Trump wants to eliminate the Department of Education. What would that mean for Kentucky?
Among President-elect Donald Trump’s most consistent pledges during his campaign was to shutter the Department of Education, “sending all education and education work … back to the states.”
It’s a goal that’s long been shared by Kentucky’s libertarian-minded politicians Rand Paul and Thomas Massie, who has sponsored legislation to terminate the federal agency on numerous occasions.
“I don’t think you’d notice if the whole department were gone tomorrow,” Paul said about DOE in the run-up to his 2016 presidential campaign.
Nonetheless, killing an $80 billion agency outright presents the tallest of tasks for Trump, who said he would aim for its closure very early in his second term administration.
But despite Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress, 60 Senate votes would likely be necessary to seal the beleaguered department’s fate — a threshold that is rarely met on controversial issues since it requires bipartisan backing in a closely divided Senate.
And when Trump proposed merging the Education and Labor departments during his first term, Republican majorities in Congress did nothing to act on it.
The U.S. Department of Education typically provides about 12% of education funding for elementary and secondary public schools in Kentucky, with the largest allocations dedicated to academic support for students from low-income families and special education subsidies.
The Trump-Paul-Massie vision wouldn’t be to eliminate this $500 million pot of funds for the commonwealth’s kids, but instead leave the money at home and empower Kentucky leaders to decide how to spend it.
“Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development,” Massie said in 2023 when introducing his legislation. “States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students. Schools should be accountable.”
A proposal in the Senate would seek to move most of the Education Department’s functions to different cabinet agencies like the Treasury Department and the Department of Health & Human Services. A formula based on population and need would divvy up funds to states without many strings attached.
“You’d see different departments in charge of things and more of the money distributed in consolidated block grants to states and states would decide how they’re distributing the money,” said Neal McCluskey, the director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom who has written extensively on eliminating the Department of Education.
“It would be up to the states to decide who allocates that funding. It probably varies from state to state. It could be the state legislature that does it. It could be the State Board of Education. They could allow the governor to do it,” McCluskey said. “That would all depend on how the federal law is ultimately written.”
For K-12 education, the Kentucky Department of Education, led by the Commissioner of Education, would likely take on responsibility for administering funds previously managed by the federal department.
Kentucky officials are loath to speculate on whether Trump will follow through with his campaign pledge and how lawmakers might attempt to enact it.
Commissioner of Education Robbie Fletcher declined an interview request through a spokesperson.
“President-elect Trump has made comments about dissolution of the U.S. Department of Education, but no specific details have been proposed or shared with Kentucky’s Department of Education,” said Jennifer Ginn, Fletcher’s communications director. “KDE will continue its obligations implementing federal programs such as Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the Carl Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, just to name a few.”
For community and technical colleges, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System would likely manage other relevant funds, under the authority of its President and Board of Regents.
“At this time, we don’t have enough detail regarding potential plans for the Department of Education to comment,” said Blair Hess, vice president of marketing and communications for the Kentucky Community and Technical College System.
Experts say that abolishing the Education Department won’t mean the end to programs like federal student aid and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, but critics worry that some states won’t be equipped to manage the new responsibility and that the most vulnerable could fall through the cracks of a new system.
“It would hurt kids with dyslexia and autism, those who take out Pell Grants, who get school lunches or who are in low-income schools,” said Rep. Ro Khanna of California.
This story was originally published January 2, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Trump wants to eliminate the Department of Education. What would that mean for Kentucky?."
