Federal Support for Public Education
Why does the Trump Administration wish to abolish the U.S. Department of Education? The reasons given are ideological: They believe that its programs support beliefs they oppose, and they believe that education should be exclusively a matter for state and local government. Another reason is said to be that which underlies the broader effort to remove all those functions of the federal government that were added in the twentieth century, returning it to its status as a collector of tariffs and maintainer of armed forces. And why that? Because its most vital supporters, the wealthiest individuals and corporations, want even more money, resenting the amounts taken by taxation to support activities like those of the Department of Education, resenting the controls on their own activities that have accumulated since the—Theodore—Roosevelt administration.
Those are, as it were, the positive reasons. There are also reasons specific to the abolition of the Department of Education, reasons that dare not speak their name.
The core of the Department of Education is Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which provides supplemental financial assistance to school districts for children from low-income families. Its purpose is to provide all children significant opportunity to receive a fair, equitable, and high-quality education, and to close educational achievement gaps by allocating federal funds for education programs and services. It operates by providing supplementary funding to high poverty schools attended by economically disadvantaged students.
In 2022 there were 422,314 American Indian/Alaska Natives in U.S. Public Schools; 2,005,266 Asian/Pacific Islanders; 11,017,872 Hispanics; 7,097,193 Black and 20,825,878 White, non-Hispanics. The percentage of students who attended high-poverty schools was highest for Hispanic students (38 percent), followed by Black students (37 percent) and American Indian/Alaska Native students (30 percent). This percentage was lowest for White students (7 percent) and Asian students (13 percent).
In 2022, the percentage of economically disadvantaged students reading below the Basic level in middle school was White (37%); Black (53%); Hispanic, non-English Language Learners (33%); Asian/Pacific Islander (29%); American Indian/Alaska Native (50%). The number of middle school students reading below the NAEP Basic level is: American Indian/Alaskan Native--63,347; Asian/Pacific Islander--75,599; Hispanic--1,381,641; Black--1,391,760; White, non-Hispanic--539,390. While White, non-Hispanic, students are the largest group in American public schools, they are less than half as numerous as Hispanic or Black students, and among those economically disadvantaged students who are not taught to read fluently in middle school they are even fewer than American Indian/Alaskan Native students.
Title I funding is, therefore, most important to support the education of students who are not classified as White, non-Hispanic (and to a lesser extent, not Asian). Reducing Title I funding lessens the “opportunity to receive a fair, equitable, and high-quality education” for economically disadvantaged students, especially Black and Hispanic students. This would likely create an underclass—a caste—of the undereducated. Could this be, in fact, the unspoken purpose of those extraordinary actions by the federal government?
Michael Holzman
July 18, 2025