civil rights enforcement on its head in ways that harm historically marginalized communities,” the Century Foundation analysis stated.
Trump’ s other education policies will have equally harmful impacts on the most vulnerable students and families.
The decision to withhold congressionally allotted funds to schools specifically targeted federal grant programs that serve high-needs populations, such as migrant students, English learners, students who need access to academic enrichment programs, and after-school and summer learning programs, according to an analysis by New America, a Washington, D. C.-based think tank.
The impact of the withheld funds would have been“ much greater on students and families in certain school districts— particularly high-need districts,” New America said.
Nationwide, students from low-income backgrounds would have been“ especially at risk of losing education resources,” according to New America.“ Districts serving highpoverty student populations( those where over 25 percent of children live in poverty)… [ would have lost ] over five times as much funding per pupil as low-poverty school districts.”
The sprawling budget reconciliation bill that Trump and Republicans passed, with its cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs, will also add to the costs of schools’ student health services and free meals programs, which are essential to low-income communities.
‘ The False Narrative’
The fact that these attacks on the public education system are being made during a time when conservative Republicans control the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, with little to no explanation, should surprise no one.
Anyone who’ s been paying attention has long known that the primary role conservative Republicans feel the federal government has in public education is punitive and controlling. They have rarely done anything to support schools and educators and address the needs and interests of students.
This has been clear ever since former President Ronald Reagan called for abolishing the Department of Education and then used the department’ s resources and clout to form a commission that issued a scathing report,“ A Nation at Risk,” now widely discredited, which education historian Diane Ravitch has said“ launched the false narrative that American public schools were failing.”
Conservatives continued their campaign to use federal agencies to punish public education when William Bennett, Reagan’ s secretary of education in his second term, weaponized the NAEP. According to education psychologist David Berliner and James Harvey, an author of“ A Nation at Risk,” who became a prominent critic of it, Bennett changed the standardized test’ s intent,“ from its original purpose of measuring what students at various grade levels actually know to a new goal: judging what students at various grade levels should know,” and created a“ proficiency” benchmark that“ the vast majority of students in most nations cannot clear.”
Conservative Republicans drew a straight line from changing the purpose of the NAEP to enacting, with the complicity of most Democrats, No Child Left Behind( NCLB) during the presidency of George W. Bush. NCLB set in motion a policy agenda, largely still intact today. This includes using test score data, like the NAEP, to label public schools as failures and closing them down or privatizing them.( Although cutting funds to the NAEP would appear to undercut its weaponization, the Trump administration has vowed to continue administering the tests.)
Trump’ s first presidential term continued to weaponize federal involvement in education with the hiring of Betsy DeVos as his secretary of education. DeVos was openly hostile to the mission of public education, and she loudly advocated for redirecting government funds from public education to private schools.
Inequality Is The Point
Democrats, for their part, are currently voicing their opposition to these cuts.
Even before the Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump to dismantle the Department of Education, 11 Democratic senators, in March 2025, called for an investigation into the massive layoffs and spending cuts McMahon carried out.
The injunction that temporarily blocked the cuts, which the Supreme Court overruled, was brought by“ New York and 20 other Democratic-led states, two Massachusetts school districts, and the American Federation of Teachers,” Education Week reported.
“ More than 175 Democratic members of Congress,” according to ABC News, filed an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to block the dismantling of the department. But all of that was before the court’ s ruling.
In response to the withholding of billions in federal funds, more than 100 Democratic House Representatives sent a letter to McMahon and Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought asking why the funds were being withheld in July. In a separate letter, 32 Democratic senators demanded“ an immediate end to the illegal withholding.”
But for the Trump administration, and a majority of conservative Republicans serving in Congress and on the nation’ s highest court, the only constituents that seem to matter are white, wealthy ones. And the nation’ s system of public education should be bent to ensure they get what they want out of it first.
44 The Trial Lawyer