President Donald Trump wants to do away with the U.S. Department of Education.
That takes more than signing an executive order. Since the department was created by an act of Congress, it’ll take another act of Congress to shut it down. Trump, though, could do the next best thing from his point of view: He could fire as many employees as possible and leave the department as an empty shell of a building.
Symbolically, this would look odd — does the United States value education or not? However, before anyone gets too worked up, let’s remember that two other major industrialized countries don’t have education departments, either: Canada and Germany.
Canada is always my go-to example because it’s so close to us and so similar to us (except in all the ways that it’s not). The current government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a minister of sport but no minister of education. (Priorities, man! Those Stanley Cups don’t win themselves.)
Somehow, though, Canada is listed as the most educated country in the world, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The United States ranks … ninth. This might be one of many reasons why Canadians have no interest in becoming Trump’s “51st” state — or any other number, for that matter. Trump may think they’d be trading up; they think they’d be trading down.
The U.S. education ranking is one of those facts that can be argued either way: Maybe we don’t need a federal Department of Education (that’s the conservative view). Or maybe we need a better one (that’s the liberal view).
Trump is not necessarily proposing to do away with all the department’s functions. The idea is that the administration of student loans would move to the Treasury Department, on the theory that student loans involve more of a banking function. Some have argued that would bring with it a philosophical shift; that the Treasury Department might be more institutionally interested in debt collection than promoting education.
That’s not the question today, though. Instead of worrying about what sign is on the outside of the building, let’s pay attention to the department’s funding. What happens to federal funding for education under the Trump administration, whether there’s a fully functional Department of Education or a vacant building collecting dust while the work gets done elsewhere? We simply don’t know.Trump has said a lot more about shutting down the department than offering policy papers on federal funding for education.
Here’s what we do know, though, with absolute certainty: how much federal funding each school system gets and what percentage that is of its total funding. That’s listed every year in an annual report on the state Department of Education’s website.
All I’ve done is turn that data into a map:
This is a classic case of a picture telling the story. One thing is clear at a glance: The localities most dependent on federal funding are in rural areas — and most cities. The localities least dependent on federal funding tend to be suburbs, particularly those in Northern Virginia.
How federal education funds are used.
Roanoke gets 22.4% of its school funding through the federal government. Here's what Kathleen Jackson, chief financial officer for Roanoke schools, had to say about that funding:
Federal funding comes through specific programs or grants that are designed to meet specified needs. Our largest area of federal support is in the school nutrition program. USDA school breakfast and lunch programs ensure our students have access to high-quality meals every day at school. Thanks to the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which looks at the community's need to determine eligibility for free breakfast and lunch rather than requiring individual students and families to apply, all students in Roanoke City Public Schools receive free breakfast and lunch each school day.
Most of our federal funds come to us through entitlement grant programs. This means that we are entitled to the funds if we meet the specified criteria. Title I-A supports schools with high numbers or percentages of students who may lack the resources at home to be fully prepared to learn each day. These funds are intended to supplement what we are already doing for all students, thanks to state and local funding, to provide extra support that a student with disadvantages may need to be successful. Some specific ways we use these funds in Roanoke City Public Schools include providing reading and math resource teachers, supplemental instructional materials, and paying teachers to stay after school to provide tutoring. Title II funding is focused on improving instruction. RCPS uses those funds to ensure our instructional staff and school leaders have the training and preparation needed to effectively meet our students’ needs. A few years ago, we used Title II funds to develop a cohort of staff to pursue graduate work to become reading specialists because we had a shortage in that area. Currently, we are following that same model, working to develop a cohort program to provide training for prospective administrators to build our pool of next-generation assistant principals and principals.
School divisions also receive funding to provide additional supports for students with disabilities through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Again, these funds must be used to supplement, not supplant what our local and state dollars fund to provide quality education to all students. IDEA funds help provide additional staffing like instructional assistants to support student learning. Sometimes there is equipment and technology that can help students with disabilities communicate and participate more successfully in school. IDEA funds are sometimes used to provide these resources as well.
Carl D. Perkins Act funding helps support career and technical education in our schools. Some of those subject areas require fairly expensive equipment and machinery to be able to teach, so Perkins funds help RCPS keep our instruction and instructional materials up-to-date to ensure we are preparing students to meet the needs of business and industry in our area.
There are many other examples, but I hope this serves as an example of important ways these funds support Roanoke City students.
The difference between the two is wide. Here are the five localities whose schools are the most dependent on federal funding:
Petersburg 30.6%
Bristol 27.6%
Galax 27.1%
Lee County 25.8%
Danville 25.3%
Here are the five localities whose schools are the least dependent on federal funding:
Falls Church 3.0%
Loudoun County 3.0%
Arlington County 4.3%
Albemarle County 6.3%
Poquoson 6.6%
There are two other ways to look at that map. One way is by income. Generally speaking, the poorest localities are the most dependent on federal funding, the most affluent localities the least. Loudoun is ranked as the most affluent county in the country. Trump could cut off all federal funding for education and Loudoun wouldn't feel that much of a pinch — nothing that some more data center revenue won't take care of.
Without federal funding, many rural (and some urban) school systems would see about a quarter (or sometimes more) of their funds go away. Again, Trump hasn't proposed eliminating education funding, just the Education Department — I'm merely showing the impact of that federal funding no matter what department the check comes from. Still, Trump has made it clear he'd like to cut federal spending generally, so it's reasonable to wonder what that might mean for education funding. If you're in Lee County, you might want to wonder more than if you're in Loudoun County. With a growing economy, Loudoun may have other ways to replace that funding and, if the worst happened, its affluent voters (median household income $178,707) could theoretically afford a local tax increase more easily than those in Lee County (median household income $42,269).
The other way to look at this map is political. The localities least dependent on federal funding for schools are generally Democratic ones (Poquoson is the exception). The ones most dependent on federal funding are generally Republican ones, with the exception of many large cities that typically vote Democratic. However, many of those Democratic-voting cities are in Republican congressional districts — that's the case with Danville on our Top 5 list above. It's also the case with Martinsville (where 22.6% of school funding comes from the feds) and Roanoke (where 22.4% of school funding comes from the feds).
To look at this another way, Democrat Gerry Connolly of Virginia's 11th District represents a district where all of the voters live in localities where the federal share of school funding is in the single digits — all are at 8.1%.
Next door in Northern Virginia, Democrat Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia's 10th District represents a district where most of the voters live in a county whose schools get only 3% of their funding from the federal government, and 64% live in counties where the federal share is in the single digits. The locality in his district with the highest dependence on federal spending for schools is Rappahannock County, at 11.2%.
By contrast, Republican Morgan Griffith of the 9th District in Southwest Virginia represents a district where only 13.2% of voters live in places where the federal share is in the single digits. The other 86.8% are all in communities where the federal share is in double digits — and the most federally dependent localities (who comprise about 8.6% of his total voters) get more than a quarter of their funding through Washington.
Republican John McGuire in the 5th District, who owes his nomination to Trump, may face the most interesting cross-pressures if federal education funding is reduced. In his district, 28.39% of voters live in communities where the federal share of school funding is in single digits, but another 25.66% live in localities where more than 20% of the federal funding comes from the feds. That's three times as many at that level than Griffith has in the 9th District.
My point: Does it matter whether we have a Department of Education or not? I'll let others debate that. The presence of a federal education department may be more immaterial than Democrats might think, but the continued flow of federal dollars for education may be a lot more material than Republicans might like.
Meet a hero from the Revolutionary War
If you'e like me, you didn't learn about Billy Flora in school. Of course, there's a lot we didn't learn in school. Next year marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. To prepare for that, Cardinal has embarked on a three-year project to tell some of the little-known stories about Virginia's role in the revolution. The next installment comes out Tuesday, and the main story is about Billy Flora. You can sign up for that or any of our other free newsletters below: