What They Said. What They Did.
Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership proposed eliminating the Department of Education entirely, ending federal student loans, defunding Title I for low-income schools, and banning gender identity protections in schools. The administration has not formally eliminated the department. It has done most of the rest.
4,000 → 2,000 employees. $900 million in research contracts terminated. 40% of civil rights attorneys gone. $10 billion in annual voucher spending across 18 states. The department still exists. Its capacity to do its job does not.
The Department of Education was cut from 4,000 to roughly 2,000 employees. DOGE terminated 64 research contracts worth $900 million. The Office for Civil Rights lost 40% of its attorneys. The proposal to eliminate the department failed in Congress, but the staffing cuts achieved a similar outcome through attrition.
The Voucher Expansion
Project 2025 called for a federal voucher program redirecting public money to private and religious schools. Eighteen states now spend over $10 billion per year on voucher programs. Arizona’s program overshot its budget by 1,346%. Oklahoma, which ranks 50th in K-12 quality, spends $248.5 million on vouchers where 72% of recipients earn $75,000 or more.
The Educational Choice for Children Act would create a $5 billion federal voucher program with no accountability requirements.
The Gender Identity Ban
Executive Order 14201 directed federal agencies to enforce biological sex definitions in schools. The NCAA reversed its transgender athlete policy within 24 hours. 27 states now ban transgender youth from school sports. The department stopped investigating complaints from transgender students.
What You Can Do
- Write your representative about defending public education →
- Read the Project 2025 scorecard for the full implementation tracker.
- Read the Education hub.
Update, July 27, 2026: The U.S. Department of Education opened a formal parental rights case against Ann Arbor Public Schools in Michigan, finding that the district’s policy directing staff to withhold students’ transgender status from parents likely violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. The department’s Student Privacy Policy Office made the determination and gave Ann Arbor until Aug. 10 to respond or face enforcement proceedings, which can include termination of federal funding. The department is also demanding the district justify maintaining gender identity records in a separate filing system.
The case is a joint action with the U.S. Department of Justice under a partnership the two agencies established in June 2026 specifically to target school privacy policies the administration characterizes as blocking parental rights. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon stated that districts attempting to “bypass or distort” FERPA requirements should expect immediate federal action. Ann Arbor schools are already under a separate Title IX investigation by the department over transgender student athletes and locker room access.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon sent a letter to state superintendents in March 2025 directing schools to apply FERPA in a way that grants parents access to all records related to a student’s gender identity. The Ann Arbor case represents a shift from that advisory stance to formal enforcement action. FERPA experts cited by Chalkbeat have said the law requires districts to share written records on request, but does not create a duty to proactively notify parents that a student is expressing a different gender at school.