Elizabeth Warren: This Is What Eliminating the Department of Education Will Actually Look Like

Earlier this month, the Trump administration made significant cuts to the Department of Education. Around 1,300 employees were laid off, leaving the agency at roughly half of its previous size. And now, President Donald Trump is threatening to sign an executive order—as soon as today—that abolishes the Department of Education entirely.

The cuts are part of Trump and Elon Musk's plan to reduce spending across the federal government. And while it's reported that the order directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to "take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure (of) the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely," it's not a done deal yet.

Eliminating the Department of Education has proven unpopular amongst parents, education advocates, civil rights groups, and lawmakers, and to officially abolish the agency would require congressional legislation.

One of those legislators, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), sat down with Marie Claire to discuss the latest developments, what it means, and why she won't support closing the Department.

President Trump has said that he wants to eliminate the Department of Education. Can you speak to exactly what that means and who will feel the immediate impact?

So think of it this way, the Department of Education has three main jobs that it carries out every single day: One is to make sure that every kid in America gets access to a good public education, so even if you live in a rural area and it’s expensive to send a bus for you, they’ve got to do it. [The agency] makes sure that brown children and Black children and white children all have an opportunity to go to good public schools. That’s part one.

Part two, the Department of Education makes sure that children who have significant disabilities—maybe they need an aid to be with them for part or all of the day—to make sure that those children still have an opportunity to go to school, and the federal government picks up the ticket so there will be money to hire an aide for that child. That’s part two.

Part three, the Department of Education is there when a family is ready to send a kid off for more education after high school, whether it’s technical school, two-year college, four-year college, maybe even graduate school, but the family doesn’t have enough money to write a single check for it, the Department of Education is there to administer the student loan program. Those are the ways in which we make sure we have a strong public education system, not just for a handful of really rich people or a handful of people who live over here or live over there, but a strong public education system for everyone, and that is what Donald Trump is trying to dismantle.

You were a public school teacher. How did you see the Department of Education working for students? And what do you think is most at risk now if the agency were to be abolished?

I don’t want to do this as “most” because it’s all so very important, but I will say this from my own personal experience—I worked with special needs kids. The children I worked with were four to six years old and had some pretty significant challenges. Most of them, for example, could not express themselves. But because we had help from the federal government, and they could get assistance and get the kind of one-on-one care they needed, those children had a better opportunity to build a real future; to be able to acquire the skills to take care of themselves, and for some of them to be able to get a job and support themselves.

Public education is about honoring each child, so that each child has an opportunity to build out who they can be and to have an opportunity to build a future that’s secure and that has a lot of independence. We make those investments early early on with our littlest learners and we know from the data that it pays off down the line. That more children are able to get a better education, more of them are able to take care of themselves and to live lives that are independent—to cut that off is not only an economic failure for this country, it is a moral failure for this country.

There are many who say you can measure a country by how it treats the most vulnerable among us, and for me, that is true just ten times over when we’re talking about the mission of the Department of Education to make sure that every one of our children has a real opportunity to build a future. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are trying to take that away and we’ve got to fight back.

The Trump Administration has said that the Education Department isn’t working; that it’s hindered by bureaucratic bloat. I’m a parent, and I live in a neighborhood in New York City where the public schools are under resourced and many families don’t have confidence their children are getting a good education. Does President Trump have a point?

I think you put your finger on it—to the extent that the Department of Education is not able to carry out its mission, a large part of that is based on the fact we don’t give it the resources to be able to do that. It takes money to pay our teachers, to pay our teacher’s aid, to make sure the children have transportation to get to school. In order to support our public school systems, we need to be willing to make the investment, because we have learned that when we do make that investment it pays off in the long run. It pays off for children who stay in school, it pays off for children who go ahead and have long careers—it pays off for our nation.

The idea of undercutting it—I gotta tell you, I know that Donald Trump says, No, no it’s not doing its job. Do you know what the cuts to the Department of Education are really about? Right now Donald Trump and Elon Musk and the spineless Republicans in Congress are trying to find places that they can cut spending so that they will have more money available to be able to give tax handouts to billionaires and billionaire corporations. The Department of Education is one of the places to see it most clearly. It is the billionaires versus the kids of America. Donald Trump and Elon Musk side with the billionaires. I side with our kids and I think that’s where most of America is.

One of the things that people may not realize is that these cuts don’t just affect public schools, many of Trump’s cuts at the Department of Education could have an impact on financial aid and even civil rights. Let’s start with financial aid. What do these cuts mean for people who have student loans or may be seeking student loans?

Of course you’re not going to be surprised to hear this: Donald Trump is causing enormous chaos in that system. The student loan program is complex because it was layered up over the years. But a big part of the student loan program, part one, is if you need the money, the money will be there from the federal government, so don’t decide not to get that technical degree or that two-year college certification or that four-year diploma; don’t give up on your dream of becoming an engineer or public school teacher. Don’t give up on that—the American people will make an investment in you by lending you the money you need to get that diploma. That’s part one and Donald Trump is hacking away at that.

But part two is a promise within that that says, for example, once you get that degree and you are a teacher or you’re a nurse or you’re a social worker or you just go to work for a town clerk, if you work in public service, and you work for a certain period of time and you make all the payments on your student loans, a grateful nation will say to you the rest of your debt is canceled. We appreciate that you took that education and instead of going out in the private sector and making a maximum amount of dollars that you could, you gave back to your community, you gave back to our children, you gave back to our public safety; police and fire fighters. You gave back, and therefore after you pay for a certain period of time, the rest of the debt will be canceled.

Donald Trump is going after that program, trying to take it away from the very people who did exactly what we asked them to do—got an education, worked in public service, and now expect a portion of their loans to be forgiven. So what he’s undermining here is truly the basic American contract, and that is you work hard, you play by the rules, and you’re going to have an opportunity to build a future and Donald Trump is trying to take that.

And what about civil rights?

The Department of Education is the place that steps in and says you’ve got to create opportunity for everyone. It’s the Department of Education that makes sure that Black kids, white kids, brown kids, all can go to school together and all have the same opportunity; the science labs, after school programs, and a good library. It’s to make sure that we honor that fundamental notion of what it means to be an American and that is that everybody gets a chance starting out. The Department of Education is the place where that chance is watered and blooms.

Our readers vote. They call and email their representatives in government. How else can they get involved on issues, like these, that matter to them?

Now is the time for the friends of the Department of Education, the friends of public education, to stand up and make their voices heard. You said it right, call your senators, call your representatives—that’s very important—but there’s more. There are two more things you can do for sure that make a big difference.

Tell the stories. Tell them in a personal way. Talk about if you have a child that has significant challenges and has received federal help. Tell about what it was like to have your student loan debt canceled after working as a teacher for more than a decade. Talk about the parts of the work that the Department of Education does that have touched you, touched your neighbors, touched someone in your family. The reason for that is we’ve got to build a movement from the grassroots up, and just describing it as the Department of Education—you and I may be on board—but to get other people on board, it’s a reminder that these are real children who are affected. This is our future that is affected. So that’s something else we can do.

The other thing I want to add to that, do not underestimate the power of organization. That means joining political groups, you bet, I’m all in. But think of everything you belong to. Think of your Facebook group, think of your PTA group, think of the group you went to school with and now you all kind of stay together and they are scattered all over this country. The more we get the stories pushed out, pushed in the blue states, purple states, red states, the more we get to them in every community—and here’s the virtuous circle—get more people calling their senators and their reps, the better we can protect the Department of Education.

The Department of Education has been there for our children for generations, and many of us without even knowing it, have had real opportunities in this life because of the work of the dedicated people at the Department of Education have done every single day. Now they need our help and now is the time we need to get in that fight.