What Trump's push to shut U.S. Dept. of Education means for students and schools

U.S. President Donald Trump is pushing to eliminate an entire federal government department focused on education, to the cheers of conservatives in his Make America Great Again movement.

Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that aims to shut down the Department of Education, the federal agency that ensures states provide all children with equal access to schooling and oversees the $1.6 trillion US college student loan program.

His order directs Secretary of Education Linda McMahon — co-founder and former chief executive of the WWE wrestling empire — to take "all necessary steps to facilitate the closure" of the department.

Here's what eliminating the Department of Education would mean for children, schools and college students in the United States. 

While states have primary jurisdiction over the school systems in the U.S., including over curriculum, the federal department enforces compliance with laws that prohibit discrimination in education and administers funding aimed at boosting educational achievement.

Last year it received $220 billion in funding from Congress for a range of assistance programs for disadvantaged students — including non-English speakers and children with disabilities — as well as collecting data on school performance.

Without federal enforcement of educational access laws, states will be free to decide that "kids who are blind, who are deaf, who have Down's syndrome, who have autism are too expensive to teach," said Keri Rodrigues, founding president of the National Parents Union.

"We have a terrible legacy in the United States of denying children with special needs access to classrooms," she told CBC News in an interview from Boston.

"When we hear about the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education, it strikes fear in the heart of parents like me," said Rodrigues, who has a child with autism.

The Trump administration has already shifted the role of the Office for Civil Rights within the department from its previous mandate of protecting the rights of marginalized children to policing whether states and schools are allowing transgender athletes to participate in women's sports.

Elizabeth Dhuey, an economics professor at the University of Toronto who studies educational policy and the economics of education, including in the U.S., said one of the things she's most worried about is the funding currently earmarked for programs related to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

The Trump administration has signalled it intends to give states the bulk of IDEA funding with no strings attached.

"The problem with that is that there's no legislation around it to have any rules and regulations so that these children actually get the educational services they need," Dhuey said in an interview. "Without that, we're probably just going to move backwards."

On average across the U.S., states provide about 85 per cent of school funding, but in those with larger proportions of children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, the federal contribution via the Department of Education is more significant.