The new political blueprint for the executive branch, known as Project 2025, is not merely a conservative wish list—it is a detailed, 900-page manifesto calling for a radical, systemic overhaul of the U.S. government. While attention has focused on the FBI and DOJ, an investigation by White House News has uncovered the most shocking and structurally destructive proposal: the total dissolution of the Department of Education (ED) and the privatization of America's public school system.
This policy paper, developed by the Heritage Foundation and allied conservative groups, is not a symbolic gesture; it is a blueprint for a nation without federal oversight for public schools, gutting civil rights protections and diverting taxpayer dollars toward private and religious institutions.
🔪 The Plan: Dismantle and Disperse
The core goal of Project 2025 is to entirely abolish the Department of Education, an agency tasked with ensuring equal educational access and distributing billions in federal funding.
The plan proposes to break up the ED’s functions and scatter them across less-equipped federal agencies, effectively neutralizing federal capacity to enforce civil rights and equality:
- Civil Rights Enforcement: The critical function of enforcing Title VI (prohibiting race-based discrimination) would be transferred to the Department of Justice (DOJ), and its ability to act preventively would be restricted. The plan explicitly calls for rejecting the "disparate impact theory," meaning discrimination experienced through racial disparities (like in school discipline) would be ignored unless intentional, gutting civil rights law.
- Data Collection: Educational statistics and demographic data, essential for documenting inequities, would be moved to the Census Bureau.
- Special Education: Programs for students with disabilities, covered under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), would be moved to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), potentially disrupting services for millions of vulnerable children.
By shuffling these responsibilities, the plan ensures that the federal government becomes little more than a "statistics-gathering agency".
💰 Defunding Public Schools to Fund Private Choice
The most immediate and devastating impact of the blueprint is its economic plan for public education, which is framed as "school choice" but operates as defunding mechanism.
Project 2025 proposes to redirect taxpayer funds away from public schools through the rapid expansion of school vouchers and Education Savings Accounts (ESAs).
- Eliminating Title I: The blueprint proposes phasing out the $18 billion in Title I funding, which provides critical financial help to high-poverty schools. The funding would be converted into block grants for states, which could then be diverted from marginalized students to their wealthier peers.
- No Accountability: Alarmingly, the plan advocates for voucher and ESA programs without requiring academic assessments for the private schools that receive the funds, removing accountability and transparency.
- Early Childhood Cut: The plan specifically calls for eliminating the Head Start program, which provides crucial services to low-income children, compounding existing racial achievement gaps.
Critics warn that this shift would dramatically worsen resource disparities, forcing public schools to serve all students with fewer resources while private entities receive public funds with no strings attached.
Ideology Over Education
The document makes clear that the policy is driven by a deep ideological antagonism toward the federal role in fostering equity and diversity. Project 2025 views education as a private, rather than a public, good.
It specifically targets and seeks to eliminate policies related to "gender ideology," "critical race theory," and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
While abolishing a federal department requires an act of Congress and faces significant hurdles in the Senate, the White House is already reportedly planning executive actions to implement parts of the plan. These unilateral actions could include ending student loan forgiveness programs and refusing to enforce newly updated Title IX regulations that protect LGBTQ+ students.
Project 2025 is not just a proposal; it is a declaration of war on the concept of universal, federally protected public education. The administration's focus on this blueprint in its opening weeks signals that a radical transformation of American education is its most immediate and central goal.
White House News is continuing to track the specific inter-agency agreements being drafted to transfer Title I and IDEA funding responsibilities.