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Photos show how the US government’s involvement in education has evolved through history

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Photos show how the US government’s involvement in education has evolved through history

Photograph of students pledging allegiance to the American flag in a public school in New York City, 1943.
Education in America has been widely shaped by the federal government's actions.

GraphicaArtis/Getty Images

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  • The Department of Education is handing off its grant programs to other federal agencies.
  • The move follows Trump's promise to dismantle the department.
  • Concerns of government overreach and unnecessary spending have fueled opponents throughout history.

The Trump administration is taking steps to dismantle the Department of Education, but the idea of abolishing the federal agency is far from new — in fact, it's existed for longer than the department itself.

On Tuesday, the department began offloading some of its largest grant programs — such as the Title I program, which provides funding for schools in low-income communities — to other federal agencies, representing a major step forward in the administration's plan to shutter the agency.

It comes eight months after the president signed an executive order to start eliminating the department, though he needs congressional approval before it can actually be shuttered.

The fight to dismantle the Department of Education has been ongoing since 1867, long before the current department was established in 1980.

Opponents have cited concerns of government overreach and unnecessary spending since the department's first, short-lived iteration under President Andrew Johnson. Supporters, on the other hand, have argued that the centralization of education helps maintain fair and equal standards for all children in the nation.

The current administration's push to reduce the federal government's role in education through federal defunding and undoing protections echoes arguments of the past, from the early republic's approaches to schooling to the Cold War concerns over intellectual superiority.

These photos show how the federal government's involvement over the past 200 years has changed and shaped education in the US.

In the 18th century, schools were run entirely by local communities.
Painting of Colonial Schoolroom Scene.

Bettmann/Getty

In the early days of the republic, children were most often educated in small, community-organized settings like churches, work apprenticeships, homeschooling, or in schools run by traveling schoolmasters, groups of parents, or women, per the Center on Education Policy. Wealthy children were often sent to boarding schools too.

Inaccessible to many, these schools often ran on tuition paid by parents, although residents in some Northeastern towns helped fund free local schools. Some churches and religious groups also provided free education for low-income children.

In 1819, the federal government created a fund to "civilize" Native American children.
Chirrcahua Apaches at the Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania, 1880s.

Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

The 1819 Civilization Fund Act provided federal funds to "benevolent societies" like religious missionaries who educated Native American children in or near their communities. The act aimed to "civilize" the Native populations.

For the next decades, boarding schools in or near reservations played a major role in assimilating Native Americans into European-American culture. At these schools, children would be removed from their families and communities, stripped of their native languages and clothing, given new names, and have their hair cut off in an effort to assimilate them into white culture.

Reports of abuse, forced labor, and hidden deaths have since come out about these boarding schools, prompting President Joe Biden to issue a formal apology in 2024 for the government's role in funding and running these schools.

President Andrew Johnson created the first Department of Education in 1867.
Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States, 1860s (1955). Johnson (1808-1875) was Abraham Lincoln's vice-president and succeeded Lincoln as president after his assassination.

The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images

During the 19th century, public schools became more common.

In 1830, 55% of children aged between 5 and 14 attended public schools, according to Johann N. Neem's "Democracy's Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America." By 1870, that number had risen to 78%.

By the late 1860s, the common school movement, which advocated for free, universal, state-funded education, had been growing in the North for decades, according to the Center on Education Policy. School reform in Massachusetts promoted universal schooling as a means to eliminate crime, poverty, and other societal ills.

After the Civil War, abolitionists and public education advocates saw the Northern model of universal education as one of the reasons for the Union's victory in the war and called for its federal expansion.

In 1867, then-Ohio representative James Garfield introduced a bill to create a federal Department of Education, which President Andrew Johnson then signed into law.

The department would collect and analyze data detailing school conditions and performance throughout the states, share information regarding education progress, school systems, and teaching methods, and promote education throughout the country.

"The idea was similar to what we think right now in terms of collecting data, that if we know more, we could improve schools based on that knowledge," Kevin G. Welner, professor of educational policy and law at the University of Colorado Boulder and the director of the National Education Policy Center, told Business Insider.

Shortly after, the department was demoted to an office within the Department of Interior.
An engraving showing the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson in the Senate March 13, 1868.

Library of Congress

The department had a small budget and a passive role in education, yet opposition in Congress considered the establishment of the Department of Education as an overreach of the federal government.

In 1868, it became an office within the Department of Interior, where it remained for the following decades.

Plessy v. Ferguson made segregation legal, bringing an era of "separate but equal" schools.
A teacher in an African American school stands at the back of a nearly empty classroom while students at desks concentrate on schoolwork.

Lewis Wickes Hine/Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

In 1896, the Supreme Court upheld a law that "separate but equal accommodations for the white and colored races" were legal, allowing for segregation to spread legally throughout the South.

In education, this meant that segregated schools remained the norm for the following decades, and Black children faced poor education resources such as overcrowded and underfunded schools, inaccessible facilities, and unequal transportation, the National Museum of African American History and Culture wrote.

The federal government started funding vocational education in 1917.
Machine gun school, 12 Dec 1917 (date created or published later). Men becoming more familiar with the delicate mechanism of the automatic rifle as part of their aviation training.

Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images

By this point, a high school education was still not common to most Americans; only 14% of adults aged 25 and older had completed high school by 1910, according to Census data.

The Smith-Hughes Act, signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, provided federal funding for vocational and technical education in areas such as agriculture, home economics, and industrial trades.

During this time of rapid industrialization, vocational education was seen as a tool to help young workers meet the needs of a changing economy while promoting the moral value of education.

The federal funding helped establish a nationwide system of vocational and technical school programs offered to young workers.

This was the first major step in establishing a federal power within education, Welner said.

"The feeling was that the war efforts and the importance of economic growth depended on preparing more students to work in non-professional vocations," he said.

Veterans received federal funding for college education after World War II.
After The War Navy And Marines Continuing Education Under The Gi Bill Of Rights At New York University In Usa On January 28Th 1945.

Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

At the end of WWII, the federal government recommended funding college education for veterans to help avoid a postwar depression — the Department of Labor estimated 15 million women and men in the armed services would become unemployed at the war's end.

In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, or GI Bill, which provided millions of war veterans with education funding and made college degrees more affordable.

The act provided funding for tuition, books, supplies, subsistence, and counseling services for servicemen seeking college education.

Within the next seven years, an estimated 8 million veterans received education benefits from the federal government, according to the National Archives.

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional.
Nettie Hunt and her daughter Nickie sit on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court.

UPI/Bettmann via Getty Images

In the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, the court found that segregating schools by race was unconstitutional, reversing the previous "separate but equal" ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson.

Despite the court ruling, schools, businesses, and services would continue to employ "de facto segregation" for the following decade leading to the rise of the Civil Rights Movement.

During this time, racial integration in schools became a controversial topic, and there were clashes between people who were in favor and those who opposed it. One example was the anger and injustice experienced by the Little Rock Nine in Arkansas.

The Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik prompted increased funding in science education.
New York: Stuyvesant High School. Photo shows a group of students in class with some of the exhibits.

Bettmann/Getty Images

In the Cold War space race, Americans found themselves falling behind the Soviets following the launch of the Sputnik satellite. With a newfound interest in education as a branch of national defense, Congress passed the 1958 National Defense Education Act, which provided education funding in areas relevant to the Cold War efforts, like science, math, and foreign languages

While federal education funding had previously been met with strong opposition, the threat of intellectual inferiority at the time persuaded Congressmen to support the act.

Lyndon B. Johnson's Elementary and Secondary Education Act provided funding for K-12.
Seated in front of his old school in Stonewall, Texas, President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which provides federal money for education. Next to him is his first teacher, Katherine Deadrich Loney.

CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the act providing funding for K-12 schools with high percentages of low-income students as part of his "war on poverty."

The measure aimed to improve school conditions for students and lower poverty rates across the country.

It also provided funding for school supplies, books, training, and research in measures designed to strengthen state departments of education.

According to the ESEA Network, an organization of school administrators and staff, the act was "the most far-reaching federal legislation affecting education ever passed by Congress. "

This was the first time that the federal government provided major aid to states for public education funding.

Students with disabilities were granted federal protections in 1975.
Special disabilities coordinator works with child on attribute-blocks learning exercise.

Denver Post via Getty Images

Previous to federal protections, many children with disabilities didn't have access to public education and instead were often institutionalized in facilities lacking educational instruction.

As reported in Arizona State University's Embryo Project Encyclopedia, only about 20% of children with disabilities attended public school at the beginning of the 1970s.

In 1975, Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to ensure that disabled children had access to free, appropriate public education. For this, the act provided funding for special education programs and early intervention services for children.

President Jimmy Carter's federal Department of Education unified federal programs.
Shirley M. Hufstedler is sworn in as the nation's first Secretary of Education by Chief Justice Warren Burger, right, while her husband Seth, holds a Bible in Washington on Dec. 6, 1979. President Jimmy Carter looks on, left.

AP

During his 1976 presidential campaign, Carter had run on the promise of creating a Department of Education to centralize federal education funding. In 1980, Carter unified different programs, such as ESEA and IDEA, under a federal cabinet-level agency.

"Primary responsibility for education should rest with those States, localities, and private institutions that have made our Nation's educational system the best in the world," President Carter said in his statement on signing the department into law, "but the Federal Government has for too long failed to play its own supporting role in education as effectively as it could."

Welner told Business Insider the move was "symbolically important" for the US.

"When Congress passed the law, and President Carter signed it, I think there was a feeling that this was elevating the importance of education to our country," he said.

That same year, Ronald Reagan promised to dismantle the department on the campaign trail.
Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell and President Ronald Reagan conferring at the White House.

CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

During his 1980 presidential campaign against Carter, Ronald Reagan criticized the Department of Education, citing concerns over federal overreach and government spending.

In 1981, after Reagan won the presidency, the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act reauthorized Johnson's Elementary and Secondary Education Act and gave most of the education responsibilities back to the states.

This also resulted in a redistribution of funds away from urban and low-income communities, according to a 1982 RAND report.

The National Commission on Excellence in Education's "Nation at Risk " report, published in 1983, largely shook up national notions of education and the federal government's response to education research findings.

The report warned of a "rising tide of mediocrity [in education] that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people" and effectively prompted an increased government involvement in education through standards and accountability, wrote Morgan Polikoff, an education professor at the University of Southern California.

The Department of Education introduced an increased focus on accountability in 1994.
US President Bill Clinton raises his hand.

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP via Getty Images

During his presidency, Bill Clinton saw the early beginnings of the education reforms that would be prompted by the "Nation at Risk" warnings to the nation.

The Improving America's Schools Act, Clinton's 1994 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, saw increased funding for schools.

The Department of Education also unveiled the Goals 2000 program, which aimed to prepare the nation's students and educational systems for the 21st century.

Under the IASA, states were required to draft plans that included "high-quality standards" for students in order to secure funding.

George W. Bush's 2001 No Child Left Behind Act also emphasized accountability and standards.
United States President George W. Bush speaks about his "No Child left Behind" education policy at the C.T. Kirkpatrick Elementary School in Nashville.

Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images

In Bush's 2001 reauthorization of ESEA, an increased focus was put on standardized testing as a measure of school performance. The act aimed to close the achievement gap for disadvantaged students by holding schools accountable for the testing performance of all students.

One of the law's most significant goals was to get every student to grade-level reading and math by 2014, reaching a "100% proficiency" goal set by the Department of Education.

At the time, 18% of fourth-graders, 17% of eighth-graders, and 11% of 12th-graders performed at or above proficiency level, according to the 2001 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

"We're gonna spend more money, more resources," Bush said at the time, as reported by NPR, "but they'll be directed at methods that work. Not feel-good methods. Not sound-good methods. But methods that actually work."

Opponents of No Child Left Behind criticized the act's increased pressure on K-12 teachers by imposing testing standards as a universal measure of progress.

While monitoring the progress of schools nationwide, the Department of Education still let each state define its education goals, which resulted in mixed performance outcomes.

During the Obama administration, Common Core Standards spread throughout the nation.
Students work on California Common Core requirements.

Paul Bersebach/Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty Images

Welner said during the Bush and Obama administrations there was a "scaling up" of the federal government's role in K-12 education.

"[The federal government] had a pretty heavy hand in telling states what to do," Welner said.

In 2010, more than 40 states signed onto the Common Core Standards Initiative, a plan to develop standards that could be compared from state to state.

While Obama's Department of Education did not create or enforce the Common Core Standards, it played a major role in funding schools that adopted it, The New York Times reported.

Some of the ways the government stepped in through funding were the use of test scores to evaluate teachers and incentive pay to teachers with high-performing students.

The program faced significant backlash due to its unfamiliar ways of teaching subjects and reliance on test scores, which led teachers to change coursework to prioritize tested subjects, like non-fiction reading and math, over non-tested ones like history and science.

Obama's Every Student Succeeds Act replaced No Child Left Behind.
President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act on Dec. 10, 2015.

NurPhoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Obama's 2015 reauthorization of ESEA was the first change to the federal government's approach to education since No Child Left Behind. The Every Student Succeeds Act pushed schools to identify performance measures beyond test scores.

The act gave some power back to the states and narrowed the federal government's role in education for the first time since the "A Nation at Risk" report identified flaws in American schooling.

As a response to the widespread opposition to Common Core standards, ESSA also prohibited federal employees from trying to "influence, incentivize, or coerce a state to adopt the Common Core" or other national K-12 education standards.

Under ESSA, states develop their own performance standards and submit them for review and approval from the Department of Education, the department said.

The act's reduced federal role raised concerns over the proper implementation of standards that wouldn't leave disadvantaged students behind.

During his first administration, President Donald Trump pulled funding from K-12.
U.S. President Donald Trump is surrounded by Governors and members of Congress as he signs the executive order to start pulling the federal government out of K-12 education, in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, on April 26, 2017 in Washington, DC.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

During the first Trump administration, efforts to reduce the Department of Education's role led to cuts in K-12 funding.

In 2018, Trump proposed merging the Department of Education with the Department of Labor to reduce the federal budget and combine the agencies' overlapping duties to better respond to market needs. While the measure, which required congressional approval, went nowhere, the idea of cutting the Department of Education prevailed.

The administration also focused on backing out of Obama-era protections in schools for vulnerable populations like transgender students.

It also advocated for school choice programs that allowed parents to choose between public, private, charter, virtual, or homeschool for their children. In 2019, Trump's education secretary, Betsy DeVos, announced a $5 billion tax credit funding scholarships for non-public schools.

Now, Trump is working to dismantle the Department of Education.
Linda McMahon arrives to testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on her nomination to be Education Secretary at Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, February 13, 2025.

SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

In March, Trump signed an executive order to begin the process of eliminating the department after saying he hoped his education secretary would "put herself out of a job" once the department is dismantled.

While the administration would need congressional approval to fully close the department, if it does go ahead, there could be significant impacts on the education system, and for some Americans, Democratic lawmakers have argued.

Trump said some functions — such as Pell Grants and Title I funding for low-income districts — would remain, but would be managed by other federal agencies.

"If the department is dismantled, those programs still exist," Welner told Business Insider in February. "Congress has created and funded these programs, so they have to exist somewhere."

On Tuesday, the department, led by Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, officially began offloading some of its grant programs to other federal agencies, signing six agreements that transferred billions of dollars in grant funding to agencies such as the Department of Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services, as reported by the Associated Press.

"We'd like to do this right," McMahon said in February. "We'd like to make sure that we are presenting a plan that I think our senators could get on board with."

Read the original article on Business Insider

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