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The Trump plan for national education policy has been simple: Dismantle it.
But now that Trump and DOGE are actively undertaking that effort, voters - even Republicans - are looking at the destruction and saying, "No thanks."
A new survey of 1,500 registered voters conducted by a team of bipartisan pollsters has found broad support for the U.S. Department of Education, despite Trump's determination to destroy that agency. According to the poll, 62% oppose the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education, while 72% want federal education spending to increase.
In an era where national elections hinge on razor-thin margins, these numbers show significant agreement across party lines that Trump's approach to K-12 education is deeply unpopular.
What is popular with voters? Federal support for innovation, for education research and development, and for the funding to make that happen.
According to the survey, a whopping 72% of voters want the federal government to increase its spending on K-12 schools. Even among Republicans, 54% said they wanted the government to spend more.
Trump and his DOGE budget cutters eliminated funding for scores of major research and development initiatives, including those focused on identifying what works in education, even though those programs enjoy broad public support. In fact, nearly 80% of voters surveyed said the federal government should prioritize efforts to discover and share effective teaching and learning strategies.
It seems that voters of both political stripes understand that the nation must invest in data collection and research if it is to drive better outcomes for all students. The voters we polled want the federal government involved in those efforts.
Recent events may offer a bit of a reprieve, or perhaps even a reversal. A recent court filing revealed that at least 10 of the DOGE-cancelled contracts that ended the Regional Education Laboratories would be reinstated. This is great news for the RELs, as they are called, which exist to help state education leaders conduct careful research and develop solutions to their biggest problems, like low literacy rates.
This just makes sense. Unlike individual school districts or states, only the federal government has the capacity and funding to carry out large-scale research on effective teaching and learning—research that can reveal what works, what doesn't, for which students, and under what circumstances.
Voters get that. Voters want that. Even among Republicans, this is a popular idea: 74% of those who self-identified as "very conservative" agreed that funding research to identify effective teaching strategies should be a federal priority.
Every day, teachers are asked to meet the needs of students with vastly different abilities, languages, and life experiences. Too often, they're left to figure it out on their own. What they need are playbooks grounded in real research.
In particular, the nation needs far more innovation and development around AI. The advent of large models have a tremendous potential to dramatically improve education, making education more personalized, targeted, and effective.
But innovation and new ideas don't spring from nothing. The key is to stop looking at education R&D as a line-item and start thinking about it as an investment that will produce better schools, better teaching, and - ultimately - the higher student achievement that the country and the economy need to remain on top.
There's talk of a "reimagined" federal research and development role, of new infrastructure and partnerships that will replace the agencies, contracts, and contractors that have traditionally done this work.
If that happens, I'll be the first to stand and applaud. But the administration has said very little about when or even if this is happening. If it is, it could take years to complete. Students don't have the luxury of time.
In the meantime, President Trump and Congress should listen to what voters are saying and not retreat from the federal role in education. They should restore funding to the Department of Education and the agencies that support research and innovation. Because abandoning the federal role in education won't just shrink government; it will shrink opportunity.