The Future of Public Education: A Conversation with Professor Kristen Roorbach
I recently had the privilege of speaking with Professor Kristen Roorbach of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Professor Roorbach pairs her background in Educational Psychology with the classes she teaches, Poverty in U.S. Education Policy and Special Education Policy. She focuses on how research on psychological behavior support can be developed in public policy initiatives. Dr. Roorbach’s extensive background in educational public policy provides an insightful perspective on the future of public education in the wake of the dissolution of the U.S. Department of Education.
On March 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that will “begin eliminating” the U.S. Department of Education (DoE). This ruling was not a surprise to most Americans, since President Trump discussed dissolving the DoE as a major part of his 2024 Presidential Election campaign. The decision to dissolve the DoE came from the idea that eliminating the department would provide parents and students a way to escape “a system that is failing them” and that all education decisions should be the power of the states.
Many Republican legislators support this bold action to shut down the DoE, including Governor Jeff Landry of Louisiana who claimed on the social media platform X:
“The United States spends the most on education, yet we are ranked at the bottom of nearly every poll. The time for change is NOW! Thank you President @realDonaldTrump for returning education where it belongs— the states!”
Essentially, there seems to be a sentiment from Republicans that the government is spending more on education compared to how students perform on tests. This 'most-bang-for-buck' mentality causes Representative Ben Cline of Virginia to write on X:
“President Trump’s Executive Order to begin closing the federal education department puts parents and students first by restoring local control over education. The Department of Education has spent too long pushing woke policies instead of focusing on student success.”
However, providing future funding for public education across the states has raised many concerns among Americans. Currently, the DoE provides around 14% of funding for K-12 public schools across the country. While this may seem like an insignificant amount compared to the 44% and 43% that state and local governments, respectively, provide, states will have to make up an additional $119 billion overall in their educational funding.
Through my conversation with Dr. Roorbach, I hoped to learn more about how public education can be funded without the presence of the DoE and how this decision will disproportionately affect different states and communities. The following is an account of our conversation.
Crosby: What do you see as the immediate policy implications for states and local governments if the Department of Education were dissolved?
Dr. Roorbach: So, this is a really interesting question, because a lot of it we don't know, right? Currently, the Department of Education being dissolved might look like parts of it are going to go to the small business administration [and] parts of it are going to go to the office of budget management. Then the job of the Department of Education and the subsets of it would remain.t would just go to different places. In terms of big kind of state and federal policy implications about the Department of Education being dissolved, the Department of Education and the federal government is in charge of 10% of the funding given to all school systems. The states are responsible for the rest. So, the No Child Left Behind Act, which was education policy prior to 2015, was very federally focused, meaning most of the funding and accountability came from the federal government. Every Student Succeeds Act [E.S.A.] in 2015, gave a remarkable amount of control back to the states with funding and money. And so, I don’t think we’ll see a big effect in that aspect of the dissolving of the Department of Education, other than the 10% of funding for K-12 education.
What I will say is that funding from the Department of Education, which goes to education research, which shows what works in education or what doesn't work in education, has been cut and subsets of the education system have been annihilated (the Institute for Education Sciences is one example of that). And that I think is going to have devastating results. If we don't have accessibility to funding to support their research in terms of discovering what works, I don't think we're going to be able to create policies that are effective. I also don't think we're going to be able to adequately assess the effectiveness of the practices under current policy. And that's devastating.
Crosby: What funding mechanisms could be implemented at the state level to fill the gap of losing those federal funds? Is there a solution, or does this look like moving responsibilities to a different department within the national level?
Dr. Roorbach: Access to nonprofit funding, partnerships with universities, and partnerships with local education agencies are traditionally paramount in education policy. The reliance on the private sector for support in implementing policies is an almost essential component of a successful education program. So ironically, I think that's already happening at capacity, and we will have to rely on more volunteer hours or nonprofit partnerships or community partnerships, or even partnerships with other government institutions. For example, partnerships with Medicaid and the Department of Health and Human Services to provide mental health services and nutrition services in the schools. I think we're going to have to leverage those more than we ever have before, and those partnerships are already being leveraged at a really high rate. And so I think we're going to feel squeezed. There's no doubt about it in terms of how we can use the funds that we do have available. Like I said, around 90% of funding comes from states for public education, so at least for right now I think that we're not going to see huge changes in that. Education as a whole is underfunded anyway, losing even 10% is damaging. So I think what we are looking at will not be immediate in terms of what's going to happen in terms of quality of education and the services that we can provide, but it will be a slow burn, and it will be quite damaging.
Crosby: How do we see this decision disproportionately affecting different regions or demographics of schools and school districts?
Dr. Roorbach: Low income schools, schools with lesser resources, schools in rural areas who are not near universities who have a lot of free labor and free access to volunteer hours and nonprofit organizations are going to be the areas that are the most impacted.
Crosby: Is that separation currently most reliant on geography, like state by state, or is it more so drawn at party lines?
Dr. Roorbach: Honestly, it’s both. I think that the degree to which a state puts effort or focus on education is based on party lines. It's also based on the history of the state. It's also based on the demographics within the states, particularly its population, which influences the state’s availability of funding to put toward education. For example, Massachusetts puts a stereotypically massive amount of funding into their education system. And so historically their numbers (in terms of graduation rates and academic output) have been very good. And it's also a matter of accessibility. So obviously, Massachusetts has a very rich and long history of education, in terms of it being one of the first founding states and having access to very old educational institutions. So, education in Massachusetts has been viewed as a value for a long time there.
Crosby: Could there be any possible positive outcomes of dissolving the Department of Education and decentralizing education?
Dr. Roorbach: Before I even answer that question, I want to say that I was funded to get my PhD in educational psychology through an IS grant, so the cohort that I went to school with to do what I do now was all funded by the Institute for Education Sciences, which no longer exists as of this executive order. So this is not only happening at the local education level that we're cutting access, it goes into research and it goes into policy and it goes into practice. So, I think that what the eventual projection will be is that we will end up setting our education system back decades. This will happen regardless of if these executive orders stick because reestablishing those systems is going to be very difficult.
Then the answer to your question is that I, as you know, am a student of education policy and a professor of education policy and I believe very strongly that we often spend money on things that don't work. I believe looking at systems and how we're spending the money and what we're spending the money on is imperative to the future success of our department. I think we spend a lot of money on things that might not actually have direct links to outcome, meaning graduation rates, academic success, even future societal success of our children that we graduate from our public education system. So I do think that we need to take a better look at what's going on and do kind of an audit of what we're spending money on.
I think that closing an entire system, as in shutting the doors of the Department of Education is largely performative. The reality of it is that parts of funding are being moved to other departments, so they will remain in whatever capacity they can, and I hope that they can sustain effectively in these other departments. Also, current education policy gives the vast majority of powers to states, so decentralizing education from the federal Department of Education is a non-issue. That's why I think it's largely performative.
The Future
After considerable reflection on our conversation, my biggest takeaway is that states will most likely have to rely more heavily on non-profit organizations to fill the funding gap that eliminating the DoE is creating. Since this issue will disproportionately affect states, we can expect states with the fewest non-governmental donors to be impacted the most.
While the actual curriculum and what is being taught in schools is not changed by the dissolution of the DoE, there is no longer federal funding for educational research. This means that there will be less knowledge on what works and doesn’t work in classrooms, putting our students at a significant disadvantage.