Instead of worrying about what sign is on the outside of the building, let’s pay attention to the department’s funding. What happens to federal funding for education under the Trump administration, whether there’s a fully functional Department of Education or a vacant building collecting dust while the work gets done elsewhere? We simply don’t know.Trump has said a lot more about shutting down the department than offering policy papers on federal funding for education.
Here’s what we do know, though, with absolute certainty: how much federal funding each school system gets and what percentage that is of its total funding. That’s listed every year in an annual report on the state Department of Education’s website.
The localities most dependent on federal funding are in rural areas — and most cities. The localities least dependent on federal funding tend to be suburbs, particularly those in Northern Virginia.
