Almost every classroom in America has at least one poster exhorting students to “Believe in Yourself.” At Believe in Me, we add a corollary: society must believe in those students, too—especially the ones facing poverty, discrimination, or trauma. That belief is expressed in federal programs that keep specialists in high-need schools, pay for speech therapists and sign-language interpreters, and guard student civil-rights. Today, all of that is on the chopping block.
Congress is debating several proposals—including the States’ Education Reclamation Act (H.R. 369) and the Project 2025 roadmap—that would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and scatter its work across other agencies or the states. The Center for American Progress calculates that the biggest single casualty would be Title I: without that funding stream, districts would have to pink-slip about 180,300 teachers—one in every 18 public-school educators. (1) In the 2020-21 school year there were 3.8 million public-school teachers nationwide, (2) so the scale of the cut is staggering.
Federal Collapse Meets Local Reality
Department headcount. ED is the smallest Cabinet agency, employing about 4,144 career staff in 2024. (3) A March 2025 reduction-in-force halved that number, prompting a federal judge to order the reinstatement of nearly 1,400 fired workers because the department “could not perform its statutory duties.”(4)
Civil-rights enforcement. Even before the layoffs, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) handled a record 22,687 discrimination complaints in FY 2024—everything from disability accommodations to antisemitic harassment.(5) A skeleton crew cannot keep pace, leaving marginalized youth without a federal backstop.
K-12 funding lifelines. Title I delivered $18.4 billion to high-poverty schools in FY 2024; IDEA supplied $15.5 billion for special education. (6) If ED disappears, those dollars either become “flexible” block grants (history shows they shrink) or evaporate altogether.
Ripple One: States and Districts Face the Math
When Congress last block-granted a major social-service program—the Social Services Block Grant—its inflation-adjusted value fell 73 percent over four decades. (7) Analysts at the Albert Shanker Institute simulate a similar fate for education: losing all federal aid would cut district budgets by just over $1,000 per pupil, depressing achievement by 0.04 standard deviations—roughly 28 days of learning. (8)
Rural and tribal districts, already reliant on Washington to level the tax-base playing field, would feel the sting first. Urban systems that count on Title I to fund bilingual aides and reading coaches would follow close behind.
Ripple Two: Early-Childhood Programs Fall First
Federal education dollars start long before kindergarten. Head Start, IDEA preschool grants, and early-intervention services could be stranded mid-budget cycle. In Connecticut on May 14, 2025, 15 towns shuttered child-care centers for a day—“Morning Without Child Care”—to dramatize how fragile the sector is even with federal support. (9) Imagine that morning, every morning.
Ripple Three: College Access up in the Air
ED’s Federal Student Aid office manages $1.47 trillion in loans for 38 million borrowers. (10) March’s layoffs triggered a four-hour FAFSA outage that snarled college financial-aid timelines nationwide. (11) Shifting that portfolio to the Treasury or a private contractor during wholesale downsizing all but guarantees more chaos—exactly when first-generation students, the core of Believe in Me’s iLevelUP initiative, need clear guidance.
Economic Shock Waves
Education isn’t just altruism; it’s infrastructure. The Alliance for Excellent Education finds that nudging one high-school cohort’s graduation rate to 90 percent would create 65,150 jobs and add $11.5 billion to GDP. (12) Cutting 180,000 teaching positions pushes in the opposite direction, shrinking tomorrow’s talent pool just as AI and advanced manufacturing raise the bar.
Why This Fight Matters to Believe in Me
Our mission is to lift marginalized youth through programs like iLevelUP (college readiness), and Cougs4Kids (youth mentorship program). Each relies on a functioning public-education ecosystem:
Equitable classrooms ensure first-generation scholars enter middle school on pace.
Special-education safeguards protect students with disabilities who turn to our scholarship fund.
Civil-rights enforcement shields LGBTQ+ youth, many of whom seek out Believe in Me’s supports.
Without federal guardrails, our statewide safety-net may stretch past the tearing point.
What You Can Do Right Now
Speak up. Call or email your representatives about H.R. 369 and any bill that abolishes ED. Explain how the Department of Education elimination job cuts endanger kids in your zip code.
Share this article. Use the hashtag #BelieveInKids to spark conversation.
Support Believe in Me.
Donate: A one-time or monthly gift powers emergency tutoring, mental-health counseling, and college-prep workshops.
Volunteer: Graphic designers, grant writers, and mentors can join our all-remote teams.
Corporate partners: Sponsor the Marcus Trufant Charity Golf Tournament or provide matching gifts for iLevelUP scholarships.
Every hour you invest fills part of the void these federal cuts would leave.
Works Cited (Chicago Author-Date)
Espey, Molly. “Project 2025’s Elimination of Title I Funding Would Hurt Students and Decimate Teaching Positions in Local Schools.” Center for American Progress, July 25 2024.
National Center for Education Statistics. “Characteristics of Public School Teachers.” Condition of Education 2023. Accessed May 29 2025.
GovSalaries. “Department of Education Salaries: 2024.” Accessed May 29 2025.
Douglas-Gabriel, Danielle, and Laura Meckler. “Education Department Must Reinstate Nearly 1,400 Fired Workers.” Washington Post, May 22 2025.
U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. “FY 2024 Annual Report.” April 2025.
Dynarski, Susan. “What Does the U.S. Department of Education Do?” Brookings, February 2025.
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Eliminating Social Services Block Grant Would Weaken Services for Vulnerable Children.” April 18 2016.
Baker, Bruce. “How Would Cutting Federal Aid to Schools Affect Student Achievement?” Albert Shanker Institute Blog, March 2025.
Putterman, Alex. “‘This Is a Crisis’: Child-Care Centers in CT Temporarily Close.” CT Insider, May 14 2025.
Federal Student Aid. “Portfolio Summary.” Data download, April 2025.
Hicks, Mitti. “FAFSA Site Sees Outage amid Mass Education Department Layoff.” Black Enterprise, March 13 2025.
Alliance for Excellent Education. “Increasing National High School Graduation Rate to 90 Percent Would Create 65,150 Jobs.” Press release, April 2018.
Together, we can ensure that every child—no matter their background—has someone who believes in them. Your action today safeguards their classrooms tomorrow.
