Accomplishing Project 2025: K-12 Edition

With Trump back in the White House, it is — by design —impossible to keep up with the news. With the year closing, I’m reviewing what the right has wrought, and it’s ugly. What follows is just a skimmed sampling of 2025’s stories, though the list is long. Some themes emerge, and I tease them out below.

In sum, you’ll see the winner of the year was the Heritage Foundation, whose Project 2025 was well underway in the states before Trump’s reelection and now has the full force and power of an authoritarian federal administration behind it.

K-12’s Annus Horribilis

Rural schools entered January with Congress refusing to restore federal funds it had provided for a century-plus. Tennessee passed a universal voucher law giving taxpayer dollars to private schools. One of the new administration’s first actions was a directive opening schools to immigration enforcement. It began investigating Denver Public Schools over an all-gender restroom.

In February, Indiana moved on a bill to shift more dollars from traditional public schools to charters. A fifteenth state thus far in 2025 proposed laws requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments. An Alabama bill demanded daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and a “Judeo-Christian prayer.”

Districts saw more fear, bullying, and absenteeism due to ICE raids by March. The Iowa House passed a bill letting chaplains counsel children in public schools. Utah became the first state to ban pride flags in schools. The Trump administration told districts DEI programs must end. It said it would cut Education Department staffing nearly in half.

Trump issued an executive order in April to close the Department of Education. Iowa’s senate passed a bill to make schools advertise vaccine opt-out policies. Touting the teaching of AI to students as young as kindergarten, Education Secretary Linda McMahon referred to it as A1 (as in the steak sauce).

Trump’s May budget request called for a 15% cut in ed spending, including $4.5 billion from K-12. Office of Civil Rights spending would drop by a third; charter schools would get more money. The House tax bill included a voucher provision: a huge federal tax break for the rich that would divert funds to private schools. Meanwhile, in states with universal voucher programs, budgets were in trouble.

ICE raids nationwide and L.A.’s occupation in June had educators trying to protect students even at graduation. Trump withheld from states nearly $7 billion allocated for schools. The Supreme Court ruled parents should be able to opt their kids out of lessons for religious reasons. A Project 2025 author, Heritage’s Lindsay Burke, was hired by the Education Department.

In July, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump admin to continue dismantling the Department of Ed. The tax bill was passed, its Medicaid provisions meaning big cuts to school funding and student meals. Over 120 investigations were underway into alleged school discrimination, antisemitism, and policies for trans students.

The Trump administration in August nixed guidance on the rights of English language learners. It was pressuring states to take advantage of federal dollars through the scheme in the GOP tax bill meant to encourage voucher programs in blue and purple states. Meanwhile, vouchers in Texas were harming rural schools.

In September, the Department of Ed, along with a host of far-right political and religious groups, announced a “patriotic” “civics” initiative. Various states were lifting or loosening vaccine requirements for schoolchildren. More states allowed students to leave campus for religious ed during the regular school day.

The Department of Ed in October looked to relocate services for students with disabilities. More staff, especially those with special ed expertise, were fired. Data showed nearly all of Missouri’s voucher monies went to religious schools. New data from the 2024-2025 school year showed book banning continued unabated.

In November, educators were not on a list of degrees deemed “professional” and eligible for federal student loans. Texas prepped to help Turning Point USA start more chapters in high schools. Ohio adopted a “success sequence” curriculum, based on a Heritage Foundation model, that teaches kids when to have kids.

Already in December, Florida became the first state to adopt the Heritage Foundation’s Phoenix Declaration. On the 50th anniversary of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, focus is on actions the Trump administration has taken to defund special education and defang civil rights enforcement.

Heritage Wins; Vulnerable Children Lose

The destruction of the Department of Education, the first federal private school voucher program, battering the barrier between church and state: those three results alone mean the Heritage Foundation ends 2025 in victory of conquest.

The losers are America’s children, especially our most vulnerable. Few recent actions taken by red states or the Trump Administration don’t harm children with disabilities, living in rural or low-income areas, born outside the US or from immigrant parents — unless they harm LGBTQ+ children, those in blue cities, non-Christians, or children of color. These children are being made less safe, less secure, less healthy, less confident right now and their futures are at stake.

Young or old, we are all endangered by the structure the Trump Administration, Heritage, and the extreme right are working — at great speed — at building out of the ruining of public education and democracy. This all sounds very dramatic. It is.

Yet the nature of our largely decentralized school system makes this fight winnable for children. A powerful focus in this chaotic era is on local schools, where individual voices and actions can have meaningful results. Public schools are our heritage, the inheritance we’ve been handed to grow and pass on.

To 2026.