Donald Trump’s return to the White House will undoubtedly impact America’s education system.

Trump has criticized schools for spending too much. He’s called for the end of the U.S. Department of Education and railed against “teaching woke.”

Here’s how a second Trump presidency may play out in K-12 education:

The person who helms the Education Department, overseeing national education policy, will be key. And with Republicans taking control of the Senate, anyone he puts forward will likely be confirmed.

Trump’s secretary will likely support:

Republicans in Washington who work on education issues have floated Cade Brumley, Louisiana’s state superintendent of education; Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s superintendent of public instruction; and Tiffany Justice, the co-founder of Moms for Liberty, as possibilities.

At a campaign event in September, Trump floated two other potential candidates for education secretary: Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur who ran for the GOP presidential nomination before dropping out and endorsing Trump, and former U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York, who left Congress last year after an unsuccessful bid for governor.

Trump also has mentioned Ramaswamy for other roles in his administration.

It’s unlikely Trump will tap Betsy DeVos to serve as his education secretary again, as he did in his first term. DeVos resigned from Trump’s cabinet in a letter dated Jan. 7, 2021, in which she blamed Trump’s rhetoric in part for inciting the violent insurrection on the U.S. Capitol the previous day.

Abolishing the Department of Education ahs proven virtually impossible to pull off, even as it has remained a conservative priority for decades.

“We will have one person plus a secretary, and all the person has to do is [ask schools], are you teaching English?,” Trump said at an October campaign stop in Milwaukee. “Are you teaching arithmetic? What are you doing? Reading, writing and arithmetic, and are you not teaching woke? Not teaching woke is a very big factor, but we’ll have a very small staff.”

Trump’s calls to end the department tap into institutional distrust and conservative concerns about the federal role in education. Republicans have been sharply critical during President Joe Biden’s administration of his efforts to forgive student-loan debt and rewrite Title IX regulations to direct schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms that align with their gender identity and enforce other protections for LGBTQ+ students.

Former President Ronald Reagan made similar promises to dismantle the Education Department in the 1980s, and his administration was unsuccessful.

Biden’s new Title IX regulation is expected to be in Trump’s crosshairs when he assumes office.

Fans and critics alike expect that Trump will seek to overturn the rule, which expands the scope of the law’s prohibition on sex discrimination so it also applies to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The new regulation is already on hold in 26 states and individual schools elsewhere as the result of litigation from Republican-led states.

Trump could support the creation of a federal parents’ bill of rights, which aims to empower groups such as Moms for Liberty that have sought to keep books about race and gender identity out of schools and gain public access to school curriculums.

He could again use the Education Department’s office for civil rights to target districts for their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. In Trump’s first term, the office took legal action against a Connecticut district that allowed students who were born male but identified as female to compete in girls’ sports. His administration could use the office to target districts taking similar steps.

Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 — a conservative policy agenda created by the Heritage Foundation that calls for universal school choice — but the official Republican Party platform, which he has endorsed, also calls for universal school choice.

In his first term, Trump attempted to establish a federal tax credit scholarship for private schools that never gained traction.

Now, legislation to create such a program has passed a U.S. House of Representatives committee. 

Meanwhile, there’s substantial state-level momentum for private school choice. Twelve states have at least one private school choice that’s accessible to all K-12 students in the state or is on track to be, according to an Education Week analysis.