The Education Department does not run schools directly, since education in the United States is constitutionally a state and local responsibility; instead, the department distributes federal funding to states and school districts, enforces federal education civil rights laws, and manages the federal student financial aid system.

Its Federal Student Aid office oversees more than $1.6 trillion in outstanding federal student loan debt, the largest single financial portfolio managed by any federal agency outside of Treasury, and administers Pell Grants, which provide need-based college funding to millions of low- and moderate-income students each year.

The department also enforces the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees students with disabilities a right to a free, appropriate public education, and administers Title I funding, which directs billions of dollars annually toward schools serving concentrations of low-income students.

The department has always been a subject of debate. It does not set curriculum, licensing, graduation requirements, or teacher standards, all of which remain with the states, and a provision of its founding statute expressly bars it from doing so. Its future has been contested since 2025, when the administration proposed to close it and move its functions to other agencies, a step that most legal analysts say requires an act of Congress; litigation and legislative proposals over that question were ongoing.