Jimmy Carter created the modern Education Department. Trump hopes it dies with him.

In 1979, former President Jimmy Carter oversaw the creation of the modern U.S. Department of Education – an accomplishment the Biden administration has hailed as a hallmark of Carter's legacy in the wake of his death.

Nearly a half-century later, as the 39th president lies in state at the U.S. Capitol, the future of that very agency may be under greater threat than at any point in history. President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to take office on Jan. 20, has repeatedly promised to “close” the department, which he has likened to a “bloated and radical bureaucracy.”

The juxtaposition merits a look back at how the department came to be, and how it has changed in its five-decade history. While the incoming president hasn’t provided specifics about how he would muster the legislative support to shutter the federal agency, he has a greater chance of bringing such a plan to fruition now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress. In November, Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota introduced a bill that would dismantle the department, largely shuffling its offices among other Cabinet agencies (the plan is similar to one outlined in Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint).

In some ways, Trump’s criticisms of the Department of Education mirror the opposition lawmakers voiced at its founding. Though education is largely under state and local control in the U.S., conservatives have opposed the idea of even marginal federal involvement in schools for years.

In other ways, Trump’s ideas about education reform would require a larger federal role in schools, not a smaller one. That tension – between conservatives' alternating view of the department as a punching bag and a tool – helps explain a lot about why it's still around.

Read more: With a Republican trifecta in Washington, a new era of college oversight is on its way

Kevin Welner, an education policy professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said there are echoes of the past in today’s debate over the agency’s future.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes,” he said. “We’re seeing rhyming here.”

Carter’s campaign promise

In a statement following Carter’s death on Dec. 29, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said everything his agency does on a regular basis can be traced back to Carter.

“In the White House, President Carter organized vital federal education programs under one roof when he established the U.S. Department of Education, elevating equal access to education to the presidential cabinet level, where it belongs,” Cardona said.

In the run-up to the Georgia governor's presidential election victory in 1976, Carter repeatedly voiced support for creating a federal agency to oversee education. Though the idea had been around for a long time, federal policy relating to colleges and K-12 schools fell mostly under the umbrella of a broader agency: the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

Establishing a freestanding education agency had long been a goal of the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union (still a powerful force in Washington, D.C.). In September 1976, the interest group endorsed Carter – its first-ever endorsement in a presidential election.

Carter assumed office in January 1977, but his vision of the department took years to materialize.

“Like other presidents before him, he discovered that his plans had to accommodate many other actors,” according to a 1983 academic article in Political Science Quarterly.

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Carter goes to Congress

In February 1978, President Carter delivered his pitch to a Democrat-controlled Congress.

“A separate Cabinet-level department will enable the Federal government to be a true partner with State, local, and private education institutions in sustaining and improving the quality of our education system,” he wrote in a message to lawmakers.

Others had begun the push ahead of him, including Sen. Abraham Ribicoff, a Connecticut Democrat, said Deanna Michael, an associate professor at the University of South Florida and the author of a book about Jimmy Carter’s education record.

As a former secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Ribicoff had seen the blended agency’s shortcomings firsthand. That experience turned him into an ardent supporter of a standalone education department.

Despite having powerful allies like Ribicoff, Carter’s plans faced opposition internally and externally. Some officials in his administration didn’t want to cede their power to another agency. And a slew of outside interest groups didn't want to change the status quo either.

“We prefer the devil we know to the devil we don’t know,” they argued, according to Michael.

Creating new federal agencies requires an act of Congress. For Carter, whipping up support in the U.S. Senate was relatively straightforward. The House of Representatives, however, was more of a headache.

“House members were closer than senators to anti-federal control sentiment at the grass roots and, facing elections every two years, they were more likely to respond to it,” David Stephens, an Australian bureaucrat, wrote in the Political Science Quarterly article. “But they were also closer to the pro-department lobbyists, who worked hard to pick up the few votes that might mean victory.”

1979: Education Department created

After two years of convincing, the Senate passed the Department of Education Organization Act on Sept. 24, 1979, with 69 votes in support. A few days later, the House passed it, too, with 215 yes votes. Carter signed the bill into law on Oct. 17.

“I don't know what history will show,” he said at a ceremony that day, “but my guess is that the best move for the quality of life in America in the future might very well be this establishment of this new Department of Education.”

Though the reimagined Education Department, which began operating in 1980, has no control over what schools or colleges teach, it has played a larger regulatory role in recent years. It has the power to fine schools that fail to protect students and staff from discrimination, and it writes rules that colleges have to follow if they want to participate in federal student-aid programs.

In 1965, before the Office of Education was spun off into its own agency, it had more than 2,000 employees and a $1.5 billion budget. By mid-2010, the department had nearly 4,300 staffers and a roughly $60 billion budget. Its responsibilities are vast, from ensuring low-income students get help paying for college to managing a nearly $2 trillion student loan portfolio that rivals the assets of the biggest banks.

From Reagan to Trump, agency has faced threats

In the last few decades, every president – including Trump – has utilized the Education Department to push education policy agendas that are often undone or rewritten when new presidents take power.

Though many Washington insiders don’t predict any bills abolishing the department will survive the GOP’s slim majority on Capitol Hill, the Trump administration has signaled a willingness to curtail its functions and slash resources. Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, whom Trump appointed to lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” alongside billionaire Elon Musk, has pledged to purge what he sees as wasteful spending from the federal government. That includes the Education Department.

“Our Dept of Education blows $$ without accountability,” Ramaswamy wrote in a post on X in November. “Unelected bureaucrats are the core problem.”

After Carter lost reelection to former President Ronald Reagan in 1980, his Republican successor, like President Joe Biden's, also promised he would close the agency. He never did.

Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why Trump wants to 'close' one of Jimmy Carter's top accomplishments