About 49 million students attend public elementary and secondary schools in the United States, in nearly 100,000 schools. Unlike many countries, the United States has no national education ministry that runs schools. Education is primarily a state and local responsibility, with the federal government playing a supporting and civil rights role.
This guide explains who controls what in American schools, how they are funded, and the main debates.
The Department of Education was created in 1979, separating it from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. In March 2025 the President ordered the department closed to the maximum extent permitted by law, and its staff was cut roughly in half after the Supreme Court allowed the layoffs to proceed in July 2025. Through agreements in 2025 and early 2026, the department moved management of programs including Title I to the Labor, Interior, State, and Health and Human Services departments, while special education remained for the time being. Supporters said the moves return control to states, while critics, including some lawmakers of both parties, said only Congress can abolish the department and warned of disruption.
Charter schools are publicly funded but independently run under contracts with authorizers, and they enroll about 7 percent of public school students. Many states also fund private school tuition through vouchers, tax-credit scholarships, or education savings accounts, and since 2021 more than a dozen states have adopted programs open to nearly all students. A 2025 federal law created a tax credit for donations to scholarship organizations in states that opt in. Supporters say choice gives families options and spurs improvement, while critics say it drains funding from public schools that serve most students.
Most public schools belong to school districts governed by elected boards, which hire a superintendent, adopt budgets, set local policies, negotiate with teachers' unions, and choose curriculum within state rules. Some large cities, such as New York and Chicago, have had mayoral control or appointed boards. School board elections, often nonpartisan and held off-cycle with low turnout, became much more contested after 2020 over issues such as pandemic closures, curriculum, and books.
Every state constitution provides for public education, and states hold primary legal authority over schools. State boards of education and education departments set academic standards, testing, graduation requirements, teacher licensing, and school accountability systems, and some states choose textbooks statewide. States provide roughly 45 to 50 percent of K-12 funding on average, often through formulas meant to offset differences in local property wealth, and state courts in many states have ordered changes to unequal funding.
The federal government provides about a tenth of K-12 funding, mainly through Title I for schools serving low-income students, created in 1965, and grants under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees students with disabilities a free appropriate public education. Federal civil rights laws bar discrimination by race, sex, and disability, and the Office for Civil Rights investigates complaints. Federal law requires annual testing in reading and math, but the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 returned most accountability decisions to the states.
Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 struck down school segregation, and courts later supervised desegregation plans for decades. The Supreme Court has held that states funding private schools cannot exclude religious schools, in Carson v. Makin in 2022, and that parents may opt their children out of certain instruction on religious grounds, in Mahmoud v. Taylor in 2025. Debates continue over learning losses since the pandemic, curriculum on race and gender, library books, cell phone bans, teacher shortages, and the right balance between local, state, and federal control.
See the local governments that run schools in how local government works, explore the state role in how state government works, or follow federal education money in how federal money reaches your town.