The DoE collects a huge amount of nationwide data. If any policy, rule, or idea that was based on evidence and is related to education affected you, there's a good chance it's thanks to the DoE.

Education in the US is pretty decentralized but there's plenty of work the federal DoE does that's very important, here's a good place to start looking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_for_Civil_Rights

The DoE enforces many of these laws which prevent abuse, bullying (teacher tolerance of it), discrimination, etc in education, which is pretty important. It's almost certainly the case that the DoE has seriously impacted the education of you or someone you care about through lawsuits, intervention, investigation which all change policy at the local level in a big way.

There's plenty of more things that it does. Take some time to look at what the DoE does and answer the question for yourself, it isn't hard.

In particular there are a lot of states that would love to let private religious schools torture gay children to try to turn them straight. The DoE is the only reason they can't do that.

From that perspective its pretty obvious why some Republicans (Tea Party/Trumpists) want to shut it down then, they don't think government should be an equalising force on society at all. Given that philosophy, it seems almost inevitable they will shut it down. Can anyone think of reasons they wouldn't?

It basically acts as a federal lever of legislative control over the individual states' Depts of Ed. According to its wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Ed...), the highlights include:

- regulating how states are accountable for standardized tests (No Child Left Behind, later Every Student Succeeds)

- regulating federal student loans

- civil rights (LGBT, race, etc.)

- federal assistance for low-income students and underperforming schools

They don't dictate curriculum or anything. So basically it falls under the old argument of Federal vs State control over education. Conservatives have been trying to get rid of the Dept of Ed ever since it was made a cabinet-level position in 1979. They might now have their chance.

AFAIK, it mostly distributes federal educational assistance to needy school districts. If you were born relatively wealthy, then no, it probably didn't have a big impact on your primary education.

It tries to address desegregation and discrimination based on sex (Title IX). I don't want to put words in Bannon's mouth or make a value judgment, but I think they would prefer those things to be scrapped.