What role would replace the U.S. Department of Education?

Mostly, the agencies Texas already has. The U.S. Department of Education does not run schools, it routes money and enforces rules, and Texas already runs the schools and already has the agencies to handle the rest. Independence folds a thin federal layer into a Texas education system that is already built.

Know what the federal department actually does

Clear up the misconception first, because it does most of the work here. The U.S. Department of Education does not operate schools, hire teachers, write curriculum, or run universities. None of that. Its core jobs are narrower: it routes federal money to states and students (Title I, IDEA, Pell grants and federal student aid), it enforces certain civil-rights laws in schools, it collects national education statistics, and it recognizes private accreditors. It is a funding-and-rules agency, not a school system. So "replacing" it does not mean replacing the people who educate Texas children. They already work for Texas.

Texas already runs the school system

The actual education of Texans happens through institutions that are already Texan. The Texas Education Agency oversees K-12, accredits districts, and administers state and federal funds. About 1,200 local school districts run the schools. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board oversees public colleges and universities. That is the part of "the Department of Education" that touches a real classroom, and in Texas it is already a Texas operation. Independence does not need to stand up a school system. The school system is here.

The funding role is just a matter of keeping the money home

The department's biggest function is moving money: distributing Title I, IDEA, and student-aid dollars. Independence handles that by keeping the money in Texas in the first place rather than sending it to Washington to be sent back. The Texas Education Agency already distributes education funds and already administers the federal streams that flow through it, so the mechanism exists. What changes is that the dollars are Texan from start to finish, with the conditions written in Austin.

The narrow federal-only functions are small and easily absorbed

A few functions genuinely sit at the federal level today and would need a Texas home: enforcing the relevant civil-rights protections in schools, recognizing accreditors, and gathering education statistics. These are not large or complex to house. Civil-rights protection moves under Texas law and Texas courts, which already protect Texans' rights. Accreditor recognition moves to the Coordinating Board, which already does adjacent work. Statistics-gathering is a small office. None of this requires a sprawling new bureaucracy, and a sovereign Texas can decide how lean to keep it.

Texas decides the shape, and can keep it light

What replaces the federal department is therefore a Texas choice, not a fixed copy. Texas could expand the role of the Texas Education Agency and the Coordinating Board, or organize an education ministry, or keep the function deliberately small. Given that Texas already runs the schools, the realistic answer is a thin coordinating layer on top of agencies that already exist, not a new federal-scale department. The decision sits with the government Texans elect, answerable to Texans.

The bottom line

The U.S. Department of Education routes money and enforces rules; it does not run schools. Texas already runs its schools through the TEA, the local districts, and the Coordinating Board, already distributes the funding, and can absorb the few federal-only functions into agencies it already has. What replaces the federal department is the Texas system that already does the actual work.