The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education building in Washington, D.C., photo: November 25, 2024 (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
This report has been updated.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s administration took significant steps Tuesday in an effort to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, announcing the signing of six interagency agreements with other departments that will shift some of its responsibilities to those agencies.
The statement was immediately met with acute backlash from Democratic members of Congress, who questioned its legality, and from labor unions.
The agreements – with the departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services and the state – come as Trump has tried to put an ax to the 46-year-old department in his push to bring education “back to the states.”
The move furthers a promise that Trump had been strenuously pursuing and later tasked to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.
“This announcement really aligns with President Trump’s plan that he’s had since day one to bring education back to the states. He absolutely believes, as I do, that the best education is the one that’s closest to the child and doesn’t run away from Washington bureaucracy,” McMahon told Fox News on Tuesday after the announcement.
The secretary likened the initiative to a “trial run” and said her department wanted to see “if we believe it is true that programs will run much smoother, more efficiently, and more effectively if we move these programs to other agencies.”
McMahon added that the agency will “transition,” “see how it works” and report “the results” to Congress.
She said her department hopes that Congress will next vote to codify the eternal transfer of these programs to these agencies.
But any effort would face a hard path in the Senate, which requires at least 60 senators to pass most legislation. Republicans have just 53 seats in the Senate.
The announcement also came after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to do so in July continue temporarily with mass layoffs and a plan to radically downsize the Department of Education ordered earlier this year.
This plan – outlined in a March executive order signed by Trump – he called McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure” of its own department.
How education contracts will work
The Department of Education explained in fact sheets that it “will retain all statutory responsibilities and continue its oversight of these programs” for all six interagency agreements.
A senior department official was not yet able to say how many Department of Education staff would be transferred to these other agencies, and noted that there would be “some delay” between the signing and full implementation of the contracts.
The official said the department “continues to explore the best plan” for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, the Office of Civil Rights and Federal Student Aid.
The Department of Labor will assume an “increasing role” in administering elementary and secondary education programs currently administered under the Department of Education’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, according to information sheet.
The Department of Education stated that “with appropriate oversight by ED, DOL will administer competitions, provide technical assistance, and integrate ED programs with the suite of employment and training programs that DOL already administers.”
IN another dealThe Department of Labor will also take on a greater role in administering the Department of Education’s higher education grant programs, such as TRIO and Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, or GEAR UP.
This includes, but is not constrained to, the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, the Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need program, and the Strengthening Historically Black Graduate Institutions program.
The Department of Home Affairs will also take on an “increasing role” in administering the Department of Education’s Indian education programs, according to, among others, information sheet.
under agreement from HHS, this agency will oversee the work of the National Commission on Foreign Medical Education and Accreditation.
HHS will also “administer existing competitions, provide technical assistance, and integrate” the Department of Education’s Parents in School child care access program, the department said.
This program, in my opinion Education Department“supports the participation of low-income parents in postsecondary education by providing on-campus child care services.”
The Department of Education’s agreement with the Department of State will allow the agency to “oversee all foreign educational programs,” according to s information sheet.
“A Downright Illegal Effort”
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, criticized the move as “an outright illegal attempt to further dismantle the Department of Education.”
Murray said there will be “consequences for students and families as key programs that help students learn to read or strengthen connections between schools and families are transferred to agencies with little or no relevant expertise and are seriously weakened – or even cut altogether – in the process.”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the House Appropriations panel, said in a statement Tuesday that “any attempt to unilaterally remove programs from the Department of Education will fundamentally change their purpose.”
“It’s not about efficiency – it’s about creating so many unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles that the Department of Education becomes useless – death by a thousand cuts. Imposing massive, chaotic and sudden changes on a whim will waste millions of dollars in duplicative administrative costs and impose wasteful burdens on the American education system,” said the Connecticut Democrat.
Republican Bobby Scott, the ranking member of the House Education and Workforce Committee, in a statement Tuesday condemned the move and called on Republicans in Congress to “work with Democrats to stop this attack.”
The Virginia Democrat said that “the massive transfer of these programs is not only extremely inefficient and wasteful, but will result in inconsistent enforcement of federal education policy.”
He added that “instead of protecting the civil rights of students of color, students with disabilities, English as a second language (ESL) students, and low-income students and closing achievement gaps, the Secretary of Education has spent her term dismantling EDs.”
Unions sharply criticize the movement
Rachel Gittleman, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Department of Education employees, said that “this latest ploy by the Trump administration to dismantle the congressionally created U.S. Department of Education is not only illegal – it is an insult to the tens of millions of students who rely on the agency to protect their access to a quality education.”
She added that “students, educators and families depend on the Department’s comprehensive support for schools, from early learning to graduate programs” and “this national mission is weakened when its core functions are dispersed among other federal or state agencies that are not equipped or prepared to provide the same supports and services as ED staff.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the nation’s largest teachers unions, said that “spreading services across multiple departments will create more confusion, more errors and more barriers for people just trying to access the support they need.”
Weingarten added that “this is an intentional redirection of funding streams that has helped generations of children achieve their American Dream” and “will undermine public schools as places where diverse voices meet and where the pluralism that is the foundation of our democracy is strengthened.”
“What we are currently seeing is the federal government shirking its responsibility to all children. This is unacceptable,” she said, adding that “Congress must regain authority over education in the coming battles over federal funding.”
