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K-12 moving to Labor as Trump administration accelerates bid to dismantle Education Department
Erica Meltzer, Chalkbeat
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The U.S. Education Department is moving management of K-12 and higher education to the Department of Labor and parceling out other job duties to other federal agencies in the most sweeping effort so far to dismantle the agency.
The Education Department announced the changes Tuesday, describing them as fulfilling President Donald Trump’s promise to “return education to the states.”
Management of both the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of Postsecondary Education will be moved to the Department of Labor, which oversees workforce development programs and protects workers’ rights, among other responsibilities.
The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education oversees major federal funding streams such as Title I, which provides $18 billion a year for high-poverty schools, as well as teacher training programs, support for English learners, and competitive grants for charter schools, arts education, civics, and more.
“If we consider K-12 education as really preparation for adult life, preparation to enter the workforce, nowhere is it better housed than at the Department of Labor that thinks about this night and day,” a senior department official said. “We’re really confident that this will end up being something that provides better services, more streamlined services, reduces bureaucracy.”
These changes involve “necessarily narrowing the size and scope of this federal agency,” the official said. Once implemented, they could serve as “proof points” for further downsizing the department.
The moves accelerate a decades-long push by conservatives to eliminate the department that gained traction when Trump signed an executive order in March to start that process. The decisions also make clear the administration’s willingness to use legal workarounds to avoid seeking approval from Congress.
“This is significantly further than I thought they would be able to go without congressional action,” said Rick Hess, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “I am surprised and impressed, as someone who has always been skeptical of the department’s role. I am open to the idea that it’s good to reduce the department’s footprint. I also think we’re a nation of laws, and it’s important to recognize congressional authority.”
Education advocacy groups widely condemned the changes. Denise Forte, president and CEO of the advocacy group EdTrust, said the administration was “selling the Department of Education for parts.”
“It’s about implementing a business model that transforms students into widgets instead of human beings who need support,” she said in a statement calling on Congress to act.
Karen Hawley Miles, whose father helped create the Education Department in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter, said the entire goal was to take functions that were spread across multiple departments and place them in one nimble agency that could prioritize education above all else.
“We’re going back to breaking these things all out,” said Miles, who is the CEO of Education Resource Strategies, which works on school improvement efforts. “The work that we do with school systems and states, when you silo programs and fragment them, you get fragmented results.”
Hess, for his part, predicted the changes would be “neither good nor bad” for students but said they represented an important symbolic step that will be difficult for future administrations to reverse.
Education Department restructuring sidesteps Congress
The restructuring comes on the heels of a lengthy government shutdown. The administration already has eliminated most of the office that supported English learners and slashed staff in the Office for Civil Rights. But workers who were laid off during the shutdown are back on the job for now.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon argued in an op-ed Sunday in USA Today that the shutdown showed “how unnecessary the federal education bureaucracy is.”
“Students kept going to class. Teachers continued to get paid. There were no disruptions in sports seasons or bus routes,” McMahon wrote. “The shutdown proved an argument that conservatives have been making for 45 years: The U.S. Department of Education is mostly a pass-through for funds that are best managed by the states.”
Only Congress can get rid of a federal department it created. McMahon repeatedly promised to work with Congress on any changes to the structure or duties of the Education Department. These changes were done administratively.
Senior officials said the Economy Act gives the Education Department the authority to contract with other federal departments for goods and services.
Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the Trump administration, called for dispersing federal education functions that are required by law to other departments in its chapter on getting rid of the Education Department. The author of that chapter, Lindsey Burke, now works for the Education Department as the deputy chief of staff for policy and programs.
The Education Department is also moving educational services for Native Americans to the Department of Interior, child care for college students who are parents and accreditation of foreign medical schools to Health and Human Services, and international education to the Department of State.
The Washington Post first reported the outline of the agreements Tuesday.
These arrangements, which the department is calling partnerships, are modeled after one that moved career-technical education to the Department of Labor earlier this year. Policy and statutory oversight will stay with the Education Department, but grant management and other functions will be the responsibility of other federal departments. Education Department staff are expected to move to other agencies.
Funding for federal programs should not be affected, officials said.
For more than a month, rumors swirled that a similar interagency agreement would move oversight for special education to Health and Human Services, a change that disability advocates strongly oppose.
The changes announced Tuesday do not affect the Office for Civil Rights, the Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, or Federal Student Aid. However, those functions could move to other departments in the future.
U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, did not respond to a question about what role Congress should play in restructuring the department.
“I agree with President Trump that education decisions should be in the hands of parents and local communities,” Cassidy said in a statement emailed by a spokesperson. “My hope is that these changes further that goal.”
U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican who introduced a bill last year to dismantle the department, said the administration’s approach aligns with his legislation.
“This is an excellent first step, and I look forward to working with President Trump and Secretary McMahon to pass my legislation and finish the job,” he said by email.
But U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, said in a statement that the administration was subverting the law, and Republicans should work with Democrats to stop it.
“This is an outright illegal effort to continue dismantling the Department of Education, and it is students and families who will suffer the consequences as key programs that help students learn to read or that strengthen ties between schools and families are spun off to agencies with little to no relevant expertise and are gravely weakened — or even completely broken — in the process,” she said.
The School Superintendents Association said in a blog post that its members have serious concerns about consistent provision of services and technical support and about state education agencies’ capacity to take on more work.
David Law, Minnetonka Public Schools superintendent and president of the superintendents association, said school administrators regularly need guidance about which uses of federal funds are allowed or which programs are supported by evidence. The Department of Labor may not have the expertise to help.
“If the Department of Labor is going to do a better job supporting students’ reading and math abilities, that would be a win,” he said. “It would certainly be a new job for them.”
This story has been updated throughout with additional information and comments.
Chalkbeat Senior Reporter Ann Schimke contributed.
Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
