The Trump administration advanced its campaign to take apart the Education Department Tuesday, announcing plans to move several programs to other federal agencies.
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The Trump administration advanced its campaign to take apart the Education Department Tuesday, announcing plans to move several programs to other federal agencies.
The arrangements, first reported by The Washington Post, include agreements with four other departments to “co-manage” work, including grant-making programs that support college access and student success.
A senior department official, speaking on background, explained that the Education Department would still set policy for the programs, but the other departments would carry out operations. Education Department staff who work on the programs would remain in their roles, according to the department official.
Under one new arrangement, the Department of Labor will now oversee the distribution of several institutional grant programs to colleges, such as TRIO grants for Upward Bound, which helps low-income and first-generation students prepare for college; Title III grants for historically Black colleges and universities; and grants to improve student success under the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education.
Other agreements will also affect higher education:
The department official said other major divisions that oversee higher education would remain at the Education Department for now, including the Office for Civil Rights and Federal Student Aid.
These moves are the latest steps by the Trump administration toward its goal of completely eliminating the Education Department, though only Congress has the authority to do so. The department was created by law as a cabinet agency in 1979; it would take a new law to undo that statute.
But the administration has already done much to diminish the department’s activities. In March, the department announced that it was laying off some 1,300 employees. Another 600 had already decided they would take deferred resignations or buyouts to leave the agency.
Later that month, President Trump signed an executive order calling on the education secretary, Linda McMahon, to “take all necessary steps” to close the department without eliminating any of its core functions.
McMahon has framed her actions as an effort to “return education to the states,” though states already have primary authority over their public schools and colleges.
Speaking with press, the senior department official described the most recent moves as the kind of ordinary “interagency agreements” that happen under every administration.
At least one Republican congressman thinks the changes could threaten the well-being of vulnerable students, such as those with disabilities. Altering the department’s programs “without transparency or congressional oversight would pose real risks to the very students they were created to protect,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, of Pennsylvania, said in a news release. “I will not allow it,” he said, “and I urge all of my colleagues to stand with me.”
Neal H. Hutchens, a professor in the department of educational-policy studies and evaluation at the University of Kentucky, said he expects legal challenges to the new arrangements.
Hutchens, who’s also a lawyer who studies intersections of higher-education law, policy, and practice, said the administration’s actions are unprecedented: “I don’t think we have previously seen such a unilateral effort by the executive branch to dismantle a cabinet-level agency.”
