In a sweeping administrative maneuver that accelerates President Donald Trump’s long-promised effort to unwind the federal role in American education, the Department of Education announced Tuesday that it has finalized a series of agreements transferring major program offices—and the billions of dollars they oversee—to other federal agencies. The moves, executed through interagency pacts rather than legislation, mark the most significant structural reorganization of the department since its creation in 1979.
At the center of the shift are offices directing roughly $28 billion in annual grants for elementary and secondary schools, alongside another $3.1 billion in programs intended to help college students complete degrees. Left untouched are politically sensitive domains such as civil-rights enforcement, federal student aid, and funding streams for students with disabilities. But the transfer of program administration, even without altering statutory authority, signals an aggressive attempt to hollow out the department’s core functions, reports The Washington Post.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who has repeatedly telegraphed her intent to wind down the agency altogether, framed the changes as necessary to reduce federal intrusion and restore state authority.
“The Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a Tuesday press release. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission. As we partner with these agencies to improve federal programs, we will continue to gather best practices in each state through our 50-state tour, empower local leaders in K-12 education, restore excellence to higher education, and work with Congress to codify these reforms.”
“We at the Department of Ed have engaged with other partner agencies over 200 times through IAAS to procure various services of other partner agencies over the years,” a senior Education Department official said Tuesday during a call with the media. “Even the Biden administration did it to help implement the First Step Act, entering into an IAA with the Department of Justice. And so this is a tool that’s frequently used.”
President Trump issued an executive order in March directing the closure of the department—an action that, in practical terms, exceeds the boundaries of executive authority. Only Congress can eliminate a cabinet agency, and no bill moving toward that end has gained traction on Capitol Hill. Yet in the absence of legislative support, the administration has turned to administrative restructuring to advance the president’s campaign pledge.
Under the newly finalized transfers, the Department of Labor will take over the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which administers 27 K–12 grant programs, and the Office of Postsecondary Education, which runs 14 initiatives supporting college access and completion. Other components will migrate to agencies with more specialized missions: Indian Education to the Interior Department, child-care and health-related higher-education efforts to Health and Human Services, and foreign-language programs to the State Department.
The reassignments follow a similar shift earlier this fall, when career, technical, and adult-education programs were moved to the Labor Department. Administration officials have invoked declining test scores and public frustration with bureaucracy as justification for shrinking the federal footprint, while defenders of the department contend that centralization remains essential for equity and coordination across states.
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