President Donald Trump’s administration is taking a major step toward fulfilling its goal of dismantling the Department of Education.
On Tuesday, the Department of Education announced that it has entered into six agreements to move programs to other federal agencies.
The announcement includes a partnership with the Department of Labor to take on elementary and secondary education programs and institution-level higher education grants; a partnership with the Department of Interior to take on Indian education programs; a partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services to take on childcare programs and foreign medical programs; and a partnership with the State Department to oversee internantional education programs.
A senior Department of Education official told reporters on a Tuesday press call that oversight over those programs will remain in the Department of Education, and that the department has broad authority to contract with other federal agencies to carry out services.
The official added that employees working on the affected programs have the option to transfer to the partnering agency to continue their work.
These actions represent a major escalation in carrying out Trump’s goal to close the Department of Education. In March, Trump signed an executive order calling on Linda McMahon, his education secretary, to eliminate the department. McMahon has repeatedly said that her goal is to be the last education secretary, which she said could be accomplished by transferring the department’s responsibilities to other federal agencies and ensuring states can make decisions about their students’ education.
Still, she has acknowledged that eliminating an agency cannot be done without congressional approval. While previous GOP presidential administrations have supported eliminating the department, the idea has not gained sufficient support from Congress. Some Republican lawmakers have been supportive this time around, though; Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the Senate education committee, introduced a bill to shut down the agency.
The Department of Education has already started outsourcing some of its work. It moved its career, technical, and adult education grants to the Department of Labor, saying in a September press release that the Labor Department will serve as a “centralized hub” for federal workforce programs while remaining under the Education Department’s oversight.
McMahon said during a September conversation hosted by The Federalist Society, a conservative legal advocacy group, that “what we’re trying to do is to show how we can move different parts of the Department of Education to show that they can be more efficiently operating in other agencies.”
Trump and McMahon have also suggested moving the student-loan portfolio to another federal agency, but specific plans on that transition have yet to be announced.
It’s not just outsourcing; the Supreme Court in July gave the department the green light to move forward with its plan to terminate over 1,300 of the agency’s employees.
McMahon wrote in a recent opinion piece that the government shutdown provided further evidence that the Department of Education is not necessary.
“The 43-day shutdown, which came smack in the middle of the fall semester, showed every family how unnecessary the federal education bureaucracy is to their children’s education,” she wrote. “Students kept going to class. Teachers continued to get paid. There were no disruptions in sports seasons or bus routes.”
Still, education policy experts and teachers have raised concerns about the future of education in the US without a centralized agency to manage it. Heather Stambaugh, a high school social studies teacher, previously told Business Insider that gutting the agency could put funding at risk.
“It feels a bit like we’re being thrown into a chaos loop,” Stambaugh said.
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