No, Donald Trump did not "close" the U.S. Department of Education
Only Congress has that power
I would rather be focused on other things, but Donald Trump and his Secretary of Education Linda McMahon are out here trying to create as much chaos as possible. They say they would like to close and “dismantle” the U.S. Department of Education.
But that’s Congress’ job, and they don’t have the votes. They need to convince more folks.
Instead, they’re pretending as if they’re closing it by sending a lot of its functions out to other federal agencies. Through a series of “interagency agreements” announced today, they’re subcontracting much of the work in K-12 and higher education out to the Department of Labor. McMahon says she’s doing it to, “return education to the states.”
That’s… not what her plan does. It doesn’t cut any federal spending. It doesn’t reduce any federal oversight responsibilities. I’d love for a lawyer to weigh in on whether I’m wrong, but I also don’t think it will eliminate any regulatory requirements. Here’s their fact sheet on what this plan will actually do:
Will this agreement change program eligibility for agencies, entities, and institutions? There is no anticipated adverse impact on eligible agencies, entities, and institutions, as ED is enabling DOL to implement and execute the grant programs. All programs will continue to be administered in accordance with the applicable statutory requirements.
The main thing it does is to move some functions from one federal building to another one less than a mile away.
That’s not nothing. The Department of Education employs people whose job is to oversee these programs—making sure the money gets where it’s supposed to go and that states and districts follow the rules. Those jobs could vanish. But, presumably, the Department of Labor would still need to hire people to do that work, or the same staff could get reassigned. The point is, the actual tasks aren’t going anywhere.
It’s all just chaos, and it may well be illegal.
Moreover, this is all temporary! The next Democratic Administration could come in and immediately end these interagency agreements.
So it’s stupid, and it will definitely harm some people’s lives. It will also make things considerably more inconvenient for states and districts. Will it lead to demonstrably better or worse service? No one knows that for sure, but somehow I doubt it.
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Chad, it’s true that such a move could be undone by another administration and ED could be cobbled back together again. This is the 2nd such move (the first was moving career and technical education from ED to DOL). And at least two more are planned, as far as I know: moving special ed (OSERS/IDEA ) from ED to HHS, and moving OCR from ED to DOJ. If all of this happens (and I don’t see why it won’t), then putting ED back together again would be a long, hard process.
It’s unclear right now whether people are moving from ED to DOL — if the teams go over to DOL, there will be more continuity, less disruption (from a state perspective), and it will be easier to move things back again. If DOL hires from scratch or just reassigns staff to these education functions, we’re in for total chaos. Money will be dispersed late/incorrectly; questions from states will go unanswered; God knows what will happen to assessments (peer review and approval of new assessments?!); and forget about any oversight of accountability.
This clears up a lot of the confuson around the recent headlines. The distinction between actual closure and administrative reshuffling is really importnt. While these interagency agreements don't reduce federal spending or oversight, the uncertianty for states and districts is concerning.