The Trump administration’s ultimate objective is semiclear. The ambition is unmistakable. Bold measures have yielded real changes. But where things get murkier is how this is going to play out, what might go wrong, and what it’ll all amount to in the end.
Now, we could be talking about the East Wing, tariffs, or the attack on Iran. But, in this case, it’s the push to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education (ED).
The administration’s allies will tell you that heroic doings are afoot. DOGE slashed the bureaucracy! Huge swaths of the department are being smoothly shifted to other Cabinet agencies, with federal processes now streamlined and more user-friendly! Education is being returned to the states!
Meanwhile, its critics insist that we’re witnessing a parade of horribles. Invaluable professionals have been mindlessly laid off! Crucial educational services have been gutted! Layoffs and bureaucratic confusion mean that state officials can’t get the support they need, leaving students at risk!
Amid all the hyperbole, it can be tough to know what’s really going on. Here’s my bottom line: There’ve been big changes at ED, but both camps have exaggerated their impact. For good or ill, the significance for states and schools is less than many observers might imagine.
The sense of shock and awe has been fed by headlines about dramatic cuts to funding and/or staff. What’s gotten less notice is how many of these moves were soon undone. Department officials did withhold nearly $7 billion in appropriated federal funds last summer, but political pressure prompted a quick reversal. Last fall, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced a new round of sweeping layoffs during the government shutdown, only to see those annulled by the courts. The House Appropriations Committee’s 2026 budget proposed reducing Title I—aimed at disadvantaged students—by 27%, while the White House called for cutting billions in other K-12 spending. What happened? As EdWeek reported, Congress “comprehensively rejected” the cuts. The panicked headlines (and emphatic tweets) can offer an exaggerated sense of what’s going on, for good or ill.
So, let’s break down what’s really changed. For starters, ED’s headcount has shrunk dramatically—by about half. Last spring, DOGE used a series of strategies—from layoffs to voluntary buyouts—to downsize the payroll from roughly 4,000 to 2,000 employees. As I see it, this was a sensible thing. The Department of Education doesn’t run schools, direct school improvement, write curricula, or employ practitioners. Mostly, it manages money, writes regulations, and monitors rules. You don’t need 4,000 people to do that (or 2,000, for that matter). Many inside ED had grown frustrated with the bloat, inertia, fiefdoms, and busywork. DOGE’s personnel cuts could potentially save over a hundred million dollars in salary and benefits while yielding a tighter operation. Indeed, the department’s 2025 performance was admirable on operational challenges like fixing the troubled FAFSA, distributing grant funds, or getting Impact Aid funds out to school districts.
At the same time, DOGE slashed staff without obvious forethought and with too much chaos. As one who’s spent decades arguing that public officials should be measured by what they do, not what they mean to do, I wouldn’t minimize the effects of DOGE’s “move-fast-and-break-things” approach. To avoid getting caught up in bureaucratic personnel processes, DOGE had to eliminate whole organizational units. This meant that it couldn’t make cuts based on individual skills. This has caused obvious problems. There’s not been enough transparency as to how organizational routines or services have been revamped in light of the cuts. If the public is to trust that operations are more efficient and responsible, it’s on the leadership at ED to make their case. Thus far, they haven’t.
Second, for all the noise, there haven’t been substantial cuts to K-12 programs or funding. Under President Joe Biden, Title I—which directs funds to districts based on their proportion of low-income students—had a fiscal 2024 budget of $18.4 billion. It’s $18.4 billion in fiscal 2026. The special education budget was $15.5 billion in fiscal 2024 and $15.5 billion in fiscal 2026. School lunch is processed on a reimbursement basis, so we don’t have 2026 numbers yet. But the budget was $16.6 billion in fiscal 2024. President Donald Trump’s budget request for the school lunch program in fiscal 2026? $17.2 billion. Even the office for civil rights, which the White House budget targeted for a hefty cut, wound up being level-funded: It got $140 million in fiscal 2024 and is getting $140 million in fiscal 2026.
In short, spending on the big K-12 programs looks like it did when Biden left office. This is true even though the Republicans passed ambitious reconciliation legislation last summer. And, if spending hasn’t been cut yet, it probably isn’t getting cut anytime soon—not with a razor-thin GOP House majority, a modest Senate majority, and a rough November looming for Republicans. While staff reductions at OCR and the office of special education and rehabilitative services have impacted caseloads and investigations, it’s easy to exaggerate the effects on the daily experience of students or schools. For those who thought “abolishing the Department of Education” was shorthand for zeroing out federal dollars (or block granting them), things look remarkably unchanged. For those who hoped or feared Trump would gut K-12 funding, not so much.
Third, the big news in recent months has been the “interagency agreements” that ED has used to assign functions to other agencies, especially the Department of Labor. The first agreement shifted career and technical education over to the Labor Department, a move that made obvious sense—as it meant that states would now have a single point of contact in Washington for things like apprenticeships. Well, that initial partnership begat a torrent, with nine such agreements now in place—covering everything from elementary and secondary education to foreign language studies. In each case, formal responsibility for the program remains at ED, while the actual work, staff, and funds move.
Because Republicans in Congress have given no indication they’ve got the appetite or votes to abolish ED, this piecemeal outsourcing is the default strategy for dismantling it. Given that, are these interagency agreements a big deal? Yes and no. They show that you don’t “need” ED to deliver education programs and funding. Hollowing out ED limits its ability to concoct and promote agendas, which is a big win for Republicans bitter about the role it played under Presidents Barack Obama and Biden (think Common Core or loan forgiveness). Moving the office for civil rights over to the Department of Justice, should that come to pass, could alter the unit’s focus and culture. And the administration hopes to demonstrate that there’s simply no real need for an Education Department, making the case for abolishing it and shrinking its programs.
But it’s also fair to ask whether shuffling funds, programs, and staff from ED to another agency does much to reduce the federal role or “return education to the states.” After all, if the programs and dollars are intact, so are the rules and regulations. And most Hill Republicans, even when Trump was riding high last year, evinced little interest in slashing or block granting Title I or special education. Moreover, fired staff can be replaced, and the interagency agreements can be reversed by the next president, since the agreements can be unwound as readily as they were adopted. The durability of Trump’s dismantling will ultimately depend on their workability and how thoroughly they’re integrated into their new agency homes over the next three years. And if things are working smoothly and reversal would entail lots of disruption, replacing staff and reversing interagency agreements will be less appealing.
What’s it all add up to? The push to dismantle the department is ultimately a bit of a Rorschach test. If you think the Department of Education is a powerful symbol of American education or of Beltway bloat, then its decimation is hugely significant. If you think what really matters for schools are the federal dollars, programs, and rules, then things really aren’t all that different from what they were in January 2025.
2026-03-16 10:00:00
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