Education Department to offload grant programs as Trump works to close it

The Department of Education announced it will offload billions of dollars in grant programs to other federal agencies, moving the Trump administration closer to its goal of shuttering the department.

Officials said Tuesday that they had signed agreements empowering the Labor Department to administer most K-12 and higher education grants and the State Department to oversee foreign language education programs.

The Interior Department will operate education programs for American Indians. The Department of Health and Human Services will oversee child care grants for college students and accreditation for foreign medical schools.

“The Trump administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission.”

The four agencies will administer the Education Department’s programs at levels funded by Congress, the announcement said.

“Under President Donald Trump, Native American education programs will become stronger, more accountable and fully dedicated to ensuring Native students are prepared for success,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement.

The partnerships are the latest in a series of actions to implement President Trump’s executive order in March to close the Education Department to the “maximum extent” allowed by law.

Because Congress created the Education Department in a 1979 law, Mr. Trump requires congressional approval to close the department.

He also needs Congress to give states greater flexibility over how they spend education dollars already allocated, another key part of his plan.

He has not secured the votes to make either happen. Hoping to convince lawmakers of what it calls the federal agency’s uselessness, the administration has opted to slash spending and staff.

It also has insisted on tying federal education funding to emerging workforce needs, accusing the department of saddling college graduates with $1.7 trillion in student loan debt for theoretical degrees that leave them struggling to find work.

The Education and Labor departments announced an interagency agreement on May 21 to follow through with Mr. Trump’s April 23 executive order, which called for a coordinated “federal education and workforce system.”

New York immediately sued to block the partnership, leading a Massachusetts district judge on May 22 to halt its implementation.

In July, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to lift that judge’s injunction, letting the Labor Department take over the management of adult workforce education programs.

That ruling also allowed the Trump administration to proceed with plans to fire more than 1,300 employees and cut billions of dollars in Education Department grants.

The Education Department said none of its staff had transferred to the Labor Department to administer the offloaded programs. Whether more layoffs are forthcoming is unclear.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said Tuesday that her agency is working to direct federal education dollars to programs that connect students with job opportunities.

“Parents and community leaders understand how important training and education are for students from all walks of life to succeed and support their local economies,” Ms. Chavez-DeRemer said. “Secretary McMahon and I will continue advancing President Trump’s vision to deliver effective, streamlined resources so every student has a clear pathway from education to opportunity.”

Conservatives have long called for the abolition of the Education Department. They argue that it promotes liberal social policies rather than preparing students for good-paying jobs.

Rep. Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Workforce and Education Committee, described the announcement as the “right-sizing” of an agency that expanded for decades while U.S. test scores plunged.

“The past few decades have made one thing clear: the status quo is broken,” Mr. Walberg said in a statement. “As the bureaucracy swelled, left-wing bureaucrats were emboldened to waste taxpayer dollars on a radical agenda. As a result, our students have been left in the dust.”

Education Department advocates have firmly rejected that argument.

The National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, said in a statement that the decision would “starve and steal from our students” by disrupting federal services to at-risk students.

“Ensuring a brighter future for our children should be a top priority for any administration, but this administration is taking every chance it can to hack away at the very protections and services our students need,” Becky Pringle, the NEA’s president, said in a statement.

Jeanne Allen, a Reagan Education Department official who supports closing the department, wonders whether that will happen.

“More than a thousand education groups draw their relevance, funding and political power from the federal bureaucracy,” Ms. Allen, founding CEO of the conservative Center for Education Reform, said in a statement. “They will predict disruption because it threatens their interests, not because it threatens students.”

For now, the Education Department will continue to administer $1.6 trillion in federal student loans for college students and oversee funding for students with disabilities.

Ms. McMahon has signaled that she hopes to offload those programs to other agencies as well, leaving the Education Department with no discernible function.

In an opinion column published Sunday at USA Today, she argued that the recent 43-day government shutdown proved “how unnecessary the federal education bureaucracy is” to educating children.

“Students kept going to class. Teachers continued to get paid,” Ms. McMahon wrote. “There were no disruptions in sports seasons or bus routes.”