Updated: This story has been updated with additional details on program transfers.
A majority of the U.S. Department of Education’s funding for K-12 schools—more than $20 billion a year—will be administered instead by the U.S. Department of Labor under an interagency agreement the two agencies have signed, the Trump administration announced Tuesday in one of its broadest efforts yet to downsize a Cabinet-level agency the president has pledged to eliminate.
It’s one of several moves the Education Department is taking to offload its vast portfolio and adhere to President Donald Trump’s March executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “facilitate” the closure of her own department. And all of the interagency moves are happening without congressional approval.
Alongside transferring oversight of most of the Education Department’s office of elementary and secondary education and the programs it oversees to Labor, five other interagency agreements will move programs that support Native American students, child care for parents who attend college, low-income college students, and other functions to different agencies. The agreements were all dated Sept. 30, the day before the federal government shutdown began and the Education Department furloughed most of its staff.
The interagency transfers are likely just the start for the department, which is also considering moves for its divisions that oversee services for students with disabilities, civil rights enforcement, and student loans, a Trump administration official confirmed to reporters on Tuesday afternoon.
A senior Education Department official on Tuesday framed the announcement as part of a decades-long conservative goal to shrink and ultimately eliminate the Education Department—also a goal referenced in the conservative policy document Project 2025.
“We are a pass-through agency for grants that are authorized and appropriated by Congress,” the official said during a call with advocates for education programs.
On a separate call with reporters, the official said that the department’s current staff working on affected programs would be transferred to the other agencies, but declined to say how many.
Rachel Gittleman, president of the union that represents the Education Department staff, said in a press release Tuesday that the agreements were unlawful.
“This move comes as the administration has attempted to fire large numbers of career public servants in these very offices—and is now trying to shift their critical work to agencies with no educational expertise,” she said. “Breaking apart the Department of Education and moving its responsibilities elsewhere will only create more confusion for schools and colleges, deepen public distrust, and ultimately harm students and families.”
Downsizing has been underway for months
In recent weeks, McMahon has publicly argued that her department is unnecessary and that furloughing most of the department during the government shutdown had hardly any effect on education—even as hundreds of schools missed federal payments, and the agency quietly brought back employees to get money out of the door on time.
On Tuesday, the department told state education chiefs, public education advocates, and its own staff in a series of meetings of its plans to transfer large chunks of its congressionally mandated portfolio to other agencies. Those working in the department said it was “standing room only” when McMahon addressed staff about the agreements on Tuesday. McMahon tried to assuage concerns, and told staff it was part of her goal to “return education to the states.”
She also told staff the department would ask Congress to codify the changes in law. She didn’t take questions.
The Education Department has already radically downsized its footprint since the start of the second Trump administration, shedding nearly half its staff in layoffs and buyout deals earlier this year, and attempting to further slash staff during the shutdown.
Some of the Ed. Dept.'s largest funding streams will shift elsewhere
The department’s office of elementary and secondary education, which distributes more than $20 billion for education each year, will shift to the Labor Department, where the department earlier moved oversight of career-technical and adult education programs. Education formula grants under the labor agency’s purview include Title I for low-income students, Title II for professional development, Title III for English-learner services, Title IV for academic enrichment and before- and after-school programs, Impact Aid for schools near non-taxable land, and McKinney-Vento for homeless student services.
These moves could complicate states’ efforts to manage federal grants—already a complicated job, said Catherine Pozniak, a school finance consultant who previously served as assistant superintendent of the Louisiana education department. Questions also remain, Pozniak said, about whether other agencies’ complex grant rules will now apply to education programs.
“This is the opposite of streamlining. It just seems like a move in the other direction,” Pozniak said. “They say that it’s going to cut out bureaucracy, but for whom?”
One major office within OESE will splinter off from the rest. The office of Indian education will move to the U.S. Department of the Interior, which already administers some education programs for tribal nations through the Bureau of Indian Education. The Indian education office oversees programs that support teacher training, financial assistance, research collection, and career and technical education at schools with large populations of Native American students.
That move has some tribal advocates concerned that the Bureau of Indian Education will struggle even more to deliver required services on time, said Susan Faircloth, an expert and advocate for Native American education and a member of the Coharie tribe of North Carolina.
“Equally important, such a move should not be made without prior consultation and consent of Tribal leaders,” Faircloth said.
The Child Care Access Meets Parents In School program, which supports college students who are also raising children, will splinter off from the rest of the transitioning office of postsecondary education and instead move to the Department of Health and Human Services. The Education Department already disrupted the program earlier this year by abruptly canceling roughly a dozen ongoing grants that had already been awarded.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of State will manage programs administered under the Fulbright-Hays grant, which are now administered by the Education Department’s office of postsecondary education. Congress established those programs to promote and develop the study of foreign languages by providing funding for overseas research and training.
The Education Department claimed that the programs have “deviated from the core mission of supporting international education for global competitiveness,” citing examples of funds being awarded to people or organizations for LGBTQ+ work.
The State Department already manages some international education grants, and the new “partnership” allows the department to “oversee all foreign education programs,” according to the Education Department.
Several of the moves align with the conservative public policy agenda Project 2025; the primary author of the agenda’s section on the Education Department now works at the agency as its deputy chief of staff for policy and programs.
