The U.S. Department of Education’s office of educational technology has been eliminated as part of the federal agency’s massive reduction in force, according to sources familiar with the layoffs and an email notice reviewed by Education Week.
The office, also called OET, was tasked with setting a national education technology plan and assisting states and districts in implementing technology in schools. Practically speaking, the OET has helped states and districts navigate whatever new and emerging technology is affecting schools—from cellphones and social media to artificial intelligence and cybersecurity—by providing policy guidance and evidence-based strategies.
The OET staffers are among the hundreds of employees dismissed from the Education Department, after the federal agency announced that it will shrink its workforce to about 2,200 employees by March 21. That’s just over half of its size when President Donald Trump—who has repeatedly pledged to eliminate the 45-year-old agency—took office on Jan. 20.
While the OET was small, consisting of just three career officials and a handful of fellows, proponents of its work said the office had an outsize impact.
“There’s going to be a new technology—it’s inevitable,” said Joseph South, the chief innovation officer for ISTE/ASCD, who was a former OET director during the Obama administration. “States and districts are going to be trying to figure it out, ... and there won’t be an entity that’s gathering research on effective pedagogy, best practices, and then responding back to states with guidance.”
Not all states have a dedicated team or person who coordinates ed-tech, he added.
The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement announcing the overall reduction in force, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the goal was to make the agency more efficient.
Yet experts say the loss of federal guidance on emerging educational technologies leaves states and districts to navigate those challenges on their own, without access to the resources and support that OET provided.
Some of its most recent guidance documents include the 2024 national ed-tech plan, which outlines how schools can tackle three big digital equity gaps; and a toolkit for education leaders to integrate artificial intelligence safely, ethically, and equitably in schools.
But there are a lot of other organizations—many of which the OET partnered with to put out reports and guidance—doing this work, said John Bailey, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a former director of the OET during the George W. Bush administration.
“There is such an ecosystem of support organizations now—like in AI, there’s just a lot of infrastructure that’s getting stood up to help districts,” he said. “I think that’s part of the administration’s argument: There are so many other resources and groups out there. I think they are trying to make the case that that’s why this isn’t needed.”
The OET didn’t have any regulatory authority, Bailey said, and previous administrations had eliminated the office’s grant-making authority over time. Even so, he said, a reimagined OET could have served an important function in the Trump administration.
“The administration [is] pushing the use of AI to drive efficiency within government, but also drive better outcomes in various sectors,” he said. “I think this was an opportunity for the administration to use the office of ed tech to rethink ways that they could have driven the AI agenda that the president has laid out or is developing.”
‘It prevents people from reinventing the wheel’
Proponents of OET’s work say that without a federal office dedicated to ed tech, there could be massive duplication in states’ efforts to understand new technologies and provide schools with evidence-based strategies.
“It prevents people from reinventing the wheel in each state,” South said. “It prevents wasting time and resources studying the very same topics from state to state. If you can pull that together on a national level, then you only have to do it once.”
As part of its mandate, the OET surveyed the field, held listening sessions, funded ed-tech research, and had the role of a neutral convener—bringing together subject-matter experts, researchers, educators, nonprofits, and ed-tech companies to understand schools’ needs and share best practices, according to experts.
The office was also able to coordinate with other federal agencies that have a hand in ed-tech, such as the Federal Communications Commission, which handles the E-rate program.
It might not be feasible for each state to do that, experts say. The role of a state ed-tech director varies from state to state, and not every state education agency has a dedicated office that coordinates ed tech, according to a 2024 report from the State Educational Technology Directors Association.
“I worked as a state ed-tech director for Nebraska, and I didn’t have a budget,” said Kristina Ishmael, an education consultant and a former deputy director of OET during the Biden administration.
During her time as a state ed-tech director between 2013 and 2017, Ishmael oversaw ed-tech training for her colleagues, worked with the legislature to get ed-tech funding for schools, and supported more than 200 districts in implementing the tools.
“I was a team of one, and it was nearly impossible,” Ishmael said. State ed-tech directors “looked to the office of ed tech as the main mechanism to get policy out and lift up priorities and exemplars. I worry about the onus being placed on these folks at the state agencies.”
Small school districts are most likely to be affected
The loss of the OET will most likely be felt by smaller districts, said Amelia Vance, the president of the Public Interest Privacy Center, a nonprofit organization focused on safeguarding student privacy. For districts that might not have much educational technology expertise in house, the OET provided important resources and guidance around issues such as data security, she said.
“You have thousands of school districts that aren’t able to provide resources when it comes to what is the best way to adopt new technology, how do we do it safely, how do it in a privacy protective way, what are best practices or lessons learned from other parts of the country,” Vance said. “That’s why having a national office is invaluable.”
Through its reports like the most recent national ed tech plan, the OET also put a spotlight on an issue that greatly affects small and rural districts, Vance said: the digital divide, or the gap between students who have access to internet and devices like laptops and those who don’t.
The OET also provided guidance around AI and cybersecurity, which are top concerns for school districts right now, said Michael Klein, a former senior adviser for cybersecurity for the Education Department and a former fellow at the OET.
“Now you have 50 states trying to make sense of how to move forward with all of these topics without central guidance,” he said.
While more ed tech organizations supporting schools have cropped up in recent years, they might not be able to fully reproduce OET’s role because they don’t have the same authority and standing, experts say.
Districts were able to “turn to the office of educational technology and have a reasonable expectation that they’re going to get clear, unbiased, vetted, evidence-based guidance,” South said. “You’ve just made that burden larger for the school or district or state.”
