The newly minted chairman of the U.S. House’s education and workforce committee said Tuesday that the U.S. Department of Education needs to be dramatically scaled back.
And the Michigan Republican indicated that he won’t stand in the way of President Donald Trump’s plans to hobble or even abolish the agency by administrative action.
“I certainly want to downsize, right-size, depower the U.S. Department of Education, unless our president can abolish it overnight some way,” Rep. Tim Walberg told former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings in an onstage interview at an event sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center, the nonprofit organization Spellings leads.
“Even the best-meaning bureaucrat in the U.S. Department of Education, I don’t think they have the ability to understand what goes on in Onsted school district where my kids went to school, or Detroit, or Lansing schools,” Walberg said. “They’re all different.”
What’s more, federal reporting requirements take away from educators’ ability to serve students, Walberg argued.
“About 90-plus percent of regulatory paperwork, red tape comes from the federal government,” he said. “All of that has cost that takes away, generally speaking, from the student and the teacher doing what we want them to do.”
Trump’s team has started working to shrink the Education Department
The Trump team has wasted no time in trying to “depower” the department. Staffers for the Department of Government Efficiency—a newly created office run by billionaire Elon Musk—have descended on the agency, scrutinizing its books and deciding how to cut staff, the Washington Post and others have reported.
The department has also put staffers on administrative leave who hold jobs that the Trump administration believes are connected to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, the New York Times reported.
Some of those placed on leave told reporters that their jobs aren’t connected to diversity, equity, and inclusion, but they attended a diversity training during Trump’s first administration at the urging of his political appointees in the agency.
The White House also is reportedly expected to release an executive order calling on the education secretary to take steps to downsize the agency, the Wall Street Journal first reported. Trump’s nominee for that Cabinet post, former wrestling executive Linda McMahon, has yet to be confirmed by the Senate; her confirmation hearings aren’t yet scheduled.
It is unclear if those executive actions will withstand legal scrutiny. The more than four-decade old Education Department was created through congressional action in 1979. It would take new legislation to completely abolish it. Any bill would need 60 votes in the Senate to overcome procedural hurdles. Republicans only hold 53 seats in the chamber—and not all GOP lawmakers are convinced the department needs to go.
In the House, a 2023 vote to abolish the department, on an amendment to a parents’ rights bill, drew the opposition of every Democrat as well as 60 Republicans, the Washington Post reported.
For her part, Spellings, who served under President George W. Bush, isn’t sure what, exactly, would be accomplished by getting rid of the department.
“When I hear that, I think, are they relocating the Pell Grant [college access program for disadvantaged students], the Title programs,” such as Title I to help educate children in poverty, she said later in the event. “What are we talking about here?”
To be sure, various programs could be moved, Spellings said. “Can workforce programs live at the Department of Labor?” Spellings asked. “Sure, they can. But is the disruption of relocating those programs, those employees, worth the squeeze? I wonder.”
There’s potential for bipartisan action on workforce programs
The question of whether to abolish the Education Department may be one of the most partisan education-related debates right now. But Walberg believes that there is room for collaboration with Democrats on other, less charged topics.
He specifically mentioned a renewal of the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act, which funds various workforce skills training programs. Bipartisan legislation to retool the program in part by putting a greater focus on apprenticeships passed the House in the previous Congress.
Walberg also pointed to a bipartisan bill to create short-term “workforce” Pell grants, which typically help low-income students cover the cost of college. The legislation would allow the grants to be used for a period eight to 14 weeks, instead of on a semester schedule, and directed to workforce training programs, not simply college tuition.
“Many of you may agree with me that no longer is a parent a failure if Billy or Nancy or Johnny or Susie don’t go to a four-year institution,” Walberg said. “Our young people can now go through short-term training experiences, apprenticeship programs, internships … that [expand] their opportunities to succeed.”
Enrollment in undergraduate certificate programs, which train students in specific vocational skills, has been on the rise in recent years.
Don’t get hopes up for an ESSA reauthorization, Walberg warns
What’s more, Walberg made it clear that no one should be holding their breath waiting for a reauthorization of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the most recent iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which passed with broad bipartisan support in 2015.
The law, which scaled back the federal role in school improvement but maintained a requirement to test students annually, was up for renewal in 2019. But Congress hasn’t yet begun serious discussions on a replacement.
Similarly, a comprehensive renewal of the Higher Education Act—which was last updated in 2008—isn’t likely to pass, Walberg said. He’s instead interested in smaller, more targeted pieces of legislation on some of the areas the bill governs, which include teacher preparation and student financial aid.
Walberg noted that Republicans hold a slim, three-vote majority in the House, making it difficult to tackle bigger bills.
“Larger things with all sorts of different ideas—I was going to say rancor, but different ideas—amongst our conference alone would make it difficult to reauthorize” those bills, he said.
