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By Nadra Nittle, The 19th
This story was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of The 19th. Meet Nadra and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
The Department of Education announced Tuesday that it was eliminating nearly half of its workforce in a move that paves the path for the agency’s demise, a goal that President Donald Trump repeated before and after resuming office.
Linda McMahon made the announcement just a week after her March 3 confirmation as education secretary, indicating that she has no qualms about putting herself “out of a job,” as Trump said in February he intended her to do, implying that he wanted her to oversee the agency’s disbandment.
“Today’s reduction in force reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers,” McMahon said in a statement. “I appreciate the work of the dedicated public servants and their contributions to the Department. This is a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system.”
McMahon said that all divisions of the department will be impacted by the loss of staffers starting on March 21 and that some divisions would need to be significantly reorganized as a result of the reduction in force. During a Fox News appearance on Tuesday, McMahon was blunt when asked if slashing the positions marked the first step toward shuttering the agency.
“Yes, actually it is, because that was the president’s mandate, his directive to me, clearly, was to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we’ll have to work with Congress, you know, to get that accomplished,” McMahon said. “But what we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat.”
The Department of Education, which employed over 4,100 people when Trump took office in January, has placed dozens of workers on unexplained leave and offered buyouts to other personnel. Elon Musk’s so-called cost-cutting team has also slashed hundreds of millions of dollars from the agency. The goal to gut the Department of Education comes straight out of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump term, which the president denied any affiliation with during his 2024 run.
Speaking to Fox News, McMahon said the programs for which the Department of Education administers funding, including those related to low-income students and students with disabilities, would not be affected by the cuts. She revealed, however, that she did not know what IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, stands for. That 1975 federal law guarantees students with disabilities a free and appropriate public education designed to meet their needs.
“This is my fifth day on the job,” McMahon explained. Leader of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term, McMahon is best known for starting World Wrestling Entertainment with her husband Vince McMahon. Her detractors have criticized her lack of education experience. They include the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest labor union, which opposed her nomination as education secretary.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America by dismantling public education to pay for tax handouts for billionaires,” said NEA President Becky Pringle in a statement Tuesday. “The real victims will be our most vulnerable students. Gutting the Department of Education will send class sizes soaring, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections.”
During her confirmation hearing in February, McMahon tried to assure members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee that ending the agency would not hurt the neediest students, arguing that states would still receive funding to support them. After the Senate voted to confirm her as education secretary last week, McMahon was reportedly slated to send out an email telling personnel about a forthcoming executive order to end the department — or at least to eliminate any of its functions that are not required by statute. The order was not issued.
Congress created the Department of Education during President Jimmy Carter’s administration in October 1979. An act of Congress is required to close it lawfully, though the likelihood of that happening is small since the Senate would need 60 votes to do so — and Democrats and many Republicans have objected to previous efforts to eliminate the department.
Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington and former chair of the HELP committee, said in a statement Tuesday that the Department of Education’s reduction in force will rob students and teachers of much-needed resources.
“Donald Trump and Linda McMahon know they can’t abolish the Department of Education on their own but they understand that if you gut it to its very core and fire all the people who run programs that help students, families, and teachers, you might end up with a similar, ruinous result,” Murray said.
The decision to downsize the agency will create chaos nationwide, she said.
“When you rip tax dollars from public schools, it is working and middle class families who suffer,” Murray said. “When you fire the people who hold predatory for-profit colleges accountable and who help students get financial aid, it is students who pay the price for years to come.”
Since 90 percent of students overall and 95 percent of students with disabilities attend public schools, the Trump administration risks losing public support by closing the Department of Education. For years, however, Republicans have backed school choice initiatives that would divert government funding away from public schools and direct it to private schools through voucher programs. In January, Trump issued an executive order, which the Heritage Foundation applauded, authorizing the education secretary to explore ways for states to use federal formula funds to support school choice initiatives.
The Heritage Foundation called Tuesday’s reduction in force announcement “long overdue” and “a victory for parents, students, and local schools.”
“Reducing the bloated bureaucracy will give state and local education officials more decision-making authority,” said Lindsey Burke, director for the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, and Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow, in a joint statement. “Federal officials say the reductions will not interfere with the distribution of federal student aid or K-12 spending for children in low-income areas or students with special needs. Ultimately, Americans will see that the Department of Education is not necessary for students to succeed, and the entire agency should be eliminated.”
As chair of the America First Policy Institute, which promotes Trump’s political agenda, McMahon advocated for school choice despite her minimal education experience. That Trump picked her to head the Department of Education over more experienced individuals signaled to some that the president was not invested in the agency’s future.
“What it means is they’re serious about trying to dismantle or destroy the department because why would you appoint somebody who was not qualified, unless that was your intention?” Pedro Noguera, dean of the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California, told The 19th in November when McMahon became Trump’s nominee for the post.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, echoed Noguera’s sentiments during a call with education leaders Thursday in anticipation of an announcement about the department’s future.
“Think about the fact that Donald Trump could have picked anybody he wanted to be the secretary of education, a lot of talented people out there who are dedicated to our children,” she said. “Now, who did he pick? He picked a pro wrestling mogul who is in the process of body slamming our Department of Education. So what does that mean for a place like New York? $5 billion in cuts.”
Hochul said that federal cuts to education would endanger children in her state, particularly those with disabilities, in rural areas or who need mental health support. New York, she said, does not have the resources to replace this funding.
“What they’re doing is saying our kids don’t matter,” she said. “What’s more important is that we slash for the sake of slashing and also be able to fund tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.”
Both Trump and McMahon have disparaged the Department of Education, blaming students’ failing standardized scores on the agency and suggesting that it creates bureaucracy for teachers, schools and states. While the department monitors student progress, the federal government does not set curriculum and benchmarks for students. States, counties and school districts do.
The Department of Education primarily functions to ensure that all students have equal access to education. It has an in-house Office for Civil Rights that investigates students’ claims of discrimination. It disburses federal funding to help schools support economically disadvantaged youth and students with disabilities. It also administers funding for the federal student loan program and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which students fill out to obtain financial assistance for college, including Pell Grants for applicants from low-income households. Most of the students applying for financial aid are young women, who outnumber young men on college campuses and take on more debt to complete their higher education.
“Trump and Musk don’t know what it’s like to count on their local public school having the resources to get their kids a great education,” Murray said during a press conference. “They don’t know why Pell Grants are so important. And they don’t care to learn why. They want to break the department, break our government and enrich themselves.”
Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, said in a statement last week that the department has helped millions of students pursue higher education through its student loans, grants and work-study programs.
“Without it, access to education for working-class Americans will decrease,” he said. “Funding for college education will be stripped away and programs for students with disabilities and students living in poverty will be eviscerated. Enforcement of civil rights laws against race- or sex-based discrimination in higher education will disappear.”
Without the Department of Education to hold schools accountable, cases of discrimination, harassment and sexual assault on campuses may rise, Murray said.
John King, secretary of education from 2016 to 2017, discussed how federal funding during President Barack Obama’s administration helped both the department and states protect and support students.
“We made significant efforts to ensure that students’ Pell Grant dollars were well used, as well as students’ GI Bill dollars, and we cracked down on predatory for-profit colleges that were taking advantage of students, literally stealing their federal aid and giving them no value,” King said during Thursday’s call with education leaders.
When Trump took office after Obama’s final term, King said that for-profit colleges felt emboldened to take advantage of students due to a lack of federal oversight.
Disbanding the department and transferring its duties to other ones, such as the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury, would create more red tape for families, not less, according to the agency’s supporters. Murray said that it will result in basic education standards not being enforced and a dearth of data about which programs improve student achievement.
Arne Duncan, education secretary from 2009 to 2015, told The 19th that he found the Department of Education employees to be indispensable during his tenure.
“The idea of getting rid of all of that institutional knowledge of history, honestly, it terrifies me,” he said. “What they’re doing to our public servants is extraordinarily cruel, possibly illegal. It’s actually cutting off their nose to spite their face because of the number of errors, the number of mistakes that are going to happen, not just in education, but across the administration.”
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