The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building in Washington, D.C., pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration took major steps Tuesday in trying to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, announcing six interagency agreements signed with other departments that will transfer several of its responsibilities to those agencies. 

The announcement was immediately met with intense backlash from Democratic members of Congress, who questioned its legality, and labor unions. 

The agreements — with the departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services and State — come as Trump has sought to take an axe to the 46-year-old department in his quest to return education “back to the states.” 

The move further fulfills a pledge Trump heavily campaigned on and later tapped Education Secretary Linda McMahon to carry out. 

“The announcement really follows the plan that President Trump has had since Day One, and that is returning education to the states — he fully believes, as do I, the best education is that that’s closest to the child and not run from a bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.,” McMahon told Fox News on Tuesday following the announcement. 

The secretary likened the initiative to a “test run” and said her department wants to see “if what we think to be true is that they will function much more in a streamlined fashion and much more efficiently if we relocate those programs into other agencies.” 

McMahon added that the agency would “move it,” “see how it works” and deliver the “outcomes” to Congress. 

She said her department hopes Congress would then vote to codify the permanent move of those programs to those agencies. 

But any effort would face a difficult path in the Senate, which requires at least 60 senators to advance most legislation. Republicans hold just 53 Senate seats.

The announcement also came as the U.S. Supreme Court in July allowed the Trump administration to temporarily proceed with mass layoffs and a plan to dramatically downsize the Education Department ordered earlier this year.

That plan — outlined in a March executive order Trump signed — called on McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure” of her own department. 

How Education agreements will work 

The Education Department clarified in fact sheets it would “maintain all statutory responsibilities and will continue its oversight of these programs” regarding all six interagency agreements.

A senior department official could not yet say how many Education Department employees would be transitioning to these other agencies, and noted that there will be “a bit of a lag” between the signing and when the agreements are fully executed. 

The official said the department is “still exploring the best plan” for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, Office for Civil Rights and Federal Student Aid.

The Department of Labor will take on a “growing role” in administering elementary and secondary education programs currently managed under the Education Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, per a fact sheet. 

The Education Department said that “with proper oversight by ED, DOL will manage competitions, provide technical assistance, and integrate ED’s programs with the suite of employment and training programs DOL already administers.”

In another agreement, the Labor Department will also take on a greater role in managing the Education Department’s higher education grant programs, such as TRIO and the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, or GEAR UP.

This also includes the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, the Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need program and the Strengthening Historically Black Graduate Institutions program, among others. 

The Interior Department will also take on a “growing role” in administering the Education Department’s Indian Education programs, per a fact sheet. 

Under an agreement with HHS, that agency will oversee the National Committee on Foreign Medical Education and Accreditation’s work. 

HHS will also “manage existing competitions, provide technical assistance, and integrate” the Education Department’s Child Care Access Means Parents in School Program, the department said. 

That program, according to the Education Department, “supports the participation of low-income parents in postsecondary education through the provision of campus-based child care services.” 

The Education Department’s agreement with the State Department will let that agency “oversee all foreign education programs,” per a fact sheet. 

‘Outright illegal effort’

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, blasted the move as an “outright illegal effort to continue dismantling the Department of Education.” 

Murray said “it is students and families who will suffer the consequences as key programs that help students learn to read or that strengthen ties between schools and families are spun off to agencies with little to no relevant expertise and are gravely weakened — or even completely broken — in the process.” 

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the House Appropriations panel, said  “any attempt to unilaterally remove programs from the Department of Education will fundamentally alter their purpose,” in a Tuesday statement.

“This is not about efficiency — it is about creating so many needless bureaucratic hurdles that the Department of Education is rendered useless — a death by a thousand cuts. Imposing massive, chaotic, and abrupt changes on a whim will waste millions of dollars in duplicative administrative costs and impose wasteful burdens on the American education system,” the Connecticut Democrat said. 

Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, decried the move in a Tuesday statement and called on congressional Republicans to “work with Democrats to stop this assault.”

The Virginia Democrat said “the mass transfer of these programs is not only extremely inefficient and wasteful, but it will result in inconsistent enforcement of federal education policy.” 

He added that “instead of protecting the civil rights of students of color, students with disabilities, English as a Second Language (ESL) students, and low-income students, and closing achievement gaps, the Secretary of Education has spent her tenure dismantling ED.” 

Unions slam move

Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, said “this latest ploy by the Trump Administration to dismantle the Congressionally created U.S. Department of Education is not only unlawful — it’s an insult to the tens of millions of students who rely on the agency to protect their access to a quality education.” 

She added that “students, educators and families depend on the Department’s comprehensive support for schools, from early learning through graduate programs” and “that national mission is weakened when its core functions are scattered across other federal or state agencies that are not equipped or positioned to provide the same support and services as ED staff.” 

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the country, said “spreading services across multiple departments will create more confusion, more mistakes and more barriers for people who are just trying to access the support they need.” 

Weingarten added that “it’s a deliberate diversion of funding streams that have helped generations of kids achieve their American dream” and “will undermine public schools as places where diverse voices come together and where pluralism, the bedrock of our democracy, is strengthened.”

“We are now watching the federal government shirk its responsibility to all kids. That is unacceptable,” she said, adding that “Congress must reclaim its authority over education during upcoming federal funding battles.”