WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats and education advocates Wednesday marked one year since the U.S. Department of Education initiated sweeping mass layoffs.

Those layoffs set the stage for more unprecedented efforts from President Donald Trump’s administration over the past year to wind down the 46-year-old agency as part of his quest to return education “back to the states.” 

Meanwhile, a new report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the staffing reductions affected the government’s ability to determine how well student loan servicers are doing their jobs.

Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono hosted the press conference outside the U.S. Capitol, joined by fellow Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, along with advocates, to underscore the impact of the mass layoffs and other major cuts on students and families across the country. 

The U.S. Supreme Court in July 2025 temporarily greenlit the mass layoffs, along with Trump’s plan to dramatically downsize the agency, which he had outlined in an executive order signed later in March 2025. 

Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, said the administration “has shown it will stop at nothing, even ignoring court orders and violating federal law to dismantle the department and sow chaos for students, families, communities and my coworkers.” 

“They will continue to undermine the careers of thousands of dedicated public servants who work every day to support our students and families,” Gittleman added.

The March 2025 Reduction in Force, or RIF, effort, hit wide swaths of the agency, taking heavy hits to units such as the Office for Civil Rights and Federal Student Aid. 

Student loans

Two Government Accountability Office reports — including the one released Wednesday — underscored the impact of the staffing reductions at these two units on the department’s abilities to carry out its key responsibilities. 

In February 2025, FSA “stopped assessing student loan servicers on accuracy and call quality due to lack of staff capacity,” the government watchdog reported.

Between January and December 2025, the department saw a drop in 656 staffers at FSA, according to the report.  

“By not assessing servicer accuracy and call quality, FSA lacks assurance that borrower records are correct and that servicers are giving borrowers quality information,” according to the GAO report.

Civil rights

Another GAO report, released in February, found that the Education Department spent between roughly $28.5 million and $38 million on the salaries and benefits of the hundreds of OCR employees not working between March and December 2025, who were put on paid administrative leave while legal challenges against the administration unfolded. 

The government watchdog found that despite the department resolving more than 7,000 of the over 9,000 discrimination complaints it received between March and September, roughly 90% of the resolved complaints were due to the department dismissing the complaint.

The agency later moved to rescind the RIFs against the OCR employees in early January while legal challenges proceeded. 

“So they wasted taxpayer money while they also tried to undermine the laws of the United States that guarantee civil rights to every student,” Van Hollen said during Wednesday’s press conference.  

Interagency agreements 

Members of Congress and advocates also pushed back against the Education Department’s several interagency agreements with other departments, which transfer many of its responsibilities to Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior and State.

The department has clarified in fact sheets regarding the agreements that it would “maintain all statutory responsibilities” and oversight of the programs involved. 

The effort has drawn strong backlash from Democratic members of Congress, labor unions and advocates.

“Trump is setting these programs up to fail,” Hirono said, adding that by “shoving these programs to departments that do not have the experience or wherewithal to run these programs, he is setting these programs that our kids rely on (up) for failure.” 

Funding increase

Meanwhile, Congress earlier this year rebuked a request from the president to dramatically slash funding for the department as he and his administration seek to dismantle it. 

Trump signed a measure in February that funds the department at $79 billion this fiscal year — roughly $217 million more than the agency’s fiscal 2025 funding level and a whopping $12 billion above what Trump sought.

The spending package does not provide ironclad language to prevent the outsourcing of the department’s responsibilities, but it does direct the department and the agencies part of the transfers to provide biweekly briefings to lawmakers on the implementation of any interagency agreements.

The department did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. 

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Democrats on Wednesday rebuked ongoing efforts from President Donald Trump’s administration to dismantle the Department of Education, including moves to shift some of its core functions to other agencies. 

Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia — who hosted a spotlight forum alongside several colleagues — said “over and over again, the administration has circumvented the law to hamstring the future of public education without the consent of Congress or the American people.” 

Scott, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and Workforce, brought in education advocates and legal voices pushing back against the administration’s ongoing attempts to axe the agency. 

The lawmakers and witnesses expressed particular alarm over the administration’s six interagency agreements, or IAAs, announced with four other departments in November 2025 that transfer several of its responsibilities to those Cabinet-level agencies.

‘Illegal’ transfers 

Ashley Harrington, senior policy counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, said that “while these agencies all provide important services for our nation, none of them are adequately prepared to take on the massive portfolio of programs that these interagency agreements strip from (the Education Department).” 

Harrington, who previously served as a senior adviser at the department, pointed to a “lack” of institutional knowledge at the four departments compared with career employees at the Education Department who have gained expertise from spending decades running the affected programs. 

Rachel Homer, director of Democracy 2025 and senior attorney at Democracy Forward, the legal advocacy group that is leading the ongoing case challenging the department’s dismantling efforts in federal court, pointed out that Congress creates and decides which agencies exist. 

“Congress charges those agencies with performing certain functions, Congress determines the mission of those agencies, and the executive branch’s obligation is to carry that out, is to implement those laws faithfully,” said Homer, who previously served as chief of staff of the Office of the General Counsel at the department. 

The advocacy group is representing a broad coalition in a legal challenge against the administration’s attempts to gut the agency. 

That challenge, consolidated with a similar suit brought by Democratic attorneys general, was expanded in November in the wake of the interagency agreement announcement to include objections to those restructuring efforts. 

“These transfers through the IAAs, they’re illegal,” Homer added. “That’s not what Congress has set up — that’s not how Congress has instructed the agencies to function.” 

Mass layoffs, downsizing 

Meanwhile, the administration’s attempts to wind down the department have also included mass layoffs initiated in March 2025 and a plan to dramatically downsize the agency ordered that same month. The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily greenlit these efforts in July.

Trump has sought to end the 46-year-old agency as part of his quest to send education “back to the states.” This effort comes while much of the oversight and funding of schools already occurs at the state and local levels. 

“I know I don’t just speak for myself when I say I can’t believe we’re here having to actually defend the existence of the Department of Education,” said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education.

“As Education committee members, we came here to work on improving education and opening doors of opportunity and addressing the civil rights disparities, but here we are having to defend the actual existence of the Department of Education,” the Oregon Democrat said. 

Civil rights in the spotlight 

Employees at the Office for Civil Rights — tasked with investigating civil rights complaints from students and families — were targeted in March as part of a broader Reduction in Force, or RIF, effort and put on paid administrative leave while legal challenges against the administration unfolded. 

Though the agency moved to rescind the RIF against the OCR employees in early January while legal challenges proceeded, a Government Accountability Office report released earlier in February found that the Education Department spent between roughly $28.5 million and $38 million on the salaries and benefits of the hundreds of OCR employees who were not working between March and December 2025. 

The government watchdog also found that despite the department resolving more than 7,000 of the over 9,000 discrimination complaints it received between March and September, roughly 90% of the resolved complaints were due to the department dismissing the complaint. 

“We’re extremely concerned of what this means for OCR to actually uphold its statutorily defined duty of protecting the civil rights of students in schools, including the rights of Black students, other students of color, girls, women, students with disabilities and members that identify with the LGBTQI+ communities,” said Ray Li, a policy counsel at the Legal Defense Fund.

Li, who previously served as an attorney for OCR, called on Congress to ensure that the unit “remains in a functioning Department of Education” and not transferred to the Department of Justice or another agency. 

He also urged Congress to provide “adequate funding for OCR” and to “play an important role in transparency, sending oversight request letters to get information on the quantity of complaints that are being received, the types of discrimination that they allege, how OCR is processing those complaints and what the basis of dismissals are.”

The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.