\n<\/p>\n
McMahon has said the recent government shutdown proved that the Education Department isn\u2019t necessary.<\/p>\n
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | Anna Moneymaker\/Getty Images | Pete Kiehart for The Washington Post via Getty Images<\/p>\n
The Education Department is planning to move TRIO and numerous other higher education programs to the Labor Department as part of a broader effort to dismantle the agency and \u201cstreamline its bureaucracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead of moving whole offices, the department detailed a plan Tuesday to transfer certain programs and responsibilities to other agencies. All in all, the department signed six agreements with four agencies, relocating a wide swath of programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For instance, the Labor Department is set to take over most of ED\u2019s higher education programs, which include grants that support student success, historically Black colleges and universities, and other minority-serving institutions. Meanwhile, the State Department will handle Fulbright-Hays grants as well as those administered by the International and Foreign Language Education office. Indian Education and programs for tribal colleges are moving to the Interior Department.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Several of the offices that have overseen these grant programs were gutted in recent rounds of layoffs, but any staff members who are still managing them will move to the other agencies. ED also has sought to defund some of the grants, deeming them unconstitutional, so it\u2019s not clear what is moving to the other agencies.<\/p>\n
The agreements were signed Sept.\u00a030\u2014the day before the government shut down. ED officials expect the transition to take some time.<\/p>\n
No programs, however, have been moved from the Office for Civil Rights, the Office of Federal Student Aid or the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services. The department is still \u201cexploring the best plan\u201d for those offices, a senior department official said in a press call Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese partnerships really mark a major step forward in improving management of select programs and leveraging these partner agencies\u2019 administrative expertise, their experience working with relevant stakeholders and streamlines the bureaucracy that has accumulated here at ED over the decades,\u201d the senior department official said. \u201cWe are confident that this will lead to better services for grantees, for schools, for families across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Education Secretary Linda McMahon hinted at the sweeping announcement in a social media post Tuesday morning. The secretary posted an ominous video of a ticking clock followed by President Ronald Reagan urging Congress to dissolve the Department of Education. The video ended with a flickering screen that read \u201cThe Final Mission,\u201d an echo of her first letter to Education Department staff in which she outlined how she would put herself out of a job.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump directed McMahon in March to close down her department \u201cto the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.\u201d <\/p>\n
Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson, applauded the announcement\u00a0 describing it as a \u201cbold, decisive action to return education where it belongs\u2014at the state and local level.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Trump Administration is fully committed to doing what\u2019s best for American students, which is why it\u2019s critical to shrink this bloated federal education bureaucracy while still ensuring efficient delivery of funds and essential programs,\u201d she said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These moves are the most significant steps McMahon has taken beyond the layoffs to comply with the president\u2019s directive.<\/p>\n
Congress has pressed McMahon multiple times to acknowledge that neither she nor the president can fully shut the department down without lawmakers\u2019 approval. But when addressing these concerns, McMahon has made a point to note that shutting the department and its programs down entirely is different than dismantling bureaucracy and co-managing operations with other cabinet-level departments.<\/p>\n
The department official echoed this Tuesday when talking with reporters, saying that policy and statutory oversight of the programs will still rest with employees at the Department of Ed. But execution of processes, particularly as it pertains to grants, will be managed by other agencies.<\/p>\n
\u201cEducation has broad authority under several statutes to contract with other federal agencies to procure services, and the department has had that authority since its inception,\u201d the official said. \u201cWe at the Department of Ed have engaged with other partner agencies over 200 times through [inter-agency agreements] to procure various services of other partner agencies over the years\u2014even the Biden administration did it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The department has already moved Career, Technical and Adult Education to the Department of Labor. McMahon has said that effort was essentially a test run to see how other agencies could handle the department\u2019s responsibilities. Democrats in Congress have decried the plan to move CTE to Labor as illegal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many of the department\u2019s offices have already experienced dramatic disruptions this year, as McMahon used two reductions in force to cut the head count of her staff by more than 50\u00a0percent. The latest mass layoff, which took place during the government shutdown, has since been enjoined by a federal court. President Trump also agreed to return affected employees to \u201cemployment status\u201d administration when he signed a stopgap bill to temporarily end the 43-day shutdown.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But it remains unclear whether those staff members have returned or will ever return to work. Multiple sources told Inside Higher Ed <\/em>that the language of the bill may allow Trump to leave employees on paid administrative leave until the bill is no longer effective on Jan.\u00a030 and then re-administer the pink slips.<\/p>\n Prior to Tuesday\u2019s announcement, many higher education experts as well as current and former ED employees were hesitant to declare the department dead. Some said as long as the department and its functions remain codified, it will still be alive. But one former staff member put it this way: \u201cIf you take the major organs out of a human, do you still have a human or do you have a corpse?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Amy Laitinen, senior director of the higher education program at New America, a left-leaning think tank, said moving the offices to other federal agencies would not save tax dollars.<\/p>\n \u201cIt fractures and weakens oversight of those dollars, it\u2019s duplicative and it\u2019s wasteful,\u201d she said. \u201cHow are you tracking student outcomes to ensure taxpayer dollars are well spent when all of the entities responsible are scattered to the wind? For example, separating the agency in charge of financial aid policy (OPE) from the entity responsible for financial aid implementation (FSA) makes no sense.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" McMahon has said the recent government shutdown proved that the Education Department isn\u2019t necessary. Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | Anna Moneymaker\/Getty Images | Pete Kiehart for The Washington Post via Getty Images The Education Department is planning to move TRIO and numerous other higher education programs to the Labor Department as part<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[2579,200,496,5810],"class_list":{"0":"post-34357","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-breaks","9":"tag-department","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-mcmahon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}