The Looting of the Federal Department of Education

Ever since Linda McMahon entered the ring as the US Department of Education (Department) Secretary, it has been exceedingly clear that the Department was on the chopping block. With little knowledge of the education sphere, including fumbling the name of the key special education legislation on national television^[1], Secretary McMahon could do little else but follow through on the Project 2025 agenda on public education. This means the organization that enforces civil rights laws in schools, manages student loans, provides funding to school districts, organizes nationwide data collection, and more is barely functioning. Moreover, this is the goal of the administration.

Impact

What began as rhetoric quickly translated into structural change. Staffing reductions hollowed out key offices within the Department, particularly those responsible for oversight, research, and civil rights enforcement. When experienced personnel are removed, institutional knowledge disappears with them. These cuts do not simply make the Department smaller; they make it less functional. 

In particular, cuts to the Office for Civil Rights have historically resulted in large caseloads and delays, leaving discrimination complaints unresolved for extended periods.^[2] Many cases are being dismissed outright with little explanation ^[3]. Although pet cases from the Trump administration get addressed, cases of racial discrimination go unanswered. In particular, one school found liable for discrimination and harassment of Black students hasn’t heard back from the Department on their remediation plan ^[4]. As staffing shrinks, processes slow down, backlogs grow, and responsiveness declines. Schools and districts that once relied on timely federal guidance are left to interpret complex legal requirements on their own, and some states are going to try to pick up the slack ^[5]. When that enforcement capacity weakens, complaints are delayed or left unresolved, and schools receive less oversight. This creates inconsistency in how laws are applied, despite the fact that these protections are rooted in major federal statutes like Title VI, Title IX, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ^[6]. If there is no clear enforcement of these statutes, are students in schools really protected?

Once these waves of staffing changes came through, next came funding disruptions of both grant funding and monies for local school districts. Grants serving a variety of needs, from recruiting and retaining school mental health professionals ^[7], programming for school staff to learn more about deaf-blind students ^[8], to research on helping students with disabilities plan for life after graduation ^[9], were gutted. These grants left holes in service delivery for students across the country. In terms of regular school funding, the federal government provides a relatively small share of overall funding but plays a targeted role in supporting low-income students, students with disabilities, and under-resourced districts ^[10]. These funds are designed specifically to reduce inequities—meaning disruptions or mismanagement disproportionately affect the most vulnerable students. In 2025, these funds were withheld from districts, causing mayhem as they had to predict whether the funding would come or if they would have to cut staff ^[11]. Some school districts had already begun to serve students before the funds were disbursed. The chaos these funding disruptions have caused can’t be understated for many already cash-strapped districts. 

Data collection, often overlooked, is another casualty. The Department oversees large-scale national datasets, including the Civil Rights Data Collection, which tracks access to courses, discipline, and school resources across the country ^[12]. Impacts of cuts in these areas may not be felt until this year and the next. Many of these data collection systems collect data in one year and release results in the next, creating a lagging effect. For example, the National Assessment of Educational Progress measures nationwide reading and math outcomes, a key metric to understand how education policy is working or not working. They now run on a skeleton crew of three staff members who are responsible for developing and evaluating national tests and data ^[13]. Conveniently, this difficulty in data collection and analysis comes at a time when educators hypothesize that these federal level decisions will negatively impact student outcomes. Without consistent data, it becomes significantly harder to identify inequities or evaluate whether policies are working.

Redistribution

As the Department’s capacity shrinks, its responsibilities are being redistributed to other organizations. This creates fractured service delivery, loss of institutional knowledge, and staff strain across organizations. Project 2025 suggested where to send many of these offices to, and the current administration is working on making the plan a reality. The Department of Education Office of Civil Rights is supposed to join the Department of Justice, and Secretary McMahon has supported this idea ^[14]. However, increasing the Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights staff has not been discussed to fill the gaps that over 500 staff used to fill in the Department of Education. The Office of Indian Education, which coordinates K-12 and college education for tribal groups, has been relegated to the Department of the Interior ^[15]. These changes were not done in consultation with Indigenous groups. Elementary and secondary education and higher education programs are headed to the Department of Labor, and some grant programs within them will be discontinued after the move ^[16]. Student loan administration is being transferred to the Treasury Department, and Health and Human Services will be in charge of childcare ^[17]. These changes go on and on until the Department is no more, and are in various stages of implementation.

While redistribution may appear efficient, the functions of each separate office are deeply interconnected. The Department was designed to coordinate funding, enforcement, and research in a unified system aimed at improving access and outcomes. This fragmentation increases the likelihood of duplication, gaps in oversight, or inconsistent implementation, particularly when different federal agencies operate under different missions and timelines. Not only will this cause chaos and confusion as these services are moved, but local school districts and state departments of education will now have to coordinate with a myriad of agencies to secure the funding they are due or to follow up on school services. Although there are clear complaints about the Department of Education bureaucracy, having schools interact with several bureaucracies instead is a worse outcome. 

Why does this matter?

In the end, what is happening to the Department of Education is not a simple bureaucratic reshuffling; it’s a systematic unraveling of the federal infrastructure that has long supported equity, accountability, and coherence in American education. Stripping staff, stalling funding, weakening civil rights enforcement, and dispersing core functions across disconnected agencies does not streamline; it erodes the government's capacity to serve students effectively. The consequences will not be immediate for everyone, but they will be profound and uneven, falling hardest on students who rely most on federal protections and targeted resources, and on local school districts already bogged down with bureaucracy. Without a centralized body to enforce laws, distribute funds reliably, and collect meaningful data, the education system risks becoming more fragmented, less transparent, and more inequitable. The question is no longer whether the Department will function as it once did, but whether anything meaningful will replace the stability, oversight, and protections it provided and at great cost to the nation’s most vulnerable learners.

However, we are not without hope. Lobbying by multiple groups and lawsuits from states brought back mental health grant dollars ^[18]. Employees have been rehired in the Office of Civil Rights ^[19]. The Institute for Education Sciences was gutted and is now being reintroduced with some positive changes ^[20]. Part of this picture is collective action by focused groups who care deeply for public education. We can work with local schools, parent organizations, school boards, teacher unions, and state education organizations to demand that the Department of Education continue serving students in its full capacity. This is a call to action: call now, organize now, before this portion of Project 2025 can be completed.