The Trump Team Turns to Education

Two days earlier, the Education Department announced plans to cut its workforce by nearly half, from 4,133 employees to 2,183. But the sweeping layoffs were likely just an opening salvo. President Donald Trump has long advocated for disbanding the Cabinet agency, selecting Linda McMahon as education secretary to, in his words, “put herself out of a job.” The department’s remaining employees are now bracing for the president’s next steps.

“The president’s mandate, his directive to me, clearly, is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we’ll have to work with Congress, you know, to get that accomplished,” McMahon told Fox News on Tuesday, when asked about the mass firings. “But what we did today was to take the first step, eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat.”

But even proponents of reforming the department are skeptical of the Trump administration’s heavy-handed approach. The real challenge, education policy experts say, is in streamlining the department without compromising its ability to carry out congressionally mandated functions—a difficult balance to strike in the absence of a clear plan for which positions to cut and which to redistribute.

So what are those key functions? Created via executive order in 1979, the department is intended to help states and local school districts provide a higher standard of education to students of all backgrounds, primarily through supplementary funding. But while defenders of the agency argue that it is needed to ensure nationwide standards, critics say it has weaponized federal funding to exert undue influence over how schools and universities operate. 

Despite being associated more with K-12 education, a far greater share of the department’s resources go toward higher education. The Education Department is charged with administering student loans and distributing the Pell Grant, which awards low- and middle-income students up to $7,400 per year toward college tuition. The former is by far its largest role: The department oversees $1.5 trillion in student loan debt for more than 40 million people—a job that required about one-third of its workforce prior to the administration’s cuts. 

“The Department of Education is basically a mega bank with a small K-12 policy shop attached,” Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, told TMD. “Far and away, the biggest part of what it does is handle financial aid for folks going to college.”

The cash that is distributed to K-12 schools through the Department of Education is primarily via two main programs: Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Act. The former provides supplementary funding to low-income districts, while the latter ensures that students with disabilities can access education. Smaller directives include funding charter schools and initiatives focused on teacher quality and class size reduction.

But despite generally making up a small percentage of public schools’ overall budgets, the federal funding has allowed Washington to exert influence over curricula. Beginning in 1994, the Education Department began using funds to pressure states to adopt uniform standards and testing in math, reading, and science. This strategy culminated in the 2009 creation of Race to the Top, a $4.35 billion grant program that encouraged states to use the controversial Common Core Standards and accompanying tests.

“We were then at the point where the federal government, through the Department of Education and the Secretary in particular, was about to essentially dictate curriculum in schools—or at the very least the standards that frame the curriculum,” Neal McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, told TMD. A collective push by small government conservatives, teachers unions, and parents succeeded in limiting the department’s reach, but many fear Washington could use the agency to reprise its role in determining what’s taught in the classroom in the future. 

Evidence of federal creep has also emerged in another key job of the Education Department: ensuring that civil rights laws are being upheld in institutions receiving federal funds. The department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) was initially formed to oversee desegregation and prevent explicit race-based discrimination, but it’s since been used as a tool by multiple administrations to enact their will on the day-to-day operations of schools and universities.

Under the Obama administration, Russlynn Ali, the head of the office, issued a controversial “Dear Colleague” letter in 2011 ordering universities to significantly reduce the standard of proof needed to find students and faculty members guilty of sexual harassment or assault. Under Biden, meanwhile, OCR head Catherine Lhamon expanded the interpretation of Title IX to create new protections for gay, transgender, and pregnant students. 

The Trump administration itself has also invoked the OCR in its push to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on college campuses—a strange footnote to its stated efforts to eliminate the department where the office resides. “They want to limit the ability of the department to do that kind of stuff in the future, so that’s part of the logic of the downsizing. But at the same time, they’re also seeking to use it to correct some of what they see as that really problematic agenda promotion,” Hess said. “So what you’re seeing is two things: They’re trying to use that OCR forcefully at the same time that they’re trying to rein it in going forward. Doing them both at once is obviously in tension.”

The conflicting goals may hint at a broader lack of strategy as the White House sets its sights on the Education Department. While the administration can slash the agency’s workforce and shutter its offices, it hasn’t indicated a desire to end the federal funding administered by the department. In the absence of a move to reform or reduce the programs (something that would undoubtedly require congressional approval), the tangible effect of gutting the department on schools is unclear. By the same token, administrative costs—things like salaries for remaining employees and running field offices—would likely be the only real cash saved. 

Arguments can be made for greater efficiency in the department, experts say. Some of its tasks, like distributing supplementary funding, are largely done using computer algorithms and arguably require fewer employees. And others, like administering student loans, may be better left to the Treasury Department. But whether downsizing the agency succeeds largely depends on how it’s done, and for now, the administration has shed very little light on what comes next. 

“We’ve been hearing calls for the elimination of the department since its founding. That is not new. But I am struck by the recklessness and velocity with which they have taken action before laying out a plan,” Peter Granville, a fellow at The Century Foundation and expert on higher education, told TMD. “They may have had much more success articulating a vision for how they would scale back the federal role in education without harming students, families, and schools. Because there is no plan put forth by the administration besides, ‘We’re going to gut it and get rid of it,’ no one knows what to expect.” 

“States don’t know what to do, school districts don’t know what to do,” he added. “By unilaterally taking these actions, the administration is taking away even the opportunity for a productive conversation in which the American people could weigh in.”

• President Donald Trump’s defenders often point to the late-19^th century President William McKinley’s “reciprocal” tariffs as a historical example for the U.S. to follow. But writing for the Wall Street Journal, economists Donald J. Boudreaux and Phil Gramm argued that proponents of reciprocal tariffs have seriously misunderstood McKinley’s aims: “Reciprocal trade policy as envisioned by President William McKinley, whom Mr. Trump often cites as his role model, recognized that by the dawn of the 20th century America had emerged as an economic colossus capable of producing an abundance of products that could be profitably exported. As McKinley explained, ‘the expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofitable’… The Trump perversion of reciprocal trade co-opts a politically appealing phrase to justify his preferred policy. While the president uses European and Japanese tariffs on American cars to justify comparable tariffs on U.S. imports, nowhere does he propose real reciprocity. He could eliminate the 25% U.S. tariff on imported trucks as an inducement to other countries to eliminate their tariffs on U.S. automobiles. Mr. Trump denounces high tariffs on U.S. exports to Central and South America and would use his theory of reciprocity as an excuse to raise U.S. tariffs on imports from those countries. But real reciprocity would be achieved by eliminating the quota on U.S. imports of sugar, for which Americans pay twice the world price, in return for Central and South American countries lowering their tariffs against U.S. products.”

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The baseball movie is back: Eephus, about older men playing their last game of baseball before their field is torn down to build a school, was released on March 7. We’re readying ourselves for the nostalgia.

Do you think the Education Department should be dismantled?