Stop the Dismemberment of the U.S. Department of Education

The Trump Administration’s plan to dismember the US Department of Education (ED) by scattering key, legally-mandated responsibilities across disparate other federal agencies actions is alarming and every effort should be made to stop it.

The six “interagency partnerships” that ED announced this past week will make it harder—not easier—for state and local education leaders to provide the money, services, and support that students need and are congressionally-mandated to receive. Because these interagency agreements require ED to retain responsibility for administering the funding and evaluation of programs moved to other agencies, the level of red tape schools and students will have to deal with will only increase.

No state or local leader committed to serving students would ask for it to be harder and take longer for them to get what they need, when they need it. But that's the outcome the Administration's actions will reap. And ED was already struggling to respond in a timely manner to states’, schools’, and students’ requests because of the Administration’s recent widespread layoffs. For example, the Office of English Language Acquisition had already been slashed down to one single staff person. (Read more on the damage.)

While ED’s plan is on shaky legal ground, a lack of legality hasn’t stopped the Administration from moving forward with other of its ill-advised efforts, and it’s unlikely to do so here either. While a legal challenge may be necessary, it’s not sufficient. Members of Congress must use the tools available to them to create a public outcry over how the Administration's decision to increase the bureaucracy makes it harder for their communities to get the educational support they've paid taxes to receive.

Congressional leaders should request that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) examine how executing this plan would impact the overall time, cost, and quality of services provided by ED, and the impact it would have on students, families, and the overall economy.

GAO won’t have to look far for the data to inform this analysis. Before ED existed, education-related programs were scattered across various agencies, and this fragmentation came with disheartening results for students. Congress created ED in 1980 to consolidate these functions under a single Cabinet-level department to reduce inefficiency and promote coherent implementation of education policies to improve results for students.

That same rationale holds true now, and arguing otherwise requires some convoluted logic. While there is plenty of room for improvement in how ED has historically functioned, dismembering the agency is not the answer. Members of Congress and state leaders must speak up immediately and call this plan out for what it is—a failure to do what’s best for our students, our communities, and our nation’s long-term prosperity.