Education Department shifts roles to other agencies, further shrinking the agency

The Department of Education, in an effort to reduce federal influence and return more power and decisions to the states, is further depleting the might of the agency and dispersing roles to other agencies, according to Education Secretary Linda McMahon.

"I've taken bodies of work out of the Department of Education and transferred them to other agencies where it will be more efficient to do that, or those agencies are already doing part of what we were doing at the Department of Education, and some of that work was duplicative, and it would just be a more efficient system and money saving," McMahon told Just The News.

"In the big project, if you will, of dismantling the Department of Education, or as the president and I like to say better, we are really taking away the bureaucracy of education in Washington D.C. and that is, I am signing inter-agency agreements or IAAs, which I have the authority to do under the Economy Act."

Parents say kids were being propagandized rather than taught core skills in math, science, English and grammar, and history

The Economy Act allows one federal agency to buy or transfer goods or services from another on a reimbursable basis when doing so is in the government’s interest, and in this case, allows McMahon to shift day-to-day management of certain Education Department programs and staff to other agencies, while the department itself remains legally intact, as only Congress can abolish it.

During the COVID-19 school closures, remote learning gave many parents an unfiltered look at classroom materials, and a large share concluded their children were being propagandized rather than taught core skills in math, science, English and grammar, and history. That backlash helped fuel demands to restore parental rights and education freedom, which President Donald Trump and McMahon have treated as a mandate in his second term.

They have already made strides in shrinking the Department of Education in an effort to cut federal bureaucracy and return more authority to states, parents and local schools. McMahon has repeatedly said her ultimate goal is to make her job obsolete, "firing herself." 

The agency's "final mission"

In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing McMahon to facilitate the department’s closure “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” McMahon has described the work as the agency’s “final mission.” The department’s staff fell from roughly 4,100 employees to about 2,200 after buyouts and March 2025 layoffs that the Supreme Court later allowed to proceed. 

Through a series of interagency agreements, the administration has shifted management of more than 100 programs — including most Title I and other K-12 grants to the Labor Department, and portions of the student-loan portfolio toward the Treasury Department — while canceling more than $1 billion in contracts and grants. 

Amanda Head is White House Correspondent for Just the News. You can follow her here.