As someone who has advocated for responsible and equitable federal public education policy since the No Child Left Behind era, through the Race to the Top years, and through the growing rush to privatization, I am finding the Trump era frightening, baffling, and hard to track. Outrageous plans are announced that would undermine the U. S. Department of Education’s role of protecting the rights of the nation’s most vulnerable students; threats are made; policies are hinted at; then there is no news for weeks and sometimes months as we all wait and nothing happens.

Although I was relieved that in early February, six months late, Congress passed an education budget for the last half of Fiscal Year 2026 (until September 30), a budget that prevents the draconian cuts in President Donald Trump’s proposed budget, Education Secretary Linda McMahon had already begun a process to dismantle the Department of Education by handing off the work of particular offices to other agencies.  A number of the “temporary interagency agreements” to move programs to different Cabinet Departments were signed off in November. Has the work itself already been transferred? Have staff, who are being assigned to travel with and oversee their programs, already moved? I haven’t been able to find out.

Why does all this matter so much?  Because it is part of a strategy to eliminate the Department of Education altogether.  On March 20, 2025 President Trump signed an executive order to shut down the Department.  It is well known, however, that without Congressional approval, the President and a Cabinet Secretary cannot eliminate a federal department established by Congress. Nor can the executive branch eliminate offices or full programs established by Congress.  When Trump appointed Linda McMahon as Education Secretary, he defined her job description as shutting down the department.

In the past couple of weeks, a bit more clarity has emerged about how McMahon is trying to accomplish that goal.

Many supporters of public schools hoped that when Congress signed the education budget  at the beginning of February, its members would protect the Department by inserting a provision to preclude the handoff its work to other federal departments. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn) the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee did her best to prevent the dismantling of the Department’s work. In a committee and chamber dominated by the GOP, however, DeLauro could not find enough votes for a clause in the budget bill itself that would prevent the handing off of education programs.  The best she could accomplish was a strong explanatory statement attached to the budget. K-12 Dive‘s Kara Arundel explains:

“When Congress passed the fiscal year 2026 budget for the U.S. Department pf Education earlier this month, many critics of the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency had hoped the appropriation would ban the outsourcing of certain education programs to other federal agencies. It did not. But while the appropriations statute does not prohibit the Education Department from carrying out or entering into interagency agreements with other federal agencies, the legislation’s accompanying explanatory statement—which is nonbinding—strongly condemns and discourages the transfer of key programs out of the department. The bicameral and bipartisan statement (which DeLauro’s committee passed) said that no authorities exist for the Education Department ‘to transfer its fundamental responsibilities under numerous authorizing and appropriations laws’ to other federal agencies. The statement also raised concerns that ‘fragmenting responsibilities for education programs across multiple agencies will create inefficiencies, result in additional costs… cause delays and administrative challenges… (and) weaken Federal support to protect the rights of students, children, youth, and families under Federal education laws.’ ”

A court challenge has been mounted to block McMahon’s steps to spread education programs across other Cabinet Departments, but sadly, the courts seem to take a long, long time as cases go through the appeals process. Arundel adds: “An ongoing lawsuit opposing the Education Department’s downsizing was amended in November to include opposition to the agency’s interagency agreements. The lawsuit called the agreements unlawful and harmful to K-12 and higher education systems. The updated complaint in Somerville v Trump was brought forward by a broad coalition of school districts, employee unions and a disability rights organizations. That case has been consolidated with New York v McMahon, which was brought… by groups of states, school districts and teachers unions. The case is ongoing.”  Arundel reports that a group of Democratic Senators has also asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the legality of the “interagency agreements.”

The Federal News Network‘s Jory Heckman recently reported on another step Linda McMahon has taken to protect her right to dismantle the department: making all of the interagency agreements to hand off the work of the department temporary and less vulnerable to legal challenge: “Education Secretary Linda McMahon told employees last November that the department’s interagency agreements would reassign staff to other agencies ‘on a temporary basis.’ ”  The Education Department’s press secretary Savannah Newhouse explains that the temporary agreements are key to McMahon’s long term strategy: “We will continue to deliver successes through these partnerships, further solidifying the proof of concept that interagency agreements provide the same protections, higher quality outcomes, and even more benefits for students, grantees, and other education stakeholders… We look forward to working with Congress on the next steps to codify these partnerships.”  The goal here is to create a trial run, prove the dismantling of the Department is harmless, and then convince Congress to take the necessary action to approve the restructure.

Last November, Department of Education work was transferred to other departments through interagency agreements with Primary and Secondary Education programs including Title I sent to the Department of Labor and smaller programs sent to the Departments of Interior, Health and Human Services, and State.  The issuing of temporary interagency agreements continued early this week.

Education Week‘s Mark Lieberman reports: “The U.S. Department of Education… announced it will begin offloading the management of key federal programs for school safety, community schools, educational TV programming and family engagement (in) an ‘interagency agreement’ with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services… Separately, the U.S. Department of State will take over management of a grant portal that displays foreign gifts to higher education institutions….  Under Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, the department has now forged nine separate interagency agreements to transfer program responsibilities to other agencies, including administration for most K-12 programs and funds.  But shifts the administration has touted for special education (to HHS), civil rights enforcement (to the Department of Justice,) students-loan management (to the Treasury Department), and data collection (to a federal statistics agency) haven’t yet materialized.”

Lieberman notices that this week’s, “Grant programs shifting to HHS are already beleaguered. The six grant programs included in this week’s announcement include several the Trump administration over the past year has proposed to defund and moved to disrupt.  Congress recently supplied level year-over-year funding for all of them—$514 million in total.  The Department of Education is currently facing three separate lawsuits from recipients of Full-Service Community Schools grant recipients in Illinois, Maryland, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia, who saw their ongoing grant awards abruptly discontinued in December.  All told, the agency discontinued roughly $168 million that Community Schools grant recipients in 11 states had been expecting in the coming years.” The Department claims the grantees were promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion”in their Community Schools.

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), the ranking member of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce, does not buy Linda McMahon’s theory that all the temporary interagency agreements will “provide proof of concept” and win over Congress. The Federal News Network‘s Heckman describes Scott disdain for the “legally dubious interagency agreements… Over and over again, the administration has circumvented the law to hamstring the future of public education without the consent of Congress or the American people.”