The Trump administration on Tuesday unveiled its plans to outsource large swaths of the Education Department (ED) to various other federal agencies, including moving postsecondary education programs like TRIO and institutional aid to the Department of Labor (DOL). ED’s federal student aid office will remain at the department — for now.
ED signed six “interagency agreements” (IAAs) with four agencies — the departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services (HHS), and State — to “streamline federal education activities on legally required programs, reduce administrative burdens, and refocus program and activities to better serve students and grantees,” according to an ED release.
The agreements are designed to tap the expertise of other agencies to improve efficiencies, the department said. The new partnerships are modeled on an agreement between ED and DOL signed in July to have Labor manage ED’s adult education and career and technical education programs. ED said that the ED/DOL partnership has “created an integrated federal education and workforce system and reduced the need for states to consult multiple federal agencies to effectively manage their programs.”
The postsecondary programs included in the new ED/DOL partnership will include TRIO, GEAR UP, Title III Part A Strengthening Institutions and the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, among others.
Meeting workforce needs
Shifting ED’s postsecondary programs to DOL fits into the administration’s efforts to more closely align education with workforce development, according to a fact sheet that noted the country’s workforce shortage for 700,000 skilled jobs. As with the current ED/DOL partnership, the new IAAs will have ED retain all statutory responsibilities and continue to provide oversight of the programs, but DOL will manage grant funds, provide technical assistance and integrate ED’s postsecondary education programs into DOL’s suite of programs, the fact sheet said.
The administration also plans to partner ED with HHS to run the Child Care Access Means Parents in School program, noting HHS already oversees child care-focused grants. It also will pair ED with DOL to manage elementary and secondary education programs to better align K-12 programs with workforce and college programs.
In addition, ED will also move its Indian Education program to the Interior Department and foreign-language education to the State Department.
Among the programs that, for now, will remain at ED include Federal Student Aid, Office of Civil Rights and special education programs, as well as the Institute of Education Sciences, which provides education research, evaluation and statistics.
The long fight
Many congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump have long sought to shutter ED, which was created in 1979, and hand most administrative responsibilities to other agencies. Only Congress has the authority to close the department, but the administration has gradually paralyzed the agency through layoffs and long reviews of programs that have stymied disbursements of funds.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon had signaled the administration’s pending IAAs earlier this week when she penned a USA Today op-ed contending that ED’s closure during the federal government shutdown had little effect on education.
“The shutdown proved an argument that conservatives have been making for 45 years: The U.S. Department of Education is mostly a pass-through for funds that are best managed by the states,” McMahon wrote. “That’s why, now that the government shutdown is over, we are emboldened to fulfill President Donald Trump’s promise to return education to the states.”
Some congressional Democrats and education organizations said after the announcement that the IAAs will likely be challenged in court.
“This is an outright illegal effort to continue dismantling the Department of Education,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), a senior member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said in a statement. “And it is students and families who will suffer the consequences as key programs that help students learn to read or that strengthen ties between schools and families are spun off to agencies with little to no relevant expertise.”
