Dismantling of Education Department Is Underway, Drawing Legal Challenges

The Trump administration is on track for sweeping changes to public education within the first 100 days of its second term, but legal challenges await.

U.S. Department of Education building in Washington on July 6, 2023.Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

President Donald Trump has yet to issue an executive order to eliminate the Department of Education or work with Congress to do so, but the process of dismantling the smallest Cabinet-level agency is well underway.

Already half of the staff has been cut, along with $1 billion in contracts related to the department’s Education Sciences agency and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training. Department offices outside of Washington will eventually be closed to save additional money over time.

Trump has also withheld federal aid from universities that ignored his executive order barring federal funding for campuses that pursue DEI programs or permit anti-Semitic activities. He warned states that the same could happen to K–12 school districts that continue to push progressive ideologies or allow boys to compete in girls’ sports.

Here’s what to know about what has happened 50 days into the new administration and what could lie ahead.

Layoffs and Contract Cuts

About 2,000 of the agency’s 4,133 employees have been laid off or have voluntarily resigned, the department confirmed on March 11.

A Department of Education senior official told The Epoch Times on March 14 that the agency’s redundancies and inefficiencies included six separate strategic communications functions, office managers for teams of only five employees, and multiple support teams for information technology, human resources, and administrative support services that should have been consolidated into one central office per function.

The department has also announced that college finance, Title I funding for low-income K–12 students, special education coverage, and civil rights investigations related to learning institutions would not be affected by the cuts.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced in February that 89 multi-year contracts totaling $900 million for the Institute for Education Sciences will be cut.

More than a quarter of that amount, $226 million, had funded regional centers established to study the effectiveness of instructional materials and student outcomes. Instead, these offices promoted ideological agendas, including a research paper that stated, “There are too many white students in STEM,” according to a Feb. 19 statement from the department.

Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, said the staff reduction measures are drastic and counterproductive to improving the performance of K–12 schools.

“Without a federal backstop, states are likely to weaken or abandon commitments to maintaining high standards for student learning and accountability for student outcomes,” she stated in an email to The Epoch Times.

Peske said cuts to the federal agency’s research arm hinder states and K–12 districts from developing a plan to improve the quality of instruction and student outcomes based on test score trends and patterns of improvements or decline by grade level.

“It is imperative that the federal government protect and ensure transparency on student outcomes, access to research and data on what works and what does not in schools, equitable funding, and maintaining all students’ civil rights,” she stated.

People walk through the gate on Harvard Yard at the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Mass., on June 29, 2023. Scott Eisen/Getty Images

Title I and Special Education Funding

During a number of congressional hearings before and after Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s nomination, Democrats said the agency is needed to assure continued funding for low-income student populations and the special education programs and protections guaranteed to students under federal law.

Republicans maintained that there is no plan to eliminate those funding streams. They said billions of dollars could be saved by removing one level of bureaucracy and relocating those functions to Health and Human Services or providing it directly to states through block grants.

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, told the American Enterprise Institute policy center on March 12 that reductions of Title 1 funding could be considered in light of post-COVID emergency school spending ($189 billion between 2021 and 2023), which had little oversight and did not result in improved student outcomes.

“Our goal is to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars and pursue policies that will benefit students and families, and you can expect us to work toward that goal,” he told the institute.

Student Loans, Pell Grants, and Higher Education Funding

Borrowers who had enrolled in President Joe Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education Program (SAVE) will remain in a state of forbearance where interest will not accrue for the remainder of this year as the agency establishes a new plan for student loans to replace the prior administration’s student loan forgiveness policies.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are discussing changes to federal loans to limit the amount borrowed according to the desired academic program in an effort to mitigate long-term student debt. There’s also interest in expanding Pell grants for low-income students to short-term vocational certificate programs.

The department could also save billions of dollars in federal grant money for research and other programs by cutting off aid to schools that violate civil rights laws. Columbia University, for example, lost $400 million in federal grants and contracts due to “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students,” according to a March 7 statement.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon arrives to President Trump's joint address to Congress in Washington on March 4, 2025. Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images

What’s Next?

McMahon previously said she‘ll continue working with DOGE to reduce the federal education bureaucracy and return more money to the state and local level, where decisions about curriculum, standards, and staffing should be made anyway.

The libertarian think tank Cato Institute noted that the department’s budget is bloated with $5.3 billion in discretionary grant programs, in which would-be recipients apply for funding for items such as “institutional development programs.” The agency’s administrative costs, primarily spent on staffing, totaled $2.8 billion in 2024.

By contrast, the allocations for department programs that would be more difficult to cut due to constitutional implications—aid for tribal schools, learning facilities on tax-exempt military bases, veteran higher education preparation programs, and two Washington universities for which the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction (Howard and Gallaudet)—total $2.4 billion.

“Eliminating the U.S. Department of Education and all that it does would produce major savings,” writes Neal McCluskey, director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom. “But so would eliminating much of what it does short of full termination, especially if we keep only what is constitutional.”

Regardless of what has been cut or what else could be cut, continued lawsuits and complaints are expected.

On March 13, a coalition of 20 state attorneys general led by New York’s Letitia James filed a lawsuit in a Massachusetts federal court alleging that the Trump administration’s cuts are illegal and unconstitutional.

A federal court in Massachusetts has already temporarily blocked the Department of Education from cutting $250 million in federal teacher training grants.

Teacher unions have also vowed to challenge the agency cuts every step of the way.

“Gutting the Department of Education will send class sizes soaring, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections,” Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, said in a March 11 statement.