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The U.S. Education Department is moving management of K-12 and higher education to the Department of Labor and parceling out other core job duties to other federal agencies in the most sweeping effort so far to dismantle the agency.
The Education Department announced the changes Tuesday, part of President Donald Trump’s ongoing effort to significantly reduce the department.
Both the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of Postsecondary Education will be moved to the Department of Labor, which oversees workforce development programs and protects workers’ rights, among other responsibilities.
“If we consider K-12 education as really preparation for adult life, preparation to enter the workforce, nowhere is it better housed than at the Department of Labor that thinks about this night and day,” a senior department official said. “We’re really confident that this will end up being something that provides better services, more streamlined services, reduces bureaucracy.”
These changes involve “necessarily narrowing the size and scope of this federal agency,” the official said.
The changes announced Tuesday do not affect the Office for Civil Rights or the Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, but those functions could move to other departments, such as Justice or Health and Human Services, in the future, the official said.
The agreements are modeled after one that moved career-technical education to the Department of Labor earlier this year. The official said policy and statutory oversight will stay with the Education Department, but grant management and other functions will be the responsibility of other federal departments.
The moves dramatically accelerate a decades-long push by conservatives to eliminate the department that gained traction when Trump signed an executive order in March. The decisions also make clear the administration’s willingness to use legal workarounds to evade Congress.
Only Congress can get rid of a federal department it created, and Education Secretary Linda McMahon repeatedly promised to work with Congress on any changes to the structure or duties of the Education Department.
Senior officials said the Economy Act gives the Education Department the authority to contract with other federal departments for certain services. These changes would serve as “proof points” to show Congress and the public that the Education Department is not necessary to support state and local education functions.
Congress created the Education Department in 1979 to focus federal efforts to support education, which has always been primarily a state and local responsibility. Education was previously part of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
The Washington Post first reported the outline of the agreements Tuesday.
The Education Department is also moving educational services for Native Americans to the Department of Interior, child care for college students who are parents and accreditation of foreign medical schools to Health and Human Services, and international education to the Department of State.
The Education Department laid off hundreds of employees during the shutdown on top of some 1,300 people who were laid off earlier this year. The agreement that ended the shutdown called for jobs eliminated during the shutdown to be restored at least until Jan. 30, 2026, but employees could still be placed on administrative leave. The Office for Civil Rights and the Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services were especially hard hit.
In an op-ed Sunday in USA Today, McMahon wrote that the government shutdown showed “how unnecessary the federal education bureaucracy is.”
“Students kept going to class. Teachers continued to get paid. There were no disruptions in sports seasons or bus routes,” McMahon wrote. “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.”
On Tuesday morning, the agency’s official X account posted a video that opened with “The clock is ticking.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.
