Is This the Beginning of the End for the Department of Education?

The department laid off over 1,300 employees this week.

On Tuesday, the Department of Education announced it was firing more than 1,300 workers as part of broader federal workforce cuts. The cuts reduce the agency's employees by half, following 572 employees who took buyout offers and 63 provisional workers who were fired in February. 

"Today's reduction in force reflects the Department of Education's commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers," Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a Tuesday press release. "I appreciate the work of the dedicated public servants and their contributions to the Department. This is a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system."

It's unclear how the cuts will affect the department. McMahon framed the cuts as an attempt to increase efficiency and better serve students. However, considering that McMahon said last week that President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order aimed at eventually shuttering the department, it's hard not to see the layoffs as the first step in a plan to effectively abolish it. While it would take an act of Congress to formally scrap the Education Department, neutering its workforce might be the next best thing.

The announcement was almost immediately met with sharp criticism. "The real victims will be our most vulnerable students," National Education Association President Becky Pringle said in a Tuesday statement. "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."

However, others noted that reducing the size of the Education Department—which hasn't even existed for 50 years—could end up streamlining a large, ineffective bureaucracy.

"A 50 percent workforce reduction is sizeable and could very well be a good thing. We don't know how many people are actually needed to execute [the education department's] jobs, and it's time to find out if it's been a bloated bureaucracy all along," Neal McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom said Wednesday. "Of course, the unconstitutional Department should be eliminated, but that would take an act of Congress. For now, it will be good to see if taxpayers can save substantial money running the place."

At the very least, since the vast majority of funding for U.S. public schools comes from local and state governments, there's little reason to think that shrinking the Department of Education would affect K-12 students much. The department primarily focuses on administering the behemoth federal student loan program—though Trump also seems to have that in his sights as well. Last month, the Education Department froze applications for income-based loan repayment. And last week Trump signed an executive order limiting eligibility for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, targeting those who help break immigration laws or commit "the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children." 

"I don't think the Education [Department] should be handling the loans," Trump said earlier this month. "That's not their business."

Comments

[Don’t get eliminated]

What a pleasant surprise.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

She didn't even mention FAFSA!

[Mother's Lament - Buttplug = Neocons (same motive)]

Is that even allowed?

[Bertram Guilfoyle]

I think I speak for us all when I demand an update on the Villareal situation.

[Michael Ejercito]

Education is not within Congress's Article I powers.

[Sometimes a Great Notion]

"The real victims will be our most vulnerable students," National Education Association President Becky Pringle

Wrong! Bye, bye.

[Longtobefree]

Today's reduction in force reflects the Department of Education's complete and total failure to improve education in any way whatsoever.

[JohnZ]

Education in America has been an outright failure.
Produced nothing but spoiled entitled brats.

[JohnZ]

With the Dept. of Education shut down, the states and local school boards will be able to decide what's in the best interests of students and it does not include trans ideology or DEI.
On another note the DOE should be investigated for corruption and fraud. The teacher's union needs to be shut down as well. Randy Weingarten can find sone more useful to do, maybe as a check-out as a dollar store.

[sarcasmic]

Most of what the DOE does is student loans which are the main driver for ever increasing tuition costs. Get rid of it and college should become more affordable.

[Winston in Wonderland]

Student loans aren't going away. They will just be administered by another department.

[Eeyore]

It will just regrow with more heads, like a hydra. You have to kill it dead. Behead it. Chop it up. Burn it. Scatter it to the four winds. Bury it.

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

The problem from a libertarian perspective is that killing the DoE will just push decision-making about government schools down to the states, which makes the situation worse - because it'll be 50 governments meddling in education policy, not one. Instead of one national standard you'll have 50 different standards, and your child could end up grossly disadvantaged if for example, you're in a backward state like Oklahoma where the government is insisting on putting a fiction work known as a "bible" in all government school classrooms. The libertarian answer is to separate school and state, period.

[sarcasmic]

As long as we're going to have government schools then it makes more sense to have decisions be at the local level so people can vote with their feet. If all standards are national, and they suck, then there's nothing anyone can do about it.

[Michael Ejercito]

Yes.

And this is our cobstiturional structure.

The feds' only rule us to provide remedies for civil rights violations.

[A Thinking Mind]

If you have to govern, govern local. Centralization is the enemy. Though I agree, moving out of the public schooling model entirely would be preferable.

[Dillinger]

>>The announcement was almost immediately met with sharp criticism.

idk I cheered and danced a little

[Winston in Wonderland]

There is a role, albeit limited, for the Federal government in education.

The commerce clause allows the Federal government to regulate interstate commerce. It makes some sense for the Federal Government to set standards (weights, measures, and some business practices) to improve commerce.

Likewise, it probably makes sense for the Federal Government to work with states to set standards that allow students and their credentials to be recognized across state lines.

Where the education department went off the rails was in attempting to micromanage all aspects of schooling. It's Dear Colleague letters requiring schools to suspend due process for males accused of sexual impropriety is an obvious example.