The US Department of Education (known as ED) has been in the media spotlight the last two weeks with an intensity that only compares to the FAFSA foul-ups of last year. Just when it seemed like ED was going back to business as usual, along comes a new president who actually isn’t a new president, and ED is getting more discussion than the Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl appearance.
As is always the case with such white-hot social attention, there’s a lot of news out there, a lot of gossip out there, and a lot of hoping out there—hope that ED is on its way out, and hope that ED is going to somehow survive all this. As you make your way through the morning headlines, here are some key ideas to help you sort fact from fiction, and hope from reality.
This Trump administration is different than the last one The 2017 Trump team featured a president who cared Not. One. Whit. about education, with K-12 getting a whopping one sentence in his first State of the Union. Between now and then, someone has convinced the new Grover Cleveland that K-12 is a threat to the American way of life, an example of government overreach, or both. As a result, Team Trump II now wants to clip the department’s wings and influence, any way they can.
Closing ED will be difficult Federal departments are created by Congress, with bills that specify exactly what the new division is supposed to do. That generally means no other part of the federal government can do what Congress wants this part to do. It also means Congress is the only group that can put it out of business.
And yet… Just like a school counseling office, government divisions often end up doing things that aren’t in their job description. ED is no different, offering programming and other services that, it could be argued, are an extension of their mandate, but not an essential element,
That’s where Executive Orders come in. Congress may have created ED, but the president runs it—and the boss can come in at any time and change, add or delete the “other duties as assigned” to ED in any way he’d like. That’s part of what’s going on now, and there is legitimate concern these orders could limit ED’s influence. An Executive Order can also be used to direct Congress to eliminate ED. That may be coming.
Layoffs and Leaves The president can also manage personnel, much like your superintendent does. This can take the form of layoffs, if they feel there isn’t (or won’t be) enough work to do; calls for employees to consider resigning, with the implied promise of layoffs if there aren’t enough resignations; and administrative leaves, an action which takes people out of the office, but not off the payroll. Administrative leaves are the most curious tool in the leadership toolbox, since they don’t affect the budget, but simply keep someone out of the office. It’s generally used to keep dissidents at bay, so they can’t organize any opposition to actions taken by the boss—and those have indeed happened at ED.
DOGE and ED The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has made its presence known at ED, and while DOGE can have access to all kinds of databases and personalized information, its role at ED has, so far, been mostly structural—what can they cut, what can they offload to another division. Efforts to access databases at other departments have made the headlines; if this happens at ED, the same is likely to occur.
