⚡ Potential Fallout From Dismantling the Department of Education
The Trump administration’s plans to eventually slash the Department of Education were previewed by the conservative policy playbook “Project 2025.” Despite several outstanding lawsuits, the administration largely made good on that promise in the last year with a massive reduction in force hitting the department. Between November 2024 and November 2025, the number of employees fell by 42 percent, according to analysis from The New York Times.
The official rationale for the cuts is that they “empower states to take charge and advocate for and implement what is best” for students’ education, according to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.
There is skepticism from experts across both sides of the aisle on the feasibility of actually dismantling the Department of Education. Chester E. Finn Jr., president emeritus and distinguished senior fellow at right-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute, believes Congress will not approve a full cut and that the move is more “symbolic” than anything. Aaron Loewenberg, senior policy analyst at left-leaning think tank New America, believes the swath of lawsuits could slow down actual implications seen this year.
“This could be tied up in courts for a long time. The courts typically aren’t known for their speed,” he says. “It’s both not right to say it’s a huge deal, and also not right to say it’s nothing. We really just don’t know yet.”
“I’m not hopeful that these changes will lead to good things for students and families,” Loewenberg adds. “But maybe it’ll be less disruptive than some of us think.”
Even the threat of a shuttered department could bring consequences.
“It’s already having a negative effect on the field in terms of the confusion and delays right now,” says Elena Silva, president of the research nonprofit Learning Policy Institute. “It’s going to impact states, of course, it’s going to impact localities. It’s going to impact districts and students and families.”
Experts previously expressed concerns to EdSurge about special education services, which are housed under the Department of Education. Advocates fear that the reduced federal workforce erodes the ability to provide students with accommodations and undermines processes for reviewing complaints about potential accessibility violations. Last month, civil servants who had been laid off were called back to help with the backlog of discrimination cases.
“There’s both this question of which states will be affected most deeply by this, which states will have the most capacity to be able to manage it, but then there’s also the question of which students the federal government is set up to protect and to provide services for,” Silva says, pointing toward students with disabilities, in high poverty areas and those for whom English is a second language. “Those will be affected most because there won’t be the protections and the oversight necessary to ensure that they really do have a high-quality education.”
Finn says his “biggest worry” with the Department of Education is less about cutting the department itself and more on the fate of the data housed within the department. In March, nearly all staff were laid off at the National Center for Education Statistics, which collects a wide range of school-related data including on academic performance, population and literacy rates.
“NCES was the worst possible place to start gutting; it’s the oldest, and in my opinion most central, part of the Department of Education,” he says. “It’s the most objective, the least political, it’s just gathering information that is of universal interest to people: It’s not Republican or Democratic, it’s not red state [versus] blue state.”
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, better known as NAEP or the Nation’s Report Card, also saw cutbacks with several of its assessments.
“I can’t even think of a good analogy; it’s like going to the Department of Agriculture and cutting corn and pigs,” Finn says. “In terms of overall well-being to education, the data is absolutely essential.”
Loewenberg pointed toward some reports of attempts to walk back some of the data collection cuts, but still has concerns.
“I think it’s a small comfort, but I think people who aren’t working on education policy day in and day out don’t understand how much the education field depends on that good data that is collected by them,” he says.
— Lauren Coffey
