U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon smiles during the signing event for an executive order to shut down the Department of Education next to U.S. President Donald Trump, in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 20, 2025.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
The Trump administration says it will transfer much of the U.S. Department of Education’s programs to other agencies, a move experts say is part of President Donald Trump’s directive to dismantle the agency.
During a press call with reporters on Tuesday, a senior administration official said the administration had signed agreements with four other federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to begin managing programs currently under the Education Department.
Under the new agreements, the Labor Department will administer more federal K-12 initiatives, and the State Department will assume additional tasks related to international education and the Fulbright programs, according to the Education Department.
Trump signed an executive order in March aimed at closing the Education Department, which oversees the country’s $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio, provides funding to low-income students and enforces civil rights in classrooms across the country.
Only Congress can unilaterally eliminate the Education Department. But the Trump administration may be trying to use a workaround by contracting with other agencies to perform the department’s tasks.
“They are attempting to hollow out the U.S. Department of Education, leaving behind a shell of the original organization,” said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration laid off nearly half of the Education Department’s staffers.
“We’ll peel back the layers of federal bureaucracy by partnering with agencies that are better suited to manage programs,” Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon wrote in a recent op-ed in USA Today.
The government shutdown “underlined just how little the Department of Education will be missed,” McMahon said.
Tuesday’s announcement did not include information on the future of the government’s student loan portfolio. However, administration officials are exploring options to sell some of the debt to the private market, Politico reported in October.
Former President Jimmy Carter established the current-day Education Department in 1979. Since then, the department has faced other existential threats, with former President Ronald Reagan calling for its end and Trump, during his first term, attempting to merge it with the Labor Department.