Ongoing Changes to the Department of Education
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President Donald Trump inherited a U.S. Department of Education with 4,133 employees, according to the administration’s own numbers. Nearly 600 workers have since chosen to leave, by resigning or retiring. And this week, more than 1,300 workers were told they’re losing their jobs in a Tuesday purge. That leaves 2,183 remaining department staff, according to the administration, which means the Department of Education will soon be roughly half the size it was just a few weeks ago.
In the department’s own language, its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the attorneys who work there are tasked with “preventing, identifying, ending, and remedying discrimination against America’s students” based on race, national origin, sex, age and disability. According to department data, at least 240 OCR employees were laid off Tuesday, most of them attorneys who investigate complaints from parents and families who believe a school has discriminated against their child. The number of layoffs is likely higher, as that 240 does not include non-union employees. As of last September, 568 people worked in OCR, according to the FedScope federal workforce database.
Catherine Lhamon, who ran the civil rights office during the Obama and Biden administrations, says these cuts are “an absolute walk-away from our longstanding, bipartisan commitments to civil rights and our belief that every one of our kids is a valuable learner.” Still, the Trump administration clearly plans to utilize this office: The day before the layoffs were announced, OCR sent letters to 60 colleges and universities, threatening to withhold federal funding if they do not protect Jewish students on their campuses.
“U.S. colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by U.S. taxpayers,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “That support is a privilege and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws.” Now though, the office has at least 40% fewer staffers to enforce those laws. “I’m open to the idea that losing half of the attorneys at OCR is a good decision,” says Rick Hess of the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute (AEI), “but being open to it doesn’t mean I believe it.” Hess says staffing cuts this large should have to be explained, with full transparency, by the administration doing the cutting. In this case, that hasn’t happened yet. It’s the Trump administration’s job, Hess says, “to be transparent about what’s going on, to explain how this is going to work, and ideally to have done that before the cuts were made rather than after the cuts were made.”
In early February, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) made deep cuts to the Education Department’s research division, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). DOGE said it cut dozens of research contracts worth roughly $900 million. These cuts included large-scale efforts to study everything from the best ways to teach literacy in the early grades to how to help students with disabilities make the sometimes difficult transition from high school into the working world.
“This is a decimation,” one source with knowledge of IES’ inner workings said, “the destruction of knowing what works for kids.” On top of those research cuts, on Tuesday, the Education Department terminated more than 100 IES employees, including many research analysts who specialize in K-12 studies and adult and career education. As of last September, 186 people worked at IES, according to FedScope.
The Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA), which administers the sprawling federal student loan portfolio, was hit especially hard in Tuesday’s cuts, losing more than 320 unionized staffers. That’s on top of other big staffing losses, which were discussed during an internal FSA meeting held Wednesday morning. In that meeting, top Education Department and FSA officials said they will lose more than 450 employees to this upcoming reduction-in-force – and a combined 727 when you include probationary staff who’ve been terminated as well as veteran workers who have agreed to retire or leave voluntarily.
Some states are already fighting the legality of the cuts. On Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James led a group of 20 other state attorneys general suing to stop the Trump administration from dismantling the Education Department. “Firing half of the Department of Education’s workforce will hurt students throughout New York and the nation,” James said in a statement, “especially low-income students and those with disabilities who rely on federal funding. This outrageous effort to leave students behind and deprive them of a quality education is reckless and illegal.”
Also, AEI’s Rick Hess points out, there are basic civil service policies in place for the hiring and terminating of staff. “Are these layoffs being done in a way that’s consistent with what Congress has authorized? To me, as an education guy, it’s not immediately clear,” he says. The White House, Wong says, is essentially asking Congress, “‘Do you agree with us in the executive branch, that this is OK for us to do?’ So I think the ball is now in the hands of Congress.”
While some congressional Republicans have voiced concern over changes at the Education Department, especially around safeguarding services for children with disabilities, it’s unclear the party, as a whole, will have any interest in pushing back, even if the downsizing continues. Without congressional intervention, Wong says, the fight over whether these massive cuts have gone too far will most likely play out in the courts.