But the steps Trump — and his first education secretary, Betsy DeVos — took to diminish the agency during the president's first term had a real impact on states and districts.
Experts expect Trump and his incoming education secretary, former wrestling executive Linda McMahon, to make similar moves this time around — and perhaps go even further.
In fact, Trump signaled that he will make reshaping the federal bureaucracy a major priority of this second term by appointing two billionaires — Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — to head up a " Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE.
Here are three things the new Trump administration could do to scale back the department and its influence, most of which don't call for congressional approval.
1. Terminate career staff — or make their jobs so unappealing that they leave on their own
The vast majority of the department's 4,000-plus employees are career staffers, meaning that they were hired based on merit principles and serve in their jobs no matter who is in the White House. This system is meant to ensure that the federal workforce remains apolitical and retains institutional knowledge. There are protections in place that make it difficult to terminate these employees, in part to preserve their independence.
About 150 or so other employees — including the education secretary — are political appointees, chosen by the president, who are charged with setting the policy agenda. These staffers resign at the end of the presidential term, and it is much easier to remove them from their jobs.
Trump is expected to reinstate an executive order he issued at the very end of his first term that enabled his team to reclassify career employees whose roles involve some policy work as political appointees. That would make it easier to remove them and replace them with Trump loyalists — or just leave their jobs vacant.
Though that plan is likely to run into legal opposition, just the threat of it might send employees running for the exit. And even if the Trump administration doesn't follow through on the plan, it can stop offering employees the flexibility to telework, move staffers to who have built up expertise on a particular program to other roles, or leave career staff out of key decision-making.
The potential upshot?
"You'll have more vacancies and people in positions without the requisite experience or knowledge to carry out [job] functions," said Rachel Perera, a fellow in governance studies at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. The programs administered "through the department, and the enforcement work that happens to the department through the office for civil rights [are] going to be less effective."
2. Scrap existing guidance documents and stop issuing new guidance
The department can step way back when it comes to one of its key roles: issuing guidance that helps districts and state understand the rules for and implement key programs, such as Title I and special education grants, or manage big new challenges, such as the role of artificial intelligence in K-12.
During the first term, DeVos tossed hundreds of guidance documents, some of which pertained to laws no longer in effect.
That helps send the message that the department is concentrating only on the responsibilities Congress has designated for it, said Jim Blew, who served as an assistant secretary in the agency during Trump's first term.
It tells states: "We're not adding red tape," Blew suggested.
But Anne Hyslop, who served in the agency during the Obama administration, worries about the impact of less technical assistance from the department, including when it comes to guidance.
"It's really problematic when you don't have a fully functioning department of education," said Hyslop, who is now the director of policy development at All4Ed, an equity-focused research and advocacy organization. "The staff at the U.S. Department of Education have such deep knowledge about how states and districts across the country" are approaching common problems for K-12 schools — "what they're doing, what's working well."
3. Close offices in the department or move them to other federal agencies
Though shuttering the department would require congressional approval, Trump and his team could close some offices in the department or merge them with others. That's a step DeVos took in the Republican's first term.
Moving certain offices out of the department entirely would also need congressional signoff. But it might be more politically palatable for lawmakers.
Kirsten Baesler, North Dakota's elected superintendent of public instruction, outlined one potential path in a Dec. 2 op-ed published in the Washington Times. She suggested shifting the Education Department's financial aid responsibilities to the U.S. Department of the Treasury and moving its civil rights enforcement work to the Justice Department.
"These commonsense shifts would immediately reduce redundancy and ensure that critical functions are handled by agencies with aligned missions and expertise," wrote Baesler, who was not endorsed by the state Republican party in her most recent, successful campaign, but has received its recommendation in past election cycles. "These moves would pave the way for further efforts to create a slimmer Department of Education to focus on its core mission: supporting states in improving student outcomes and fostering innovation without unnecessary bureaucracy."
©2024 Education Week (Bethesda, Md.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
