The Trump administration says it has taken a major step toward dismantling the Department of Education, advancing a long-promised plan to return education authority to the states. This week, the department shifted several key functions to other federal agencies.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said Nov. 18 that six agreements completed this week will transfer multiple legally mandated programs to the Departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, and State.
She emphasized that the administration aims to end federal micromanagement, not federal support itself.
“To be clear, returning education to the states does not mean the end of federal support for education,” she wrote in a Nov. 16 USA Today column. “It simply means the end of a centralized bureaucracy micromanaging what should be a state-led responsibility.”
At a Nov. 20 press conference, McMahon framed the transfers as a necessary rollback of federal control and a fulfillment of President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge.
“These interagency agreements to cut our own bureaucratic bloat are a key step in our efforts to shift educational authority from Washington D.C. to your state education agency, your local superintendent, your local school board,” she said.
She added that these are “entities that are accountable to you” and urged parents to stay involved.
McMahon also dismissed criticism from what she called “D.C. insiders” and “a chorus of anti-Trump voices” who accuse the administration of gutting federal education policy without a plan. She said critics ignore what voters have already recognized.
“Cutting federal bureaucracy is never a popular move among D.C. insiders,” McMahon remarked. But voters, she argued, see the “brokenness of the top-down education system run by the federal government.”
She pointed to stagnant academic performance, rising student debt, and worsening teacher burnout.
Only three in 10 students read proficiently at grade level, she noted. College students collectively hold $1.7 trillion in debt, and less than half of the graduates work in the field they studied. Meanwhile, teachers are leaving the profession in record numbers due to heavy regulation and shrinking autonomy, McMahon argued.
“Our final mission as a department is to fully empower states to carry the torch of our educational renaissance,” she concluded. “Education is local. It should be overseen locally by those who best know local needs. We’re not ending federal support for education. We are ending federal micromanagement and paving the way for education renewal through state reforms like school choice.”
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