New America

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) was created to help ensure that every student has access to a high-quality public education. The Trump Administration’s decision last week to move many of our country’s core education programs to other federal agencies will severely hurt its ability to fulfill this goal. In addition to being on questionable legal ground, the administration’s six interagency agreements to “co-manage” education programs will increase inefficiency and create unnecessary confusion. Administering programs to protect students and improve their outcomes requires much more than being a “pass-through” for funding. It requires deep expertise of the evidence on what educational strategies are likely to work and which aren’t. The interagency agreements implicitly acknowledge this by requiring ED staff to provide expertise, oversight, and myriad other support functions to the four agencies where education programs will be moved (the Department of Health & Human Services, the Department of Interior, the Department of Labor, and the Department of State). The back-and-forth required between agencies to execute this plan will detract from the real work of ED, which is to protect students’ rights and provide guidance and support to states, schools, and other educational entities to ensure students have the resources to succeed.