Halving the Department of Education

 Reductions in force are established processes for cutting positions in a workforce. The federal government has a series of regulations that oversee how this happens. 

Those have yet to be followed for the cuts last night at the Department of Education; thus, while the press release calls it a "reduction in force," it isn't clear that it is. While I have yet to see legal action, I'd expect it. 

You can read about the cuts in The Hill; K-12 Dive; NPR; EdWeek; New York Times.

Besides many, many people who care a lot about public education, and in many cases, have been doing their jobs for years, losing their jobs (which, to be clear, is bad enough!*), what does this mean?

Someone from the Department shared a list of who had been cut last night on Bluesky, and James Murphy of Ed Reform Now posted an analysis of who is gone. While the largest number of employees have been cut from FAFSA (insert the hollow laugh of the parent of a college student), by percentages of total employees compared to 2024, the big hits are the Office of Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences: 

from James Murphy's post here 

I think just "FAFSA" alone is concerning, but note that some of that office's duties are ensuring that funding for higher education through student aid is used in ethical ways.

The Office of Civil Rights is of course what ensures schools protect and preserve students' civil rights; that's race, gender, special education, language, and more. While we've already seen signs of the office being weaponized (as I warned about in November), they have a VERY legitimate function. With an even smaller office, the prioritization of the ideological use of the office, one assumes, will take priority over families who need the OCR to work to ensure their students are appropriately treated by their schools.

IES is one of the quiet functions that few know exists, but many have used. If you've seen (or said) anything comparing one state to another on educational outcomes, or cited state education spending, or any of many, many other data points, you used IES. The New York Times has a useful piece on this, as well as the research funded by the Department, today. The lack of accountability--for states! for the country!--is not good here. 

Program Administration also worries me. While school districts have the big grants for the current year now, those granting systems don't run themselves, and that, plus a lot of other Department functions take people doing things. It's that sort of thing--the dribbles of "wait, no one is doing that??" that I will say I dread.

Now we have half as many people doing this work. And I have to say that I have little confidence that the cut was done in any way that ensures the functions we need are served. 

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*If you lost your job yesterday, I am sorry. Your work is valuable and valued.

Just to offer: MASC did a Learning Lunch in January on what the U.S. Department of Education does (and what it means for districts) and you can find the video here.