The Trump administration has taken another illegal step in its attempt to abolish the U.S. Department of Education. The White House recently announced that several key offices and their respective functions within the Education Department are being transferred to other federal agencies. This plan is not only wholly unpopular among the 61 percent of Americans who do not wish to see the department abolished, but is an unlawful action in that it ignores an authority that only Congress holds to stand up or to dismantle the agency.
Congress, the legislative branch of the U.S. government, makes the laws on behalf of the American people. It established the Department of Education in federal law, which can be repealed only by another act of Congress. But since assuming office, President Donald Trump has made eliminating the department a priority through questionable legal means, including by dissolving the department via executive order and slashing its workforce. According to recent analysis by the Center for American Progress, the department’s head count has been reduced by nearly half, leaving it unable to carry out its responsibilities and statutory authorities under the law. Now, the administration is using interagency agreements (IAAs)—intended for government agencies to partner with each other in fairly narrow and specific ways to procure various goods or services—to continue its dismantling of the department. The interagency agreements would transfer tens of billions of dollars from the Education Department to different agencies, which will not reduce administrative bureaucracy and result in more challenges for schools, states, and others to implement programs to fully support students. It should be noted that the administration’s IAA actions for the department far exceed prior use of IAAs.
Using interagency agreements to circumvent congressional authority
Under this latest maneuver, the Department of Education announced six new IAAs; a previous IAA was made public in July 2025. The six new agreements would move various programs to the departments of the Interior, Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, and State.
Agencies routinely use IAAs to partner on procurement or other areas, but the broad nature of the IAAs announced in November 2025 sets a new and dangerous precedent of effectively allowing a president to eliminate entire agencies in plain contradiction of the law. Only Congress has the legal authority to make changes to federal programs at this scale, and lawmakers have expressed concerns that the IAAs violate appropriations law.
Additionally, without additional funding or resources, the transfer of programs will strain the partner agencies. In some cases, these programs are being transferred to agencies without operational or institutional know-how to execute these programs according to their purpose. The haphazard and rushed way the IAAs are being rolled out is consistent with the administration’s priority to attack the American education system at any cost, under the guise of streamlining the federal government.
Transferring key programs and operations from the Department of Education to other agencies will cause more administrative burden, not less
Moving Education Department programs could cause chaos for programs that serve millions of students, teachers, schools, and workers.
K–12 education
The recent IAAs concerning K–12 education will transfer 13 formula and 14 discretionary grant programs to the Department of Labor. These programs—which support efforts including literacy instruction, charter schools, family engagement, teacher development, and school leader effectiveness—will be moved to an agency that lacks relevant expertise to guide and oversee their implementation. The affected programs are currently managed by the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) within the Education Department. Their estimated total annual funding exceeds $28 billion, which is more than double the Labor Department’s annual operating budget of $13.3 billion.
One of the programs to be transferred to the Labor Department is Title I, the formula grant that provides funding to schools in low-income communities. This program is being moved to an agency that has no experience overseeing the education of children living in poverty and improving school performance. The annual appropriation for Title I alone is $18.4 billion, surpassing the Labor Department’s entire budget. The change will make accessing funds harder for school systems with a high percentage of low-income students—such as Birmingham City School District in Alabama, where more than one-third (37.8 percent) of its federal funding is derived from Title I. This shortsighted action by the administration will force districts to work with two federal agencies, creating more administrative burden and red tape to access necessary funds to serve students. This new process will be particularly challenging for smaller districts, especially those in rural areas with limited staffing capacity.
The Education Department has cited recent pre- and post-pandemic declines in reading and math performances in fourth and eighth grades to justify its decision. However, moving mostly academic programs that prioritize innovation and evidence-based instruction to an agency that has no relevant expertise and capacity to accelerate K–12 student learning is unlikely to improve student outcomes.
Historically, OESE has made decisions on new grant awards, providing technical assistance and guidance to states on program implementation, and ensuring appropriate data collection and reporting. Without OESE’s institutional knowledge and expertise, districts are likely to receive improper guidance and assistance and experience delays with receiving funds. Ultimately, the Trump administration’s decision will affect every district across the nation, including rural, suburban, and low-income schools. This move will undoubtedly create more government bureaucracy, which the administration had vowed to reduce.
Higher education
The agreement between the Education and Labor departments transfers a combined 50 provisions of programs and corresponding responsibilities authorized by the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA) implicating roughly $30 billion. The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) within the Labor Department, responsible for an array of activities including job training and unemployment insurance, will now be tasked with administering major programs to assist students and families in gaining access to financing and completing their postsecondary education.
For example, the six separate discretionary programs authorized under the HEA and known as the TRIO programs all will be administered by the Labor Department. Eligible institutions of the TRIO programs include entities that the Education Department is better positioned to understand, evaluate, and communicate with—colleges, middle and high schools, and nonprofit organizations that focus on college preparation and success. This will ultimately require much more governmental bureaucracy, not less, especially across the two departments.
Other programs, including capital financing for historically Black colleges and universities and a program that provides a quality postsecondary education to students with disabilities through technical assistance, require expertise in financing of postsecondary institutions or in serving students with disabilities that the Labor Department simply is not required or intended to have.
Another IAA with HHS will transfer the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program that provides campus-based child care services to low-income students. This move will not streamline the program because the statutory requirements include consideration of information that the Education Department produces in real time. For example, eligibility for the program is tied to total Federal Pell Grant funds and the amount of the grant is tied to the share of Federal Pell Grant funds awarded to the institution. Given that Pell Grants remain with the Education Department, there likely will be an additional step for HHS to figure out whether a college is eligible for CCAMPIS.
Workforce
In May 2025, the departments of Education and Labor signed an IAA that was the stepping stone to this latest round. The May 2025 IAA established a partnership between the Department of Education’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) and the Department of Labor’s ETA to administer career, technical, and adult education grants and Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Title II programs through the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act.
At first glance it might seem like the transfer between the two subdivisions might make sense, but the two have starkly different objectives and authorities in terms of who they serve. OCTAE administers programs for adult education and literacy, career and technical education, and community colleges. Additionally, it oversees key grant programs established by the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act (Perkins V) and provides support to states to improve program quality and accountability. ETA administers job training and worker dislocation programs, federal grants to states for public employment service programs, and unemployment insurance benefits, which are ultimately run by individual state and local workforce development systems.
Transferring these education programs to ETA will mean the loss of expertise around program quality and education. The Education Department’s expertise in academic standards and connections to postsecondary education have strengthened career and technical education and adult education programs. Since ETA is focused on job training, including for workers already out of a job, this is a poor fit for CTE programs meant to prepare secondary and postsecondary students for professions through comprehensive educational and career preparation programming.
ETA is also not well equipped to handle the volume of grants that OCTAE distributes annually. Already, there are reports that outsourcing the distribution of $1.4 billion of funding for career and technical education for schools and local governments to the Labor Department has led to disruptions and delays. This next tranche of IAAs will only further strain partner agencies and cause harm to students and workers.
These programs are essential for building the nation’s future workforce, expanding career pathways, and strengthening community colleges. The disruptions caused by these transfers will result in a less-prepared generation of students entering the labor market. Additionally, the transfer could cause future issues during a reauthorization of Perkins V, as this transfer would contradict both the current structure of career and technical education as detailed in federal law and how the transfer is handled by states.
Conclusion
Since assuming office in January, the Trump administration has continued to pursue policies that harm students and the quality of their education. The IAAs are not only illegal, they are also a misuse of funding and taxpayer dollars that will erode public trust in government and the institutions that serve the public. The transfer of key programs and operations from the Department of Education will cause dysfunction for programs that support millions of students, teachers, families, schools, adult learners, and states.