White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Education Secretary Linda McMahon said Thursday the administration found a silver lining from the 43-day government shutdown: it proved the Department of Education is not needed.
Ms. Leavitt told reporters that 90% of Education Department staffers were furloughed during the shutdown, but education systems were not affected.
Ms. McMahon said in a video on social media that even amid the record-breaking government shutdown, “our schools don’t depend on Washington bureaucracy to function.”
“If 90% of an agency supposedly governing education can disappear for weeks without disrupting education, do we really need it at all?” she said.
The shutdown “did manage to do one valuable thing,” Ms. Leavitt said.
“It proved that America does not need a federal Department of Education,” she said.
But others disagree, specifically citing halted research due to delayed agency reviews of grant proposals and no new awards being made.
During the shutdown, Association of American Universities President Barbara Snyder said that the “longer Congress fails to reopen the government, the more sustained the shutdown’s effects will be on students, faculty, and researchers.”
Many education associations, including the Association of American Universities and the Association of University Professors, voiced concerns that dismantling the department could jeopardize educational needs.
In March, Ms. McMahon laid off half of the department’s workforce as President Trump rolled out an executive order to shutter the department.
The move delivered on one of Mr. Trump’s key campaign promises: downsize the federal government and dismantle the Education Department.
“We are not ending federal support for education; we are ending federal micromanagement and paving the way for education renewal,” Ms. McMahon said.
The Education Department recently entered into agreements with the departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services and State to transfer over programs and offices.
Ms. McMahon said she has talked to dozens of lawmakers to “bring them up to speed” and to codify the department transfers. Some lawmakers say the administration’s moves are an illegal attempt to circumvent congressional authority.
“This is an outright illegal effort to continue dismantling the Department of Education, and it is students and families who will suffer the consequences as key programs that help students learn to read or that strengthen ties between schools and families are spun off to agencies with little to no relevant expertise and are gravely weakened—or even completely broken—in the process,” said Sen. Patty Murray, Washington Democrat, in statement this week.
Ms. McMahon said the interagency agreements 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; entities that are accountable to you.”
