oversight

Education Department's Own Watchdog Opens a Review as the Agency Hands Off Its Work in 14 Interagency Deals

The Education Department’s inspector general has opened a review of how the department is carrying out its agreement to have the Labor Department run most of its K-12 and higher education grant programmes. Senator Elizabeth Warren made the review public on 6 October.

The Labor agreement is one of 14 interagency agreements Secretary Linda McMahon has signed to move the department’s work elsewhere. About 2,300 staff remain, down from 3,902 in January 2025, according to OPM data.

How it’s being taken apart

Only Congress can abolish a cabinet department. The administration’s approach has been to cut staff and move programmes out under existing authority to make agreements with other agencies.

  • In March 2025 the department sent layoff notices to about 1,400 employees. In July 2025 the Supreme Court let the layoffs proceed while litigation continued.
  • In November 2025 it announced six agreements with Labor, Interior, State and Health and Human Services. Labor took over the main elementary, secondary and postsecondary grant offices.
  • In March 2026 Treasury agreed to take over collection of defaulted student loans, then other loans “to the extent practicable,” and later the FAFSA. The portfolio is about $1.7 trillion.
  • In June 2026 special education and vocational rehabilitation moved to HHS, and civil rights and student privacy enforcement to the Justice Department. More than 100 programmes have now moved.

Staff moved out of the department’s headquarters building in August, into the former USAID building. The Energy Department takes the old building.

Congress funded it anyway

The fiscal 2026 appropriations law gave the department about $79 billion, roughly $200 million more than the year before. It barred using funds to relocate offices or reorganise programmes. The department says that doesn’t block the agreements. Republicans blocked amendments that would have banned them outright. The House fiscal 2027 bill doesn’t mention them, and the department now runs on the stopgap to 11 December.

The accountability question

Money appropriated to Education is now spent by six other departments, under agreements that Congress didn’t vote on. The question the inspector general is looking at is who’s accountable when something goes wrong: Education, which holds the appropriation, or Labor, which runs the programme.

There are early signs of strain. GAO found the department spent up to $38 million keeping civil rights staff on paid leave. The Office for Civil Rights has closed more than half its regional offices. Staff quoted by NPR in September described a department that has become less efficient at the work it still does.

Why it matters

Federal education money is a fraction of what states and districts spend, but it carries the main civil rights and disability protections for students, plus $1.7 trillion in loans. Moving it piece by piece tests how far a President can reorganise government without Congress. Congress holds the obvious lever, appropriations language, and has chosen not to use it so far. The inspector general’s review, and the courts, are the checks still running.