Education policy can feel far removed from the real work of schooling. Why is that? What can we do about it? These are crucial questions, never more so than in 2025, and I can’t think of anyone better to help tackle them than Andy Rotherham, the author of the Eduwonk blog, co-founder of Bellwether, member of Virginia’s board of education, and former special assistant for education to President Bill Clinton at the White House. Today, Andy and I discuss Trump administration efforts to downsize the Department of Education and what they mean.
—Rick
Rick: Andy, the Trump administration has issued an executive order signaling its desire to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. But, even Trump’s secretary of education, Linda McMahon, concedes that she’ll need congressional action to follow through on that. In the meantime, the administration has taken the extraordinary step of laying off more than 1,300 staff at the department. Combined with earlier cuts and buyouts, they’ve shrunk the 4,000-plus-person agency by roughly half. We’ve never seen anything like it. The cuts have provoked a furious reaction from traditional education groups. They’ve also posed big questions about how the department will operate moving forward.
I have a couple thoughts on all this. For starters, as someone who thinks there’s a lot of bloat and redundancy at the department, I’m underwhelmed by a lot of the pushback. In all the angry statements that have filled my inbox, I haven’t seen much that cogently explains why we should expect the loss of 2,000 federal officials to have a discernible impact on K–12 or higher education. That said, the Trump administration has not yet clearly explained the rationale for these particular cuts, how a smaller department will work, or why these actions will yield a more efficient, nimble agency. In fact, the lack of explanation raises questions about whether the cuts will hobble crucial, congressionally mandated activities like the National Assessment of Educational Progress or the FAFSA overhaul that the Biden administration badly fumbled. I guess my bottom line is that I’m supportive of the cuts in principle but have a lot of questions about their execution.
Andy: I think the best way to think about this is that it’s a mixed bag. On NAEP, for instance, their “move fast, cut what you can cut” approach is going to backfire because they say they want to keep NAEP, and the assessment enjoys bipartisan support, but they are cutting some of the key functions needed to keep it operating in a high-quality way. (My understanding is they are trying to fix this, but it’s not straightforward given how they’ve made these cuts in the first place.) That same dynamic is showing up in some other work at the Institute for Education Sciences. This would have been avoidable if they’d just listened to some people with expertise at the department instead of assuming everyone there was the enemy. Will disruptions to NAEP or their data gathering be a high-profile issue with the public? No. But it will still be a substantive problem for the sector going forward. That points out the risk for Democrats and supporters of the department—many of these cuts and changes have a slow fuse and won’t be apparent for a while, if ever. The lack of reform and attention to effectiveness over the years leaves defenders of the department playing a weaker hand than they otherwise might.
The bottom line, though, is this is sloppy, and your take is what I hear even from a lot of people who are broadly sympathetic to their aims: skepticism and concern about how DOGE and the administration are doing this.
Rick: It was Mark Twain who said that a patriot is someone who supports their country all the time and their government when it deserves it. That’s kind of how I feel here. I’m all for cutting red tape and empowering accountable educators, but clumsy or slapdash efforts won’t do that. I think that there are a lot of terrific people in this Department of Education. But it’s their job to convince the public that what they’re doing will actually work. The NAEP example is illustrative. The administration says it values NAEP, and it did indeed protect the small NAEP unit at the National Assessment Governing Board that handles management, strategy, and communications. Meanwhile, the administration zeroed out the unit at the National Center for Education Statistics responsible for NAEP’s data coordination, collection, and analysis.
Was this just an oversight? Did the left hand not know what the right hand was doing? Is there some kind of strategy or plan here? I’ve no idea. You’re right, of course, that most people aren’t going to worry about a statistical agency. But if things play out similarly when it comes to special education or student loans, the problems are going to be plenty visible. If they don’t do a better job of making the case that they know what they’re doing, administration officials will sow doubts and invite political blowback.
Andy: Well, Mark Twain also had plenty of choice things to say about education, school boards, and learning. I think you are pointing to something important, and the inverse of the slow fuse issue. Whether it was oversight, sloppiness, or deliberate, there is a political risk here. A majority of Americans oppose gutting the Department of Education. A recent Economist and YouGov poll found that just 30 percent say they want it reduced or eliminated. Two-thirds say they want it kept the same or expanded. The Trump team seems to think it can thread this political needle by keeping the funding but dismantling the agency—and they’re probably correct to assume that when Americans say they want to keep the agency, they’re referring to funding more than specific program offices. But that doesn’t mean there will not be a political price at some point if this creates visible disruptions or if Congress cuts some of these programs down the road.
We should also note that in the context of the overall federal budget, education department-related cuts are all pretty small stakes percentage wise. The drivers of federal spending are entitlement programs and the debt. This whole exercise creates more of a perception of fiscal responsibility and seriousness than a reality.
Rick: Yeah, it can feel like everything is messaging nowadays. After all, we’re running a $1.8 trillion annual deficit in a healthy economy while sitting on $36 trillion in total accumulated debt. I’m 100 percent for tackling that, so we’re not just dumping a mountain of debt on our kids and their kids. But, as you say, that’s mostly about reining in entitlements—and there’s zero evidence either party has any appetite for that. So we’re mostly getting small, symbolic cuts. The administration still hasn’t released any clear numbers, but I’d estimate the staff cuts at the department amount to something like $400 million in salary and benefits, give or take. That’s real money, but it’s also a lot less than 1 percent of what Washington will spend on education this year—and less than one one-thousandth of this year’s deficit.
Meanwhile, the administration has taken pains to say that programs aren’t getting cut, issued an executive order to abolish the department even as it conceded this is Congress’ call, and talked about empowering states without yet moving to address the rules or regulations that matter (shrinking the Education Department doesn’t actually help on that score unless you’ve done that). This all adds up to more style than substance. Democrats, in turn, have leaned into “sky-is-falling” messaging. The public comes away confused with an exaggerated sense of how much this all matters. And we get a lot of click-bait headlines but not much action on deficit reduction, regulatory relief, or school improvement.
Andy: Yeah, I don’t think it’s explicit and I’m not a conspiracy type, but it’s hard to miss how much this issue works for both “sides” in different ways. It’s one of those fights people are quietly glad to have from a political standpoint. Arguing about “abolishing” the Department of Education is easier than, for example, solutions to our stubborn post-pandemic reading scores. On the substance, you are right about rules and regulations. I’m surprised the letter from a dozen state chiefs to Linda McMahon asking for flexibility hasn’t received more attention. The 74 broke that story. One part of it was a request for waivers. I’d keep an eye on that. Iowa is already in line for one. That approach would have a few benefits for the administration, including sidestepping some of the issues you raise. It also creates the sort of feudal spectacle the president seems to like, with people asking for authority he can then bestow.
We haven’t even talked in-depth about the congressional obstacles to this—60 votes in the Senate, 218 in the House—because, as you alluded to, they’re so obvious. So, this will happen through other means, and there will be litigation about aspects of it. In fact, because it’s hard to do this in an intentional manner because of all the barriers—Congress, existing law, personnel rules, and so forth—we’re getting this sort of “do what you can when you can” approach. It is sloppy, situational, and chaotic. And, as you noted at the outset, it lacks any positive message because this is a lot more complicated than just “leave it to the states.”
