Education secretary shifts department functions to other agencies via interagency agreements

Summary

The Trump administration transfers significant Education Department functions to five other federal agencies through interagency agreements rather than statutory reorganization.
Legal experts at Sligo Law Group characterize the mechanism as lacking statutory authority for the education secretary to delegate departmental responsibilities outside the agency.
The reorganization fragments civil rights and special education oversight, moving complaint resolution to the Justice Department and Health and Human Services respectively.
Union representatives and policy analysts report that the structural shifts increase bureaucratic friction and disrupt established grant management and IT systems.

The Trump administration is restructuring the U.S. Department of Education by transferring significant functions and programs to five other federal agencies through interagency agreements executed without congressional approval. Education Secretary Linda McMahon characterized the initiative in a March 2025 email as the agency’s “Final Mission” to “restore the culture of liberty and excellence,” but the administrative mechanism bypasses the statutory reorganization typically required to eliminate cabinet-level functions or redirect congressionally approved funds. This executive realignment has drawn legal challenges and operational warnings from policy analysts and federal workforce representatives, who argue that shifting civil rights enforcement, special education oversight, and workforce development to the Justice Department, Health and Human Services, and other agencies fragments established regulatory frameworks and introduces new bureaucratic inefficiencies.

Structural realignment and statutory authority

The administration has executed the overhaul by transferring specific functions across five cabinet departments. The Office for Civil Rights has moved to the Justice Department; the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, Early Childhood Technical Assistance Centers, and family engagement programs are moving to the Department of Health and Human Services; Career and Technical Education offices and youth workforce development programs are moving to the Department of Labor; the Bureau of Indian Education and tribal school operations are moving to the Department of the Interior; and the State Department is assuming control over international student exchange programs and global education initiatives. By law, eliminating cabinet-level departments and redirecting congressionally approved funds requires an act of Congress. The administration has instead utilized interagency agreements, a mechanism typically governed by authorities like the Economy Act, which permits agencies to procure goods and services from one another.

Legal experts at the Sligo Law Group told UPI they are not aware of any statutory authority that allows the education secretary to delegate departmental responsibilities to agencies outside the Education Department. “The main statutory concern that I see here is that I am not aware of any authority within the department that allows the secretary of education to delegate responsibilities and functions outside of the Department of Education,” partner Jill Siegelbaum said. She added that the agreements rely on “this vague contracting authority which these clearly do not fall within the scope of those authorities.” The litigation posture positions the federal courts to determine whether the executive branch’s interpretation of interagency authority can supersede the statutory architecture established by Congress. Sligo Law Group has filed for a preliminary injunction to stop the department from terminating two community school grants totaling $18.5 million, alleging the decision violates the Administrative Procedures Act. Partner Emily Merolli characterized the department’s approach, stating, “What we’re seeing is a department that is not interested in negotiating or improving outcomes. We’re seeing a department that is interested in pushing its own priorities and terminating and canceling based on a number of pretty ill-defined and sometimes arbitrary delineations.”

Civil rights enforcement and service fragmentation

The reorganization alters the enforcement landscape for civil rights and special education. The Office for Civil Rights, which moved to the Justice Department, received more than 9,000 discrimination complaints between March and September 2025 and resolved 7,000 of them. According to the Government Accountability Office, 90 percent of those resolutions were reached by dismissal. During that period, approximately half of the office’s staff was placed on paid administrative leave and seven of its 12 regional offices were closed; those staff members were recalled in December.

Eric Duncan, director of P-12 policy for EdTrust, noted that the administration’s interpretation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act has changed how the Justice Department enforces the law. In December 2025, the Justice Department announced it was eliminating the disparate impact test from its Title VI enforcement rules without opening the rule change to public comment as required by the Administrative Procedures Act. “The administration hasn’t gotten a court decision on their interpretation of Title VI,” Duncan said. “The court has not said anything about their interpretation of Title VI and how it applies to race-conscious programming or practices that the Department of Justice is now being more punitive of.”

Duncan also raised concerns about service gaps resulting from splitting the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services from the Office for Civil Rights. Previously, the Office for Civil Rights handled many special-education complaints. Duncan said transferring this oversight to Health and Human Services “just fragments it even more and puts it in an agency that doesn’t necessarily have the expertise or functions to provide timely support.”

Efficiency, workforce capacity, and administrative friction

McMahon has described the purpose of the moves as an effort to eliminate “bureaucratic bloat” and improve efficiency. Leslie Hiner, senior adviser for legal policy for the organization EdChoice, told UPI she believes the description is accurate and that transferring programs to agencies with more relevant expertise will improve outcomes. “We’re going to find that in these key areas, service and effectiveness of that work will improve tenfold,” Hiner said. “This is very positive.” Hiner argued that the department’s core competency should focus on helping states figure out how to properly educate children, with functions better suited to other agencies relocated accordingly.

Federal workforce representatives present a contrasting assessment of the operational impact. Rachel Gittleman, AFGE Local 252 union president, told UPI the department has long been the smallest cabinet-level agency and the most efficient in “dollars in versus dollars out” service delivery, but that the reshuffling has “added more bureaucracy.” Gittleman pointed to the transition from the Education Department’s proprietary G5 funding system, which operated at no cost, to the Grants Management Solutions system used by Health and Human Services and Labor, which comprises three systems used together and costs the department money.

Gittleman also highlighted workforce turbulence, noting that about half of the agency’s workforce was reduced during DOGE cuts and shakeups. “Massive loss of expertise,” Gittleman said. “Actually the department is embarking on a huge hiring spree right now.” Despite these disruptions, Gittleman maintained that the structural changes are reversible. “I wouldn’t be in this job if I didn’t believe this could be undone,” she said. “There’s a lot of conversations happening right now, not just at the department but about how do we rebuild a federal workforce that could withstand — hopefully this is a once in a lifetime attack.”

Stakeholder alignment and institutional power

The education-policy coalition surrounding the restructuring is not monolithic. EdChoice supports the transfers on efficiency grounds, while EdTrust opposes the fragmentation of civil rights and special education oversight. A divergence exists between the institutional actors executing the policy and the parties bearing its operational consequences. The administration and receiving agencies possess high institutional power and are driving the reorganization, leveraging subject-matter adjacencies in Justice, HHS, Labor, Interior, and State departments. Conversely, families and students relying on civil-rights protections or special-education services face direct service fragmentation, possessing high legitimacy and urgency but lower immediate institutional power. Legal challengers, including the Sligo Law Group representing grant recipients, exercise their power through the judiciary, positioning the federal courts to resolve the underlying statutory disputes over appropriations authority and delegation.

Analytical techniques used in this piece

This analysis applies the methods below. Each links to a short, plain-English explainer you can read and reuse.

Deep Clarification: Pins down what an ambiguous or contested term actually means in context.
Domain Induction: Builds a working mental model of a domain from the ground up.
Stakeholder Mapping: Charts the parties to a situation — their interests, power, and alignments.
Allison’s Three Lenses: Reading a state’s action as rational actor, organizational output, and bureaucratic politics at once.