Editorial: The incredible shrinking Department of Education

Las Vegas Review-Journal, Las Vegas Review-Journal on Mar 30, 2026

Published in Op Eds

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If a federal bureaucracy falls in the middle of Washington, D.C., and no one notices, did it really matter?

Just more than a year ago, President Donald Trump signed an executive order closing the Department of Education. Officially shuttering the agency would require an act of Congress. But Trump directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take all legally allowed “steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities.”

The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, the country’s two largest teacher unions, sued. They did their Chicken Little impressions and claimed the sky was falling.

“Dismantling the Department of Education, including by firing half of the Department, will bring these and other activities to a halt, harming students, educators and school districts across the country,” the AFT’s lawsuit said.

It would be more on point to observe that the Education Department’s decades of failure have already hurt innumerable students and educators.

As those cases wind their way through the court system, McMahon has been cutting back. This month, the Education Department announced it would transition oversight of the country’s massive student loan program to the Treasury Department.

“As the Federal student aid portfolio soars to nearly $1.7 trillion and with nearly a quarter of student loan borrowers in default, Americans know that the Department of Education has failed to effectively manage and deliver these critical programs,” McMahon said in a news release. By moving the program, “we are confident that American students, borrowers and taxpayers will finally have functioning programs after decades of mismanagement.”

Streamlining government doesn’t happen often but is possible. “This is the 10th interagency agreement the administration has reached to disperse large swaths of the work of the Education Department to other agencies,” NPR reported.

The Department of Education has cut staffing by nearly 50 percent. It’s slashed DEI-focused grants in favor of efforts to boost student achievement. It has expanded funding for charter schools. It’s helping states create more apprenticeships and training opportunities. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill contained a new federal school choice initiative.

The doom-and-gloom predictions of the education establishment, long lined up at the trough, haven’t come to pass. It’s unlikely most Americans even know this occurred. There are likely many more programs that could be chopped without most people noticing.

It’s not easy to reduce the size and scope of government, but Trump and McMahon have made progress here. Keep going.