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U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon meets with schoolchildren in March. (Credit: Department of Education)

This week, the United States Department of Education announced it was terminating nearly 2,000 of its roughly 4,000 employees—the latest move in what Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has called the department’s “final mission.” Both McMahon and President Donald Trump have signaled that they ultimately want to close the department completely.

“Today’s reduction in force reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers,” .

Kevin Welner, a legal scholar and research professor in the School of Education at the ����ֱ�� Boulder, sees many reasons to worry in the new cuts. The department’s major programs were all established by Congress and provide important services to communities and children around the country, he said—including rural schools and students with disabilities.

“The effect of this is going to be that if you're, for example, a parent of a student with disabilities, you're going to have to fend for yourself,” said Welner, who also directs the based at ����ֱ�� Boulder.

Welner discussed the Department of Education—the cabinet-level department with the fewest staff in the federal government—even before the recent cuts. He spoke about what the department actually does, and whether the cuts will open the White House to legal challenges.

Kevin Welner

What does the Department of Education do?

At the higher education level, its work includes administering student loans and Pell Grants. The department also oversees the accreditation process for higher education.

At the K-12 level, the two biggest federal programs are Title I, which provides resources for schools serving families who are lower income. That's at about $18 billion a year. And there’s IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which is at over $14 billion a year.

Beyond those two, it's important to note that there are many programs that are funded at smaller levels. They provide programs around vocational education, mental health, community schools, magnet schools, rural schools, after-school programming, teacher preparation, students who are experiencing homelessness and students whose first language is other than English. These are all extremely important programs for communities, and they are all now going to be understaffed, presumably.

Has the department historically been controversial?

When the Department of Education was originally created by Congress in 1979, it really wasn't that controversial in the moment. By my count, there were 14 Republican co-sponsors in the Senate. There have been attempts since then to close the Department of Education, but many Republicans resisted those attempts. It hasn't been that partisan of an issue until very recently.

Let’s break down a few of the department’s programs a little more. What does Title I do?

For Title I, that money is being used to pay for teachers. It's being used to pay for after-school programming, tutoring and more, particularly in communities that are impoverished. Think about rural areas of Alaska or Appalachia. In a lot of those districts, Title I is providing more than half of the money for any individual kid’s education.

What does the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act do?

For IDEA, schools often have students whose needs are extremely expensive to meet, and state and local districts are not able to provide the needed resources by themselves. That’s where the federal money comes in.

Right now, less than 13% of the funding for those students is coming from the federal government. But that is still crucial money. There are also a series of procedures that go along with that money to protect the students. IDEA requires students with disabilities to have an IEP, or an Individualized Education Plan. That is worked out between the school and the parents to make sure the student receives an appropriate education.

If there’s no one—or many fewer people—on the Washington, DC, end to administer and enforce that program, a lot of that is now going to be much more difficult for parents and schools to carry out.

What impacts do you think these cuts will have?

Losing half of the employees in the department is undoubtedly going to kneecap the ability of the department to carry out its work.

Imagine that you are a student applying to college or a parent trying to figure out questions about affordability. Are you going to be able to get that loan? How do you apply? Those questions are going to be much more difficult to get answered. And the actual administration of student loans and the Pell Grant program will be gutted if the staffing is gutted.
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It’s hard to figure out what the process might be moving forward for administering the department’s programs at some basic level. We have to assume there'll be delays and less effective services. But there's also a very real question about whether those functions can even be carried out at all because of losing so many employees.

Now the big legal question: Is it constitutional to completely shut down this department?

The U.S. Department of Education was created in 1979 by Congress, and the U.S. Department of Education, therefore, can only be closed by an act of Congress. A key legal question then is whether the department is being functionally or meaningfully closed.

As we all learned in our own educations, the U.S. Constitution sets up a system of checks and balances. But that system only works if the other two branches—in this case, Congress and the courts—step up and push back on any over-reach by the third branch—in this case, the Executive Branch. If no one pushes back, then the Executive Branch can do whatever it wants. This separation of powers issue lies at the center of a , including ����ֱ��’s, filed two days after the firings.