President Donald Trump inherited a U.S. Department of Education with 4,133 employees, according to the administration’s own numbers. Nearly 600 workers have since chosen to leave, by resigning or retiring. And this week, more than 1,300 workers were told they’re losing their jobs in a Tuesday purge.
That leaves 2,183 remaining department staff, according to the administration. Which means the Education Department will soon be roughly half the size it was just a few weeks ago.
What those numbers don’t capture is the toll these cuts will take on the work of the department. With roughly half the staff on the way out, what half of that work will fall by the wayside?
Using department data obtained by NPR, including a spreadsheet of nearly 1,000 laid off members of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) local 252, as well as interviews with a dozen employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by the Trump administration, NPR has compiled this list of department responsibilities hit hardest by these staffing cuts.
Civil rights enforcement has been dramatically cut
In the department’s own language, its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the attorneys who work there are tasked with “preventing, identifying, ending, and remedying discrimination against America’s students” based on race, national origin, sex, age and disability.
According to department data, at least 240 OCR employees were laid off Tuesday, most of them attorneys who investigate complaints from parents and families who believe a school has discriminated against their child. The number of layoffs is likely higher, as that 240 does not include non-union employees. As of last September, 568 people worked in OCR, according to the FedScope federal workforce database.
A revised department organizational chart obtained by NPR shows that more than half of the OCR’s 12 field offices will also be shuttered – in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco and Dallas.
Catherine Lhamon, who ran the civil rights office during the Obama and Biden administrations, says these cuts are “an absolute walk-away from our longstanding, bipartisan commitments to civil rights and our belief that every one of our kids is a valuable learner.”
Still, the Trump administration clearly plans to utilize this office: The day before the layoffs were announced, OCR sent letters to 60 colleges and universities, threatening to withhold federal funding if they do not protect Jewish students on their campuses.
“U.S. colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by U.S. taxpayers,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “That support is a privilege and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws.”
Now though, the office has at least 40% fewer staffers to enforce those laws.
“I’m open to the idea that losing half of the attorneys at OCR is a good decision,” says Rick Hess of the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute (AEI), “but being open to it doesn’t mean I believe it.”
Hess says staffing cuts this large should have to be explained, with full transparency, by the administration doing the cutting. In this case, that hasn’t happened yet.
It’s the Trump administration’s job, Hess says, “to be transparent about what’s going on, to explain how this is going to work, and ideally to have done that before the cuts were made rather than after the cuts were made.”
Money will still go to the most vulnerable students, with fewer guardrails
The Department of Education administers two large, decades-old funding streams to schools to help educate the nation’s most vulnerable students: Those living in poverty (Title 1) and children with disabilities (The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA). Both funding streams were created by Congress and are protected by law.
While Tuesday’s layoffs do not directly affect those federal dollars, four sources with direct knowledge of the inner workings of the department’s Office of General Counsel tell NPR the Trump administration has fired every attorney responsible for helping states and school districts understand how they can and cannot use their federal K-12 money, and who raise red flags when a state or district appears to be in violation of these funding laws.
These layoffs still allow states to continue receiving vital federal funds, including money for homeless students and rural schools, but they strip away the U.S. government’s ability to offer either legal guidance or guardrails — to guarantee the money is being used to help the children it was intended to help.
“That will have very negative effects on communities around the country that currently don’t really even understand that their child’s [special education], or the supports that they receive for their child, are directly connected to the U .S. Department of Education,” says Patrice Willoughby, chief of policy and legislative affairs at the NAACP.
On Wednesday, speaking to reporters, President Trump made clear the rollback of federal oversight is meant as a sign of trust in states’ ability to manage their own affairs.
“We have a dream, and you know what the dream is we’re going to move the Department of Education – we’re going to move education into the states, so that the states, instead of bureaucrats working in Washington, so that the states can run education.”
Another blow to education research
In early February, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) made deep cuts to the Education Department’s research division, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES).
DOGE said it cut dozens of research contracts worth roughly $900 million. These cuts included large-scale efforts to study everything from the best ways to teach literacy in the early grades to how to help students with disabilities make the sometimes difficult transition from high school into the working world.
“This is a decimation,” one source with knowledge of IES’ inner workings told NPR, “the destruction of knowing what works for kids.”
On top of those research cuts, on Tuesday, the Education Department terminated more than 100 IES employees, including many research analysts who specialize in K-12 studies and adult and career education.
As of last September, 186 people worked at IES, according to FedScope.
There will be fewer resources for student loans and college financial aid
The Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA), which administers the sprawling federal student loan portfolio, was hit especially hard in Tuesday’s cuts, losing more than 320 unionized staffers.
That’s on top of other big staffing losses, which were discussed during an internal FSA meeting held Wednesday morning, sources told NPR.
In that meeting, top Education Department and FSA officials said they will lose more than 450 employees to this upcoming reduction-in-force – and a combined 727 when you include probationary staff who’ve been terminated as well as veteran workers who have agreed to retire or leave voluntarily.
According to FedScope, FSA had 1,440 employees as of last September. That means FSA too is essentially being cut in half.
Sources familiar with the inner workings of FSA, who would not speak publicly for fear of retribution by the Trump administration, said these layoffs, coupled with steep numbers of veteran staff who have chosen to leave, have been devastating.
“We’ve lost hundreds of years of institutional knowledge,” one FSA employee told NPR.
Also lost in the layoffs, according to multiple FSA sources, were staff who helped oversee the companies that manage the federal student loan portfolio, as well as a large group of IT specialists who help maintain FSA’s online presence, including cybersecurity compliance.
Sources tell NPR that the office could soon struggle to perform even basic functions – at a time when huge changes will need to be made in the coming months as Congress and the courts settle on the future of income-driven repayment.
“Borrowers are going to be calling call centers,” one source told NPR, “and they’re going to have even less information than is available to them now.”
Millions of college students need no reminding of what happens when FSA falls short. Many no doubt remember the Biden administration’s troubled rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and are hoping these staff cuts don’t mean a return to FAFSA chaos.
Are these mass layoffs legal?
That question does not have a clear cut answer, according to Kenneth Wong, a professor of education policy at Brown University. Wong says Trump “is pushing the boundary of executive power” by making deep cuts to staff that work on programs created by Congress.
Some states are already fighting the legality of the cuts. On Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James led a group of 20 other state attorneys general suing to stop the Trump administration from dismantling the Education Department.
“Firing half of the Department of Education’s workforce will hurt students throughout New York and the nation,” James said in a statement, “especially low-income students and those with disabilities who rely on federal funding. This outrageous effort to leave students behind and deprive them of a quality education is reckless and illegal.”
The executive branch has the authority to manage federal personnel; that’s not in doubt. The question of the moment is: At what point does managing personnel undermine or even endanger a program that is protected by statute?
For example, the Office for Civil Rights’ mandate to enforce federal civil rights laws is protected by statute. Eliminating the office entirely would likely be considered a violation of federal law, but is cutting the office’s staff nearly in half?
Also, AEI’s Rick Hess points out, there are basic civil service policies in place for the hiring and terminating of staff.
“Are these layoffs being done in a way that’s consistent with what Congress has authorized? To me, as an education guy, it’s not immediately clear,” he says.
The White House, Wong says, is essentially asking Congress, “‘Do you agree with us in the executive branch, that this is OK for us to do?’ So I think the ball is now in the hands of Congress.”
While some congressional Republicans have voiced concern over changes at the Education Department, especially around safeguarding services for children with disabilities, it’s unclear the party, as a whole, will have any interest in pushing back, even if the downsizing continues.
Without congressional intervention, Wong says, the fight over whether these massive cuts have gone too far will most likely play out in the courts.
Reporting contributed by: Stephen Fowler
Transcript:
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
We begin this hour with the latest on the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Late yesterday, the administration announced sweeping layoffs. Between those cuts and the hundreds of veteran staffers who have agreed to leave voluntarily, the Education Department will soon be roughly half the size it was two months ago, cut from around 4,100 to around 2,200. For more on those cuts and how they may play out across the country, let’s bring in NPR’s Cory Turner. Hey there.
CORY TURNER, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.
KELLY: Who are the workers losing their jobs?
TURNER: Well, you know, while just about every office in the department lost staff, I think it’s important right now to focus on the handful of offices that were hit especially hard. One of them is the Office for Civil Rights. These are largely attorneys that are based all over the country. And they field complaints from families and parents who say, hey, a school discriminated against my child because of their race, sex or disability. Now, according to internal department data obtained by NPR, at least 240 employees in the Office for Civil Rights were laid off, most of them attorneys. I spoke earlier today with Catherine Lhamon. She ran the Office for Civil Rights under both the Obama and Biden administrations, and she called these cuts devastating.
CATHERINE LHAMON: Cutting the office by more than half is an absolute walk away from our longstanding bipartisan commitments to civil rights and our belief that every one of our kids is a valuable learner.
TURNER: It’s also worth pointing out, Mary Louise, the Trump administration has said it wants to crack down on campus antisemitism. But to do that now at these staffing levels, it will almost certainly require deprioritizing some other discrimination claims.
KELLY: Another thing to ask you about, Cory – the federal dollars that schools get from the Education Department, which specifically help kids in low-income communities, also kids with disabilities.
TURNER: Yeah, so that money, provided by law, will still flow to schools. But several sources told me the administration has fired most of the experts who help states and school districts understand how they can and cannot spend that money. So these are also the attorneys who say, hey, you’re breaking the law. Don’t do that or you could lose your federal funding. You know, these layoffs essentially allow states to keep receiving federal funds while limiting the U.S. government’s ability to offer guidance or guardrails to guarantee that this money is being used to help the kids it was meant to help.
KELLY: But what are the people making these cuts, either at the Ed Department or at the White House, what are they saying in their defense?
TURNER: So President Trump himself was asked about them earlier today. He said a few things. One, he repeated something he has said many times now, that he wants to return education to the states. This is a big Republican talking point. He called it a dream of his. He also said this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: When we cut, we want to cut, but we want to cut the people that aren’t working or not doing a good job. We’re keeping the best people.
TURNER: The problem with that, Mary Louise, is I am right now looking at a spreadsheet of nearly a thousand Education Department employees who were fired and the jobs they did. And these layoffs were the opposite of a thoughtful, case-by-case, person-by-person thinning based on past performance. They cut people in large groups with nothing in common but the kind of work that they were doing – again, civil rights enforcement, education research. I spoke with one person in the student loans office. They told me, through these cuts and buyouts, the office of Federal Student Aid has lost many of its best and most productive people.
KELLY: A basic question, Cory, are these cuts legal?
TURNER: We don’t know, Mary Louise. That is the question. I’ve spoken with several government and legal experts who say they certainly push at the edges of what’s legal because the law is pretty clear that only Congress has the power to eliminate programs it created. But then, is cutting department staff in half tantamount to eliminating programs? I think lawsuits are inevitable. The courts could step in. But what comes of all this? I have no idea.
KELLY: NPR’s Cory Turner. Thanks, Cory.
TURNER: You’re welcome.
The U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, Institute of Education Sciences and Office of Federal Student Aid were especially impacted by the cuts announced on Tuesday. MindShift
