The Department of Education is cutting more than 1,300 jobs.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon posted on X that the cuts are part of the department's "final mission" and represent nearly half of the department's workforce.
The cuts are part of the Trump administration's wider goal of shrinking the federal workforce. Critics have taken aim at the Department of Education, noting students are falling behind.
A recent education report card found the average U.S. student was almost half a grade level behind in both reading and math, compared to before the pandemic.
But those who study education policy, like Jon Valant, the director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, says that's not the fault of the Department of Education.
"Most obviously, it's because of Covid and keeping kids out of school for too long," Valant said. "It may also be because of cell phones, or maybe it's because of something that's wrong in curriculum, but it's very hard to point to any kind of evidence that would suggest that it's because of the U.S. Department of Education."
Valant noted that the agency performs higher-level functions, mostly outside of the classroom. Those include some funding for schools, overseeing financial aid for students, funding education research and protecting students' civil liberties.
"When it comes to deciding what's taught in schools and who teaches in the schools and what programs schools offer, all those decisions are made at the local level or the state level," Valant said. "What the Department of Education does and what the federal government does is offer some broader supports and protections."
The cuts will not impact federal student aid, FAFSA operations, civil rights investigations or any other mandatory department functions, officials said.
But education equity advocates, including Wil Del Pilar, senior vice president at think-tank EdTrust, worry the widescale cuts will have ripple effects.
"I'm not even convinced that we can perform the functions, the basic functions that need to be performed, with the staffing that are left at the department currently," Del Pilar said. "The sad thing is that many of the protections that are in place protect the students that are most vulnerable."
He said students won't feel the impact of the cuts immediately, but could in the coming months if the Department of Education doesn't make payments to schools that they on them.
"It's the students who depend on these resources that are going to be most impacted," he said.
RELATED STORY | Department of Education announces plan to eliminate roughly half of its workforce
