Ten new interagency agreement bills were advanced by the House Workforce and Education Committee on July 15th, furthering efforts to transfer responsibilities from the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to other government agencies. The committee, led by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), engaged in a push-and-pull of opinions between members of Congress about the direction and purpose of the shift in this latest string of moves intended to dismantle the education department.
House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R.-Mich.)
The bills would transfer a large portion of ED’s portfolio to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the Department of Treasury, including moving federal student aid functions (as well as defaulted loan collection) to the Department of Treasury, shifting K-12 student academic supports, career and technical education to DOL, and changing reporting requirements for foreign gifts to U.S. institutions.
According to their Republican supporters, the bills were created to “modernize federal education law by streamlining administration, reducing unnecessary bureaucracy, and ensuring federal responsibilities are carried out by agencies best positioned to administer them — all while keeping the focus where it belongs: on students, families, and taxpayers.”
Through the “Less Bureaucracy, Better Workforce Development Act,” introduced by Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.), ED responsibilities would be moved from the Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education to the Department of Labor. This would affect numerous programs, including TRIO programs intended to support low-income students.
As a ranking member with over 30 years of political service, Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.) called out several issues in remarks to the committee, outlined what he called the devastating impact the shift of power would create. Particularly, the elimination of grant programs in the Offices of Elementary and Secondary Education, Federal Student Aid office, Postsecondary Education, Indian Education and Career Technical and Adult Education.
“It is difficult to articulate how impractical these proposals are, to say nothing of the pain and suffering they will inflict on students, educators, and their communities if they were to become law,” said Scott. “Whatever you say about the ‘problems’ at the Department of Education, these bills will only make things worse.”
In addition, Scott addressed Cabinet Republicans for the lack of pushback that, he says, “would result in the permanent transfer of the Department of Education’s core responsibilities to other federal agencies.”
“[T]he efforts to dismantle the Department of Education are proof that the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans would rather prioritize fulfilling a campaign promise, even in the face of mounting evidence that doing so would be disastrous for students, educators, and their communities,” Scott emphasized.
Congresswoman Summer L. Lee (D-PA) expressed how the results of moving these bills forward would be disastrous for the ED and the national educational system.
“The Department of Education was established to protect students’ rights, remove barriers to learning, and ensure that every young person, no matter their zip code or background, has an opportunity to succeed,” she wrote. “No wonder it’s being gutted. The bills we’re marking up today undercut the foundation of public education in this country. All in service of an authoritarian playbook that relies on an uneducated electorate, the erosion of public goods that don’t serve corporate interests and attacking marginalized communities.”
