Education Dept shifts workforce duties as Trump moves to dismantle agency

“The Trump administration is committed to ensuring that all Americans are prepared for a fulfilling and meaningful career,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in the press release. “I am confident that the Department of Labor is well positioned to cooperatively administer, implement, and streamline these critical career and adult education programs.”

“To prepare our next generation of American workers, the Trump Administration is taking decisive action to streamline unnecessary bureaucracy and advance the skills needed to fill jobs of the future,” Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in the press release. “The Department of Labor has an exciting and important role to play here, and I’m honored to team up with Secretary McMahon and our state partners to better connect workers with the training they need to find in-demand, mortgage-paying jobs.”

President Donald Trump in March signed an executive order directing McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities” to the “maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”

The department quickly went to work redistributing some of its duties to other agencies, including working to transfer student loan programs to the Small Business Administration (SBA) and special needs and nutrition programs to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

ED also cut nearly half of its staff in March, though a June federal court decision reversed the action.

ED and the DOL announced a partnership in July focused on workforce development “to create an integrated federal education and workforce system.”

“The workforce development partnership marks a major step in shifting management of select ED programs to partner agencies,” ED said at the time.

The action was a response to Trump’s April executive order promising to restore “fragmented Federal workforce development programs that are too disconnected from propelling workers into secure, well-paying, and high-need American jobs.” ED and DOL were instructed to reform, improve and consolidate federal workforce development and education programs to make it easier for Americans to enter high-need skilled labor fields and make the programs more effective.

“Thanks to our workforce development partnership, states will now be able to more easily and efficiently administer their programs,” McMahon continued. “I am proud to work alongside Secretary Chavez-DeRemer as we continue to implement commonsense reforms that will better serve students, families, and states.”