The Education Department announced a drastic reduction in its workforce Tuesday, saying it’s preparing to cut about half of its staff.
About 1,300 career employees will receive termination notices and will be given an opportunity to return to office to turn in government property and clean out desks Wednesday, two officials said.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that the layoffs reflect the department’s “commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.”
Around 3,000 people work in the Washington headquarters, and roughly 1,000 are in 10 regional offices — making Education one of the smallest Cabinet-level federal departments. Its $268 billion appropriations last year represented 4% of the federal budget.
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NBC News reported last month that the White House is preparing an executive order to eliminate the agency altogether.
It was not immediately clear whether Tuesday’s announcement was part of a broader plan to abolish the department. (Trump cannot unilaterally get rid of a federal agency without congressional approval.)
In its announcement, the Education Department did not disclose what jobs and units were being terminated.
Conservatives have for decades discussed an array of ideas for how to abolish or dramatically scale down the department. The discussions included transferring key responsibilities to other federal departments, as well as moving funds and oversight to the states.
For example, some proposals by conservative activists have called for moving federal student loan programs to the Treasury Department — Republican-sponsored bills filed in January by Reps. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, and David Rouzer, of North Carolina, that seek to eliminate the agency proposed doing just that — and moving civil rights enforcement issues in public schools to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Meanwhile, other groups — including Project 2025, which had pushed for eliminating the entire Education Department — have advocated for ending certain funding in phases or for converting most of the funding the department gives to states for K-12 programs into block grants, a form of funding that comes with fewer and less onerous rules and federal oversight.
In interviews last month, state lawmakers from both parties said state legislatures were widely unprepared to deal with — and had made few plans to address — how states would handle such a broad new framework.
