Secretary of Education Linda McMahon ( Mandel Ngan / AFP/Getty Images)
One agreement includes the Department of Labor establishing an elementary and secondary education partnership to "empower parents and states, promote innovation, and deliver program improvements," according to a press release on the announcement.
The Department of Labor also will take a "growing role in managing" the Education Department's higher education grant programs and institution-based grant program, according to the press call.
Additionally, the Department of the Interior will take a "growing role" in administering the Indian Education program, according to the call. The Department of Education also signed a pair of Health and Human Services agreements related to the Department of Education's foreign medical accreditation programs and establishing a new program called Child Care Access Means Parents in School to promote on-campus child care for parents enrolled in college.
The announcement also included establishing a new program with the State Department to oversee international education and foreign language studies programs.
"These partnerships really mark a major step forward in improving management of select programs and leveraging these partner agencies' administrative expertise, their experience working with relevant stakeholders and streamline the bureaucracy that has accumulated here at Ed over the decades," a senior department official said during the call. "We are confident that this will lead to better services for grantees, for schools, for families across the country as a result of these partnerships."
The announcement follows Trump's pledge to dismantle the agency altogether, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told Fox News Digital Tuesday.
"President Trump promised the American people he would dismantle the Department of Education. Today, Secretary McMahon is delivering on that promise with bold, decisive action to return education where it belongs — at the state and local level," Huston said. "The Trump Administration is fully committed to doing what’s best for American students, which is why it’s critical to shrink this bloated federal education bureaucracy while still ensuring efficient delivery of funds and essential programs. The Democrat shutdown made one thing unmistakably clear: students and teachers don’t need Washington bureaucrats micromanaging their classrooms."
President Donald Trump holds an executive order relating to education in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP NEWSROOM)
"The Department of Education has entrenched the education bureaucracy and sought to convince America that Federal control over education is beneficial," Trump's executive order said in March. "While the Department of Education does not educate anyone, it maintains a public relations office that includes over 80 staffers at a cost of more than $10 million per year."
Democrats have railed against Trump's plan to dismantle the department, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries saying in March that Democrats will defeat the president's mission in the halls of Congress and in the courtroom.
"Shutting down the Department of Education will harm millions of children in our nation’s public schools, their families and hardworking teachers. Class sizes will soar, educators will be fired, special education programs will be cut and college will get even more expensive," Jeffries said at the time.
"Congress created the Department of Education and only an act of Congress can eliminate it," he added in the media statement. "We will stop this malignant Republican scheme in the House of Representatives and in the Courts."
The federal government just emerged from the longest shutdown in U.S. history, at 43 days, with McMahon authoring an op-ed claiming the shutdown exposed how "little the Department of Education will be missed."
The Trump administration announced Nov. 18, 2025, that the Department of Education signed a series of interagency agreements to shift power from a handful of its offices and programs to other federal agencies. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo)
TRUMP DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION ROLLS OUT LATEST STEP TO EXPAND SCHOOL CHOICE NATIONWIDE
"Our nation just experienced the longest government shutdown in its history," McMahon wrote in the USA Today piece published Sunday. "The 43-day shutdown, which came smack in the middle of the fall semester, showed every family how unnecessary the federal education bureaucracy is to their children’s education. Students kept going to class. Teachers continued to get paid. There were no disruptions in sports seasons or bus routes."
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
"The shutdown proved an argument that conservatives have been making for 45 years: The U.S. Department of Education is mostly a pass-through for funds that are best managed by the states," she continued.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/power-stripped-from-education-department-latest-trump-administration-move-dismantle