RALEIGH — The U.S. Department of Education announced partnerships to unload certain responsibilities to other agencies last week as part of President Donald Trump’s promise to return education authority to the states.
“The Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a press release. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission.
“As we partner with these agencies to improve federal programs, we will continue to gather best practices in each state through our 50-state tour, empower local leaders in K-12 education, restore excellence to higher education, and work with Congress to codify these reforms. Together, we will refocus education on students, families, and schools — ensuring federal taxpayer spending is supporting a world-class education system.”
This recent move aligns with President Donald Trump’s executive order in March directing McMahon — a New Bern native who graduated from East Carolina — to close the Department of Education and return authority to the states.
The White House, in a post on X, touted the planned dismantling of the agency.
According to the press release, the Department of Labor will take on a “greater role in administering federal K-12 programs” and “administering most postsecondary education grant programs authorized under the Higher Education Act.”
Aside from the new agreements, federal student loan programs are staying where they are at this time. Across the loan programs, there is an estimated total of $1.65 trillion in student loan debt held by 42.3 million Americans.
The Department of the Interior will take on a bigger portion of Indian Education programs for “elementary and secondary education, higher education, career and technical education, and vocational rehabilitation.”
The press release says the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will work with the Department of Education (DOE) to establish a “Foreign Medical Accreditation Partnership” to monitor medical school accreditation compared to other nations.
The DOE and HHS are also setting up a Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) Partnership to “improve on-campus child care support for parents enrolled in college,” and HHS will “manage existing competitions, provide technical assistance, and integrate ED’s CCAMPIS program.”
The U.S. State Department and the DOE will establish an “International Education and Foreign Language Studies Partnership” to improve program efficiency, data collection and other measures under the Fulbright-Hays grant, which the State Department already administers.
Each partnership agreement has a fact sheet that can be accessed through the DOE’s press release.
