“The Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “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.” The Department of Labor will manage two higher education grant programs, revolving around institution-based grant programs. It will also “co-manage” the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which handles around $28 billion in grant funding, and take on “a growing role in managing” the Office of Post Education, marking a $3. 1 billion transfer. The Department of Health and Human Services signed two IEAs, with the first allowing the department to take on the Child Care Access Means Parents in School grant program. The second involves foreign medical accreditation. The Department of the Interior signed an IEA to take a growing role in administering Indian education programs. And by invoking authorities found in the Economy Act at 31 U. S. C. § 1535, the Education Department also signed an IEA with the State Department to take on the work of international education and foreign language studies programs. Staffers working on programs set to be transferred or co-managed by other federal departments will be detailed over to their receiving agency, a senior official at the Education Department said during a press call. “The way that these IAS are structured, staff here at the department who have expertise in elementary and secondary education programs and literacy programs, whatever it might be that’s part of this IEA, those staff will be at the Department of Labor to manage these, these programs, to manage the day-to-day operations,” the official said. “State leaders, etc., can really be confident that these programs continue to have the expertise and concierge-level service that states have come to expect.” McMahon has framed efforts to dismantle the Education Department as necessary to revitalize academia by handing control over education to local and state leaders. On Tuesday, a senior department official said, “We are confident that in streamlining that bureaucracy at the end of the day, it means more dollars to the classroom, to the grantees, that does not get siphoned off through bureaucracy. And so we think that this really does give states more power to really determine how those dollars are spent and to best, best manage them.” “We’re really confident that this will end up being something that provides better services, more streamlined services, reduces bureaucracy, and in shifting some of these responsibilities to co management with other agencies, we are necessarily narrowing the size and scope of this federal agency in line with the president’s executive order,” the official continued, referring to President Donald Trump’s directive in March seeking to dismantle the Education Department. TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ENDING UNIVERSITY GRANTS THAT PROMOTE ‘RACIAL OR ETHNIC QUOTAS’ In recent weeks, McMahon has argued that the government shutdown proved her department is “unnecessary.”.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/education/3890976/education-department-announces-significant-downsizing-six-interagency-agreements/
