On July 15, 2025, a letter signed by a dozen federal special education leaders from Republican and Democratic presidential administrations since the 1960s was sent to Congress urging legislators to reject any efforts to move oversight of special education services out of the U.S. Department of Education (USDE). The letter also asked Congress to reject President Donald Trump’s plan to combine into a block grant certain funds under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in fiscal year 2026.

The letter, sent to leaders of the House and Senate education appropriations subcommittees, follows Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing the Education Department to continue downsizing while legal challenges play out in the lower courts. That ruling means the USDE can move forward with its reduction in force of nearly half its workforce, including those in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS).

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On July 15, 2025, it was announced that career and technical education (CTE) is among workforce development programs to be jointly administered by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the U.S. Department of Education (USDE). According to the announcement, the management of key federal workforce development programs will begin shifting from the USDE to the DOL under an interagency agreement signed in May.

As per the agreement, adult education and family literacy programs under Title II of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and career and technical education programs under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act will be managed by the DOL alongside USDE staff. The announcement was made the day after the U.S. Supreme Court stayed an injunction in McMahon v. New York, granting the USDE the ability to move forward with a sweeping reduction in force. That decision meant the workforce development interagency agreement between the USDE the DOL could move forward.

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In a July 14 statement, Peggy Carr, the former commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), said the nonpartisan education statistics agency cannot fulfill its statutory responsibilities in its current state. According to Carr, “It is impossible for three, five, or even a dozen people to fulfill the statutory responsibilities of NCES or to fully inform policymakers, educators, and the American public of the condition of education. What has occurred is a quiet, devastating shutdown and decimation of a critical national institution.”

According to Carr, states and school districts will lose their ability to compare education data as a result of the administration’s decimation of NCES. With the lack of data, the nation will also be unable to measure whether education policy changes are effective.

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On July 14, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to proceed with laying off nearly half of the staff at the U.S. Department of Education (USDE). The decision in New York v. McMahon enables the USDE’s reduction in force (RIF) initiated in March as the original question of the legality of the RIF to works its way through the lower courts. 

The order allowing RIF to continue was met with dissent from justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who called the majority’s decision “indefensible” in their 18-page dissent. 

The decision is seen as a significant victory for the Trump administration as it seeks to close the USDE to the greatest extent possible. In fact, the layoffs leave the USDE with only about 2,183 employees out of its previous approximately 4,133.

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