A political earthquake is shaking Washington, and this time it has nothing to do with elections or personalities. The U.S. Department of Education is not quietly being reorganized — it is being fundamentally dismantled.
In a series of moves that represent the most significant structural shift in federal education policy in decades, the Department has begun transferring major functions to other agencies under interagency agreements. These are not symbolic gestures. They are real shifts of authority — student aid, workforce programs, research oversight, disability services, and more — migrating to agencies like Treasury, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Interior.
Statutorily, ED retains ultimate authority unless Congress acts. But operationally? The ground under the nation’s education system is already moving.
This is not routine housekeeping. It is the first substantive acknowledgment in decades that a centralized federal education bureaucracy has not delivered the results America’s students deserve.
And the timing could not be more important.
A major new New York Magazine feature by Andrew Rice, “The Big Fail,” lays out in stark detail just how deep the nation’s achievement crisis runs. His reporting adds force to a reality that innovators, parents, and reformers have been warning about for years: the drop in student achievement began long before COVID, and the federal system did nothing to stop it.
The Data Is Devastating — and It Predates the Pandemic
Rice documents what national assessments have been signaling for more than a decade. Achievement began slipping in the mid-2010s, well before the pandemic, with the steepest declines hitting the lowest-performing students — the very children federal policy was designed to protect. The bottom tenth of students has lost the equivalent of two grade levels, while achievement gaps that had narrowed slowly and steadily for years are now widening again.
Perhaps most troubling, parents are often unaware how severe the decline is. School systems routinely delay releasing test results, inflate grades, lower cut scores, and hide critical academic data behind hard-to-navigate portals. Many families believe their children are on track when the evidence shows otherwise.
The crisis didn’t sneak up on us. It unfolded in plain sight while federal policy grew more complex, more prescriptive, and increasingly detached from classroom realities.
Washington Grew. Achievement Didn’t.
During the same period when student performance was deteriorating, the federal footprint expanded dramatically. Guidance documents, “Dear Colleague” letters, regulations, and compliance requirements multiplied. States responded by lowering standards, weakening graduation requirements, and backing away from the accountability systems that had driven gains in the early 2000s.
Meanwhile, school districts spent more, hired more staff, and still produced worse results. As Rice details, even high-spending communities like Newton, MA, Evanston, IL, Montclair, NJ, and others face stagnant performance, declining enrollment, fiscal mismanagement, and opaque budgeting. More money and more bureaucracy simply did not translate to better learning.
This is precisely the system the Department of Education has presided over — and why the current restructuring matters so profoundly.
Why These Transfers Matter
Shifting core programs to agencies with entirely different missions changes the federal ecosystem in fundamental ways. Treasury, Labor, and HHS were not built to micromanage classrooms. They do not have the culture, staffing, or incentive to issue reams of prescriptive guidance or to dictate how schools operate.
When education programs enter agencies like these, the compliance machinery that has characterized ED begins to loosen. Process naturally gives way to measurable outcomes, and states, educators, and families gain more freedom to act. It does not guarantee improvement, but it reduces the federal drag that has made innovation harder for decades.
The transition will be messy. Long-entrenched interests will resist. But the alternative — continuing with a federal bureaucracy that has presided over the steepest decline in modern educational history — is untenable.
Where Progress Has Happened, Innovation and Accountability Led the Way
Importantly, the states that bucked the national trend offer a clear roadmap. Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee saw meaningful gains because they embraced evidence-based reading instruction, maintained transparent accountability systems, set high expectations, and supported teachers with strong curriculum and training. Their success was not the product of federal intervention — it was the result of Washington stepping back and allowing states to lead.
The same is true of the fastest-growing and most effective models in education today: microschools, ESA-powered parent-directed programs, hybrid and community-based models, career-aligned pathways, innovative charter networks, and agile private and nonprofit providers. Innovation thrives when authority sits with families, entrepreneurs, and educators — not within a 4,000-person federal agency.
The Real Opportunity in ED’s Restructuring
The real significance of the Department’s dismantling is this: it allows authority, flexibility, and accountability to shift back to the people who are closest to students and most responsible for their success.
The restructuring will not solve the achievement crisis on its own. But it creates essential space. And space is exactly what innovators, parents, and forward-leaning states need.
If we use this moment to empower parents with transparent data and choices, direct funding to students rather than bureaucracies, reward models that produce measurable learning, and support experimentation instead of compliance, we can begin to reverse the long decline Rice so vividly documents.
America’s education crisis is not inevitable. It is the result of decades of choices that prioritized bureaucracy over students.
If leaders in states, communities, and Congress seize this moment, the disruptive force shaking Washington could become the very earthquake that finally cracks open a system long insulated from change — and clears the way for an education future defined not by bureaucracy, but by innovation, opportunity, and parent power.