Education Secretary Linda McMahon is asking Congress to let her close the Department of Education and fire herself, calling the agency a needless middleman for school funding.
McMahon told Fox News Digital she has locked in interagency agreements that hand major day-to-day duties to the Labor and Treasury departments. She calls the transfers a live test that federal support for schools and students can continue without a standalone Cabinet education agency.
The push follows President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign promise to eliminate the department and his March 20, 2025, executive order directing the administration to start dismantling it. McMahon says she wants lawmakers to watch the results and then vote to shut the agency for good, and end her own job with it.
McMahon described the first large block of work moving to the Department of Labor. Career and technical education came first. K-12 and higher education functions followed in the sequence she outlined.
Under the deals, Labor is taking a major role in the daily administration of adult education, family literacy, and career and technical education programs that run under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the Perkins Act. The Education Department keeps its statutory responsibilities and oversight while shifting services toward states and grant recipients.
Treasury agreed to take over key operations tied to federal student loans and collections on defaulted debt. McMahon framed the contracts in plain terms.
"Signing these interagency agreements means, in fact, that the Department of Education is contracting with these agencies to perform the functions that they've been given,"
she said. She added that the first big block of work went to Labor and that the order ran from career and technical education into K-12 and then higher education.
Andrew Gillen, a higher education policy research fellow at the Cato Institute, told Fox News Digital the shift of core duties such as student loans and formula grants marks a substantial change. Past interagency agreements, he said, usually covered only minor administrative support.
McMahon is not waiting for a final shutdown vote to make her case. She is treating the agreements as a demonstration project aimed straight at Capitol Hill.
"I've asked Congress with this proof of concept in these interagency agreements: 'Let me prove to you that it works,'"
she said. She repeated the same theme when she described the goal for schools and students.
"I call it my proof of concept to show Congress that it works, that the money still gets to schools and to students where they need it,"
McMahon said. She argued some Education Department programs were already duplicated elsewhere or handled better in other agencies.
"So, let's be efficient. Let's make sure the money gets where it needs to go, let's measure that by student outcomes and let's hold teachers and administrators accountable for what they're doing."
She reminded lawmakers who controls the dollars. Congress appropriates the funds. The money has long passed through the Education Department on its way to states and local authorities, and some of it already moved through other agencies to reach students and schools.
Her endgame is explicit. Closing the department requires a congressional vote. If that vote comes, she is prepared to lose the post.
"Ultimately, Congress has to vote if we do close the Department of Education, and if I, in fact, am able to fire myself. Hopefully, they will vote [for it], because I believe the outcome will be better for students, and that is the goal. That is certainly the president's goal."
The downsizing is visible in Washington real estate. The Education Department moved out of the Lyndon B. Johnson building that had housed it for decades. Officials said the Department of Energy is set to move in by August.
Administration officials cast the building handoff as a practical step that can save hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and shrink the federal education bureaucracy’s footprint. The message is straightforward: if the work can run from other agencies, the standalone headquarters and the Cabinet slot attached to it become harder to defend.
While the interagency transfers proceed in Washington, the department has also opened a path for states to claim more control over federal education money. In July 2025 it sent states a letter urging them to apply for waivers. Those waivers would give state education officials wider discretion over federal dollars and cut compliance costs.
Iowa became the first state to join the effort. The design matches the larger argument McMahon is making: federal dollars can reach classrooms without a thick layer of Washington process sitting on top of every decision.
McMahon has also argued, including during the government shutdown debate, that the department largely acts as a pass-through and that many day-to-day functions are nonessential. The interagency agreements, the building exit, and the state waiver track all point in the same direction, move the work, keep the funding flowing, and show lawmakers the Cabinet department is optional.
Taxpayers have watched federal education spending climb for years while too many students still leave school unprepared. If McMahon can show the money still reaches classrooms without the bureaucracy, Congress should take the deal and let her fire herself.
