The Education Department announced a drastic reduction in its workforce Tuesday, saying it’s set to cut about half of its staff.
About 1,300 career employees will receive termination notices and will be given an opportunity to return to offices to turn in government property and clean out their desks Wednesday, the Department of Education said in a news release. Another 600 people previously accepted voluntarily resignations or early retirement.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that the layoffs reflect the department’s “commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.”
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The job cuts will perforate a department that enforces an array of anti-discrimination laws and campus safety rules and distributes funding to assist needy students, and which has drawn scorn from conservatives calling for its elimination ever since it was established during the Carter administration.
Around 3,000 people work in the department’s Washington headquarters, and roughly 1,000 are in 10 regional offices — making Education one of the smallest Cabinet-level federal departments. Its $268 billion appropriations last year represented 4% of the federal budget.
McMahon said in an interview Tuesday night that the layoffs were the first step on the road toward shutting down the department.
“That was the president’s mandate — his directive to me,” McMahon told Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
President Donald Trump cannot unilaterally get rid of a federal agency without congressional approval, which McMahon acknowledged.
NBC News reported last month that the White House is preparing an executive order to eliminate the agency altogether.
In its announcement Tuesday, the Education Department did not disclose what jobs and units were being terminated but said all divisions will be affected. The department said that it will “continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview.”
Democrats lambasted the layoffs.
“Ultimately, what they want to do is clear: fire the people who help our kids and gut funding for our students, teachers, and schools,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who serves on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, in a statement. “This is about breaking government for working families—and enriching billionaires like themselves in the process.”
The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing department staff, said in a notice to its members Tuesday that it had been informed that 969 employees will be impacted by layoffs, and will lose access to their accounts “as soon as tonight.”
Sheria Smith, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, said the Trump administration has misled the public on what the department does and services the public relies on.
“So we must ask our fellow Americans: do you want your and your children’s rights enforced in school?” Smith said in a statement. “Do you want your children to have the ability to play sports in their school districts? Do you need financial aid for college? Are you a fellow civil servant that relies on student loan forgiveness? Does your school district offset property taxes with federal funding? If yes, then you rely on the Department of Education, and the services you rely on and the employees who support them are under attack.”
Department employees hit by the layoffs separately received notices from the chief human capital officer Tuesday evening informing them that they will be placed on paid administrative leave beginning March 21, according to copies reviewed by NBC News.
All employees working out of the department’s regional offices in San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas and Cleveland will be fired as part of the layoffs.
Conservatives have for decades discussed an array of ideas for how to abolish or dramatically scale down the department. The discussions included transferring key responsibilities to other federal departments, as well as moving funds and oversight to the states.
For example, some proposals by conservative activists have called for moving federal student loan programs to the Treasury Department — Republican-sponsored bills filed in January by Reps. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, and David Rouzer, of North Carolina, that seek to eliminate the agency proposed doing just that — and moving civil rights enforcement issues in public schools to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Meanwhile, other groups — including Project 2025, which had pushed for eliminating the entire Education Department — have advocated for ending certain funding in phases or for converting most of the funding the department gives to states for K-12 programs into block grants, a form of funding that comes with fewer and less onerous rules and federal oversight.
“This news is another signal that the bureaucratic state is coming to an end in America, ushering in a golden age in American education that is centered on sending education back to the states and parents,” said Tommy Schultz, CEO of American Federation for Children, an activist organization that pushes for taxpayer support of private schooling.
In interviews last month, state lawmakers from both parties said state legislatures were widely unprepared to deal with — and had made few plans to address — how states would handle such a broad new framework.
CORRECTION (March 11, 2025: 9:54 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the number of layoffs happening at the Education Department. It is 1,300, not 2,100. The latter is the number of jobs that will remain.
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