Furthering its effort to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, the Trump administration announced plans to transfer oversight of many of the department’s grant programs to other agencies.
The plan, announced on November 18, moves control of the $18 billion budget for the Title I program that aids low-income schools to the Department of Labor. Experts like USC Professor of Clinical Education John Pascarella see the move as a way to emphasize workforce development over higher education.
“This move to labor threatens to undermine the very purpose of Title I, which is to provide resources and protections to schools serving children in poverty,” Pascarella said. “The argument that schools should ultimately bring education closer to the needs of the economy fails to recognize that the well-being of young children, adolescents and teens is a big responsibility of educators. School is not solely about workforce preparation.”
Pascarella added that Title I schools ultimately benefit the workforce by meeting students’ basic needs, which allows them to engage in the classroom and access learning opportunities. According to him, such reorganizing will inevitably result in changes to how Title I schools function, impacting their efforts to provide underserved communities with social and educational resources.
“[Title I is] not just a pot of money,” Pascarella said. “By moving Title I over to labor, the dissolution of the Education Department, the laying off of staff members, career staffers who have decades of expertise implementing the Title I funding, which was designed to advance equity in school, not workforce development, is going to be a significant loss to the country.”
Pascarella said the Department of Labor lacks the trained staff needed to help K-12 schools that need Title I funding to reduce chronic absenteeism, expand dual-language programs or build higher-quality early reading instruction.
The 32nd Street School/USC Magnet is one of 10 member schools at the University Park Campus affiliated with the university. The school received $738,226 in Title I funding in the 2024-25 fiscal year, with 87 percent of the student population considered in poverty.
Support for early literacy, dual-language programs and schools with fewer resources will fall to the wayside, Pascarella said.
USC Professor of Clinical Education Fred Freking works with the 32nd Street School/USC Magnet as a part of a partnership to send student teachers for mentorship to develop well-trained science teachers. Rossier School of Education and its Dean, Pedro Noguera, emphasize working in the community, Freking said.
It’s hard to predict what exactly may happen at LAUSD schools like the 32nd Street School as a result of changes to the oversight of Title I funds, though Freking said he can’t imagine it’ll be a good thing.
“Right now, there are amazing people there that are still supporting the students,” Freking said. “But, these [changes] are eventually going to have impacts. It’s going to take a while to see.”
A decrease in funding could mean a lack of support for K-12 teachers, which Freking said could cause an exodus of good teachers.
Freking added that during economic crises, more people pursue careers in education. But losing resources might mean losing the mentorship to develop great teachers.
“Education is supposed to be the great equalizer,” Freking said. “All kids should have great teachers. They shouldn’t have to worry about safety (when) going to school. They need to have full bellies so they can learn, so every kid has access to a great K-12 education. Those funds really support so many programs.”
The Rossier School is working to prepare educators and find ways to support them amid uncertainties with their Title I funds, according to Pascarella. Yet, he said schools will likely see a decrease in funding for after-school programs, free and reduced meals, mental health services, classroom aids and other programs.
Former President Lyndon Johnson launched the Title I program of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965 as part of his “War on Poverty.” The Act was passed the same year as the Voting Rights Act.
USC Professor of Research Kendrick Davis explained that Title I was “very clearly and explicitly an anti-poverty program.”
“We do know that just financially, the federal government plays a very small part in funding K-12 education, or education at the state level, but it has always played a large role in terms of civil rights and accountability,” Davis said.
Title I was meant to fill funding gaps, where property taxes fell short of funding schools, Davis said.
“The federal government was going to fill some of those funding gaps where the local education funding was not providing for quality education,” Davis said. “So when we see the fit from the Title I funds as anti-poverty funding to a workforce-based funding model, it really needs a lot more questions and answers.”
Davis added he’s skeptical that students most in need will receive the same support under the workforce model as they did under the previous model.
The announcement was not surprising to many in the education field, Davis said, as the Trump Administration has moved to dismantle the Department of Education and decentralize its functions for months.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March calling for the dismantlement of the department, which oversees funding and promotes equal education opportunities across the nation.
With the changes to oversight of the Department of Education’s grant programs, six offices within the Department of Education will be moved to four other agencies, according to a press release.
Due to these new interagency agreements, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, as well as the Office of Postsecondary Education, will fall under the Department of Labor. Departments of the Interior and Health and Human Services are also involved in the new DOE leadership.
In the press release, the Department of Education claimed that such changes would help ease federal bureaucratic processes.
“By partnering with agencies that are best positioned to deliver results for students and taxpayers, these [interagency agreements] will streamline federal education activities on the legally required programs, reduce administrative burdens, and refocus programs and activities to better serve students and grantees,” the press release stated.
The move to split funding oversight into various federal agencies may make it less efficient to access funding, Davis said. Rather than reduce bureaucracy in education, Davis anticipates the changes will complicate the process.
Under the new oversight plan, individuals seeking to access Americans with Disabilities Act funding would still go through the Department of Education. Now, schools seeking Title I funding would have to go through the Department of Labor.
“Now it’s not an exact overlap, but in certainly low-income, large urban districts, there’s sometimes a critical mass overlap between students receiving supports that rely on Title I funds and students receiving and relying on ADA funds,” Davis said. “So being able to access those within one department created efficiency.”
This announcement comes after the 43-day government shutdown that left all federal employees furloughed, including those working for the Department of Education. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon wrote in USA Today that the shutdown proved why this kind of restructuring is necessary.
“The 43-day shutdown, which came smack in the middle of the fall semester, showed every family how unnecessary the federal education bureaucracy is to their children’s education,” McMahon wrote. “The shutdown proved an argument that conservatives have been making for 45 years: The U.S. Department of Education is mostly a pass-through for funds that are best managed by the states.”
Davis responded that schools have not been functioning well.
“In terms of having the confidence that they had the critical supports they needed for the student populations, that funding was going to be suitable, that they had the proper pipelines, and school leadership retention was strong,” Davis said. “No, schools and districts were bleeding students, particularly in critical areas like math and science.”
Pascarella said instead of “carelessly dismantling and dissolving the department and scattering its programs across unrelated agencies,” efforts should be made to leverage the expertise from career staffers who are “committed to implementing this program responsibly.”
The move, Pascarella said, is destabilizing.
“This is not going to strengthen public education,” Pascarella said. “It is not going to give the states more oversight of public education. Ultimately, it’s going to weaken the very systems that were designed to ensure children and low-income families have a fair shot.”