Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

11. Department of Education · Minor · Needs Congress

Cut OESE programs and transfer the rest to other agencies

Attempted

325 11. Department of Education

“Reduce the number of programs managed by OESE, and transfer some remaining programs to other federal agencies.”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    The fiscal year 2027 Budget Request repeats and widens the consolidation, folding seventeen K-12 programs into a proposed Make Education Great Again (MEGA) block grant. Still a request; the programs remain separately authorized in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

  2. Attempted

    Two of the six interagency agreements announced this day move the administration of OESE programs out of the Department: the ED-DOL Elementary and Secondary Education Partnership hands Labor the day-to-day administration of Title I Parts A-D, Title II-A, Title III-A, Title IV-A and IV-B, Title V rural programs, Impact Aid, homeless education, the Charter Schools Program, the D.C. SOAR scholarships and seven other competitions, and the ED-DOI partnership hands Interior the OESE Indian and Native education programs. Both are Economy Act service contracts: the fact sheets say ED "will maintain all statutory responsibilities", so the programs are still OESE's in law.

  3. Attempted

    The President's fiscal year 2026 Budget Request asked Congress to consolidate eighteen currently funded formula and competitive OESE grant programs into a single $2 billion K-12 Simplified Funding Program and to stop funding several others outright - a formal administration request to reduce the number of programs OESE manages. Congress did not enact it.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • The reduction half of this ask needs appropriations or an ESEA amendment. Neither the K-12 Simplified Funding Program (FY 2026) nor the MEGA block grant (FY 2027) has been enacted, and no ESEA reauthorization is moving. The half of this ask that needs an act of Congress rests on one negative search, run once for the program transfers and eliminations on pp. 325–327.
  • Kept separate from #813 (block-grant or eliminate the remaining OESE programs) and from #803 (abolish the Department): the interagency agreements are evidence for each ask only so far as they touch that ask’s named object.
Action
eliminate
Object
Office of Elementary and Secondary Education programs
ID
806