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

11. Department of Education · Notable · Needs Congress

Transfer Career, Technical, and Adult Education programs to Labor

Attempted

326 11. Department of Education

“Transfer the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education's few programs to the Department of Labor, but”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    The Supreme Court stayed the injunction on 2025-07-14 and ED and Labor announced implementation the next day. By January 2026 OCTAE had processed about 1,627 payment requests totalling $575 million through Labor's GrantSolutions and Payment Management System and onboarded all 51 state and territory grantees. Administration moved; the Perkins V and WIOA Title II statutes did not, so under playbook 3b this is an executive workaround rather than a transfer.

  2. Blocked

    A preliminary injunction issued by the District of Massachusetts in McMahon v. New York the day after the agreement was signed forced ED to pause implementation of the interagency agreement. The district court's own order is not readable on an allowlisted source; the Supreme Court's stay order is what recites it.

  3. Attempted

    ED signed an interagency agreement with the Department of Labor under the Economy Act giving Labor a greater role in administering the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education's two program families: adult education and family literacy under Title II of WIOA, and career and technical education under Perkins V. ED keeps leadership, oversight and every statutory authority.

Research log

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

Research notes

  • The Mandate’s sentence is truncated at “but”; the exception it introduces - moving the Tribally Controlled Postsecondary CTE program to the Bureau of Indian Education instead - is tracked as #815.
  • The fiscal year 2026 Budget Request eliminates Adult Education Basic and Literacy Education State Grants outright rather than transferring them; Congress did not enact that.
  • 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.
Action
transfer
Object
Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education programs
ID
814