Education Department plans to cut half of workforce in DOGE push

Akayla Gardner, Bloomberg News on Mar 11, 2025

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WASHINGTON — The Education Department is pushing to terminate half of its more than 4,000 employees, the Trump administration’s first major step in dismantling an agency it has targeted to shutter completely.

Affected employees will be notified Tuesday, according to a senior administration official who outlined the plans to reporters on the condition of anonymity.

The announcement follows a directive to employees to vacate office buildings in the Washington area by 6 p.m. local time, and not to return to facilities on Wednesday, citing “security reasons,” according to a copy of the email seen by Bloomberg News. Recipients were asked to bring their laptops home, and perform duties remotely, if permitted.

Workers will have 90 days from today until they are actually terminated. They will receive full pay during that time, as well as severance: one week salary for every year of service up to 10 years, and two weeks salary for each year of service beyond their first decade.

Those workers will be expected to wrap up their work via telework by March 21, and then go on paid administrative leave for the remainder of their time as government employees.

President Donald Trump has singled out the agency for elimination amid Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency push to reduce the federal workforce and lower spending. Trump previously said that he wanted the department closed “immediately,” but has acknowledged that congressional approval is needed to completely abolish it.

Similar actions in partnership with DOGE have taken place at other government agencies since Trump took office, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Both bureaus were also established by Congress, but DOGE gutted most of the operations without legislative action. Part of the dismantling involved removing signs with those agencies’ names outside those facilities.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon told staff earlier this month the agency would be embarking on its “final mission,” which would “profoundly impact staff, budgets, and agency operations.” McMahon has vowed to fulfill Trump’s aim of placing education oversight with state and local officials, although those governments already dictate curriculum and day-to-day functions of their school systems.

“He’s taking the bureaucracy out of education, so that more money flows to the states,” McMahon said of Trump during an interview on Fox News Tuesday night.

“We wanted to make sure that we kept all of the right people and the good people, to make sure that the outward-facing programs, the grants, the appropriations that come from Congress, all of that are being met,” she added.

All agencies are slated to submit reports to the Office of Personnel Management on their plans for “large-scale” workforce reductions by Thursday, the first phase of a two-part proposal to drastically reduce the federal government’s footprint. Agencies are also required to draw up plans to overhaul their organization charts and move jobs out of the Washington, D.C.-area by April.

The Education Department currently has about 4,133 total staff, and around 600 people are planning to depart through deferred resignation or voluntary separation programs offered earlier this year. Another 63 probationary employees were terminated in February, meaning approximately 1,315 additional workers are expected to lose their jobs as part of the effort.

As part of the reduction, the agency is also cutting leases with buildings in cities across the country, including San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas and Cleveland, the official said. The department intends to consolidate its Washington, D.C., operations into one facility, instead of three.

Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who chairs a committee overseeing education issues, said he had spoken with McMahon earlier Tuesday and she assured him that the reductions would not have an impact on the department’s “ability to carry out its statutory obligations.”

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(With assistance from Derek Wallbank.)

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