The Department of Education said it was carrying out part of its "final mission" when it announced Tuesday that it would put nearly half of its staff on administrative leave starting March 21. In comments to WMUK, the heads of two Southwest Michigan districts slammed that move, and a higher education researcher raised a variety of concerns.
Cuts to civil rights
The education department’s Office of Civil Rights was hit hard by the cuts.
The office handles civil rights complaints, making sure districts follow federal discrimination laws.
Michelle Miller-Adams is with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, a Kalamazoo-based nonprofit.
She said many cases involve students with disabilities, but the system that handles cases has essentially been dismantled.
“Those timelines are now going to extend basically indefinitely. People from those offices are saying that there's kind of no point in filing any civil rights complaints anymore because there's no staff to hear it.”
Without enforcement, Miller-Adams said civil rights infractions could go unaddressed.
"You can have laws, but if there's no recourse to ensure that they're followed, then they're not very meaningful."
But the Office of Civil Rights wasn't the only group gutted by the DOE.
Cuts to research
Miller-Adams said the cuts have also effectively shut down many research centers within the department.
The National Center for Education Statistics is one of those groups.
Along with collecting and analyzing data to inform policy makers, the NCES releases an annual report on the academic performance of U.S. schools, known as the "Nation's Report Card."
But due to the DOE cuts, the NCES lost nearly all of its staff.
Miller-Adams said groups like the NCES provide essential data on the effectiveness of curriculums.
“The curriculum that's being used to teach your children in the schools is hopefully not something that some random person said, "Hey, this looks good." It's going to be a curriculum that has been studied and evaluated and tested, and it's been chosen because it is effective at teaching what the schools need to teach.”
Some of this research is handled by outside firms, but they also haven't escaped the DOE's cost-cutting measures.
"There have been also expensive layoffs in firms like Mathematica, WestEd. These are education research organizations, a bunch of which funded their work through federal grants. So those grants were also stopped a little bit before the layoffs occurred."
Miller-Adams added many districts are still trying to recover academically from the pandemic, making this data even more crucial.
"Simply having access to data sources about how your school district is doing, what reading scores look like, what math scores look like, which groups are seeing gains, which groups are not," Miller-Adams explained.
"That's another way school districts, leadership, superintendents, state superintendents, state department of state departments of education, all use those data to make decisions about what's happening in their systems."
But Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said this is just the first step toward a much larger goal: shutting down the department.
This has been a point of concern among some Southwest Michigan educators.
"A direct threat to the future of millions of students"
Kimberly Carter is the Superintendent for the Battle Creek Public Schools.
"The potential closure of the Department of Education is not just a policy decision—it is a direct threat to the future of millions of students across the country. It would shift an immense financial and logistical burden onto states and local districts, many of which are already underfunded and overextended," Carter said in the statement.
"It would leave historically underserved students even more vulnerable, stripping away the safeguards that ensure they receive the education they deserve."
In a statement, Benton Harbor Area Schools Superintendent Kelvin Butts also decried the idea, calling it "reckless."
"The dismantling of the Department of Education is a deeply alarming development. The proposed plan to redirect funds through various federal departments will severely compromise the effective allocation of resources to states and school districts, particularly those, like Benton Harbor, that depend on Title I funding."
Both superintendents called on officials to act immediately.
"We must stand together to protect our students, our educators, and our communities from the long-term harm such actions would inflict. Our children’s futures depend on it," Superintendent Carter said.
South Haven Public Schools Superintendent Ana Alemán-Putman said in a statement that the district would monitor recent changes to determine its impact.
Berrien Springs Public Schools and Fennville Public Schools declined to comment for this story.
Kalamazoo Public Schools, Niles Community Schools, and Allegan Public Schools did not respond to a request for comment.
Michael Symonds reports for WMUK through the Report for America national service program.
