Category: Science

Source: United States Senator for Washington State Patty Murray

Top appropriators press McMahon on how the Department will carry out requirements of federal law and its critical responsibilities despite far-reaching, illegal firings of approximately 50% of staff

Washington, D.C. — Today, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee and the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee, and Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee, sent a letter to the Department of Education (ED) demanding detailed answers about the mass firings it has conducted and how it is carrying out requirements of federal law and its critical responsibilities despite the sweeping reductions in force.

“We write to request your immediate response to questions we have raised about actions taken by the Department of Education and additional questions related to the massive reduction in force announced on March 11,” write the lawmakers. Citing the wide scope of responsibilities the Department is required by bipartisan laws to undertake to help students learn and thrive, the top appropriators in the Senate and House add: “Recent actions of the Department appear to undermine the Department’s obligation under these laws.”

“The staff at the Department provide real services that impact the daily lives of students and their families from enforcing students’ civil rights and providing transparent information on how our schools are doing to processing critical aid such as Pell Grants to helping low-income students all over our nation attend college and further their careers,” Murray, DeLauro, and Baldwin write. “Firing the people that ensure states, school districts, and institutions of higher education live up to their legal obligations is neither efficient nor accountable.”

In the letter, the lawmakers note that the Department’s staffing levels have largely remained flat in recent years despite significant growth in the programs it administers and the responsibilities it carries out. They write that the mass layoffs and other detrimental actions risk major reductions in support for and oversight of our nation’s K-12 schools and institutions of higher education and threaten vital support for students with disabilities, access to Pell Grants and other financial aid, oversight of student loan servicers, scrutiny of for-profit colleges, and more.

The letter follows an earlier March 6 letter the lawmakers sent alongside colleagues demanding answers about the chaotic, harmful actions taken by ED since January—which the Department has yet to respond to.

“Given the profound change to staff, budgets, and agency operations promised by this administration, it is critical that we receive additional information on these staffing reductions and changes to agency operations,” conclude Murray, DeLauro, and Baldwin before posing a series of detailed questions. “The President’s disregard for appropriations and other laws and the need for stability and productivity in government creates an imperative for the Department to provide accurate, timely responses on its use and planned use of taxpayer resources provided by the laws passed by Congress.”

Full text of the letter is available HERE and below:

Dear Secretary McMahon and Acting Director Soldner:

We write to request your immediate response to questions we have raised about actions taken by the Department of Education (“the Department”) and additional questions related to the massive reduction in force announced on March 11, 2025.  We believe the Department plays a critical role in fulfilling the purpose of our Constitution to “promote the general welfare of the United States” and strongly support the purposes Congress established for the Department to ensure equal access to educational opportunity, including by administering education programs and carrying out important functions established in law and funded each year by Congress.  However, recent actions of the Department appear to undermine the Department’s obligation under these laws, despite your statement on March 11th that “Today’s reduction in force reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to ensuring efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: students, parents and teachers.”^[1]

According to the Department’s most recent Congressional justifications and prior to this administration’s personnel actions, staffing levels at the Department were largely unchanged from 2016 despite the fact that the discretionary budget for the Department’s programs increased by 16.5 percent and the federal student loan portfolio grew by more than 30 percent between 2016 and 2024.^[2] Further, the Department has the smallest staff of the 15 cabinet agencies despite representing the government’s third largest discretionary budget after the Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services.^[3] The Department also said that it had been tasked with “addressing some of the greatest challenges facing public education today: academic acceleration, students’ well-being and mental health, chronic absenteeism, school safety, and emerging and changing pathways from high school to college and career,” and, “modernizing and improving the entire student aid process to better help students and families, as well as implementing major legislation, including the FAFSA Simplification Act and FUTURE Act.”^[4] The staff at the Department provide real services that impact the daily lives of students and their families from enforcing students’ civil rights and providing transparent information on how our schools are doing to processing critical aid such as Pell Grants to helping low-income students all over our nation attend college and further their careers. Firing the people that ensure states, school districts, and institutions of higher education live up to their legal obligations is neither efficient nor accountable.

We are very concerned that the Department’s staffing reductions will result in significant reductions in the support and oversight of critical Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) requirements for state and local educational agencies (SEAs/LEAs) to provide school report cards on the achievement of students, qualifications of teachers, and per-pupil spending in understandable and uniform formats. This is critical information parents, families, and communities need to have about their public schools and public school options that might be available.  The ESEA also requires states to use a portion of Title I-A for grants to implement school support and improvement activities in the lowest performing schools and in schools with historically underserved student subgroups performing significantly lower than other subgroups of students, including through evidence-based interventions.  However, the Department’s recent elimination of federally supported assistance used by SEAs and LEAs to effectively implement these requirements and limited state capacity will likely prevent effective implementation in many states and schools .^[5][6][7][8] When combined with these massive staffing reductions, we are concerned that the Department’s ability to monitor or support implementation of the law will be nearly non-existent, leaving students and families with the long-term consequences for the Department’s short-sighted actions. 

We are concerned that students with disabilities will also be harmed by the Department’s actions.  The Department is required under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to monitor and support effective implementation of IDEA requirements.  This includes the evaluation of results and outcomes for infants, toddlers, children and youth with disabilities through the State Performance Plan and Annual Performance Report processes intended to improve results and outcomes for more than seven million children with disabilities.^[9] It is not clear to us how effective oversight will be conducted at the significantly lower staffing levels created by the Department’s recent actions.

The Department is also required by law to operate federal student aid programs and conduct oversight and enforcement of colleges and universities to ensure access to postsecondary education for our nation’s students and to help make college more affordable for American families.^[10] Some of these responsibilities include ensuring students can apply for Pell grants and other financial aid to go to college, ensuring colleges and universities have the information and resources they need to disburse such aid to students, ensuring colleges and universities protect students’ civil rights, certifying universities compliance with administrative and fiscal rules to ensure low-quality colleges and universities cannot participate in Title IV aid programs, overseeing and approving accreditors, and protecting students and taxpayers from fraudulent universities that leave students with worthless degrees and debt. The vast reduction in force across the office of Federal Student Aid (FSA), the Office of General Counsel (OGC), and other offices puts all of this work in jeopardy.

However, your stated commitment to ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most rings hollow to us.  Our actions should absolutely start with supporting students, just as we have directed through our federal education laws. The guiding purpose is to direct federal resources so all students have access to a high-quality education and schools close achievement gaps.  For example, our laws include maintenance of effort requirements that generally prohibit SEAs and LEAs from reducing their support for education after receiving federal funds and only use federal funds to supplement, not supplant other funds.^[11] It’s the Department’s statutorily required job to enforce these responsibilities.^[12][13]  Moreover, ESEA requires school districts receiving Title I-A funds to reserve a sufficient amount of these funds to identify and meet the needs of students experiencing homelessness. The Department has taken important steps in recent years to increase oversight of this provision and planned additional monitoring and technical assistance in fiscal year (FY) 2025.^[14]  Without the effective oversight and support of Department staff, we are concerned that students may not benefit from the additional federal resources Congress requires to be made available to identify and meet their needs.

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) enforces the nation’s civil rights laws in federally-funded education programs.  Disability discrimination is typically the most frequent complaint received by OCR.^[15] While OCR received the highest number of complaints in its history last year—and nearly three times the level in 2009—its staffing declined from 629 to 588 during this period.^[16]  Reporting also indicates that a change in priorities at OCR since January 20, 2025, has stalled work on investigations of disability complaints, preventing timely consideration of such complaints and appropriate remedies.^[17]  We are greatly concerned that the Department’s personnel actions will only add to delays in remedies that would provide students with disabilities the access to free appropriate education in the least restrict environment as required by federal law.

Given the profound change to staff, budgets, and agency operations promised by this administration, it is critical that we receive additional information on these staffing reductions and changes to agency operations.^[18] The President’s disregard for appropriations and other laws and the need for stability and productivity in government creates an imperative for the Department to provide accurate, timely responses on its use and planned use of taxpayer resources provided by the laws passed by Congress. Finally, we expect all of the questions below are ones the Department itself would have already considered before making significant staffing reductions. We request you provide written answers to the following questions as soon as possible, but not later than, March 21, 2025:

1. For each program office^[19] and in total by appropriation, please provide the number of staff terminated as a result of the March 11, 2025 reduction in force.
   1. What are total expected savings in salaries and benefits in FY2025? 
   2. What share of the Department’s FY2024 budget do these savings represent?
   3. How many remaining staff at the Department were assigned additional duties as a result of staffing reductions since January 20, 2025?
   4. What is the average number of new duties assigned to remaining staff?
   5. Please provide a complete list of office teams terminated as a result of the March 11, 2025 staffing reductions and other staffing reductions and the specific responsibilities of those terminated teams transferred to other office teams.

2. Please explain how the reduction in force announced on March 11, 2025 reflects a commitment to each of the following as claimed in Secretary McMahon’s statement accompanying the announcement:
   1. How will these staff reductions ensure “that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers”?  Please provide three examples and the analysis supporting the expected changes.      
   2. How do these reductions reflect the Department’s “commitment to… accountability”?  Please provide three examples and the analysis supporting the expected changes.
   3. How do these reductions reflect the Department’s “commitment to efficiency”?  Please provide three examples and the analysis supporting the expected changes.  Further, please explain how the Department’s decisions to cancel evaluation contracts that help us understand what is working and terminate Department grants and contracts that support the development and implementation of evidence-based solutions to challenges identified by state and local education leaders promotes efficiency. 

3. For the Office for Civil Rights, please provide the number of investigative staff on board after all of the Department’s personnel actions taken since January 20, 2025, including the March 11, 2025 reduction.
   1. Please provide the number of such staff in total and for each region for the immediately preceding pay period to the date including January 20, 2025.
   2. Please provide the average caseload for such staff for the immediately preceding pay period to the date including January 20, 2025 and after all of the Department’s personnel actions taken since January 20, 2025, including the March 11, 2025 reductions.
   3. Please provide the number of complaints pending investigation as of March 11, 2025.
   4. Please provide the number of resolution agreements requiring monitoring for implementation of corrective actions as of March 11, 2025 and September 30, 2024.  What is the average caseload for such work as of September 30, 2024 and after implementation of staffing reductions?    
   5. Please describe any changes planned to OCR’s current Case Processing Manual and explain how each change would improve civil right protections for students attending federally-funded educational institutions.
   6. Please describe any organizational changes planned and explain how each change would improve civil right protections for students attending federally-funded educational institutions. 

4. In FY2024, the Department was directed to increase its monitoring efforts in order to ensure compliance with the ESEA. However, it appears, as of today, the Department has only completed three consolidated monitoring reports conducted in FY2024 and none in FY2025.^[20]
   1. How many ESEA consolidated monitoring visits did the Department complete in FY2024?  When can we expect to see those consolidated monitoring reports made public in order to understand compliance with the law?
   2. How many ESEA consolidated monitoring visits is the Department conducting in FY2025?  When can we expect to see those consolidated monitoring reports made public in order to understand compliance with the law?
   3. How many ESEA consolidated monitoring visits is the Department planning to conduct in FY2026?  When can we expect to see those consolidated monitoring reports made public in order to understand compliance with the law?
   4. How many ESEA targeted monitoring visits is the Department conducting in FY2025?  On what specific requirements of ESEA is the Department conducting this monitoring, and in how many states?  If no such monitoring is planned, please explain why the Department is not conducting targeting monitoring necessary to understand compliance with the law?
   5. How many ESEA targeted monitoring visits is the Department planning to conduct in FY2026? On what specific requirements of ESEA is the Department planning to conduct this monitoring, and in how many states?  If no such monitoring is planned, please explain why the Department is not conducting targeting monitoring necessary to understand compliance with the law?
   6. Please update the monitoring findings in the August 29, 2024 Report to Congress on school improvement^[21] to include the status of implementation of each of the actions required and recommendations in the report. 

5. For the last five years, the Department has conducted an annual review in January of each state’s website to check whether the state has posted state and local report cards, reviewed a subset of ESEA requirements, and followed up with states on noncompliance with requirements. This information is essential to help parents and families understand the resources available at each school, the quality of the school’s educator workforce, and performance of their school.
   1. Has the Department completed this review of each state’s website this year as it has for each of the past five years?  If not, why not?  If so, which subset of requirements was the focus of its review?
   2. How many states has the Department identified the need for corrective actions and engaged states on its findings and plans to remedy noncompliance?   If none, please explain why.
   3. What is the expected timeline for redress of each instance of noncompliance?

6. The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act requires states that receive ESEA Title I funding to participate in state National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments in reading and mathematics at grades 4 and 8 every two years.  This is important information for parents, families, state and local education policymakers, and federal policymakers on performance of students. In fact, has been cited by this administration as it argues the low NAEP test results are a result of Democrats diverting attention from American students.^[22]

6. Please provide copies of all documents, electronic communications, records, and meeting notes of Department staff from January 20, 2025 through the date of this letter that relate to NAEP.
7. Please provide an assurance that none of the Department’s actions since January 20, 2025 were inconsistent with the requirements of National Assessment of Educational Progress Authorization Act.
8. Please provide an assurance that no federal funds will be used in contravention of the requirements of the National Assessment of Educational Progress Authorization Act.
9. Please provide an assurance that none of the Department’s actions since January 20, 2025 will alter the validity or reliability of NAEP assessments on the currently approved schedule, including the national assessment required under section 303 of the National Assessment of Educational Progress Authorization Act.
10. Please explain the unprecedented decision made earlier this year to cancel the scheduled long-term trend assessment outside of a period of a national emergency.

7. The Department has critical oversight, support, and technical assistance obligations under the IDEA.
   1. Please provide the number of staff on-board whose job includes responsibilities for Results Driven Accountability activities as of the pay period including January 1, 2025 and the number of such staff upon full implementation of the Department’s March 11, 2025 staffing reductions.
   2. Please identify the timeline for completion of the 2025 and 2026 determinations under IDEA.

8. The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 ushered in critical changes about the effective use of data and timely development and use of relevant evidence in federal policymaking.  We have consistently supported the Department’s work, which has been recognized for its progress and achievement in this area.^[23]
   1. Please provide the number of staff in the Grants Policy Office of the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development as of September 30, 2024 and after the staffing reductions announced on March 11, 2025.  Please describe the specific actions supported by the revised staffing level to undertake work required to advance evidence based policy making, the inclusion of priorities for evidence in discretionary grant programs, support for the use of evidence in formula grant programs, and building of staff capacity to support a culture of evidence at the Department.
   2. Please identify any changes to the staffing, policies, and work of the Evidence Leadership Group as compared to September 30, 2024.  Please share analysis, as applicable, related to the Department’s belief that these changes will better promote the development and use of evidence in the Department’s policymaking and formula and discretionary grant programs.

9. In 2020, Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act to modernize and streamline the FAFSA to make it easier for students and their families to apply for federal financial aid to attend postsecondary education. Initial implementation of the law was flawed and led to a chaotic launch of the 2024-2025 FAFSA. Due to a lot of hard work by dedicated Department staff, the roll out of the 2025-2026 FAFSA went more smoothly, yet more remains to be done to ensure the effective implementation of the FAFSA Simplification Act and the FUTURE Act. Your staff indicated that the March 11^th reduction in force would not impact the ability of students to apply for financial aid,^[24] but in reality, it took very little time to show how cuts to Department staff could hurt the functionality of the FAFSA. On March 12^th, the FAFSA form had an unscheduled outage of approximately five hours and fired staff had limited access to their computers or phones to help get FAFSA back online.^[25] The Department stated the cause of the outage was ”Planned Maintenance,” but when the entire team responsible for systems supporting the FAFSA form^[26] was subject to the reduction in force, it calls into question whether that is an accurate representation of what happened to the FAFSA on March 12. Additionally, former Department staff have noted that among those fired on March 11^th was a team that worked on FAFSA completion workshops, among other responsibilities, also calling into question whether critical work to boost FAFSA completion rates under the previous administration will continue.^[27]
   1. Please describe how the staff reductions will impact the ability of students to apply for financial aid or limit the full functionality of the FAFSA form, including FAFSA processing, school receipt of processed FAFSAs, processing of paper FAFSAs, and FAFSA correction functionality for applicants, institutions of higher education, and states.
   2. Given the substantial cuts to Department staff who manage vendors that implement critical parts of the FAFSA, please describe how remaining Department staff will adequately manage, coordinate across, and oversee these vendors so that functionality for the FAFSA and its data center is maintained.
   3. Please describe how the Department will continue developing the 2026-2027 FAFSA and ensure an October 1^st launch as required by Congress.
   4. Please describe how the Department will engage in communication efforts with students and their families to ensure they know federal financial aid is available to them and the FAFSA form is available to fill out.
   5. Please describe how you will continue to report on important FAFSA submission and completion data and maintain monthly briefings for Congress.
   6. Given the large cuts to FSA in this week’s reduction in force, please provide a staffing plan that details which staff will be reassigned to cover the work of those employees who are departing and involved in implementation of the FAFSA to ensure that student aid will continue to be disbursed without interruption.
   7. Please describe how any changes in availability of the call center, including weekend and evening hours, will be sufficient to answer questions from FAFSA applicants and students with questions about their student loans.
   8. Please describe how the Department will meet its statutory requirements to support applicants in the most common languages spoken in the United States?

10. In FY24, FSA oversaw the disbursement of more than $120 billion in federal financial aid to more than 9 million students across the country and managed $1.6 trillion in student loans held by approximately 45 million borrowers.^[28] To help implement the FAFSA and provide student loan services, the Department contracts with vendors and is responsible for ensuring the quality of the work those contractors provide.
    1. According to public reporting, many of the Department staff who oversee these contractors were terminated through the reduction in force.^[29] How does the Department plan to oversee the vendors and contractors who are providing these services to student borrowers?
    2. Please describe how the Department will work to uphold strong loan servicing standards across the agency’s vendors.
    3. Reports also indicate that Department staff have met with staff from the Treasury Department to discuss moving the student loan portfolio to the Treasury Department,^[30] a change that only Congress can make.^[31] Please describe organizational changes being contemplated as they relate to the student loan portfolio and how they comply with current statutory requirements.

11. Reports indicate that the Ombudsman Group, which helps resolve discrepancies with student loans, helps students identify the right loan repayment option for them, and helps settle disputes between student loan borrowers and their servicers, among other issues,^[32]  was deeply affected by the March 11^th reduction in force.^[33] In the last year, over 130,000 complaints^[34] were submitted to FSA and the Student Loan Ombudsman.
    1. What are the Department’s plans to ensure that student loan borrowers are still able to get the support they need when with the wide variety of issues the Ombudsman Group handled?
    2. Will the Department maintain the online portal for student borrowers to submit complaints regarding their student loans and if so, which office at the Department will be tasked with responding to those complaints?

12. The Borrower Defense to Repayment unit also appears to have been severely impacted by the March 11^th reduction in force.^[35] As you know, these Department staff review student loan relief applications from student borrowers who were misled or defrauded by the school. Borrower Defense to Repayment is a protection that has been authorized by Congress in the Higher Education Act^[36] and provides student borrowers relief from their federal student loans that were taken out under fraudulent, misleading, or illegal acts of their schools. As of 2023, approximately 770,000 student borrowers applied for Borrower Defense to Repayment.^[37]
    1. What is the Department’s plan to ensure that it will carry out the statutory requirement to adjudicate the current remaining Borrower Defense to Repayment claims?
    2. With such severe cuts to the people who worked in the Borrower Defense to Repayment unit, please describe how the Department will ensure that current and future student borrowers will be able to submit claims and have them adjudicated in a timely fashion going forward.
    3. What proportion of the remaining staff will be responsible for fulfilling the Sweet settlement, and how will the Department ensure borrowers not included in the settlement are also able to file claims and have them resolved accordingly?

13. The Higher Education Act requires the Department to carry out numerous oversight responsibilities over the thousands of institutions of higher education that seek to participate in the Title IV program, including eligibility and certification requirements, program reviews, and enforcement of program participation agreements. These requirements help ensure institutions of higher education are on sound financial footing and abide by all requirements of Title IV.
    1. Please describe how the Department will continue to carry out the work of the School Eligibility and Oversight Service Group (SEOSG), including ensuring institutions of higher education can submit initial and updated applications, recertifications, letters of credit, and documents related to program reviews.
    2. Please describe how the reductions in the SEOSG will impact the caseloads of remaining staff at the Department conducting this important oversight work and not lead to increased waste, fraud, and abuse in the Title IV program.
    3. How many program reviews does the Department estimate remaining staff will be able to conduct in FY2025, given the staffing cuts?

14. For the Office of Institutions of Higher Education Oversight & Enforcement, please provide the number of staff on board after all of the Department’s personnel actions taken since January 20, 2025, including the March 11, 2025 reduction.
    1. Please provide the number of such staff in total and for each work unit under the Office of Enforcement and the Office of Partner Participation and Oversight for the immediately preceding pay period to the date including January 20, 2025.
    2. Please describe any changes planned to investigations and oversight responsibilities under the Investigations Group, the Administrative Actions and Appeals Service Group, and the Resolutions and Referral Management Group, and explain how each change would protect students and taxpayers from misconduct by institutions.

15. The Office of Student Service is responsible for administering the TRIO, GEAR UP, and other discretionary grant programs. TRIO and GEAR UP implementation takes a significant amount of work due to the large number of grantees nationwide.
    1. Please provide the number of staff on board for the Office of Student Service after all of the Department’s personnel actions taken since January 20, 2025, including the March 11, 2025 reduction.  
    2. Please provide the number of such staff in total and for each work unit under the Office of Student Service for the immediately preceding pay period to the date including January 20, 2025.

16. The Department enforces an ESEA requirement that must be met by a State, SEA, or LEA that receives ESEA funds to prevent an SEA, LEA, school, or individual acting on behalf of one of those entities from assisting an employee, contractor, or agent who has engaged in sexual misconduct with a minor or student in violation of the law in obtaining new employment. As directed in the Department’s 2024 appropriation, the Department has taken initial steps to improve compliance with this provision of law.^[38]  More must be done.
    1. How many staff are actively working on the 2024 directive after all personnel actions taken through March 11, 2025? 
    2. Please provide a description of actions planned and the associated timeline for meeting this directive and assuring compliance with section 8546 of the ESEA. 

17. The FY2025 Major Management Challenges report issued by Education’s Office of Inspector General found the Department has “established progress” in improving monitoring and oversight of its grantees.^[39]  The report further noted “the Department developed plans to address this Management Challenge that included improving its training and technical assistance and broadening consolidated monitoring efforts. These activities have been substantially implemented.”
    1. Please provide the number of staff with responsibilities for implementing grantee monitoring and oversight as of September 30, 2024 and after all personnel actions taken through March 11, 2025.

Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter. We look forward to your prompt response.

Sincerely,