Eleven months ago President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order declaring,

“The Secretary of Education shall, to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”

The Department of Education still exists, and its budget has not been slashed. Tanner Nau of The Free Press reports:

“The new federal funding package Trump signed into law on Tuesday funds the agency at $79 billion for the current fiscal year, which ends September 30. That is an increase of $217 million from fiscal 2025, $12 billion more than the White House requested in May, and a win for Democrats in Congress who helped negotiate the deal.”

The Trump Administration has decreased the department’s staffing and is using interagency agreements to shift the execution of some functions to other federal departments. The full extent of the changes to the Department of Education are not yet clear and will require a lot of digging into budget documents and agency data.