AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The Trump administration can continue its efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, at least for now. That's after the Supreme Court stayed a lower court ruling which had blocked mass layoffs and had ordered many fired employees to be reinstated. The Trump administration laid off nearly 1,400 people earlier this year. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said that her final mission is to turn the Education Department's power over to the states. Well, with us now to talk about what's next is Michael Petrilli. He's the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank focused on education policy. Welcome.
MICHAEL PETRILLI: Thank you, Ailsa.
CHANG: So I just want to start out by getting your reaction to the Supreme Court ruling yesterday.
PETRILLI: Well, the ruling itself isn't too surprising in that they are going to allow this to play out in the lower courts. I do think that the plaintiffs have an argument that the cuts that have happened are pretty extreme in some cases and would dismantle at least parts of the Department of Education that Congress has authorized.
CHANG: OK, so walk me through at least what you see the next steps for the department - what those steps will look like now. Like, what specific work will stop now that these cuts can proceed?
PETRILLI: Right. So I think it's important to look and see which offices have really taken the brunt of these cuts. Many of the cuts impact the Financial Aid Office. This is the office that deals with the student loans for colleges. Now, we know that those loans were just reformed quite dramatically in the One Big Beautiful Bill, and that bill does cut back on the Department of Education's role in student lending. So it's possible that that office can get by with fewer staff.
Another big office that was really cut dramatically was the Office for Civil Rights. And I think this is the one where a lot of people have concerns that now a much smaller Office for Civil Rights is not going to be able to keep up with the complaints when students and their families feel like they've been discriminated against.
CHANG: OK, so then paint a picture on a day-to-day basis. Like, how much do you see teachers and students personally feeling the impact of these kinds of cuts in the classroom?
PETRILLI: Well, here's the good news, Ailsa, is I think most teachers, most students aren't going to notice this at all. And that's because the U.S. Department of Education was already tiny and had a very small role in our schools even before all of this. We're talking about an office that even before this was only 4,000 people. It just is the case that the federal government doesn't have that much to do with the day-to-day schooling. Most neighborhood schools are run by local school boards and local school districts, and what the federal government does really is just send them money.
CHANG: You know, back in March, you wrote in a blog post, quote, "if you want to go after the real waste, fraud and abuse in America's education system, you need to do it at the local level, not in Washington. After all, that's where the money is." So let me ask you - do you think these federal layoffs are really doing anything substantive to improve education and to target waste or fraud?
PETRILLI: I don't. I don't think it's possible to make the argument that these cuts are going to improve our schools. But look, there was a time, Ailsa, when leaders in Washington worked hard at improving our schools. We had a bipartisan effort. It's now been about a decade since that has been the case, and we can tell. America's schools desperately need help. There are kids that are still struggling after the pandemic. But we're at a place where we need everybody focused on actually trying to improve our schools.
CHANG: Well, we should also point out, like, President Trump did campaign on shutting down the Department of Education, right? So how much closer does this latest Supreme Court ruling get him to that goal? Are we going to see the end of the Department of Education?
PETRILLI: (Laughter) No, I don't think we're going to see the end of the Department of Education. It is in statute. It was created by Congress, and therefore, Congress would need to decide to close it, and Donald Trump does not have 60 votes to do that. I don't think you could even get all Republicans to back that because it's very unpopular. So I think at the end of all of this, at the end of his administration, there will still be a Department of Education. It will be smaller, but it will be here. But it will still remain the fact that if you want to improve schools, you got to work at the state and local level because that is where the action is.
CHANG: Michael Petrilli is the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Thank you so much for your time.
PETRILLI: Thanks for having me, Ailsa. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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