When President Trump signed an executive order in March 2025 calling for the dismantling of the Department of Education, he framed the problem as the federal bureaucracy itself—not just one agency. Now, a leading parent-advocacy group says the Republican-controlled Congress is ignoring that directive, instead shuffling federal education programs into other departments, a move it calls worse than doing nothing.
In a piece published Wednesday at American Thinker, Melanie Kurdys—president of the Michigan chapter of U.S. Parents Involved in Education (USPIE)—argues that the House Education and Workforce Committee’s recent package of bills (H.R. 9602-9611) merely relocates education programs to agencies like Labor, Health & Human Services, Treasury, Interior, and State. The programs, she says, would move “wholly intact with the same people, the same funding, and the same ineffective rules and regulations.”
The legislation, approved in late July under Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI), was designed to “right-size” the Department of Education before closure, according to a Heritage Foundation issue brief by Jonathan Butcher, acting director of its Center for Education Policy. But Kurdys contends that such an approach misses the point of Trump’s executive order and his campaign promises.
A promise to return control to states
Trump’s March 20, 2025, executive order explicitly stated that “the Department of Education’s main functions can, and should, be returned to the States.” The order also decried the “unaccountable bureaucracy” that federal programs and dollars support—words Kurdys says apply equally to other federal agencies.
“Here, you can see the problem is not described as being the Department of Education. The problem is clearly stated as the federal bureaucracy,” she writes. “Labor, HHS, and other federal agencies are just as bureaucratic and unaccountable. There is no reason to think that these other departments will successfully educate our children when the Department of Education has undoubtedly failed.”
The group points to H.R. 2691, introduced by Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL) in April 2025, which would abolish the Department of Education and provide funding directly to states. That bill, Kurdys says, is what Trump promised and what voters elected Republicans to deliver—yet it has not received committee time.
Frustrated by lawmakers’ shift
USPIE says it has worked with Moore and other House members, meeting with Chairman Walberg and Reps. Joe Wilson (R-SC), Mark Messmer (R-IN), Mary Miller (R-IL), and Burgess Owens (R-UT) or their staffs, and was making progress in gaining support. But all of those lawmakers ultimately signed onto the package that shuffles rather than eliminates federal education programs.
Kurdys finds this puzzling, noting the legislators’ past statements. She cites Miller’s Freedom Caucus membership, Harris’s promise to “fight for education policies that focus on local control,” Wilson’s co-sponsorship of H.R. 2691, and Messmer’s criticism of “government overreach and one-size-fits-all policies in Washington.” When asked why they changed course, she says the official reason offered was that “they decided to go a different direction”—a direction she notes aligns with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
“The time for half measures has passed”
Kurdys argues that moving programs between federal agencies does nothing to restore local control or reduce bureaucratic overreach. Instead, she calls on Congress to support H.R. 2691, warning that inaction or half measures would leave another generation of children subject to an ever-expanding federal education bureaucracy.
“The time for half measures has passed,” she writes. “The American people elected President Trump and Republican majorities to restore sanity and local control of education.”
While the executive order directed Secretary Linda McMahon to begin the process, only Congress can enact the statutory changes needed to truly eliminate the department—and so far, the legislative path appears to be moving away from, not toward, that goal.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/08/education-shuffling-is-worse-than-doing-nothing/