Donald Trump stands with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon after signing an executive order to slash the Education Department at the White House, March 20, 2025.Chip Somodevilla/Getty
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The Education Department spent an estimated $28 to $38 million on attempted staff cuts last year at its Office of Civil Rights, according to a report from the US Government Accountability Office released Monday.
The department initiated a reduction in force last March, pushing nearly 50 percent of its more than 4,000-strong workforce onto administrative leave. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon called the cuts a “commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.”
Later that month, Donald Trump signed an executive order stating that the Secretary of Education should “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities.”
At the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), which enforces federal civil rights laws in schools and other institutions that receive Education Department funding, close to half its 575 employees were put on leave in March. In October, they were officially laid off. In November, they were taken off the payroll. The department’s cuts were challenged in court, and in December, some fired staff were told to return to work.
This back-and-forth doesn’t scream “efficiency.” And the cuts to OCR did not, in fact, save money.
But they did have real consequences: From the beginning of the layoffs in March to September 23, Americans filed more than 9,000 federal complaints about discrimination in education. Of the 7,000 cases resolved, about 90 percent were thrown out.
From Trump’s first inauguration through the end of 2017, OCR reached a resolution agreement in more than 30 racial harassment cases. From his second inauguration through the end of 2025, it resolved only two, a review of public OCR data by NPR found. In 2017, the office reached about ten times as many agreements in disability cases than in 2025. And while even Trump’s first-term OCR resolved about 60 sexual harassment cases and 15 sexual assault cases in 2017, it did not reach a single agreement on either kind of case in 2025.
The Department of Education declined to comment regarding the cost of its staff cuts and the stark increase in civil rights complaint dismissals, citing the temporary government shutdown.
“Every child in America should be able to get a good education no matter where they live, what their religious beliefs are or whether or not they have a disability,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who commissioned the GAO report. “Instead, the Trump administration fired half of the Education Department employees working to protect the civil rights of students and wasted as much as $38 million in taxpayer dollars by preventing investigators from doing their jobs. That is unacceptable.”
