Secretary Linda McMahon is working to fulfill President Trump’s March executive order to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education (DoE). Last week, the department announced six interagency agreements to transfer major programs and responsibilities to other federal agencies, including the Labor, HHS, and the State Department. The move follows a similar transfer of federal workforce programs to Labor over the summer.
As Secretary McMahon’s team considers how to move additional programs and responsibilities out of the department, they should consider opportunities to improve the value of the federal education R&D enterprise to improve learning opportunities for American children.
A focus of this effort should be the department’s Education Innovation and Research (EIR) program, one of the federal government’s key initiatives aimed to improve learning outcomes. EIR received $259 million in FY2024. Since 2017, the Department has spent $1.5 billion on grants through this initiative. Under federal law, the program must provide grants to “create, develop, implement, replicate, or take to scale entrepreneurial, evidence-based, field-initiated innovations to improve student achievement and attainment for high-need students,” and to “rigorously evaluate such innovations.” The law requires grants to focus on three phases of projects: early development, validation, and scaling up proven interventions.
