United States Department of Education
U.S. federal government department
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| April 2025 | Linda McMahon announced that the Department of Education would resume garnishment of wages for student loan defaulters. |
| March 2025 | President Donald Trump signed an executive order to begin dismantling the Department of Education. |
| March 2025 | Representative Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, publicly criticized the potential dismantling of the Department of Education, arguing it would harm vulnerable student populations. |
| March 2025 | Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, along with a group of colleagues, issued a joint letter to Education Secretary McMahon protesting mass layoffs at the Department of Education and urging the reinstatement of laid-off employees. |
| March 2025 | Polls in March 2025 continued to demonstrate broad public opposition to eliminating the Department of Education. |
| March 21 2025 | President Trump announced plans to restructure the Department of Education, declaring that the federal student loan portfolio would be transferred to the Small Business Administration, and special needs programs would be moved to the Health and Human Services office. |
| March 2025 | The Department of Education Office of Civil Rights launched investigations into 60 universities regarding antisemitism, examining potential violations of civil rights protections. |
| March 11 2025 | Seven weeks into Donald Trump's second term, the department announces it will fire nearly half of its workforce as part of an effort to shrink the federal government. |
| March 3 2025 | US Senate confirmed Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education. McMahon emailed ED staffers about the department's 'final mission' to send education back to the states. |
| March 3 2025 | Linda McMahon was sworn in as the 13th Secretary of Education, with President Trump emphasizing her objective to dismantle the Department of Education. |
| February 2025 | Polls in February 2025 showed approximately two-thirds of Americans opposed closing the Department of Education. |
| February 10 2025 | The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the Trump administration announced plans to cancel $881 million worth of contracts across 169 projects at the Institute of Education Sciences. Researchers and contractors were directed to immediately stop work on ongoing research and program evaluation projects. |
| February 2025 | The US Department of Education established an 'end-DEI' portal to collect complaints about diversity in schools, simultaneously warning universities about potential federal funding cuts for maintaining Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. |
| February 2025 | US Department of Education workers were offered a deal to quit or retire, signaling potential workforce restructuring within the department. |
| February 2025 | President Donald Trump announces plans to prepare an executive order to potentially abolish or curtail the Department of Education. |
| 2024 | The US Department of Education's annual budget was set at approximately $268 billion, with $79,052,238 allocated for discretionary spending. The department also managed approximately $1.7 trillion in federal student loan debt. |
| March 2024 | The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) announced the retirement of the Academic Libraries survey after the 2024-2025 data collection period, transitioning fully to the IPEDS system for collecting library data. |
| 2023 | The Department of Education's budget is $274 billion, which includes funding for children with disabilities, pandemic recovery, early childhood education, Pell Grants, Title I, and work assistance programs. |
| 2022 | The Department of Education has a budget of $637.7 billion. |
| October 7 2022 | President Biden announced the intention to appoint 15 new members to the National Board for Education Sciences (NBES). |
| 2021 | The department had more than 4,000 employees, which was the smallest staff among Cabinet agencies. |
| September 3 2021 | The Biden administration acknowledged the validity of the NBES Board appointments and formally terminated them, resulting in the withdrawal of the lawsuit by Hanke and Yoo. |
| August 2021 | Pacific Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for The District of Columbia against Secretary Cardona and the Department of Education regarding the NBES Board appointments. |
| July 2021 | The Pacific Legal Foundation obtained emails from White House officials confirming the Department of Education's possession of credentials and sent a demand letter on behalf of Hanke and Yoo. |
| May 2021 | Steve Hanke and John Yoo published a commentary in The Wall Street Journal, claiming their Board commission documents were signed and certified, but Secretary Miguel Cardona refused to acknowledge the appointments. |
| May 18 2021 | Cindy Marten begins term as United States Deputy Secretary of Education under President Joe Biden |
| March 2 2021 | Miguel Cardona takes office as the United States Secretary of Education under Joe Biden's administration. |
| 2020 | During the coronavirus pandemic, a parental rights movement gained momentum, intensifying efforts to challenge the Department of Education's policies and potentially close the agency. |
| 2020 | The United States aimed to achieve a 90 percent high school graduation rate, which would have required almost 200,000 additional students to graduate on time. |
| December 2020 | During the winter, the Trump administration made controversial appointments to the NBES board, filling vacancies that had existed for several years, drawing criticism from education organizations for lacking academic or educational research credentials. |
| May 2020 | The Northern Mariana Islands was allocated $28 million in CARES Act federal funds through the Education Stabilization Fund to support K-12 and higher education in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, overseen by the Trump administration and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. |
| August 29 2019 | US Department of Education awarded $4 million of the promised $9.3 million for immediate recovery of the CNMI Public School System infrastructure. |
| May 2019 | Congressman Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan and Congresswoman Aumua Amata announced the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa College Access Act to provide tuition assistance grants for students, addressing financial barriers due to low household incomes. |
| 2018 | Super Typhoon Yutu caused catastrophic damage to Tinian and Saipan, severely damaging half of the public schools, with Hopwood Middle School forced to conduct classes in 42 tents for 918 students. |
| 2018 | The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act was passed, establishing the Commissioner as the Statistical Official for the U.S. Department of Education under Section 314. |
| May 17 2018 | Mick Zais begins term as United States Deputy Secretary of Education under President Donald Trump |
| February 7 2017 | Betsy DeVos is appointed as the United States Secretary of Education during Donald Trump's administration. |
| 2016 | Conservative Republican presidential candidates campaigned against Common Core standards elevated by President Barack Obama's 'Race to the Top' program. |
| January 1 2016 | John King Jr. becomes the United States Secretary of Education, serving during Barack Obama's final year in office. |
| December 2015 | President Barack Obama signs the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) into law, reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and replacing the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). |
| January 4 2015 | John King Jr. becomes Acting Senior Advisor for the United States Deputy Secretary of Education |
| 2014 | Adopted its current name, the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC), further evolving its organizational identity. |
| July 2013 | James H. Shelton III begins term as United States Deputy Secretary of Education |
| 2012 | Presidential candidate Ron Paul continues to campaign against the Department of Education. |
| April 2012 | Congressman Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan announced a nearly $40,000 award from the Interior Department's Office of Insular Affairs to the Northern Marianas College for developing a new strategic plan focused on preparing graduates to meet local economic needs. |
This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia articles Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, United States Secretary of Education, Distance Education Accrediting Commission, Institute of Education Sciences, High school dropouts in the United States, Education in the Northern Mariana Islands, United States Deputy Secretary of Education, National Center for Education Statistics & United States Department of Education, which are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.