Fewer teachers. Incomplete data. Delays in addressing problems and getting financial aid information.
Those are just some of the impacts Jason Cottrell, who worked as a data collector at the Department of Education for nine and a half years before being laid off along with more than a thousand other agency employees, warns the Trump Administration’s massive cuts to the department’s funding and workforce could have on the country’s education system.
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“With funding being cut, it’s going to reduce the number of teachers, it’s going to reduce the ability for us to make evidence-based changes that we need,” he tells TIME. “If we’re not collecting data, for example, or the data isn’t complete, we’re not able to go in and say, ‘Okay, we can improve these test scores by implementing this new reading program.’”
Some effects of the Administration’s actions are already being felt, he notes, but others may not be fully evident for years. “We’re not going to know what the impact of these cuts are going to be, in a lot of ways, until this Administration is gone.”
Read more: Understanding Trump’s Dismantling of the Education Department—and What’s At Stake
Cottrell, a member of AFGE Local 252, the union representing Education Department employees, was still on bed rest four days after undergoing surgery when he was informed via email in March that he was among the more than 1,300 employees who were being laid off from the department.
“I was actually out on medical leave when I got [the notification],” says Cottrell, who developed a data governance model for the agency’s Office of Postsecondary Education. “That was a rough week. It wasn’t exactly the way that I wanted to find out, [but] it was almost a little bit of a relief for many of us.”
Cottrell and other federal employees had already been living under the looming threat of layoffs for weeks by the time the department began carrying out its “reduction in force” in March, as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency touted plans to slash the size of the federal government. So while the notification that he’d lost his job was unwelcome, Cottrell said it also helped quell the anxiety he and many others had been experiencing.
The widespread cuts the Department of Education announced that month impacted nearly half the agency’s staff, about a third of whom accepted voluntary resignation opportunities and retirement. Staffers who received layoff notices were put on paid administrative leave beginning in late March and were set to stop receiving pay in June. Initial legal challenges to the mass layoffs resulted in a federal judge issuing a temporary injunction in May that directed the Department to reinstate workers. But Cottrell says staffers were not called back to the office, leaving many in limbo as they questioned whether they’d actually return to work. “Of course, they appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. And I think a lot of us kind of saw the writing on the wall,” he says.
A Supreme Court ruling on Monday temporarily paused the lower court’s injunction, allowing the Trump Administration to proceed with laying off Department of Education employees but blocking an Executive Order seeking to dismantle the agency completely. The case will continue to move through the lower courts, but critics argue that the damage that occurs while it does so will be difficult to reverse.
Trump celebrated the win, calling it a “major victory” on Truth Social. “Now, with this GREAT Supreme Court Decision, our Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, may begin this very important process.”
Trump promised during his 2024 campaign to gut the Department of Education and “return” control of children’s education to parents and states.
The department does not control school curricula, however, but rather plays other roles in the nation’s education system, including managing the federal student loan portfolio, overseeing civil rights complaints, and providing about 13.6% of funding for K-12 public schools.
Cottrell, whose job involved assessing the effectiveness of federal grants and policy efforts, says the lack of data collection will make it more difficult for the Department to act efficiently and respond to the concerns of the American public.
The mass layoffs could starkly affect public and higher education institutions across the country, as according to an NPR report they particularly target federal student aid workers and the Office of Civil Rights—the arm of the department that investigates discrimination in schools and could lose seven of its twelve regional offices. “Parents and teachers may not always realize how readily those resources have been there, and now suddenly that stuff is getting cut off. So that’s a big concern of mine,” Cottrell says. “Education is the great equalizer for society, and it’s probably the one piece that shouldn’t be politicized. And for some reason it is.”
Higher education institutions may also be particularly at risk. The Trump Administration has actively targeted prestigious universities such as Harvard and Columbia, demanding that they make changes to their leadership and hiring practices and dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion practices or suffer consequences. Harvard, which has refused to cede to the Administration’s demands, has been a particular focus of attacks, losing federal funding and grants amounting to billions of dollars for research and other programming and facing threats to its accreditation status and ability to enroll international status. While university leaders battle such moves in the courts, Cottrell says schools and students can also expect delays in getting answers about their federal student aid status as a result of the Department of Education cuts.
He suspected the Administration would enact broad changes given that Project 2025—a conservative policy playbook for Trump’s second term created by the Heritage Foundation—outlined the dismantling of the Education Department. (Trump sought to distance himself from Project 2025 during his campaign, but many of his actions since taking office have mirrored its agenda.) But despite expecting a shift, Cottrell says he is growing concerned about the direction the Administration is taking.
“We’re nonpartisan,” he says. “I don’t want a government that’s run by one party. I want a government that is run by committed Americans, and I want it to be reflective of the American people.”