The Trump administration has taken its latest step in dismantling the Department of Education, announcing Tuesday that it will outsource the work of investigating some civil rights complaints to the Department of Justice.
Department officials say the shift of duties will reduce federal bureaucracy and improve student equity, but several civil rights advocates and former staffers at the Office for Civil Rights expressed concern that the sharing of responsibilities could create more barriers for students.
“The irony here is that every action that [ED] says they’re taking to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse is creating more chaos and confusion,” said Beth Gellman-Beer, a former OCR attorney. “No one understands how this is going to operationalize, and at face value, it really does feel like it's going to create more levels of review and more barriers. It's just going to make an already difficult situation worse.”
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