The Education Dept. hasn't been dismantled. It's become more inefficient, staff say

"Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission," Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said. Mark Felix/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

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The Trump administration says it wants to close the Education Department to cut bureaucracy and increase efficiency, but NPR found that changes over the last 18 months have cost an unknown amount of taxpayer dollars and made the agency's work more complex and potentially inefficient.

NPR spoke to five Education Department employees to understand how the administration's publicly stated goals are unfolding inside the agency. They all asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the moves and fear professional repercussions for doing so.

"Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission," Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said.

But some of the employees NPR spoke to said the changes have made it more difficult for them to serve states and schools who rely on billions of dollars in federal money to educate students who need the most support, including low-income students and those with disabilities.

The administration has also made costly changes around where staffers work — changes that some employees say don't seem to have been made with particular improvements in mind.

"A lot of the frustration we feel is from the fact that they came up with a solution for a problem they have not identified," an Education Department worker says.