“Under your tenure as Secretary, ED has not only ignored repeated Congressional requests for servicer performance data but now appears to have progressed to active obstruction of efforts to obtain this information directly from the servicers.”
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) pushed Education Secretary Linda McMahon on concerns that the U.S. Department of Education (ED or the Department) is apparently obstructing Congressional efforts to hold federal student loan servicers accountable for underperformance.
“Servicers’ history of egregious failures have caused undue financial and emotional distress for borrowers in the past, and the public deserves to know whether loan servicers are meeting their obligations to borrowers and their contractual obligations to ED,” wrote the senators.
Over the past year, Senator Warren has sent multiple letters to Secretary McMahon requesting data on student loan servicers’ performance and the impact of the ongoing dismantling of ED on customer service for borrowers. The letters sought comprehensive performance data for each federal student loan servicer, including call abandonment rates, customer satisfaction scores, and average speed to answer calls. Senator Warren even held an in-person meeting with Secretary McMahon in June 2025, during which the Education Secretary promised to provide complete responses to written requests regarding oversight of loan servicers and other problems facing student borrowers.
Servicer performance data has traditionally been published by ED upon Congressional request. However, President Trump’s ED has repeatedly ignored lawmakers’ requests for this data while claiming that it continues to “review the performance of all our current contractors” and that Federal Student Aid (FSA) is “prioritizing efforts to improve customer service to students and parent borrowers.”
After the Department failed to provide service performance data, Senator Warren led five other members of the Senate in writing to the five federal loan servicers—MOHELA, EdFinancial, Maximus, CRI, and Nelnet—directly. These servicers did not provide the requested information, indicating that ED had blocked them from complying and instructed them to redirect the request to the Department.
“ED has repeatedly refused to comply with Congressional requests for basic servicer performance data and now appears to be refusing to allow federal student loan servicers to provide this information, despite previous Administrations granting such requests,” wrote the senators. “Given ED’s directive that Congressional requests to the servicers should be redirected to ED itself, we hope this indicates that ED is now prepared to provide specific and substantive responses to our questions.”
The senators sent ED a copy of the original questions sent to the five servicers in addition to new questions about ED’s communications with the servicers regarding the release of the requested data, with a deadline of March 5, 2026.
Senator Warren has led the fight to make our higher education system more affordable, cancel student loan debt, and hold student loan servicers accountable for incompetence and malfeasance. She launched the Save Our Schools campaign in a coordinated effort to fight back against President Trump’s attempts to abolish the Department of Education.
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