In an interview with CNN's John Berman on Friday, Duncan blasted the executive order Trump is expected to sign tasking new Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin dismantling the department as much as possible without congressional approval, which is necessary to totally abolish the agency.

"Folks like Trump are sort of cowards at heart, and so it's hard to tell what will happen," Duncan told Berman. "If they just simply move parts of the Department of Education to other agencies — to Treasury, to HHS, to Labor, whatever — what you just have is a bureaucratic nightmare."

"You know when you walk into stores and they say 'You break it, you own it?' If banks start to fall apart in D.C. because they have moved things around, they are going to own it," the Obama-era education chief continued. "And it's something they're not going to want to see happen if they start to take away educational opportunity away from vulnerable children."

McMahon on Friday confirmed Trump was set to sign the EO, and said remaining control over education institutions would be left up to the states, a notion Duncan mocked.

"I'll be the first guy to say 'mission accomplished.' He can put that banner up," the former chief said, referring to Trump's claims that states should control their own education. "Because guess what? That's already where the action is…Everything he says is so dishonest. So disingenuous."

"As you know, 90 percent of K-12 funding is already at the state and local level," he added. "So that action is already at the states."

Duncan went on to claim that the Dept. of Education's purpose was to provide underprivileged children with healthy meals, quality education and Pell grants, warned that Trump will face "major backlash" if he cuts those resources from the department.

"If he starts to touch resources, hurting our most vulnerable young people, where their only chance in life is to get a great public education [and] go to college, it's going to be a major, major backlash and he's going to wake up mama bear and papa bear at home," Duncan told Berman.