Ed. Dept. Meets Research Spending Deadline—But Bigger Funding Challenges Loom

Under pressure from a federal court, the U.S. Department of Education’s research office this week narrowly finished spending more than $170 million, for now allaying concerns that the funds would revert to the U.S. Treasury after Sept. 30.

But the office’s future remains uncertain, as the White House continues to withhold nearly half a billion additional dollars in fiscal 2026 funding Congress approved for it earlier this year.

Congress approved more than $760 million in fiscal 2025 funds for the Institute of Education Sciences during President Donald Trump’s first months in office last year. That money was set to remain available, as usual, for two fiscal years, with an expiration date of Sept. 30, 2026.

But the White House Office of Management and Budget, under Director Russell Vought, withheld much of the 2025 appropriation from IES until mid-2026, more than a year later than when OMB typically “apportions,” or distributes, congressional appropriations to agencies.

Even after the department gained access to the fiscal 2025 funds, research advocates became increasingly worried that the money would go unspent before this week’s deadline.

Education and transparency advocates in late June filed a federal lawsuit challenging the withholding of congressionally appropriated funds. A federal judge earlier this month told IES it needed to accelerate its pace of spending and exhaust the 2025 funds by the end of the month.

That message appears to have landed: IES spent close to $250 million between July 1 and Sept. 30, compared with just $87 million during the preceding three months, according to federal spending documents.

Just $3.5 million of the original $768 million remained unobligated as of Monday, according to a Sept. 28 court declaration from Matthew Soldner, the acting director of IES. Nearly all that unspent money was in the subcategory of statistics, for which Congress allocated $121 million in fiscal 2025.

“IES remains committed to diligently completing all year-end fiscal activities,” Soldner wrote.

In a statement, the lawsuit’s plaintiffs cheered the outcome, but expressed concern that a court intervention was necessary in the first place.

“This is a win for students, educators, schools, and researchers, but the fight isn’t over— students, teachers and educators shouldn’t have to go to court at the end of the fiscal year to ensure funds are actually made available and spent,” plaintiffs wrote.

Spokespeople for the Department of Education and OMB didn’t return requests for comment in time for publication.

IES funding woes are far from over

Soldner’s declaration doesn’t specify how IES spent the fiscal 2025 money. It also doesn’t explain why, in August, IES notified Congress that it planned to reprogram $68 million lawmakers had previously approved for data collection, technical assistance, and special education studies, and spend it on other line items like research grants and state data systems.

The institute is currently soliciting applications for five separate grant programs, but it’s not expected to finalize those fiscal 2027 awards until later this year. IES in recent months handed out a couple dozen new awards to researchers who had applied for funding during the Biden administration, but those grants alone weren’t worth the full $180 million sum.

Staffing at IES, meanwhile, remains greatly diminished after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency deputies severed dozens of contracts and the Trump administration laid off hundreds of employees in early 2025—meaning IES has less to pay out in staff salaries.

IES started fiscal 2026 with $510 million left over from its 2025 allocation. The institute could have an even tougher time spending down its fiscal 2026 accounts—as of Aug. 31, according to a federal spending report, IES had spent less than 10% of its $789 million appropriation from fiscal 2026, leaving more than $700 million to spend between now and Sept. 30, 2027.

The agency itself currently has access to less than half of that $700 million sum. OMB is withholding the remainder—$465 million—using the typically routine apportionment process, which Vought has described as a tool for the president to enact political priorities.

Late last week, the Trump administration said it will rescind nearly $100 million from fiscal 2026 congressional appropriations for education programs, as well as more than $700 million lawmakers appropriated for other agencies. The $465 million in 2026 IES funds wasn’t on the list of pocket rescissions, which are widely viewed as illegal.

The federal judge overseeing the IES spending lawsuit has yet to rule on whether the administration is breaking the law by declining to apportion those funds.