Just two months after Congress maintained steady year-over-year federal funding for most education programs, the second Trump administration is asking lawmakers to once again consider major cuts that would take effect for the 2027-28 school year.
The White House budget released Friday likely won’t resemble the spending package Congress eventually approves. Instead, President Donald Trump’s administration is using the budget proposal process as presidents typically do—to signal its political priorities.
For the second year in a row, Trump is proposing to zero out longstanding federal education programs that support educators’ professional development (currently $2.2 billion a year), services for English learners ($890 million), academic enrichment and student supports ($1.4 billion), before- and after-school programs ($1.3 billion), rural schools ($220 million), and support for students experiencing homelessness ($129 million).
The administration is also reviving its longshot proposal to consolidate those programs and 11 others into a $2 billion education block grant—called “Make Education Great Again,” or MEGA, grants in budget—for states to spend largely how they please. States would be required, however, to put quarter of their allocations toward literacy instruction and another quarter toward math.
The $2 billion fund would be $4.6 billion short of the total value of the programs it proposes to merge.
Discretionary grant programs that support research and educator training for special education, currently worth roughly $260 million a year, would similarly fold into the existing formula grant program that pays for special education services in schools.
The current federal budget, which Congress approved in February, already determined funding levels schools can expect for key formula programs for the upcoming school year. The odds are favorable for those federal funding levels to remain relatively stable even beyond that, experts say.
“We’re dealing with the same Congress, the same majorities in the House and Senate we were dealing with for the FY2026 negotiations process,” said Kelly Christiansen, legislative director for the Bruman Group, an education law firm.
The specter of massive cuts may alarm advocates, but in terms of a final approved budget, “we’d expect to see something pretty similar to this year,” Christiansen said.
Federal funding for 2026-27 is already set
Federal dollars make up roughly 10% of public K-12 spending nationwide, though some districts and states depend more heavily on federal support.
Key flagship federal programs for K-12 education would remain intact under the president’s new proposal.
Funding for Title I, which serves low-income students in more than 60% of the nation’s public schools, would stick to its current level of $18.4 billion. Investment in special education through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act would increase modestly year over year, to roughly $16 billion.
Head Start, the nationwide education program for low-income children ages 0 to 5, would see an $85 million year-over-year cut under Trump’s budget, for a total allocation of roughly $12 billion. Head Start operators last year intermittently struggled to pull down federal funds from their home agency, the Department of Health and Human Services; some providers even had to temporarily shut down as a result.
Key offices of the Education Department that have seen significant staff reductions in the last year would get substantially less funding under Trump’s proposal. The office for civil rights would lose roughly one-third of its current annual allocation. The Institute of Education Sciences, which is currently reevaluating how to fulfill its role of collecting education data and funding research, would experience an even steeper cut, from more than $700 million to just $261 million. Trump proposed the same cut last year, but Congress rejected it.
Other details of the new budget are still coming into focus. A detailed budget appendix the Trump administration published Friday morning appeared to include a $64 million increase from the current $500 million level for the Charter Schools grant program. But a document from the Department of Education on Friday afternoon confirmed the Trump administration is pursuing level funding for that program. Congress in February approved Trump’s previous request for $60 million in additional charter school investments.
Other programs the Trump administration is targeting for elimination include Full-Service Community Schools, for connecting students and families with social services on school campuses; TRIO and GEAR UP, for supporting middle and high schoolers pursuing college and career options; and adult education, which the White House says without evidence “inappropriately incentivized illegal immigration.”
Most agencies newly involved in Ed. Dept. programs go unmentioned
Much of the new budget proposal closely resembles last year’s.
The 17 grant programs slated for consolidation into the MEGA grants, for instance, were also marked for last year’s block grant proposal. The Native Hawaiian Education Program was on the consolidation list last year; now it’s proposed for elimination altogether.
One new wrinkle is a nod to the Trump administration’s ongoing push to close the Education Department: The new budget proposal appears to pitch permanently shifting funds for career and technical education to the Department of Labor.
Since last summer, the Education Department has shifted those funds to the Department of Labor through an interagency agreement that also entailed relocating Education staff to the Labor building. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said she’s using that agreement—along with nine others the agency has subsequently signed—to help convince Congress to make the move permanent.
“Through the partnership, DOL would take the lead on workforce development programs and States would no longer need to consult multiple agencies to effectively manage their programs,” the new budget says.
That change might not be as simple as the budget suggests, though. In order to move that program permanently to Labor, Congress would have to amend the Department of Education Organization Act of 1979—a step outside the budget process that Christiansen said lawmakers are “unlikely” to take.
The other ongoing efforts to transfer Education Department programs to one of five other agencies go unmentioned in the new budget documents the Trump administration published on Friday.
“I think perhaps the administration is waiting until the implementation of those is more fully complete,” Christiansen said.
Regardless of which agency employs them, civilian federal workers wouldn’t receive a pay raise next January under Trump’s plan.
More disruptions could emerge no matter what Congress does
The White House budget draft kicks off federal spending negotiations for the 2027 fiscal year, which starts this Oct. 1. Appropriators in Congress have until then to craft an agreement that secures sufficient support in both chambers as well as the president’s signature.
Lawmakers in recent years have regularly missed that deadline, instead agreeing to either a short-term extension of the previous year’s funding levels, or sending the federal government into a shutdown.
The administration is touting a proposed 3% cut to overall Education Department funding levels—far smaller than the 15% cut the Trump administration called for a year ago. That’s in part because the administration is proposing increased investment in Pell grants for low-income college students, even as it continues to request billions of dollars in K-12 cuts.
This year’s budget proposal also revives the Trump administration’s pitch to close smaller agencies like AmeriCorps, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and national endowments for the arts and the humanities.
The Trump administration’s prior efforts to shutter those agencies without congressional approval haven’t gained favor with lawmakers or courts.
Even so, the current White House has asserted unprecedented control over federal spending—including canceling hundreds of previously awarded education grants, temporarily withholding billions of expected formula dollars, and injecting new political priorities into existing program rules.
Many of those moves have drawn rebukes from courts and watchdogs, as well as Democrats in Congress. Advocates and educators have already begun raising concerns that similar disruptions could be on the horizon in the months ahead.
With Congress having approved a full budget, rather than a less-detailed continuing resolution, the Trump administration may face steeper hurdles in implementing disruptions like those this year, Christiansen said.
Still, she said, “They’re certainly going to try to at the very least rework some of these programs.”
2026-04-03 16:44:23
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