The White House office that oversees federal spending is withholding more than $2 billion Congress approved in February for more than 30 separate K-12 and higher education programs—all of which the Trump administration has repeatedly proposed to eliminate.
Lawmakers belatedly approved a fiscal year 2026 budget for the U.S. Department of Education on Feb. 3. Before the agency can actually spend those dollars, the federal Office of Management and Budget by law must “apportion” the correct amounts, or dispense them, into the agency’s accounts.
As of May 5, more than seven months into the current federal fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, OMB has unlocked little or no funding for nearly three dozen of the Education Department’s competitive grant programs, according to an Education Week review of publicly available apportionment documents.
Major budget line items for which the Education Department has yet to access current-year funds, Education Week found, include $235 million for education research, $220 million for teacher preparation and training, $150 million for community schools initiatives, and $139 million for magnet schools.
In most cases, the Education Department isn’t required to send these funds to grant recipients until later this year. Some observers are waiting to see how long the apportionments delay lasts before assuming funding disruption is inevitable.
“It is concerning that they aren’t following the law and apportioning the funds in the timeline and manner directed by Congress, but I am hopeful they will spend the money as required in the appropriations bill for the grant programs,” said Amanda Miller, who oversaw the department’s higher education programs during the Biden administration.
Still, the second Trump administration has repeatedly come under scrutiny, as recently as this week, for using the apportionment process to withhold congressionally appropriated funds across the federal government.
Uncertainty over the status of education grants is sparking concern among some advocates, grantees, and legal experts about the possibility of more delayed grant competitions and funding disruptions in the coming months.
For instance, the department’s migrant education office announced in March that it plans to launch competitions this year for the High School Equivalency and College Access Migrant programs (HEP and CAMP). But the most recent OMB document listing those two programs shows only $181,701 apportioned.
The longer the wait for the full $52 million in congressional appropriations to flow to the Education Department, the more nervous grant recipients hoping to renew their funding will get, said Greg Contreras, a CAMP project director at Portland Community College in Oregon.
Without the funding, they could be forced to lay off staff and halt student programming, including onboarding of new student recruits, he said.
“There are real implications if this delay of the grant competition continues,” said Contreras, who also serves as president of the National HEP/CAMP Association, an advocacy coalition.
In a statement to Education Week, a spokesperson for the Education Department said, “The administration sent a spend plan consistent with appropriations to Congress.” The spokesperson didn’t immediately answer follow-up questions and referred questions about apportionment timing to OMB.
A spokesperson for OMB didn’t answer requests for comment in time for publication.
OMB hasn’t apportioned funds for programs Trump seeks to eliminate
The 35 education programs with missing fiscal 2026 apportionments have several things in common.
First, the Trump administration two years in a row has proposed eliminating them, and consolidating funding for some into a larger education block grant for states to spend largely as they please. Congress rejected virtually all of Trump’s proposed education funding changes last year, and appears likely to do the same this year.
Second, for all of these programs, the Education Department last year either discontinued individual ongoing grants, or moved some or all of their appropriated funds to other programs.
For 13 of the 35 programs, the Trump administration has apportioned a tiny sliver of fiscal 2026 appropriations—including $200,000 for American History and Civics (out of $23 million budgeted), $350,000 for Native Hawaiian Education (out of $46 million budgeted), and $500,000 for Comprehensive Centers (out of $50 million budgeted). Those limited apportioned funds may be covering salaries for staff or payments to contractors who support those programs, but not to make new or continuing grant awards, federal spending experts say.
The remaining 22 programs all show apportionments of zero. That includes nearly $900 million Congress approved in February for a slew of grant programs that support higher education institutions with large populations of students from racial minority groups.
The Trump administration argued last July that some of those programs violate the Constitution. A lawsuit challenging the programs is underway, but no court has ruled either way. During a Senate committee hearing last week, Education Secretary Linda McMahon testified, “We won’t be funding those.”
Last year the department reprogrammed those funds to historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, and tribal colleges; the agency this year will reprogram those funds into the broader Strengthening Institutions grant program, a spokesperson confirmed this week.
For some programs, documents show OMB making spending contingent on an “agreed-upon spending plan” with the Education Department that hasn’t been made public. That’s the case for $5.8 million in “demonstration and training grants” for supporting teachers training to serve students with vision and hearing impairments.
Elsewhere, published agreements leave some questions unanswered.
OMB on April 7 published a fiscal 2026 spending plan for the Institute of Education Sciences, the Education Department’s research arm. The document shows $438 million in congressional appropriations for IES—but Congress approved $765 million, and it’s not clear whether OMB will unlock the remaining $327 million.
That’s on top of $289 million in fiscal 2025 money OMB also hasn’t yet cleared the Education Department to spend.
Delayed funding is likely to scramble worthwhile efforts to collect data on what’s happening in America’s schools, said Rachel Dinkes, the president and CEO of Knowledge Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates for education research.
“I think there’s a real need to know what’s happening with AI and social media and cellphone bans [in schools]. I believe there would be strong bipartisan support for IES executing on that,” Dinkes said. “Should they apportion the money fully, this is something they could execute on.”
Typically, apportionments appear seamlessly in agency accounts
Congress created the apportionment process more than a century ago to discourage federal agencies from spending more money than they had.
During recent presidential administrations, OMB would routinely apportion full congressional appropriations for most education programs within a month of lawmakers passing the budget.
“There is always an assumption that OMB is going to apportion the money per Congress’ instruction because we have not seen a case, at least in recent memory, where the administration refuses to apportion or declines to apportion funds,” said Julia Martin, director of policy and government affairs for the Bruman Group, a law firm that represents state education departments and school districts.
That’s changed under President Donald Trump, with the typically obscure OMB playing a central role in the internal operations of other federal agencies.
Apportionment documents published in the last three months show 35 Education Department programs with most or all of their fiscal 2026 congressional appropriations listed as “unallocated,” meaning the Education Department doesn’t yet have permission to spend those funds for the line item with which they’re associated.
The documents for many of those programs show attached, legally binding footnotes that explicitly prohibit the agency from spending the money until OMB executes another apportionment. Most also have attached footnotes saying all spending must comply with Trump’s executive order banning government spending on “DEI” initiatives, broadly defined.
The second Trump administration’s use of apportionments to help shape its federal policy agenda closely resembles the OMB section of the conservative policy document known as Project 2025—written by OMB’s current chief, Russell Vought.
Apportionment “is essential to the effective financial stewardship of taxpayer dollars,” Vought wrote. “OMB can then direct on behalf of a President the amount, duration, and purpose of any apportioned funding to ensure against waste, fraud, and abuse, and ensure consistency with the President’s agenda and applicable laws.”
During both of Trump’s presidential terms, career officials who typically execute apportionments have been replaced by political appointees. All of the education apportionments in 2025 and 2026, for instance, were signed by OMB’s Anne DeCesaro, a Trump appointee who previously served as a Republican congressional committee staffer.
OMB has also moved to shield its actions from public view. The office abruptly pulled down its apportionment database in March 2025, arguing that the information it displayed could “have a chilling effect on the deliberations within the Executive Branch” and jeopardize national security. OMB restored the database six months later, after two courts ruled that wiping the website was illegal and ordered its return. The legal dispute is ongoing.
“Congress used to be able to pass bills that provided funding and with some certainty know that that funding would be provided,” said Cerin Lindgrensavage, an attorney for Protect Democracy, a nonprofit that has led many lawsuits challenging Trump administration actions, including the removal of OMB’s apportionments database. “If the administration is going to abuse this part of the process to redirect or withhold that funding, Congress and the people who’ve asked Congress to make these investments can no longer be confident those investments are going to be made according to law.”
New grant competitions offer hope to some, but not all
The Education Department has already begun soliciting applications for new awards for four of the education grant programs with currently frozen funds.
They include grants for helping teachers work with students who have visual or hearing impairments, expanding gifted and talented programs in K-12 schools, providing pay bonuses to high-performing teachers and principals, and providing effective professional development opportunities.
For some advocates, it’s reassuring to see competitions launched for programs the Trump administration targeted for cuts last year.
“Once they put themselves on the record and announce a competition, I’d be surprised if they subsequently went, ‘Oh gosh, silly us, actually [OMB director] Russ Vought doesn’t want us to do this so we’re not going to do it,’” said Jaci King, a research, policy, and advocacy consultant for the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
Others feel less confident. “Just because there’s a grant competition doesn’t mean that the agency is obligated to award funds if they don’t believe enough or any of the applicants meet the requirements,” Martin said.
For the rest of the 35 programs, no competition has been announced. Without eventually gaining access to the fiscal 2026 dollars, the department likely wouldn’t be able to give out new awards for those programs, or even supply funding for ongoing awards.
Six organizations currently in their first year with Assistance in Arts Education grants are expecting another round of funding in September. That money won’t arrive if OMB doesn’t apportion the $37 million in fiscal 2026 funds Congress approved for the arts program, said Amanda Karhuse, assistant executive director for advocacy and public policy at the National Association for Music Education.
The same is true for nearly $46 million for Native Hawaiian Education grants and another $45 million for Alaska Native Education grants.
The Partners in Development Foundation, which runs early childhood programs at 38 sites across Hawaii, is one of several organizations that could have to scale back operations if the department doesn’t run a new competition for the Native Hawaiian Education program, Shawn Malia Kanaiaupuni, the foundation’s CEO, told EdWeek in March.
“The hardest part is knowing that these services support children and families who rely on them every day,” Kanaiaupuni said at the time.
Will funding stay frozen or will it flow?
Several scenarios could play out from here, depending on the program.
OMB could delay apportionment of congressionally appropriated funds long enough that the agency doesn’t have time to run competitions or award new grants.
The Trump administration could attempt to argue—as it did last year—that authorizing spending on certain education grant programs violates the Constitution.
The executive branch could also simply decline to spend the funds at all, allowing them to expire and sending them back to the Treasury. All told, nearly $1.4 billion in congressionally appropriated fiscal 2026 education funds OMB is currently withholding will expire and return to the U.S. Treasury in less than five months if OMB doesn’t release the money by then, according to Education Week’s analysis of OMB apportionments.
Experts say these moves would amount to the president impounding funds, which is illegal unless Congress approves a request from the White House to rescind previously approved spending. The president hasn’t yet asked Congress to rescind any fiscal 2026 appropriations.
Alternatively, the appropriated funding may ultimately flow, albeit behind schedule.
Until it does, said Martin, “every withholding incrementally increases the pressures on schools and districts and community organizations.”
2026-05-06 19:33:07
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