The Trump administration has injected fresh chaos into school budget planning for the quickly approaching academic year with its abruptly announced and unprecedented nationwide halt on $6.8 billion in education funding Congress allocated in March.
In the two weeks since states and schools learned that key funding for English learners, teacher training, and more wouldn’t arrive on time, education agencies and districts nationwide have been grappling with a range of unappealing options for adjusting staffing and programs for the upcoming school year. Layoffs and service suspensions have already begun in some places; advocates are calling for states and other potential funders to backfill cuts; and at least one legal challenge against the administration’s latest education funding disruption is underway.
Education Week has been closely tracking the latest on this rapidly evolving situation since it emerged as a potential issue in the spring. We will update the below guide as new developments unfold.
How much money are states and districts losing?
In total, the federal government is withholding $6.8 billion for education. Congress allocated that money when it approved a continuing resolution in March that kept funding amounts steady with current levels for the upcoming fiscal year.
No state is losing less than $25 million. More than a dozen states are losing more than $100 million each. California is losing $928 million, Florida is losing $398 million, New York is losing $464 million, and Texas is losing $738 million.
Use these EdWeek tools to see how much each state and each district could be losing.
Which grant programs are affected?
Title I-C ($375 million), which funds services for students from families whose jobs in fisheries, food processing, and other transient industries require them to move from state to state throughout the year.
Title II-A ($2.2 billion), which funds professional development for teachers.
Title III-A ($890 million), which funds services for English learners.
Title IV-A ($1.3 billion), which provides funding for academic enrichment and student support.
Title IV-B ($1.4 billion), which funds before- and after-school programs. It’s also known as the Nita M. Lowey 21st Century Community Learning Centers program.
Adult Education basic grants ($629.6 million), which fund literacy and general instructional services for adult students.
Adult Integrated English Literacy and Civics Education grants ($85.9 million), which fund supplement educational services for adult students.
Are Title I and IDEA affected?
No. Those funds—the two largest K-12 funding streams from the U.S. Department of Education—flowed to states as scheduled on July 1. Title I helps fund services for students from low-income households, while Individuals with Disabilities Education Act funds special education programs.
Which groups of students will be most affected?
The federal government has zeroed out its investment in legally mandated services for English learners and migrant students. That means, unless the money flows, schools will have to use other sources of funds to pay for those services, or risk violating the law by not providing those services.
Students in rural areas, students with disabilities, and students from low-income families are also likely to feel disproportionate impacts from the loss of these funds. Federal funding formulas for education tend to target school districts with large populations of high-need students, which means cuts to federal funding hit hardest for many districts with large populations of students who require additional investment.
When was the money supposed to arrive?
State education agencies routinely receive the bulk of their federal education allocations for the upcoming school year on July 1—three months before the start of the 2025 federal fiscal year, which starts in October.
Federal appropriations law specifies that, with rare exceptions, funding for education must flow to states on that date.
How much notice did the federal government give that the money wouldn’t arrive?
The Education Department sent every state the same three-sentence email on the afternoon of June 30, alerting them that funding for the affected programs wouldn’t flow the next day as expected.
District leaders and state agencies had an inkling weeks earlier that four of the programs might be disrupted. The Trump administration didn’t send out routine funding allocation tables detailing the exact amount each state should expect for Titles I-C, II-A, III-A, and IV-B.
The administration did, however, send out Title IV-A allocations, which reassured state agencies that those dollars would flow as normal. They did not.
Why is the federal government holding on to the money?
The Office of Management and Budget has said the money is under “ongoing programmatic review” to root out spending related to a “radical left-wing agenda.”
The Trump administration’s position on these programs, more generally, is that they should be eliminated. In its budget proposal earlier this year, the White House proposed eliminating all seven of the affected programs beginning in the 2026-27 school year.
Under that budget, four of the programs—titles I-C and III-A, and the two adult education grants—would disappear altogether. The rest would be wrapped into a “simplified” block grant for each state to spend on education priorities of its choosing. That block grant would amount to $2 billion total—$4.5 billion less than the sum total of the existing programs it would replace.
Has anything like this ever happened before?
No. Disputes about federal funding levels have been contentious in the past, with vast differences between the priorities of the president and lawmakers in Congress. But no executive branch in modern history has attempted to assert authority over congressionally appropriated education funds to the extent that the Trump administration has.
Is this a delay, freeze, impoundment, or something else?
The Trump administration hasn’t given a particular name to this action. But legal experts believe the appropriate term is “impoundment”—codified in federal law as the federal executive branch holding on to funds Congress has allocated for a particular purpose, which is illegal unless the president follows a process prescribed in federal law that he hasn’t for these education funds.
What have President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon said?
Trump and McMahon have not commented publicly on impounding these education funds.
A spokesperson for the Education Department has routed all questions to the federal Office of Management and Budget, which is run by Russell Vought, who co-wrote large sections of the conservative policy document known as Project 2025.
OMB didn’t answer a request for comment for this article.
When will the funding “review” be done?
The Office of Management and Budget has not specified when the review started, how long it will last, or when it will end.
Will the money flow once the department finishes its review?
The Office of Management and Budget has not confirmed that the money will flow once the review is complete.
Will the Trump administration ask Congress to approve impounding the funds?
The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 requires that the executive branch spend funds appropriated by Congress but specifies a process by which the president can withhold funding. Congress passed that law—with an overwhelming majority of lawmakers in support—to rein in illegal spending actions by President Richard Nixon.
The law says that, in order to impound funds, the president must send a “rescissions” package to Congress detailing the funding it wants to hold back, and the reasons for doing so. Congress then has 45 days to consider that package. If lawmakers don’t approve it by the end of that period, the administration must halt the impoundment and send out the funds as allocated.
The Trump administration has so far sent one rescissions package to Congress, with $9 billion of proposed cuts to foreign aid and public media. That package did not contain any proposals to rescind education funding, though Vought in June said the administration might include education funding in future rescissions packages.
Bill Clinton was the last president before Trump’s first term to propose rescissions, and the last president to secure congressional approval for rescissions. Trump proposed $14 billion in rescissions during his first term, but Congress rejected all of them. Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden didn’t propose any rescissions.
Will Congress admonish the executive branch for overriding its authority?
Republicans hold slim majorities in both the House and Senate. So far during the Trump administration, Republicans have largely avoided challenging the administration or passing laws that conflict with its priorities.
But on July 16, 10 Republican U.S. senators wrote to the Trump administration, urging the restoration of the $6.8 billion in frozen funds.
One House Republican—Mike Lawler from New York—has sent a letter to the Trump administration calling for the release of Title IV-B funds for after-school programs. His letter doesn’t mention the other six funding streams.
More than 30 Democratic senators and 150 House Democrats have also written to McMahon and Vought urging them to release the withheld funds.
Will Congress preserve these programs for future years?
Appropriations committees from both chambers in the coming weeks will work on the fiscal year 2026 federal budget. Many of the programs the Trump administration has moved to preemptively eliminate have long enjoyed bipartisan support.
What will happen with legal action challenging the withholding of funds?
Two dozen Democratic states sued the Trump administration in federal court on July 14, alleging that the withholding of $6.8 billion in education funding is an act of illegal and unconstitutional impoundment. If their case prevails and a judge grants them what they’ve requested, funding would be restored only to schools in the states serving as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
So far, Republican attorneys general have not sued the second Trump administration at all, including on education issues. Several Republican state education chiefs have, however, joined their Democratic peers in calling on the administration to release the funds.
What will the Supreme Court do?
The Supreme Court hasn’t weighed in this year on whether the Trump administration has the constitutional authority to impound funds that don’t align with its priorities. It’s likely that the court will take up the issue at some point, whether directly related to education funds or not.
The court—which currently includes six justices appointed by Republican presidents—has overturned federal court rulings against Trump administration policies in an overwhelming share of cases this year. On July 12, the Supreme Court issued an order with no explanation, over the dissent of three justices, greenlighting his administration’s efforts to dismantle the Education Department while the legal challenge to that action continues to play out, overriding rulings from two lower courts.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court also allowed the administration to proceed with the termination of millions of dollars in teacher-training grants it had abruptly canceled, also going against lower-court rulings.
2025-07-16 20:39:52
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