President Donald Trump is once again proposing to slash more than $8 billion from federal programs for K-12 education.
But that doesn’t mean schools should immediately brace for cuts of that magnitude. Congress still has until Sept. 30 to approve a budget for the upcoming fiscal year. If recent history repeats itself, it might take many months after that for lawmakers to reach an agreement—and that agreement could bear little resemblance to Trump’s proposal.
In the meantime, Trump’s budget provides a window into how the current administration is thinking about education funding as midterm elections loom. It also provides another opportunity to revisit how the budget process works—in law, and in practice.
Here are some key takeaways to keep in mind.
Trump’s proposal is not the law
A common misconception—especially during the second Trump presidency, when the president has unilaterally disrupted the flow of billions in education funds—is that funding levels in the president’s budget proposal are in effect as soon as the proposal arrives.
But Congress holds the power of the purse, per the U.S. Constitution. The president’s budget is merely a wish list. Lawmakers have no obligation to follow the president’s spending priorities, and the president lacks the authority to implement spending levels without Congress.
That doesn’t mean he won’t try, though.
Last July, more than three months after Congress approved the fiscal 2025 federal budget, the Trump administration declined to release nearly $7 billion in formula funding lawmakers had allocated for K-12 schools. The administration then unfroze the funds a few weeks later, after legal challenges and bipartisan pushback.
Since then, it has continued to try to meddle with congressional appropriations, though it often hasn’t been successful—courts recently blocked Trump’s efforts to freeze funding for child care, health care, and public broadcasting.
Still, educators nationwide will continue watching warily to see whether the Trump administration builds on its 2025 project of abruptly revoking hundreds of previously awarded grants across dozens of programs. In some cases, those cuts wiped out entire programs, including for teacher preparation and workforce development, without congressional approval.
Trump continues to seek cuts to the same group of programs
Widespread opposition to the prospect of massive education funding cuts does not appear to have changed the Trump administration’s positions.
Last May, the Trump administration proposed to eliminate more than 40 separate grant programs for education, including nearly all programs that serve K-12 schools.
Congress eventually rejected all of those cuts. This year, the Trump administration is again proposing to zero out all those same programs. The only K-12 programs that would survive under Trump’s plan are, like last year, formula grants for low-income students, special education, schools on federal property, and Native American students, as well as reimbursement for school meals (which would get a slight funding increase from the U.S. Department of Agriculture).
Lawmakers also declined to accept Trump’s 2025 pitches for two efforts to consolidate disparate funding streams for education—one for K-12 education generally, and one for special education. Those changes, too, appear in the new budget proposal—as do last year’s proposals to eliminate smaller federal agencies like AmeriCorps, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the national endowments for the arts and humanities.
Even for two Education Department offices Trump wants to trim but not eliminate, this year’s proposed reductions look identical to last year’s: $49 million less for the office for civil rights; and $450 million less for the Institute for Education Sciences, the department’s research and data collection arm.
Numbers are fungible
The budget documents released last Friday tout a proposed 3% cut to overall funding for Education Department programs—substantially smaller than the 15% cut highlighted in last year’s proposal.
But this year’s number is a little misleading. Trump is proposing virtually all of the same funding cuts as last year. But he’s also proposing to bump up the annual allocation for Pell grants for low-income college students by $10 billion.
That increase, if enacted, would bring up the annual funding level for Pell grants so it matches the current fiscal year’s overall funding, which included a one-time increase of $10 billion that Congress approved last summer as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That means the $10 billion increase proposed in the FY2027 budget isn’t really new.
Some proposals contradict other policies
Since last summer, the Education Department under Secretary Linda McMahon has signed 10 agreements with five separate agencies that will take over day-to-day responsibilities of managing more than 100 K-12 and higher education programs.
But Trump’s budget proposal would take two of those agencies, and five of those agreements, out of the equation, according to an analysis by the Committee for Education Funding, a nonprofit advocacy coalition.
All Education Department programs currently slated to move to the departments of State and Health and Human Services would cease to exist if Trump’s budget were enacted as written. Those include grants for connecting schools and community resources; the development of educational TV programming; and providing child care for parents attending college.
Elsewhere, the Trump administration wants to zero out a competitive grant program for civics instruction. But just six months ago, the Education Department awarded $150 million to new grantees through that program—far exceeding Congress’ annual appropriation of $25 million.
“This record investment underscores the Trump Administration’s commitment to strengthening civics education nationwide,” said the press release announcing the awards.
The budget proposal also zeroes out funding for the department’s “comprehensive centers” just weeks after soliciting public comments on the future of the program; and regional education laboratories, even though a recent internal report on potentially restructuring the office that houses that program doesn’t propose nixing them.
Level funding would effectively mean yet another cut
Given the Trump administration’s stated desire for major funding cuts, education advocates hoping for increased investments have largely viewed flat funding for key programs as a political victory.
But that doesn’t change the fact that flat funding approved by Congress amounts to reduced investment, once inflation is factored in.
Funding levels for most federal education programs have remained flat for the last four enacted budgets. That means, for this upcoming school year, schools are getting roughly the same number of federal dollars for most programs as they did for the current school year and the two before that.
Thanks to inflation and other factors like Trump’s tariffs, the price of consumer goods has risen by 9% over the last four year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures. Pressure on state budgets is also mounting.
All of that means many school districts in many places have to lean more and more on revenue from local taxpayers to pay for the rising costs of serving students.
