The Trump administration 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.
Since June 30, when states and schools learned that key federal 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. The Trump administration’s bombshell announcement sparked budget revisions, staff layoffs, and program suspensions as well as two lawsuits aiming to overturn the decision.
Then, on July 18, the Trump administration announced it would unfreeze Title IV-B funding for before- and after-school programming nationwide. One week later, the Trump administration told states it would unfreeze all the remaining money.
Education Week has been closely tracking the latest on this rapidly evolving situation since it emerged as a potential issue in the spring. This guide was last updated July 28. We will continue to make changes as new developments unfold.
How much money were states and districts set to lose?
In total, the federal government withheld $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.
On July 18, the Trump administration told states they would soon receive their allocations for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant program, also known as Title IV-B. That money flowed early the following week.
On July 25, the Trump administration made a similar announcement for all of the remaining affected grant programs.
If the funding freeze had gone forward, every state would have lost at least $25 million. More than a dozen states would have lost more than $100 million each. California was set to lose $927 million, Florida would have lost $398 million, New York would have lost $463 million, and Texas would have lost $738 million.
Use these EdWeek tools to see how much each state and each district could have lost.
Which grant programs were 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. The federal government unfroze this money on July 18.
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.
Were 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 the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act funds special education programs.
Which groups of students would have been most affected?
The federal government zeroed out its investment in legally mandated services for English learners and migrant students for the duration of the funding freeze. Until the money flowed, schools would have had 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 were 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 did the federal government hold on to the money?
The Office of Management and Budget has said the money was under “ongoing programmatic review” to root out spending related to a “radical left-wing agenda.” OMB did not specify when the review started, how long it would last, or whether it would end.
During a CBS interview on July 27, OMB Director Russell Vought said the goal of the review was to crack down on spending the administration deemed inappropriate, including for “illegal immigrant advocacy organizations.”
On July 18, an OMB spokesperson said in a statement that the review for Title IV-B funds was complete. On July 25, OMB said the review was complete for all the remaining affected programs.
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 pitched 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.
Why did the federal government unfreeze all the money?
OMB has not disclosed the results of its review nor any instances in which the administration will penalize a state or district for improper spending of funds from these programs.
In both notices to states that the federal funding would soon flow, the Education Department said recipients of the funds must not use the money in ways that violate the U.S. Constitution or any of eight federal civil rights laws (listed below). It also warned states and districts it would conduct reviews of their use of the funds “to ensure ongoing compliance.”
The Trump administration has used several of these laws as the basis for investigations aiming to pressure states and educational institutions to change their policies.
- Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (protection against race-based discrimination in federally funded programs)
- Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (protection against race- and sex-based discrimination in employment)
- Title IX of the Education Amendments (protection against sex-based discrimination)
- Age Discrimination Act
- Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act (protection against disability-based discrimination)
- Boy Scouts of America Equal Access Act (protection against discrimination against Boy Scouts groups based on their policies)
- Section 117 of the Higher Education Act (requirements for higher education institutions to disclose foreign gifts)
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.
Was 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.
Two legal challenges—one from Democratic state attorneys general, and another from a coalition of teachers’ unions, school districts, and education advocates—accused the Trump administration of violating the Constitution’s separation of powers clause.
Ultimately, this situation amounted to a delay: 18 days for Title IV-B, 25 days for the rest. Until the administration announced it would release the funds, it wasn’t clear that the money would ever be released.
What have President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon said?
Trump has not commented publicly on impounding these education funds.
McMahon commented on the funding freeze for the first time on July 25, hours after her agency told states all the remaining frozen money would flow soon. In an onstage interview with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, McMahon told the nation’s governors during a National Governors Association meeting, “I would think now, we’ve reviewed them, a year from now we wouldn’t find ourselves in that same situation.”
She said OMB reviewed “all the Title funds” as part of the transition to a new administration. When Polis asked whether states could expect clearer communication about future federal changes, McMahon replied, “No guarantees from me that we’ll eliminate all the communication gaps that do happen.”
A spokesperson for the Education Department referred all questions during the freeze to OMB.
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—finalized by Congress on July 18—did not contain any proposals to rescind education funding.
Reports surfaced in late July that the administration was preparing a package of Education Department rescissions. It was not clear whether the funds affected by the recent impoundment were among the funds the administration wants to formally claw back.
Bill Clinton was the last president before Trump’s first term to propose rescissions, and the last president before Trump’s second term to secure congressional approval for rescissions. Trump proposed $14 billion in rescissions during his first term, but Congress rejected all of them.
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.
That remained largely true for the education funding freeze. Fewer than 10 members of Congress who voted to approve the March funding law responded to an Education Week inquiry about whether the administration had the legal authority to withhold the money.
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. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., said in a July 18 post on X that letter helped convince OMB to unfreeze Title IV-B funds two days later.
A handful of House Republicans urged the Trump administration to release some or all of the education formula funds.
More than 30 Democratic senators and 150 House Democrats also wrote 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?
As of July 28, both lawsuits challenging the formula funding freeze have court hearings set for Aug. 13.
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 in response to these cases or others.
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 the 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.
