What to Know About Education Funding in Trump’s Budget

On Friday, President Trump released his FY 2026 “skinny budget” which provides topline funding requests but isn’t as comprehensive as the full budget proposal that is expected to be released in the coming month or two. While the budget proposal is not binding and acts as more of a presidential wish list, Republican control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate means that this proposal could hold more weight than usual.

New America’s education and workforce teams are tracking the following:

Office for Civil Rights

In alignment with the administration's efforts to reframe civil rights enforcement, the President’s budget request includes a proposed $49 million cut to the the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), bringing total funding levels down to $91 million. The budget request frames the OCR as one that “push[es] DEI programs and radical transgender ideology,” a falsehood meant to both minimize the function and practicality of the office. Civil rights enforcement is critically important to correcting race, gender, and disability violations at all levels of education, from young children, to elementary and secondary school and through higher education. The continued cuts to both funding and staff serves the administration’s intent to dismantle civil rights protections in education and across the country.

Early & Elementary Education

Earlier reports suggested that the budget would propose eliminating funding for Head Start, the 60-year-old federal program that provides child care, healthy food, and medical screenings for over 800,000 young children living in poverty each year. According to The New York Times, a draft document accused the program of using a “radical” curriculum and giving preference to illegal immigrants, but Head Start is not mentioned at all in the budget proposal. It’s unclear what this means for the future of the program, but dozens of Senate Democrats recently sent a letter to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. outlining administration actions that undermine Head Start, including a temporary freeze on the disbursement of grant funding for federal programs, the abrupt closure of five of the ten regional offices that assist local grantees in administering Head Start services, the termination of almost 100 Office of Head Start central office staff, and delays in payments and grant renewals. The budget proposal is also silent on funding levels for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) which provides funds to states for child care subsidies for families with low incomes.

The proposal calls for eliminating the Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG B-5) program, the only federal funding stream dedicated to building state-level capacity across the various programs that make up the country’s early care and education landscape. The budget proposal claims that PDG B-5 funds have been used to “push DEI policies on to toddlers,” but the only evidence it provides to support this is that Minnesota’s guiding principles for implementation of its PDG program include the terms “intersectionality” and “racial equity.” The truth is that these grants have been instrumental in enabling states to improve their ECE systems through strategies such as strengthening the transition between early childhood and the early elementary grades, increasing program operating and cost efficiencies, and encouraging alignment and quality across a mixed delivery system of child care providers, Head Start, state pre-K, and more.

PreK-12 Education

With so few details, it’s difficult to get a full picture for the Trump administration’s plans for elementary and secondary education. Two things that are abundantly clear the administration intends to double down on are 1) efforts to eliminate programs they perceive to support racial, gender, and linguistic diversity among students and educators, and 2) giving states more discretion as to how federal education funding is used.

Direct Funding to PreK-12 Schools

The budget proposes a massive $4.5 billion cut to “streamline programs” in PreK-12 public schools, which would consolidate 18 as-of-yet unnamed competitive and formula grant programs into a new “K-12 Simplified Funding Program.” According to the administration, these cuts would preserve Title I funding for schools serving children from low-income families, but in reality the proposal eliminates $428 million from Title I, Part C “Migrant Education and Special Programs for Migrant Students.” These grants aim to ensure that all children of migratory farm workers and fishers reach challenging academic standards. Projects funded by Title I, Part C provide direct academic instruction, online courses, graduation-planning assistance, health and dental care, clothing, transportation, and other supports that help migratory children progress and succeed in school. In his letter to Congress sharing the Trump administration’s funding recommendations, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought claimed this program should be eliminated because it works to the “detriment of children’s academic success by encouraging movement from, rather than stability and consistency in, a single location.” The reality is that these grants help support migratory families who follow the seasonal availability of work and help provide American families with fresh produce, fish, meat, and other essential foods.

The only proposed funding increase for the Department of Education is $60 million to expand the number of charter schools, bringing the total funding level for this program to $500 million. This aligns with the administration’s aim to provide parents and families more discretion over their students’ education.

English Learners

President Trump is recommending that Congress defund Title III–the only federal grant program specifically geared towards supporting English learners (ELs) and recent immigrant students in the classroom. Title III funding supplements state and local revenue to provide ELs with the services they are entitled to under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI), the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA), and other state and local requirements. These funds are used to implement programs that help ensure ELs, including immigrant children and youth, attain English proficiency and develop high levels of academic achievement in English. The most recent Title III appropriation for fiscal year 2025 was $890 million. According to the proposal, the Title III program represents an “overreach from Washington” and “actually deemphasizes English primacy” since funds are also used to support bilingual education programs. These claims fly in the face of decades of research demonstrating that bilingual education programs help ELs attain English proficiency and provide them with an academic boost over the long term.

Students with Disabilities

This year's budget request asks that funding stay flat for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). It also proposes that the U.S. Department of Education create a "Special Education Simplified Funding Program" that consolidates seven unnamed IDEA programs. The budget document states that this consolidation "furthers the Administration’s goal of limiting the Federal role in education by reducing the number of programs at ED, the number of staff needed to administer them, and the administrative burden on States so more dollars go to students instead of bureaucrats." The proposed budget changes would grant the Trump administration more discretion regarding whether to preserve IDEA Part B grants to states, Part C funds for infants and toddlers (early intervention), and Part D funds for personnel, parent training, research, and technical assistance (including efforts to strengthen the special education workforce).

Educators

The only place where the skinny budget specifically mentions educators is in its elimination of funding for the Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grant program ($70 million). The TQP program, authorized via Title II of the Higher Education Act, has played an instrumental role in funding innovative, evidence-based efforts to improve the stability and capability of the teacher workforce, but the Trump administration’s budget document falsely claims that it is used to “train teachers and education agencies on divisive ideologies.” The administration also claims the end of this program will provide more local control over how teachers are recruited and prepared, despite school districts already being one of the required partners in the development and implementation of any TQP program.

The administration’s attempt to cancel TQP grants that were funded in previous fiscal years is still being contested in court.

Higher Education

If President Trump’s actions in his first 100 days show that his targets of attack on higher education are elite institutions, immigrant, and international students, then his budget proposal for the coming fiscal year shows his new targets: low-income and underserved students who try to earn a college degree.

The budget proposes over $2 billion in cuts, effectively eliminating critical programs that help these students access and complete college. Notably, it would slash over $1.5 billion in funding, ending TRIO and GEAR UP—longstanding, bipartisan-supported programs that provide academic advising, financial aid counseling, and college preparation to low-income and first-generation students.

It also eliminates funding for key campus-based aid programs like Federal Work-Study and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (SEOG), which help students who rely on federal aid, especially students with exceptional financial need (as in the case with SEOG), offset the cost of college. The administration claims SEOG is duplicative and benefits private institutions more than community colleges. While the issues with inequitable allocation exist, the argument serves to emphasize the need to revise the funding formulas for these programs, rather than cutting their funding completely.

Student parents would also be impacted. The budget eliminates the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program, a competitive grant program to help colleges fund campus childcare for low-income parents. Nearly one in five undergraduates in 2020 were parenting students, 56 percent of these students received Pell grants of whom received Pell grants. Though only a small number of colleges receive CCAMPIS funds, the program plays a vital role in improving outcomes for student parents. The administration argues CCAMPIS overlaps with the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), but unlike CCDBG, which is a block grant program for states to subsidize the cost of child care for low-income families, CCAMPIS directly targets student parents and supports their college success.

The budget also zeros out funding for the Strengthening Institutions Programs and the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, which includes important funding provisions and programs such as the Postsecondary Student Success Grant that would put in place evidence-based practices to improve retention and completion outcomes of students, mostly low-income, first-generation, and other underserved students at community colleges and public regional colleges.