The Trump administration is following the Project 2025 agenda, vowing to turn federal education programs into block grants or issue blanket waivers that would let states see money in any way they want. The results might not be what the Trump movement hopes, or what educators fear. Much will depend on whether local actors who care about the education of students with economic disadvantages or disabilities seize the opportunity to remake schools around student needs.
Some background: How did we get here?
Starting soon after the enactment of Title I, the first major federal funding program for K-12 education, there was a struggle about whether the money was the states’ to do with as they wished. The statute written in 1965 was not definitive about whether states or local districts could use Title I money to offset local spending or spend the money on all students rather than only those who were disadvantaged. Over time, as the law was reenacted and regulations were written in what was then the US Office of Education, the feds made it clear that Title I funding had to be used for disadvantaged students and “supplement not supplant” local spending. Other regulations also ensured that funds were used for disadvantaged students, not shared uniformly across all schools and classrooms.
The many subsequent federal “categorical” programs were structured similarly. Funds were targeted to specific groups and used in defined ways (e.g. for bilingual education, migrant students, teacher professional development, etc.). Federal programs also paid for state and local agencies to administer the programs and file reports on how funds were used. These and extensive requirements about continued consultation with parents were ways of building grassroots support for the programs. Federal grants also required and paid for state and local administrative units to manage and advocate for each major program.
In 1975, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), added a new wrinkle: every K-12 student identified with a disability was to have an individualized education plan (IEP), and parents unhappy with the plan or its implementation could bring independent legal action. This created a strong grassroots constituency for special education and a new form of legal practice. The US Department of Education also provided advice to parents and could intervene in disputes over which services a student was entitled to.
Federal funds provide only about 14% of total K-12 spending, but they matter. The following table shows how much federal money goes to K-12 education. Nine out of ten school districts receive Title I funds, depending on how many low-income students they serve. IDEA provides about a quarter of total spending on special education (last estimated two decades ago at over $50 billion) each year; one in seven students receive some special education services.
Federal Appropriations for Elementary and Secondary Education 2023
Program | Appropriation |
ESEA Title I | 18.4 Billion |
Other ESEA titles | 0.7 Billion |
Other elementary and secondary | 10.3 Billion |
IDEA | 15.5 Billion |
Source: US Department of Education Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Summary
Title I, IDEA, and the smaller programs targeted particular groups (e.g. English learners) or functions (e.g. teacher professional development) all had one unequivocal effect: they forced states and localities to pay attention to students in need. But ever since Title I was enacted in 1965, evidence of its effects on student learning has been elusive. National studies have generally found scant effects on disadvantaged students’ reading scores and other academic outcomes, except for the brief period in the early 2000s when No Child Left Behind required states to measure effects and change schools that were not getting results. Localities that used highly structured instructional programs like Success for All moved the needle on reading, but national averages did not budge. Analysts suggest that the dollar amounts available are too small ($500 to $1500 per recipient student) and too thinly spread among districts and schools to make a big difference.
The effects of special education services mandated by IDEA are also complex, and student results depend on accuracy of prescription and quality of services provided. There is less definitive evidence about whether students with disabilities learn more in regular classrooms or special settings. On average, there is strong recent evidence of positive effects on mathematics learning, school persistence, and high school graduation. However, students who are incorrectly classified as in need of special education services and separated from regular classrooms (disproportionately Black students) can suffer negative effects on educational attainment.
What’s next?
Advocates for block grants point to the size of the administrative and enforcement apparatus that has grown up around federal programs, which, if eliminated, could put a greater share of federal funds into schools. Some also argue that federal programs create rigidities that fight against school flexibility and innovation.
Defenders of federal programs predict bad consequences if existing funds are turned into block grants or made eligible for waivers of program rules. Their greatest fear is that once-targeted dollars will be bled off for other uses and that students and schools now helped by federal funds will lose teachers and learning opportunities. If states were to add federal money to their general funds (as was previously prohibited), dollars intended for specific populations would be spread across all schools or spent on system-wide costs rather than focusing on schools with high concentrations of high-poverty students.
States could also use block-granted federal funds to support vouchers and education savings accounts (ESAs). The Trump administration has directed education agency leaders to make as much funding as possible for these purposes. If so used, federal funds formerly reserved for disadvantaged children would likely benefit families that can afford and get access to private schools. In the absence of the traditional federal “supplement not supplant” provisions, it’s even possible that states could reduce their own spending on schools by the amount of federal block grant funding they receive.
In all these scenarios, high-needs students and schools that are now getting federal support could lose. If, as some fear, the Trump Administration eventually cuts the total federal dollars going to states, then all students and schools would lose.
Some federal programs could resist dilution of federal funds better than others. Unless Congress repeals the provisions of IDEA (unlikely because they benefit both Republican and Democratic parents), that program will survive, though its funding could be cut or partly diverted into private school vouchers. Federal enforcement and investigation of special education-related complaints could also virtually disappear. Students would then have the same nominal rights to special services as now guaranteed by IDEA, but districts could have a lot less money to pay for them, and parents would have less leverage.
Critics of block granting also claim, with reason, that no federal gift can stay unregulated for long. And President Trump is proving them right as he seeks to withdraw funding from places that teach subjects he doesn’t like or that let transgender and cisgender youth play on the same athletic teams. Other new mandates are sure to arise from time to time, driven by politics, scandals about misuse of funds or harm to students, or cultural moments. That’s how the regulations governing Title I, IDEA, and other federal programs grew.
There is no natural boundary preventing the addition of new requirements to existing grants. Block grants may start out clean, but new mandates will come and eventually burden schools and force inefficiencies. Existing federal programs at least have defined purposes and organized local constituencies, which can create resistance against capricious decrees.
The big question: will students who currently receive federally-funded services lose out, or will states and localities find new and more effective ways to support students with unique needs?
The negative possibilities discussed above are clear. But there is nothing to prevent states and localities from using federal funds in creative new ways, e.g., to pay for more schools to adopt structured reading programs like Success for All or to provide instant help to students who show that they have missed a key idea or skill necessary for learning reading or math. Or to invent new and effective ways of teaching in teams or supporting teaching with technology.
Today’s federal programs are fiscal blockbusters but educational pipsqueaks. The results could be a lot better. But it all depends on what people do in state governments, school districts, and classrooms.
Local and state leadership will be key
The bad outcomes of a move to block grants are hardly inevitable, and good ones are possible. Title I services in many places have been held in place by staffing commitments and habit. Localities could do better, depending on whether local parents, interest groups, and philanthropies concerned about students in need can agree on an agenda and organize to pursue it.
This won’t be easy: it can’t work if every group now delivering or receiving a particular service fights to keep things exactly as they were. But as city leaders in New Orleans, New York City, Denver, and elsewhere have shown, it is possible to create a new public education operating system that supports strong schools focused on the distinct needs of the students they serve. Federal funds, even if they were pooled with state and local support, could go to schools with weights to reflect degrees of student need, to be used flexibly for smaller classes, longer school days, team teaching, structured reading programs, online support for learning, tutoring closely linked to classroom instruction, or other innovative programs. Districts could support new schools that are truly welcoming to students with disabilities and schools that are built from the ground up to be desegregated.
Local strategies can and should vary, though all should feature clarity about where dollars go and which school initiatives are and are not benefiting students, including those with disabilities.
How advocates can ensure funding flexibility benefits students most in need
At a time when the structures of federal programs are dissolving and localities have fewer constraints on how they use money, local decision-making will matter more than ever. Ashley Jochim and I have just published a book about how people trying to make a difference in local public education can succeed in local politics. We show how local leaders can create and sustain ambitious reform agendas that could change how schools operate and what students learn.
The lessons in the book can be used to support effective schooling for the students and schools on which federal funds are now targeted. Local leaders (including philanthropies hoping to support local initiatives) can make cases for specific changes, reach out to civic-minded people, and form a core group that gradually recruits others. Initiators of reform can analyze their own communities and identify groups and individuals that would be open to supporting an initiative. In our book, Ashley and I suggest how local leaders can support pilot efforts and use evidence to buttress support. Building and maintaining a local school improvement coalition requires steady work, constant efforts to find new supporters and keep established ones, consistent messaging, quick responses to small failures and opponents’ attacks, and persistence.
Opposition to any effort to improve schools or redirect money will arise. It will attack and try to wear down support, but initiatives can be sustained against it. Unlike many recent analysts who claim the politics of change is too hard and opposition will always win, we conclude that local politics is tractable, if demanding. Coalition builders can be local superintendents, city leaders, clergy, business persons, university faculty or staff, or even teacher association heads – though the last of these would have to overcome unions’ incentives to oppose change.
State-level politics are also tractable. In response to Trump’s initiatives, state coalitions could organize around two principles: making sure localities that have leadership and ideas have the freedom to change, and that every education initiative grows only as it shows evidence of positive effects on students and no harm to schools serving the students most in need. Leadership could come from state officials, local superintendents, universities, or even teacher unions. But, just like at the local level, it would require that diverse groups abandon their siloed concerns and work together on a new agenda.
Those committed to the goals of federal programs are not helpless in the face of current Trump initiatives. Block granting federal programs carries serious risks, but it can also be an opportunity to re-think schools and districts that have been tied down by bureaucratic strings—and give students new opportunities. But to accomplish this, educators, civic leaders, and philanthropies need to invest time and money in case-making, anticipate challenges, and commit to initiatives for a long enough time for local leaders to deal with inevitable resistance. Local supporters of children in need can’t control what’s happening in Washington right now, but they can build something new (and possibly better) in their hometowns.
Grounded in CRPE’s core belief that public education is a goal, not a particular set of institutions, this series begins with exploring what shape a revamped federal role in education might take. Future posts will examine the evolving responsibilities of states and local communities. This series is a forum to challenge assumptions, spark debate, and generate ideas for preparing today’s and tomorrow’s students for a rapidly changing, uncertain future.
