The Trump administration recently released their budget summary, which makes one thing heartbreakingly clear: America’s students will be left behind, particularly those living in rural areas. The proposed $12 billion cut in education spending strips resources from the very students and communities that can least afford to lose them and that have the fewest funding alternatives. These cuts don’t target waste—they target students and America’s future. Rural students are among the hardest hit—not only by the deep education cuts, but also through related proposals to cut Medicaid and SNAP, which disproportionately impact rural families and would further undermine rural students’ ability to learn, eat, and access health care.
The Disappearing Act: How Vital Education Programs Could Vanish Under Consolidation
At the center of this misguided proposal is a sweeping consolidation of eighteen critical K–12 programs into a single “Simplified Funding Program” (SFP)—a block grant to states that would throw discretionary grant programs and formula funding into one pot yet deliver far less money, fewer details, and even fewer guardrails to prevent misuse of funds.
Research shows that relying on block grants for federal funding leads to significant reductions in overall funding levels, exacerbating existing strains on local budgets. Any move toward consolidating formula and discretionary funds could impose an unbearable additional burden on school districts that use federal dollars for essential services such as hiring teachers, purchasing curriculum, providing parent engagement opportunities, buying laptops, offering tutoring or after school programming, and more.
Historically, discretionary grant programs have been a mechanism for Congress to address national imperatives and provide crucial support where states and school districts lack the capacity or political will to act. These programs allow states and school districts to design and propose solutions based on their local needs and then compete for federal funding that advances nationally aligned goals. These grants serve distinct purposes and provide targeted support to students who need it most.
Under this administration’s budget proposal, school choice programs such as the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) would be thrown into one pot with formula grants such as Rural Education and McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance, leaving it up to states to decide how (or whether) to support these students. Without a federal requirement, using these funds to meet needs they were originally intended to meet becomes optional—leaving their use subject instead to the priorities and budgetary whims of the individual states.
The Rural Education program is far more than just a line item in the federal budget; it represents a lifeline for more than one in four public schools and nearly 10 million students. These rural schools often serve communities facing unique challenges, including declining populations, limited local tax bases, and geographic isolation, making it incredibly difficult to fund basic educational necessities. Rural districts frequently lack access to diverse local funding streams and struggle to attract and retain qualified teachers due to lower salaries and fewer professional development opportunities. If a state decides to zero out Rural Education and use the funds for something else, it doesn’t just cut a line item; it pulls the rug out from under rural students who already have to fight for every educational opportunity they get.
If the federal government eliminates dedicated funding for the McKinney-Vento Education for Homeless Children and Youths programs, it would strip away vital protections that ensure 1.4 million students experiencing homelessness can enroll, attend, and succeed in school. This could mean fewer students identified, fewer liaisons trained to support them, and fewer transportation services—all of which are critical to ensuring stability and access to learning for some of the most vulnerable children in the country.
Approximately 2.5 million students in the country attend magnet schools; a significant portion of those schools received or are still supported by MSAP funds. MSAP is the only federal education program that, by statute, addresses school segregation and promotes voluntary desegregation efforts. Allowing states to divert MSAP funds to other uses is especially alarming at a time when segregation in schools is worsening. In some rural communities, magnet schools, along with full-service community schools, provide families with the only public school choices. They also promote innovation and academic rigor—values the Trump administration claims to support. Consolidating MSAP undermines progress in education and contradicts the stated goal of supporting school choice and excellence for all students.
The Trump administration also plans to consolidate six programs authorized under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), including folding funding for the much needed recruitment and training for special education teachers, parent information centers, preschool services, into the main grants to states. This move is a bait and switch: the funding to states doesn’t look like a cut, but it comes at a cost: determining which of these necessary services receive what amount of funding—not to mention administering the funding flows—takes tremendous resources and expertise that state agencies likely do not currently possess or have the state funds to staff. In many cases, it will not be that states lack will to do this, but simply lack the capacity. The parent information centers especially are best suited to be funded and monitored by the U.S. Department of Education, as they offer training and information to parents on their child’s rights under federal law. The consolidation will likely amount to fewer teachers, fewer services, and less support, putting achievement for students with disabilities further out of reach in rural communities where fewer people and resources exist in the first place.
Wiping Out Federal Support for Students Who Need It Most
In addition to reduction through consolidation, the Trump administration is also proposing to fully eliminate ten programs altogether, wiping away nearly $2 billion in funding for evidence-based, bipartisan programs that support the educational needs of students across the country. Some of these programs include rural set-asides and supports, such as the Full-Service Community Schools Program (FSCS) and Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grants. The Biden administration championed FSCS, boosting funding five-fold from $30 million in FY2021 to over $150 million in FY2024. This historic investment allowed the Department of Education to award grants to over 200 communities across thirty states, including dozens of rural districts. The Department of Education specifically provided technical assistance to under-resourced areas, resulting in more awards to rural districts than congress required. This expanded support is critical because community schools are an evidence-based strategy that directly addresses inequities by integrating vital academic, social, and health services into the school day. Research consistently shows this approach leads to demonstrably positive outcomes for underserved students, such as improved attendance, stronger academic achievement, enhanced social-emotional well-being, and greater family engagement. Ultimately, these comprehensive supports are essential for narrowing opportunity and achievement gaps, ensuring all students, especially those in high-poverty and rural communities, have the chance to thrive.
EIR has been a key federal vehicle for supporting evidence-based innovation in education—particularly important in the wake of COVID-19, when addressing academic recovery, chronic absenteeism, and student well-being. Similarly, EIR, by current law, requires a 25 percent rural set aside. These programs don’t just support innovation—they help rural schools meet students’ basic needs, from improving STEM programs, to increasing access to mental health services, to creating out-of-school learning opportunities. Since its inception, EIR has awarded hundreds of grants, positively impacting millions of students across the nation by scaling effective educational practices. EIR ensures that federal support for cutting-edge educational practices reaches all corners of the nation, particularly those often overlooked.
Some of the most damaging cuts strike at the heart of educational opportunity—eliminating dedicated support for the nation’s 5.3 million English learners (ELs), migrant students, and the teachers who serve them. Among these, cutting and consolidating Title III is especially egregious. This program funds essential services that ensure ELs can access their education in a language they understand—a right protected by law. At a time when the Trump administration is undermining proven strategies that help ELs gain English proficiency, handing this funding over to states in a block grant with no guidance, support, or obligation to support language instruction is a dangerous abdication of responsibility. Title III was already underfunded at $890 million—far below what’s needed for our growing EL population. To now fold it into a $2 billion block grant shared among all states is indefensible. Abandoning multilingual learners and migrant children, without a plan for accountability or oversight, should give serious pause to anyone who claims to care about schools and America’s future as a global leader.
Even the administration’s proposed commitment to reading instruction, included in the background section of the summary budget, doesn’t hold up. While it touts a $150 million investment in reading, it simultaneously proposes eliminating the $194 million Comprehensive Literacy State Development (CLSD) program—the very federal education program supporting evidence-based literacy programs. Under this program, more than twenty states are focusing on evidence-based literacy practices such as the science of reading. It’s hypocritical: lamenting low reading scores while cutting federal programs to states for their proven literacy programs. This move directly breaks the promise of empowering states by dismantling existing, effective federal–state partnerships, and simultaneously undermines the commitment to raising academic achievement by gutting a program that demonstrably supports the very evidence-based literacy strategies it claims to prioritize. This signals either deep confusion or deliberate misdirection.
While making these cuts, the administration is also proposing a $60 million increase for charter schools, bringing total funding to $500 million. The program is already the largest discretionary K–12 program, but it is mostly an urban one: only a little over one in ten charter schools are in rural areas. Meanwhile, the pace of new charter school openings has slowed over the past five years, which means that additional funding risks fueling waste, fraud, and abuse rather than expanding meaningful educational opportunities.
Looking Ahead
Several of the programs targeted for elimination or consolidation in the administration’s proposed budget enjoy broad bipartisan support and have a track record of improving outcomes for students. But support alone doesn’t shield them from this administration’s chopping block. Budgets are moral documents. They reflect what—and who—we value. And this proposal sends a clear and troubling message: students in rural and underserved communities are not a priority.
The administration frames these cuts as part of a “simplification” strategy, but the reality is that it is eliminating meaningful investments that help children learn; investment in public education; in research-based literacy initiatives that actually reach classrooms; in mental health supports, full-service community schools, and models that are proven to support whole-child development. We need a federal education strategy that meets this moment and affirms every student’s right to opportunity—especially those historically denied it—not one that retreats from that responsibility.
Tags: state budget, education funding, federal budget, educational equity
Abandoning Students in Rural America: The Real Cost of the Trump Administration’s Education Budget
The Trump administration recently released their budget summary, which makes one thing heartbreakingly clear: America’s students will be left behind, particularly those living in rural areas. The proposed $12 billion cut in education spending strips resources from the very students and communities that can least afford to lose them and that have the fewest funding alternatives. These cuts don’t target waste—they target students and America’s future. Rural students are among the hardest hit—not only by the deep education cuts, but also through related proposals to cut Medicaid and SNAP, which disproportionately impact rural families and would further undermine rural students’ ability to learn, eat, and access health care.
The Disappearing Act: How Vital Education Programs Could Vanish Under Consolidation
At the center of this misguided proposal is a sweeping consolidation of eighteen critical K–12 programs into a single “Simplified Funding Program” (SFP)—a block grant to states that would throw discretionary grant programs and formula funding into one pot yet deliver far less money, fewer details, and even fewer guardrails to prevent misuse of funds.
Research shows that relying on block grants for federal funding leads to significant reductions in overall funding levels, exacerbating existing strains on local budgets. Any move toward consolidating formula and discretionary funds could impose an unbearable additional burden on school districts that use federal dollars for essential services such as hiring teachers, purchasing curriculum, providing parent engagement opportunities, buying laptops, offering tutoring or after school programming, and more.
Historically, discretionary grant programs have been a mechanism for Congress to address national imperatives and provide crucial support where states and school districts lack the capacity or political will to act. These programs allow states and school districts to design and propose solutions based on their local needs and then compete for federal funding that advances nationally aligned goals. These grants serve distinct purposes and provide targeted support to students who need it most.
Under this administration’s budget proposal, school choice programs such as the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) would be thrown into one pot with formula grants such as Rural Education and McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance, leaving it up to states to decide how (or whether) to support these students. Without a federal requirement, using these funds to meet needs they were originally intended to meet becomes optional—leaving their use subject instead to the priorities and budgetary whims of the individual states.
The Rural Education program is far more than just a line item in the federal budget; it represents a lifeline for more than one in four public schools and nearly 10 million students. These rural schools often serve communities facing unique challenges, including declining populations, limited local tax bases, and geographic isolation, making it incredibly difficult to fund basic educational necessities. Rural districts frequently lack access to diverse local funding streams and struggle to attract and retain qualified teachers due to lower salaries and fewer professional development opportunities. If a state decides to zero out Rural Education and use the funds for something else, it doesn’t just cut a line item; it pulls the rug out from under rural students who already have to fight for every educational opportunity they get.
If the federal government eliminates dedicated funding for the McKinney-Vento Education for Homeless Children and Youths programs, it would strip away vital protections that ensure 1.4 million students experiencing homelessness can enroll, attend, and succeed in school. This could mean fewer students identified, fewer liaisons trained to support them, and fewer transportation services—all of which are critical to ensuring stability and access to learning for some of the most vulnerable children in the country.
Approximately 2.5 million students in the country attend magnet schools; a significant portion of those schools received or are still supported by MSAP funds. MSAP is the only federal education program that, by statute, addresses school segregation and promotes voluntary desegregation efforts. Allowing states to divert MSAP funds to other uses is especially alarming at a time when segregation in schools is worsening. In some rural communities, magnet schools, along with full-service community schools, provide families with the only public school choices. They also promote innovation and academic rigor—values the Trump administration claims to support. Consolidating MSAP undermines progress in education and contradicts the stated goal of supporting school choice and excellence for all students.
The Trump administration also plans to consolidate six programs authorized under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), including folding funding for the much needed recruitment and training for special education teachers, parent information centers, preschool services, into the main grants to states. This move is a bait and switch: the funding to states doesn’t look like a cut, but it comes at a cost: determining which of these necessary services receive what amount of funding—not to mention administering the funding flows—takes tremendous resources and expertise that state agencies likely do not currently possess or have the state funds to staff. In many cases, it will not be that states lack will to do this, but simply lack the capacity. The parent information centers especially are best suited to be funded and monitored by the U.S. Department of Education, as they offer training and information to parents on their child’s rights under federal law. The consolidation will likely amount to fewer teachers, fewer services, and less support, putting achievement for students with disabilities further out of reach in rural communities where fewer people and resources exist in the first place.
Wiping Out Federal Support for Students Who Need It Most
In addition to reduction through consolidation, the Trump administration is also proposing to fully eliminate ten programs altogether, wiping away nearly $2 billion in funding for evidence-based, bipartisan programs that support the educational needs of students across the country. Some of these programs include rural set-asides and supports, such as the Full-Service Community Schools Program (FSCS) and Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grants. The Biden administration championed FSCS, boosting funding five-fold from $30 million in FY2021 to over $150 million in FY2024. This historic investment allowed the Department of Education to award grants to over 200 communities across thirty states, including dozens of rural districts. The Department of Education specifically provided technical assistance to under-resourced areas, resulting in more awards to rural districts than congress required. This expanded support is critical because community schools are an evidence-based strategy that directly addresses inequities by integrating vital academic, social, and health services into the school day. Research consistently shows this approach leads to demonstrably positive outcomes for underserved students, such as improved attendance, stronger academic achievement, enhanced social-emotional well-being, and greater family engagement. Ultimately, these comprehensive supports are essential for narrowing opportunity and achievement gaps, ensuring all students, especially those in high-poverty and rural communities, have the chance to thrive.
EIR has been a key federal vehicle for supporting evidence-based innovation in education—particularly important in the wake of COVID-19, when addressing academic recovery, chronic absenteeism, and student well-being. Similarly, EIR, by current law, requires a 25 percent rural set aside. These programs don’t just support innovation—they help rural schools meet students’ basic needs, from improving STEM programs, to increasing access to mental health services, to creating out-of-school learning opportunities. Since its inception, EIR has awarded hundreds of grants, positively impacting millions of students across the nation by scaling effective educational practices. EIR ensures that federal support for cutting-edge educational practices reaches all corners of the nation, particularly those often overlooked.
Some of the most damaging cuts strike at the heart of educational opportunity—eliminating dedicated support for the nation’s 5.3 million English learners (ELs), migrant students, and the teachers who serve them. Among these, cutting and consolidating Title III is especially egregious. This program funds essential services that ensure ELs can access their education in a language they understand—a right protected by law. At a time when the Trump administration is undermining proven strategies that help ELs gain English proficiency, handing this funding over to states in a block grant with no guidance, support, or obligation to support language instruction is a dangerous abdication of responsibility. Title III was already underfunded at $890 million—far below what’s needed for our growing EL population. To now fold it into a $2 billion block grant shared among all states is indefensible. Abandoning multilingual learners and migrant children, without a plan for accountability or oversight, should give serious pause to anyone who claims to care about schools and America’s future as a global leader.
Even the administration’s proposed commitment to reading instruction, included in the background section of the summary budget, doesn’t hold up. While it touts a $150 million investment in reading, it simultaneously proposes eliminating the $194 million Comprehensive Literacy State Development (CLSD) program—the very federal education program supporting evidence-based literacy programs. Under this program, more than twenty states are focusing on evidence-based literacy practices such as the science of reading. It’s hypocritical: lamenting low reading scores while cutting federal programs to states for their proven literacy programs. This move directly breaks the promise of empowering states by dismantling existing, effective federal–state partnerships, and simultaneously undermines the commitment to raising academic achievement by gutting a program that demonstrably supports the very evidence-based literacy strategies it claims to prioritize. This signals either deep confusion or deliberate misdirection.
While making these cuts, the administration is also proposing a $60 million increase for charter schools, bringing total funding to $500 million. The program is already the largest discretionary K–12 program, but it is mostly an urban one: only a little over one in ten charter schools are in rural areas. Meanwhile, the pace of new charter school openings has slowed over the past five years, which means that additional funding risks fueling waste, fraud, and abuse rather than expanding meaningful educational opportunities.
Looking Ahead
Several of the programs targeted for elimination or consolidation in the administration’s proposed budget enjoy broad bipartisan support and have a track record of improving outcomes for students. But support alone doesn’t shield them from this administration’s chopping block. Budgets are moral documents. They reflect what—and who—we value. And this proposal sends a clear and troubling message: students in rural and underserved communities are not a priority.
The administration frames these cuts as part of a “simplification” strategy, but the reality is that it is eliminating meaningful investments that help children learn; investment in public education; in research-based literacy initiatives that actually reach classrooms; in mental health supports, full-service community schools, and models that are proven to support whole-child development. We need a federal education strategy that meets this moment and affirms every student’s right to opportunity—especially those historically denied it—not one that retreats from that responsibility.
Tags: state budget, education funding, federal budget, educational equity