FY26 Federal Funding at Risk for America’s Schools

EdTrust has created an interactive tool that shows what’s at stake for states if the budget proposal from Trump or the House is adopted for school districts across the country, including high-poverty, urban, and rural districts

September 15, 2025 by EdTrust
Image of a dollar bill superimposed on an American flag signifying money

Both the House of Representatives and President Trump are working to expand the Great American Heist — the largest transfer of wealth in U.S. history — throughout the country’s K-12 public schools. Funding proposals from both the House of Representatives and the President propose eliminating about $6 billion in funding that supports the programs and initiatives that students depend upon for educational success. These include money for teacher training, after-school programs, school nurses and counselors, specialists to support the needs of students with disabilities and multilingual learners, and research and data activities to help us understand what works to make education better. The funding proposals also aim to:

  • Cut $5 billion Title I funding, which is a lifeline for schools in the nation’s high-poverty communities. (House proposal)
  • Convert 18 federal programs into a single block grant, while reducing the total funding of the block-granted programs from $6.5 billion to $2 billion. This would not only reduce education services overall but open the door to districts abandoning certain families, students, and schools. (President’s proposal)
  • Steal more than $2 billion that was promised to school districts back in March 2025. (House proposal)

While Senate appropriations leaders have thus far rejected the harmful proposals in the president’s budget, we know our work is far from done. We need bipartisan majorities in Congress to protect these educational investments in any final funding deal.

The FY26 Federal Funding at Risk tool highlights what’s at stake if any of the funding proposals becomes law. The tool helps you understand the effects in terms of dollars, school lunches, library resources, and teacher salaries. Funding for school districts across the country, particularly funding for districts with high percentages of students of color and districts in high-poverty, urban, or rural communities, face disastrous cuts. While the Senate’s proposal will lead to small funding changes, the President’s budget proposal and the House bill would mean fewer services, programs, and opportunities for the students who need them the most — including students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, multilingual learners, and students with disabilities. Opportunity gaps will grow and funding roadblocks will limit pathways for student success in school and beyond.

Data Tool

Using This Tool

The tool can help answer questions like:

  • How much K-12 funding will the districts with high poverty rates, high percentages of students of color, or serving rural areas in my state lose based on each of the current FY26 funding proposals, and which proposal is most or least devastating for those districts?
  • How much funding per student would be cut in my school district?
  • How much federal K-12 funding did my district receive in FY23?

Here’s how the tool works

The different tabs allow you to see how the proposals would impact funding in different states and districts. If you want to know how the proposals would impact funding in:

  • High poverty districts, compared with low poverty districts, go to the “poverty analysis” tab.
  • Districts with high, medium, and low percentages of Black, Latino, and Native students, go to the “students of color analysis” tab.
  • Districts in cities versus districts in suburban or rural areas, go to the “geographic locale analysis” tab.
  • Your specific school district, go to the “school district map” tab and hover over any district on the map to view the data. On this tab, you can also search for a district in the search bar – that will highlight the district in the map.

Each tab in the tool allows you to view a lot of different information about the risks to FY26 federal education funding. In each tab, you can view:

  • The effects (usually negative) from the funding proposals by the president, House of Representatives, and Senate.
  • FY23 funding levels
  • New funding levels if the proposals are signed into law

Note: The Learning Policy Institute has published an analysis comparing the impact on key formula funding to states of the President’s FY26 budget and Senate appropriations bill, which can be found here.

New America has published an analysis of the funding proposals from the president and House of Representatives on schools and school systems in each congressional district, which can be found here.