Education Week

President Donald Trump is proposing $12 billion in cuts to the U.S. Department of Education budget for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. The plan “reflects an agency that is responsibly winding down,” the administration says in budget documents. While the president’s budget proposal keeps topline funding steady for the Education Department’s two largest sources of funding for schools, Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, it asks Congress to eliminate nearly four dozen other grant programs that provide services for specific K-12 student populations, pay for teacher training and professional development, and fund education research and data collection, according to an Education Week analysis of the Trump budget. The Trump administration proposes to consolidate 18 of those grant programs into a $2 billion “K-12 Simplified Funding Program” that states and districts would have substantial flexibility to spend as they see fit—though with $4.5 billion less overall than what the individual programs it would replace currently provide. It proposes eliminating six special education grant programs and transferring the money allocated for them into the primary IDEA funding stream for states.

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