On April 3rd, President Trump released his fiscal year 2027 (FY27) budget request, which includes requests for the U.S. Department of Education. Although the budget request maintains funding for some major education programs like Title I and IDEA, it requests that Congress enact significant cuts to other programs including Title II-A, the primary federal funding stream for professional learning.
Under the proposed budget, Title II-A would be one of 17 programs consolidated into a block grant to states that would receive approximately $2 billion. This represents a major cut – over $4 billion or 70% – from the FY26 total for those programs, during which Title II-A received $2.2 billion. Furthermore, the block grant regulations would require states to spend 25% of their funding on supporting evidence-based literacy instruction and 25% on evidence-based mathematics instruction, thereby further reducing the amount of funding available for many initiatives previously funded by Title II-A. Several other longstanding education programs would be cut entirely, including Teacher Quality Partnership Grants, Language Instruction for English Learners and Immigrant Students (Title III), Migrant Education, Full-Service Community Schools, and higher education programs such as TRIO and GEAR UP.
It is important to note that the President’s budget is far from a done deal. As EducationCouncil wrote in a recent policy update, “this is only the first step in the annual appropriations process. Congress will review the request and draft its own FY27 appropriations bills. Appropriations bills need 60 votes to pass the Senate given the filibuster—meaning that a final appropriations bill must have bipartisan support.”
We may see another budget showdown like last year’s, when the President proposed steep education cuts that were ultimately rejected by Congress. After disagreement in the Senate, whose proposal restored the funds, and the House, whose proposal mostly supported the cuts, most of the funding was maintained when both houses enacted a bipartisan FY26 appropriations bill that was signed by the President. That bill included level funding for Title II-A from the previous fiscal year, although because of inflation, the $2.2 billion allotment was essentially a decrease in real dollars.
EducationCouncil also notes that the President’s budget request “includes new efforts to put the agency, in the Administration’s words, ‘on a path to elimination’… [and] aligns with its ongoing efforts to transfer functions and funds from [the Department of Education] to other agencies via interagency agreements.” The Department of Education is already engaged in nine interagency agreements that transfer funding for programs such as career and technical education to the Department of Labor. This would continue under the plan outlined in the president’s budget proposal.
The budget request also proposes a 75% reduction in spending on personnel and program administration, which would result in a department staffed by only 231 full-time employees, according to EducationCouncil. The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education would be reduced to 28 staff, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to 31, and the Office of Postsecondary Education to 15.
If FY27 negotiations follow a pattern and timeline similar to last year’s, they will continue through the summer and likely into September. The FY26 budget was not finally approved until late January 2026, after continuing resolutions and a partial government shutdown.
As FY27 negotiations continue, Learning Forward will share updates and recommendations for calling on the President and Congress to fully fund the educational programs and services students need and deserve.
