Mark Lieberman
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Reporting on K-12 school $$ for @educationweek. Proud member of @EdWeekUnion. Bylines in @washingtonpost, @DCist, @VanityFair, @vulture, and more. he/him/his
Articles by Mark Lieberman
A Public School District Wants to Maximize Federal Choice Funds. Here’s How
Beginning next year, public school districts in at least 31 states could begin receiving tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer donations that would fuel scholarships for students to access expanded district services. But, unlike with state and federal formula dollars that flow directly to schools, this money will take a more circuitous path—and require more legwork on districts’ part to take advantage of it.
Public Schools Are Prepping for Federal Choice Cash. They Still Might Not Get It
For the 12 years Joshua Stafford has served as superintendent of the rural Vienna High School district in Illinois, he’s been dealing with insufficient resources. Ever since state lawmakers established a formula determining whether each of its 850 school districts’ annual funding levels meet baseline “adequacy,” Stafford’s district has hovered between 52% and 70% of the adequacy baseline, which now sits at close to $17,000 per student. As a result, he’s constantly looking for new revenue sources.
School Funding Is on the Ballot Across the Country. Here’s How
As voters nationwide head to the polls for next week’s midterm elections, they’ll be confronted with a wide range of dilemmas over where school funding should come from, how much schools should spend, and which priorities should be the focus of schools’ investments. Many of those questions appear in the form of state-level ballot measures. Some mention schools directly, while some have significant implications for schools even though they’re not mentioned in the ballot language.
Schools Wrestle With Exploding Health Costs: ‘Medical Inflation Is Crushing Us’
This past July, tragedy struck a handful of employees of the Big Walnut school district in Ohio. One was diagnosed with cancer. Another’s spouse received a cancer diagnosis. For a third staffer, it was their child. Those experiences, painful on their own terms, have also put the 4,500-student district in an even tougher financial position, according to Scott Gooding, Big Walnut’s interim treasurer.
Trump’s School Choice Program Could Push Public Schools to Charge New Fees
Public school districts in at least 30 states next year could start charging fees for expanded services their students can use federal tax-credit scholarship funds to cover. But in setting up those systems, districts will likely have to confront difficult logistical, legal, and philosophical questions—all of which could stymie their ability to participate in the new federal school choice program as extensively as private schools will. Beginning Jan.
New Rules for Federal School Choice: What You Need to Know
The Trump administration expects at least 2 million K-12 students nationwide to receive scholarships through its new national school choice program, which it projects will grow to $26 billion annually by 2030, an amount that dwarfs what’s now spent on school meals or Title I aid. The U.S. Department of the Treasury on Thursday released long-awaited proposed rules outlining how the new Federal Tax Credit Scholarship program will work when it launches next year.
Federal Education Tax Credit Rules Are Finally Here. What We Know So Far
The U.S. Department of the Treasury this morning released long-anticipated rules for the first-of-its-kind federal school choice program it’s launching this January—offering fresh details and raising new questions about student eligibility, public school participation, and protections against fraud and abuse.
Ed. Dept. Meets Research Spending Deadline—But Bigger Funding Challenges Loom
Under pressure from a federal court, the U.S. Department of Education’s research office this week narrowly finished spending more than $170 million, for now allaying concerns that the funds would revert to the U.S. Treasury after Sept. 30. But the office’s future remains uncertain, as the White House continues to withhold nearly half a billion additional dollars in fiscal 2026 funding Congress approved for it earlier this year.
Trump’s Ed. Dept. Is Still Disrupting Grants—Just More Quietly Than Before
Earlier this year, educators nationwide breathed a sigh of relief as the U.S. Department of Education began launching new competitions for grant programs the Trump administration had previously targeted with cuts and cancellations in 2025.
Trump, Bucking Congress Yet Again, Cancels $100 Million for Education
The Trump administration is using a mechanism widely viewed as illegal to cancel nearly $100 million Congress appropriated for expanding college-level foreign-language instruction and helping transient U.S. agricultural workers get GEDs and go to college.
Federal Tax Credits for K-12 Scholarships: What We Know (and Don’t)
The clock is ticking: The ambitious new federal school choice program will launch in January. And while the broad aim of the program is clear—to direct federally bankrolled money to families to spend on schooling—key details are still being hammered out.
Trump’s Education Funding Maneuvers Were Illegal, Judges Rule
The second Trump administration’s education agenda suffered two setbacks in federal court on Thursday, as judges ruled in separate cases that the U.S. Department of Education unlawfully canceled teacher-preparation grants and imposed new funding conditions for education research. The rulings add to a growing pile of legal verdicts reversing or neutralizing the Trump administration’s efforts to assert unprecedented executive authority over federal spending, including for education.
Trump Admin. Touts Ed. Dept.'s Help for States as It Tries to Shut It Down
The Trump administration is pressing forward with efforts to relocate U.S. Department of Education staffers, offload agency funding, and scale back the federal role in education—even as it touts a new initiative to help state education agencies measure policy outcomes.
$180M in Unspent Federal Education Research Funding to Expire Soon
(TNS) — The U.S. Department of Education's research arm has nearly a quarter of its annual budget left to spend with only a month before those funds expire, the department revealed in a court filing last week. Congress each year gives the Institute of Education Sciences an annual round of funds that must be spent by the end of the following fiscal year — essentially, a two-year period. Out of $768 million lawmakers approved in 2025 for IES, the agency had spent $587 million as of Aug.
Ed. Dept. Risks Letting $180 Million for Research Expire as Deadline Looms
The U.S. Department of Education’s research arm has nearly a quarter of its annual budget left to spend with only a month before those funds expire, the department revealed in a court filing last week. Congress each year gives the Institute of Education Sciences an annual round of funds that must be spent by the end of the following fiscal year—essentially, a two-year period. Out of $768 million lawmakers approved in 2025 for IES, the agency had spent $587 million as of Aug.
Averting a Shutdown, Congress Punts Federal Spending Decisions to December
Congress on Tuesday approved a plan to extend ongoing federal budget negotiations and delay implementation of controversial grant rule changes from Oct. 1 until Dec. 11, after the midterm elections. House lawmakers voted 370-48 on Sept. 1 in favor of a continuing resolution, already approved last month by the Senate, that carries over current fiscal 2026 federal funding levels into the first two months of fiscal 2027.
Head Start Providers Struggle as Trump Admin. Holds Up Funding Competitions
Head Start programs serving tens of thousands of students nationwide are facing an uncertain future as the federal government indefinitely stalls the competition process for programs seeking new assurances of long-term funding. Each of the nation’s 1,600 Head Start providers operates on a staggered, five-year federal grant.
Education Department Will Keep Sending Most K-12 Funds Through Its Own System
Despite ongoing efforts to transfer program responsibilities to other agencies, the U.S. Department of Education will continue to send billions of formula dollars for the current school year through its own online payments system this fall, the agency confirmed Monday. Congress in February approved more than $12.5 billion for K-12 schools to flow to states on Oct.
After Months of Standstill, Ed. Dept. Announces New Federal Research Funding
The U.S. Department of Education’s research wing has announced plans to begin new education research grantmaking, marking the agency’s first grant competition for research in more than 15 months amid a period of sluggish spending unprecedented in recent memory.
What’s in Store for School Funding for 2026-27?
Big changes and fierce debates over school funding are poised to continue playing out nationwide as the new school year begins. Congress is still far from finished negotiating the federal budget for the 2027-28 school year. High-stakes midterm elections could reshape the balance of power on Capitol Hill and in statehouses across the country. Less than two months later, a new federal tax credit for K-12 scholarships will begin rolling out.
Trump’s Education Department Is Letting Tens of Millions of Dollars Expire
The U.S. Department of Education last year let more than $75 million in congressionally appropriated funds expire without spending it—an amount without recent precedent that the agency appears on track to repeat this fall, a first-of-its-kind Education Week analysis of federal spending data shows.
From the Feds on Down, School Funding Is Uncertain. What to Know
The federal government supplies roughly $1 of every $10 that pays for America’s public K-12 schools each year. That’s been true for much of the 21st century, and it’s still true today. Even so, for many school district leaders, recent experiences with federal money, no matter how small a share of their overall budget, have been tumultuous.
Trump Cut Their Education Grants. Here’s What Happened Next
It was after 10 p.m. on Feb. 10, 2025, when Stephanie Lee Behm Cross opened an email notifying her that the U.S. Department of Education had terminated her federal teacher-training grant, effective immediately. Going to sleep was no longer an option. Cross, a professor of education at Georgia State University here, first had to call 23 university employees whose salaries were funded entirely by the grant to tell them she could only guarantee them pay for one more day.
School Pregnancy Prevention Efforts Shut Down as Trump Emphasizes Abstinence
The Children’s Aid’s teen pregnancy prevention program was more than just about talking to young people about the risks associated with teen pregnancy. The New York City nonprofit provides comprehensive services for K-12 students living in poverty in schools, at after-school programs, and in other community-based and foster-care settings. Its teen pregnancy prevention program provided young people with connections to trusted adults and referrals to health resources.
Federal Equity Centers Protecting Students’ Civil Rights Fight to Stay Open
For more than half a century, as spelled out in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal government has funded a set of “equity assistance centers”—small nonprofit organizations initially focused on desegregating schools that now more broadly help expand opportunities for marginalized students. Eshé Collins currently runs the Region II center, which covers schools across 11 southern states. She and her four colleagues work out of the offices of the Southern Education Foundation downtown here.
Big Changes to Federal Grants Are Coming: What They Could Mean for Schools
The Trump administration is advancing a sweeping set of regulatory changes that, if implemented, could permanently destabilize how schools and educators receive and spend federal dollars. New rules currently under review would add new restrictions on grant-funded efforts that clash with the current and future presidents’ policy positions, empower political appointees to intervene in ongoing awards and even terminate them early, and create new paperwork burdens for recipients of federal money.
Schools Lay Off Staff as Lawsuits Challenging Federal Grant Cuts Continue
The onslaught of federal grant cancellations that hit K-12 education last year has slowed—but schools and students affected by the cuts are still feeling the direct effects of lost funding. Schools across Illinois are preparing to lay off staffers this week after a federal judge last Friday narrowed the path to reinstatement of canceled grants for community schools programming. The Trump administration recently redoubled its efforts to disrupt funding for school-based mental health supports.
Special Ed. and Civil Rights: What We Know About the Ed. Dept.'s Latest Moves
The Trump administration last week advanced its ongoing push to close the U.S. Department of Education, announcing that two major agency functions—special education and civil rights enforcement—will move to other agencies. They join more than 100 other K-12 and higher education programs that have already begun moving. All told, six federal agencies—Health and Human Services, Interior, Justice, Labor, State, and Treasury—are set to oversee Department of Education programs.
Education Department Moves Special Ed. and Civil Rights to Other Agencies
The U.S. Department of Education has begun outsourcing responsibility for overseeing the nation’s sprawling special education system and enforcing civil rights law in schools to other federal agencies, after months of previewing dramatic efforts to restructure both core functions. Department officials announced the moves—made possible by four new interagency agreements—on Tuesday morning to advocacy group representatives, and on Tuesday afternoon to reporters and the general public.
Education Department Moves Special Ed. and Civil Rights to Other Agencies
Civil Rights 1 hour ago Trump further guts Education Dept. by shifting oversight of special ed, civil rights NPR - Jonaki Mehta , Cory Turner • 1h Two of the U.S. Department of Education's biggest responsibilities will shift to other federal agencies: safeguarding student civil rights and supervising programs for students with disabilities.
Education Department Moves Special Ed. and Civil Rights to Other Agencies
The U.S. Department of Education has begun outsourcing responsibility for overseeing the nation’s sprawling special education system and enforcing civil rights law in schools to other federal agencies, after months of previewing dramatic efforts to restructure both core functions. Department officials announced the moves on Tuesday morning to advocacy group representatives, who shared accounts of the discussions with Education Week on the condition of anonymity.
How Can Public Schools Participate in Trump’s Federal Choice Program?
Updated: This article has been updated with information from additional governors’ responses to Education Week inquiries asking whether they plan to participate in the federal scholarship tax credit program. Federal officials have not yet released precise rules for how a new education tax credit will work. But that’s not stopping school leaders in Gwinnett County, Ga., from preparing to participate.
Districts Brace for the Unexpected as Federal Funding Troubles Linger
Last summer, when the Trump administration abruptly withheld nearly $7 billion in formula funding for K-12 schools nationwide, school district leaders in Gwinnett County, Ga., were concerned but not panicked. The 183,000-student district—Georgia’s largest—had enough cash on hand to weather at least three to four months of federal delays. Ultimately, the White House bowed to bipartisan backlash and released the withheld funds within a month of their original due date.
Tornado Threats Are a Constant. But Funding for a Safe Room Is Lagging
The federal government in 2022 awarded almost $9 million to the rural Cuba City school district in Wisconsin. District leaders planned to use the grant to outfit a new gymnasium building with a safe room where students and community members could shelter during a tornado outbreak. More than four years later, the district still hasn’t seen a cent of that money, and the plan to build a safe room is still on hold.
Congress Is Working on a New K-12 Budget. See What’s Proposed for Key Programs
Congress has kicked off negotiations over the federal budget, and lawmakers are poised to clash over whether and how much to cut education investments for the 2027-28 school year. The House appropriations subcommittee focused on education and labor issues on Friday morning advanced its fiscal 2027 budget bill on a party line vote of 11-7.
House GOP Endorses Education Cuts as Talks on Trump’s Budget Begin
House Republicans on Thursday unveiled a federal budget proposal that once again proposes billions of dollars in education funding cuts, and aims to impose new restrictions for schools that support transgender students. The fiscal 2027 appropriations bill, released Thursday morning in advance of a subcommittee markup on Friday, marks the opening salvo for what will likely be months of negotiations on Capitol Hill. Congress has until Sept.
White House Blocks $2 Billion for Education: See All the Affected Programs
The Trump administration is using an obscure and typically routine federal budget procedure to withhold more than $2 billion for education that Congress approved in February. Lawmakers belatedly approved a fiscal 2026 budget for the U.S. Department of Education on Feb. 3. Before the agency can actually spend those dollars, the federal Office of Management and Budget by law must “apportion” the correct amounts, or dispense them, into the agency’s accounts.
Mark Lieberman
A tutor works with students at Benjamin O. Davis Middle School in Compton, Calif., on Feb. 6, 2025. The federal tax-credit scholarship program that launches next year can cover select expenses for public school students, including for tutoring. But to receive revenue from the program, public schools could have to set up systems to charge fees that the federally bankrolled scholarships can then cover.
Decades After Brown v. Board, New Lawsuit Challenges Persistent K-12 Segregation
Racially segregated public schools have been illegal in Massachusetts since before the Civil War, and nationwide since the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision 72 years ago this month. Even so, segregation persists to this day in the state’s K-12 system, effectively depriving tens of thousands of Black and Latino students of their constitutional right to an adequate education, a new state lawsuit argues.
Schools Brace for Impact as Fuel Prices Climb
As the ongoing war in Iran drives up fuel prices across the globe, some school districts are already feeling the strain on their budgets—and many more are bracing for impact. Last school year, the Yakima district in Washington state spent about $3.84 per gallon on diesel for school buses. In the 16,000-student district’s last fuel order in late April, it shelled out about $6.30 per gallon.
Trump Holds Back $2 Billion for Education Grants. What Will Happen Next?
The White House office that oversees federal spending is withholding more than $2 billion Congress approved in February for more than 30 separate K-12 and higher education programs—all of which the Trump administration has repeatedly proposed to eliminate. Lawmakers belatedly approved a fiscal year 2026 budget for the U.S. Department of Education on Feb. 3.
Trump Holds Back $2 Billion for Education Grants. What Will Happen Next?
Kevin O'Leary's Massive Data Center Project in Utah Gets the Greenlight, Locals Are Furious The project would be more than twice the size of Manhattan and could consume more electricity than the entire state currently uses. Shark Tank’s Kevin …
A School Wants a Tornado Shelter. A Federal Grant Keeps Getting in the Way
Updated: This article was updated to include a statement from a FEMA spokesperson. Aaron Olson first learned in January 2020 that the federal government might help pay for a new tornado shelter for the 670-student school district he oversees in rural, southwest Wisconsin. One pandemic, two presidential elections, one federal lawsuit, and more than six years later, it still hasn’t happened.
McMahon Still Wants to Relocate Special Ed.—And Other Budget Hearing Takeaways
More than a year after signaling major changes to federal programs for students with disabilities, the Trump administration continues to weigh shifting pieces of the U.S. Department of Education’s special education office to the departments of Labor or Health and Human Services, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said Tuesday.
Trump Sidestepped Congress on More Than $1 Billion in Ed. Spending Last Year
The U.S. Department of Education took roughly $1 billion Congress appropriated for specific education programs during the first months of President Donald Trump’s second term and either spent it differently than how lawmakers intended or hasn’t spent it at all, the agency acknowledged in recently published budget documents.
Federal Funds for Schools Will Still Flow Through Ed. Dept. System—For Now
Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify the U.S. Department of Education’s response. Despite ongoing efforts to transition federal education programs to other agencies, billions of federal dollars for K-12 schools will continue to flow through the U.S. Department of Education’s grant portal this summer, the nation’s top K-12 official told states last week.
Trump’s Budget Proposes Billions in K-12 Cuts. Will They Happen?
President Donald Trump is once again proposing to slash more than $8 billion from federal programs for K-12 education. But that doesn’t mean schools should immediately brace for cuts of that magnitude. Congress still has until Sept. 30 to approve a budget for the upcoming fiscal year. If recent history repeats itself, it might take many months after that for lawmakers to reach an agreement—and that agreement could bear little resemblance to Trump’s proposal.
Trump Again Proposes Major Education Cuts in New Budget Proposal
Updated: This story has been updated to include additional details about the 2027 budget proposal. Just two months after Congress maintained steady year-over-year federal funding for most education programs, the second Trump administration is asking lawmakers to once again consider major cuts that would take effect for the 2027-28 school year. The White House budget released Friday likely won’t resemble the spending package Congress eventually approves.
See Which Ed. Dept. Programs Are Moving to New Agencies: A Tracker
The Trump administration is shifting large swaths of the U.S. Department of Education’s congressionally mandated portfolio to other agencies, as part of its ongoing campaign to shutter the Education Department altogether. As of June 16, 2026, the Education Department has struck 14 interagency agreements with six separate Cabinet-level agencies to transfer at least 148 K-12 and higher education programs, according to an Education Week analysis.
Meet the Trump Cabinet Secretaries Taking Over Ed. Dept. Programs
The Education Department is transferring day-to-day operations for dozens of its congressionally mandated programs to other federal agencies—each with its own set of leaders, working conditions, and procedures. Some staff who manage those education programs have already begun shifting to new offices in different buildings. And Trump-appointed Cabinet secretaries have begun signaling their involvement in federal education policy.
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