On March 14, the Senate passed, and President Trump then signed into law, a long-term Continuing Resolution (CR) by a vote of 54-46 to provide annual, discretionary federal funding through the remainder of fiscal year (FY) 2025, which ends on September 30, 2025. The CR funds the U.S. Department of Education (USED) at essentially the same level as in FY2024. Note there is a slight decrease to account for the elimination of congressional members’ projects, also known as earmarks, included in the FY2024 appropriations bill. A CR was necessary because Congress had been unable to agree on a FY2025 appropriations bill. Despite the overall amount of funding remaining basically the same, there may be a significant impact on the funding levels for some specific USED programs.

This is because CRs, unlike annual appropriations bills, do not include explicit spending directives from Congress, which are included in an accompanying Explanatory Statement. Such Explanatory Statements provide instructions to federal agencies specifying funding levels for each individual program. Absent such instructions, the Trump Administration may take advantage of the flexibility in a CR to implement federal funding for some programs for the remainder of FY2025 without congressional input. Emphasizing this point, Senate Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA) said during the Senate’s deliberations, “Because House Republicans’ bill fails to include the typical, detailed spending directives…they wrote a bill that turns many of our accounts into slush funds…to redirect funding to their own pet projects, force states and communities to abide by their directives, and slash, burn, and zero out programs that our families count on.”

Key to understanding the potential impact on specific USED programs subject to the CR’s flexibility is that the annual appropriations bill itself typically does not include specific funding levels for a large number of federal education programs. Instead, the annual appropriations bill for the USED, in most cases, only includes funding at the “account” level that typically involves a combined amount for several programs. However, annual appropriations bills are always accompanied by an Explanatory Statement that outlines explicitly how Congress expects funding to be directed to each program under each account.

As noted above, CRs in general and the FY2025 CR in particular do not have such an accompanying Explanatory Statement. When faced with this lack of program-level funding specifics, prior Administrations have followed as much as possible the instructions in the most recent FY’s Explanatory Statement, as well as informally discussed changes with appropriators. But this is not required by law. In other words, the Trump Administration could proceed in one of two ways. First, they could follow Congress’s instructions from FY2024 when finalizing its spending plan under the FY2025 CR, similar to prior Administrations. Second, President Trump may instead exercise his own judgment about how to fund specific programs within each account. In other words, USED’s operating plan for FY2025 may increase funding for the Administration’s priority programs within each account, while reducing funding for other programs under the same account.

To illustrate how this might play out, consider two higher education accounts:

• The CR sets the overall funding level for the Higher Education Account, but the Trump Administration could choose how to fund specific programs under the account. These programs include Strengthening Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), Federal TRIO Programs, the Teacher Quality Partnership Program, Child Care Access Means Parents in Schools program, and the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, among several other programs.
• This is also the case for the Student Financial Assistance Account, which includes Pell Grants, the Federal Work-Study program, and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (SEOG).

Notably, there are some limits to the flexibility available to the Administration. The FY2025 CR does explicitly specify funding levels at the program level for some programs, grouping them together with unspecified programs at the account level. For these specified programs, USED and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will have to provide funding for those programs exactly as directed by Congress. Chief among these programs are:

• The core early childhood education programs such as the Child Care and Development Block Grant, Head Start, and the Preschool Development Grant Birth to Five program;
• Some ESSA programs, including Title I (which provides funding to schools with high percentages of children from low-income families); 21st Century Community Learning Centers; State Assessments; Title IV-A – Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants; and Education, Innovation, and Research Grants; and
• USED funding for particular offices, including the Office of Federal Student Aid and the Office for Civil Rights.

These bullets are only some of the programs with specified funding levels. Please see the Committee for Education Funding’s comprehensive list for which programs have specified amounts and which remain unspecified.

Under the CR, USED has 45 days from enactment to submit a detailed operating plan down to the program, project, or activity level to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees for FY2025 funding. Accordingly, we will learn on or around April 28, how the Administration will or will not take advantage of the funding flexibility offered by the new CR. Because most USED programs receive forward funding, that operating plan will govern much of the 2025-2026 school year. Specifically, the CR spending plan will apply to all the federal funding that becomes available beginning July 1, 2025, and that remains available for obligation through September 30, 2026.

Finally, there are other potential mechanisms, unrelated to the CR, that could result in cuts to or reallocations of federal education funding. These include Congressional processes such as reconciliation and rescission, any decision by the President to “impound” funds by delaying or canceling funding appropriated by Congress, and the FY2026 appropriations process, starting with the President’s budget request that is expected in the next month. We will provide more detail on all of these as events unfold.