Education Department hands more states flexibility with federal dollars

The Trump administration is increasing its efforts to turn more control of federal education money to the states as it continues working to dismantle the Education Department.

Six states have received waivers allowing them to consolidate more than $109 million in federal education funding and bypass certain requirements for local education agencies, Kirsten Baesler, assistant secretary for the department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, told Stateline in an interview.

The consolidation of four funding streams into one means the money can be used more flexibly by the states with Returning Education to the States waivers — Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, South Dakota and Vermont. Some states chose to put that money toward statewide literacy or math improvement efforts. Indiana will run a pilot program allowing up to 15% of its districts to combine two funding streams that had been focused separately on teachers and students and to alter requirements for all schools on college and career readiness measures when calculating a high school’s performance rating. 

It’s a part of a growing push by the Trump administration to turn federal education measures to state control. Beyond the six states that received these waivers, 22 states have received Education Flexibility Partnership, or Ed-Flex authority, which allows states to waive certain federal education requirements for school districts without seeking separate permission from the Department of Education each time. 

That’s the highest number of states in the program’s 32-year history, Baesler said. 

Those states are: Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. 

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While many public school district staff welcome the waivers, some state education groups have opposed them. Some have argued that consolidating federal funding weakens guardrails that ensure money goes to the specific populations and programs they were meant to serve. In Arkansas, for example, the Arkansas Education Association warned that greater flexibility would reduce transparency and possibly shift money away from formula-based funding for high-need districts, the Arkansas Advocate reported. 

A state must request such a waiver. Baesler said department officials are working with states before they submit applications to determine whether their goals require a waiver, an amended state plan or could already be done under existing federal law.

Baesler also said state officials should take greater responsibility for identifying and pursuing their own education needs and priorities rather than waiting for direction from the feds.

“Don’t wait for the signal to come because what students in North Dakota need are going to be completely different than what Texas needs or Louisiana or Oregon or Washington,” Baesler said.

In September, the department will convene with state representatives to discuss results from a Learning Agenda Initiative which includes eight states: Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin, officials told Stateline. The program paired state education agencies with federally funded research and technical-assistance centers to examine state data and develop multi-year learning agendas identifying needs and ways to measure a state’s progress on its education priorities.

The department is also giving states additional points on some competitive grant applications when they design or help lead “Returning Education to the States” projects.

The future of the Department of Education has been a hot topic since President Donald Trump signed a March 2025 executive order directing Secretary Linda McMahon to take steps to close the department and push more control of education to the states. Congress, which created the department through a 1979 federal law, retains the authority to eliminate it.

But the department has begun to hand off some administrative duties to other federal agencies. 

Carissa Moffatt Miller, CEO of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said at an National Conference of State Legislatures conference earlier this month that transferring federal programs between agencies could disrupt grant payments because the Education and Labor departments, for example, use different grant management systems. Those delays could lead districts to hold back spending or pull teacher contracts even if Congress appropriated the money, she said.

Moffatt Miller said that federal funding accounts for about 12% of education funding, with the remaining 88% coming from state and local sources. Analysis from Education Week estimated that at least $12 billion in previously awarded federal education funds have been disrupted by administrative actions over the past year.

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org. 

Source: Washington State Standard

This article was originally published by Washington State Standard.