Episode 150: What the Funding Freeze Means for K-12 and Your Child

A funding shock the size of a small state budget doesn’t just make headlines—it changes classrooms. When the federal government froze, then unfroze, billions destined for K–12, districts delayed hiring, shelved curriculum purchases, and cut partnerships that keep after‑school and migrant education programs alive. I walk through how those ripples hit hardest in communities that rely most on federal support—students of color, English learners, and children with disabilities—and why even a short pause shakes long‑term trust.

The story doesn’t end with money moving again. Fresh NAEP results show twelfth graders slipping in reading and math, eighth‑grade science down since 2019, and a widening gap between the highest and lowest performers. I connect the dots: the attention drain of smartphones and social media, the gradual decline in clear accountability that once lifted low-performing students, and the pandemic’s lasting disruption to core routines. I also highlight a worrying trend—girls’ science scores falling further than those of boys—and explore how lost STEM initiatives and mentorship may have contributed.

Data itself is under pressure. With staffing cuts at the Department of Education, NCES, and the Institute of Education Sciences face constraints that could shrink assessments over the next decade, even as policymakers need more, not less, clarity. Still, families have leverage right now. I share practical, low‑lift habits that build back skills: playful science at home in the early years, 20 focused minutes of reading a day backed by phonics and rich nonfiction, and short, joyful math practice that boosts confidence and even literacy.

If you want a grounded look at federal education funding, NAEP trends, and what actually helps learners rebound, you’re in the right place. Listen, share with a parent who needs a plan, and leave me your district’s experience—then subscribe so you never miss a Tuesday drop.

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Chapters

• 1:11 Who We Are and Why We Care
• 3:44 The Federal Freeze: Scope and Stakes
• 4:53 Funds Unfrozen, Trust Broken
• 6:32 Uneven Impact on Districts and Programs
• 8:28 Who Depends Most on Federal Dollars
• 10:48 Private Schools and State Agencies’ Share
• 12:36 Lawsuits and Constitutional Challenge
• 14:59 Scores Are Falling—If Not Money, What?
• 18:24 Policy Lessons from NCLB and Gender Gaps
• 21:26 Data Under Strain at NCES and NAEP
• 23:03 Parent Action Steps at Home
• 26:16 Key Takeaways and Listener Prompt

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:27

Welcome to another episode of K-12 Public Education Insights, Empowering Parents of Color podcast. The podcast that converges at the intersection of educational research and parental actions. It's about making the trends, topics, and theories in public education understandable so that you can implement them into practical, actionable strategies that work for your children. My name is Dr. Kim J. Fields, former corporate manager, turned education researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as experiencing the microaggressions that I faced as an African-American mom raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. Once I gained the information and the insights that I needed, I was then equipped to be able to successfully support my children in their educational progress. This battle-tested experience is what I provide as action steps for you to take. It's like enjoying a bowl of educational research with a sprinkling of motherwood wisdom on top. If you're looking to find out more about the current information and issues in education that could affect you or your children, and the action steps you can take to give your children the advantages they need, then you're in the right place. Thanks for tuning in today. I know that staying informed about K-12 public education trends and topics is important to you, so keep listening. Give me 30 minutes or less, and I'll provide insights on the latest trends, issues, and topics pertaining to this constantly evolving K-12 public education environment. Earlier this year, President Trump froze more than five billion dollars, that's billion with a B from the Department of Education. There are numerous implications of what this funding freeze could do to the Department of Education, including schools' lack of trust in the government, pending lawsuits, and the continued downside of student academic achievement. Think this doesn't affect you and your children in their local schools? Think again. I address what the implications of the funding freeze means to you as parents with children in your local K 12 public schools, as well as other impacts at the local level. Let's gain some insight on this. Sometimes you have to take what the president says with a grain of salt. Well, at least I do. After all the threats of withholding five billion dollars in funding from the Department of Education, the Trump administration unfroze billions of K-12 education dollars in late July of this year. The funds that were released from various grant programs to the states were for migrant education, teacher professional development and teacher training, English learner services, academic enrichment programs, adult education programs, and adult literacy and civics education programs. Funds were also released for before and after school programs. The education funds emphasized that states have to comply with a long list of federal civil rights laws. One casualty of the billions, up to$6.8 billion of funding freeze that had taken effect and the funds are now released, is that schools have a lack of trust in the government. Many education leaders said that the damage from the unexpected delays in funding restoration can't be easily undone, and it created an environment in which trust can't be easily rebuilt. Most of the immediate impacts include employment positions that will remain unfilled. Beyond the immediate impacts, many school district leaders and others who work with them said that they are growing skeptical of depending on federal funding because they are unsure of the likelihood that it will happen again. While several urban school districts were able to move money around to support staff and programs, for school districts that served smaller populations, a temporary loss of federal funding amounted to more than a minor bliff. For example, some school programs were shut down in places like Oluchua County, Florida, Batineau, North Dakota, and Grand Isle, Vermont. Classes for adult learners were suspended in Abilene, Texas, Fisherville, Virginia, and Oak Hill, West Virginia, and programs serving children of seasonal migrant workers in St. Louis and Wenatchee, Washington suddenly could only serve a fraction of their typical student population. Additionally, the Cincinnati District had to halt plans to purchase new curriculum materials, and the Fort Worth, Texas District had to cancel contracts with local nonprofits. These are just a very small sampling of examples of the impact of a lack of funding on school districts across this country. Uncertainty was the primary effect of the funding freaks. Generally, school districts receive 8 to 10% of their budgets from federal sources. The rest comes from state investments and local tax revenue. In the last 50 years, however, federal funding has largely been geared toward helping ensure high needs students, including those from low-income families and those with disabilities, and making sure that they have access to the same educational opportunities as their peers. As a result of this, some states and districts depend on federal funding a lot more than others. And you can guess which school districts and states depend on federal funding based on the populations they serve. That's right, school districts with high concentrations of students of color and students from low-income families who stand to lose several times more dollars per pupil than districts with low concentrations of these student populations. This affects more than 9,000 school districts across 46 states, according to federal spending data analysis. In real life, this looks like a loss of funding for after-school programs and early childhood education programs for students of color and English language learners. It also looks like an interruption in services for students who qualify for special education. Are you seeing a pattern here? Federal funding makes up more than 10% of annual revenue for approximately 25% of this nation's 13,000 public school districts. At the state level, public schools' dependence on federal funding ranges from nearly 19% in Arizona and New Mexico to less than 6% in Connecticut and New Jersey. Simply stated, this means that more money equals more resources. Less money equals less resources. It's important to remember that these federal funds don't just go to public schools. The federal government requires that public school districts ensure non-public school students receive equitable services. And this includes private schools which benefit from a portion of the allocation from these federal funds. For private schools that have smaller enrollments, they need federal funds to add professional development for teachers as one type of funding that's necessary for the school. You should also be aware that many state education agencies receive a large amount of their annual funding from the federal government. So even with a disbanded Department of Education, state education agencies need federal funds to provide high quality services to the school districts they serve. The Trump administration emphasizes shifting federal education responsibility to the states, but without federal funding, it's like telling the states good luck, you're on your own. The bottom line is that without the funding, fewer education services will be provided. Not surprisingly, two dozen states have sued President Trump over the six point eight billion dollar school funding freeze because they say that the move was unconstitutional. The lawsuit filed July 4th of this year in the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island characterized the Trump administration's unprecedented withholding of billions of dollars that Congress appropriated for education as a brazen attack on the constitutional separation of powers. The lawsuit also contended that federal laws were violated, especially those governing education programming, administrative procedures, and executive branch spending of funds allocated by Congress. The lawsuit seeks to restore all the federal funding cuts that were made from schools in the states listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Are you ready to know whether your state was one of the plaintiffs in this lawsuit? Then listen up. Those states seeking relief on behalf of their schools include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin. The District of Columbia is also a plaintiff. There's been no update on the status of this lawsuit to date. So the six point eight billion dollars in federal funds has been reinstated. The programs, the curriculum, the staff needed to provide enriching educational experiences for all children seems to be stable for the moment. Schools have always managed to secure funding. However, funding has not always translated into increased test scores. The question is, why are scores still falling on the nation's report card and why are high school seniors still falling further behind? If money is not the reason, then what is? The National Assessment of Educational Progress is known as NAT or the Nation's Report Card. It displays how well this country's students are doing academically, with test results given to fourth and eighth graders every two years. It's designed to tell us what's happening to student achievement, but not why student achievement continues to fall. Science scores for eighth graders are down since 2019, which was the last time students were tested in that subject. High school seniors have also lost ground in reading and math. Twelfth grade reading scores hit a peak in 2009 and fell significantly over the following 10 years. Twelfth grade math scores peaked in 2013 and have also fallen since 2019. Results released in September of this year from the 2024 Nations Report card show that more students than ever before are scoring below NAPES threshold for mastery of basic skills. It's the first time the test has been given to 12th graders since before the pandemic. Overall, 12th graders who took the test in 2024 were less prepared for college than their peers in 2019. This means that high school students are taking their next steps in life with fewer skills and less knowledge in core subject areas compared to their predecessors a decade ago, which to me is a dangerous trend for the overall subject area knowledge and critical thinking skills necessary to make informed decisions in the future in this society. The gap between the lowest performing and highest performing students is now widening across all subjects and grades, highlighting the stark reality that schools today are equipping only some students for post-secondary success. Money and decline in student achievement pre-pandemic are not the cause for the current woes in academic achievement. What seems to be the main culprit is the rise of smartphones and, in particular, the advent of social media platforms targeting young people. Phones distract students from math homework just as much as they do from reading. Because students are not taught how to discern factual information from opinion online, the readings that most students do is superficial. Surveys indicate that disadvantaged students spend the most time on their devices, while motivated students of all backgrounds may be able to use them to enhance their learning. While there may not be a definitive causal link between smartphones and learning, the circumstantial evidence is sufficiently strong. It may be worth looking back into the past when elected officials from both political parties came together around one agenda grounded in articulating clear standards for student learning and holding schools accountable for ensuring students met those standards on state tests. This later became known in 2002 as the No Child Left Behind Act, or Nickleby. This law produced results in reading and math, such as steadily rising levels of achievement driven by unusually large gains for low performers, precisely the opposite of the pattern over the last decade. The downside to that law was that it didn't emphasize other subjects such as civics, history, and science instruction. Another downside that I saw to these standards for state testing was that teachers began teaching to the test instead of teaching students how to think and how to learn. A loosening of that law's provisions began around 2011 and may be a contributing factor to the recent backsliding in student academic achievement. Worth noting is that at the high school level, girls' scores declined further than boys' scores in science, reopening a gender achievement gap in that subject that had been closed by 2019. A possible reason for the girls' score decline is that some of the initiatives that schools had in place to encourage girls in STEM were lost in the shuffle of pandemic era learning because when the education system was disrupted, some of the extra things that teachers might have been doing, like having role models come in or having days focused on technical careers, might have fallen by the wayside. Let's tie all of this information back to the funding discussion. The NAPE results come as operations at the National Center for Education Statistics, which is the federal statistical agency responsible for collecting, analyzing, and reporting data on the condition of U.S. education from early childhood to adult education, and its parent organization, the Institute for Education Sciences, face uncertainty following federal staffing cuts at the U.S. Department of Education earlier this year. Following these widespread reductions in force, representatives from the National Assessment Governing Board, the organization that sets policy for NATE, announced that some tests will shrink in scope over the next 10 years. Although the main reading and math tests in fourth and eighth grades, which are required by law, will continue as scheduled. These latest test results from the 2024 Nations Report card throws into sharp focus how critical it is to have the test, which is the only nationally comparable assessment of student abilities on this scale, for identifying persistent trends in student achievement. So what can you do with the information that I've just shared? Here are the action steps you can take regarding how funding for the K-12 public education system impacts you locally. In order to reverse the trends in lower academic achievement, it's important that you continue reinforcing and enhancing what your children learn in school. The fact is that higher achieving students are coming into schools and tests with more experience seeing science, for example, and doing science at home. The research indicates that if you have more science starting in pre-K and kindergarten, it engages students, it increases their interest in school, and it increases their math and literacy performance. A great science kit for young learners, those between the ages of six and eight years old, comes from National Geographic, including kits that contain 15, 45, and up to 100 experiments. These are a great way for kids to incorporate STEM projects at home. Also, keep reading to your child every day. And when they're old enough to read by themselves, provide the resources and the designated space for them to practice their reading skills daily. And because reading requires a lot of coordination mentally and physically, the optimal allotted time to practice reading is only 20 minutes per day every day. A series of books that I enjoyed and were very effective for teaching my children to learn to read was a pig can jig reading series starting at around age five. I also like the Montessori phonetic reading blocks for children to start recognizing and sounding letters as early as age three. Additionally, include mathematics practice, even with your preschooler and kindergartner as part of your at-home work. Research indicates that improving math skills also improves reading and literacy skills. The scholastic series of math games and the Kugan spelled C-O-O-G-A-N math games have been a hit with my grandchildren in teaching them mathematics concepts. By the way, I devoted an entire episode to the importance of early math literacy skills in episode 61. The main thing about incorporating learning at home is keeping it fun so kids don't even realize that they're learning. Here are this episode's takeaways. The funds that were released from various grant programs to the states were for migrant education, teacher professional development and teacher training, English learner services, academic enrichment programs, adult education programs, and adult literacy and civics education programs. Funds were also released for before school and after school programs. One casualty of the billions of dollars that were frozen that would be up to six point eight billion dollars, is that it created a lack of trust in the government by the schools. Many education leaders said that the damage from the unexpected delays in funding restoration cannot be easily undone, and it created an environment in which trust can't easily be rebuilt. Schools have always managed to secure funding. However, the funding is not translating into increased test scores. Results released in September of this year from the 2024 Nations Report Card show that more students than ever before are scoring below NAPES threshold for mastery of basic skills. It's the first time the test has been given to 12th graders since before the pandemic. Overall, 12th graders who took the test in 2024 were less prepared for college than their 2019 peers. This means that high school seniors are taking their next steps in life with fewer skills and less knowledge in core subject areas compared to their predecessors a decade ago. These latest test results from the 2024 Nations Report card froze into sharp focus how critical it is to have the test, which is the only nationally comparable assessment of student abilities on this scale for identifying persistent trends in student achievement. Tying all of this information back to the funding discussion has these implications. The NATE results come as operations at the National Center for Education Statistics and its parent organization, the Institute for Education Sciences, faced uncertainty following federal staffing cuts at the U.S. Department of Education earlier this year. What are your thoughts about the defunding and refunding of billions of dollars to the Education Department and its impact on your local school? Let me know your thoughts or experiences by leaving me a text comment on my podcast website, k12educationinsights.busgrout.com. Here's how you can leave a text comment. Go to the episode description page and click on the send me a text message link. Again, it's k12educationinsights.busgrout.com. If you enjoyed this episode, why not listen to another episode from my library? It could take as little as 15 minutes every day. And remember, new episodes coming out every Tuesday. And before we begin, what do you think at the end of this episode with one point and you like the level? Thanks for watching today. And so next time we can