The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — U.S. House Democrats on Wednesday rebuked ongoing efforts from President Donald Trump’s administration to dismantle the Department of Education, including moves to shift some of its core functions to other agencies.
Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia — who hosted a spotlight forum alongside several colleagues — said “over and over again, the administration has circumvented the law to hamstring the future of public education without the consent of Congress or the American people.”
Scott, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and Workforce, brought in education advocates and legal voices pushing back against the administration’s ongoing attempts to axe the agency.
The lawmakers and witnesses expressed particular alarm over the administration’s six interagency agreements, or IAAs, announced with four other departments in November 2025 that transfer several of its responsibilities to those Cabinet-level agencies.
‘Illegal’ transfers
Ashley Harrington, senior policy counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, said that “while these agencies all provide important services for our nation, none of them are adequately prepared to take on the massive portfolio of programs that these interagency agreements strip from (the Education Department).”
Harrington, who previously served as a senior adviser at the department, pointed to a “lack” of institutional knowledge at the four departments compared with career employees at the Education Department who have gained expertise from spending decades running the affected programs.
Rachel Homer, director of Democracy 2025 and senior attorney at Democracy Forward, the legal advocacy group that is leading the ongoing case challenging the department’s dismantling efforts in federal court, pointed out that Congress creates and decides which agencies exist.
“Congress charges those agencies with performing certain functions, Congress determines the mission of those agencies, and the executive branch’s obligation is to carry that out, is to implement those laws faithfully,” said Homer, who previously served as chief of staff of the Office of the General Counsel at the department.
The advocacy group is representing a broad coalition in a legal challenge against the administration’s attempts to gut the agency.
That challenge, consolidated with a similar suit brought by Democratic attorneys general, was expanded in November in the wake of the interagency agreement announcement to include objections to those restructuring efforts.
“These transfers through the IAAs, they’re illegal,” Homer added. “That’s not what Congress has set up — that’s not how Congress has instructed the agencies to function.”
Mass layoffs, downsizing
Meanwhile, the administration’s attempts to wind down the department have also included mass layoffs initiated in March 2025 and a plan to dramatically downsize the agency ordered that same month. The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily greenlit these efforts in July.
Trump has sought to end the 46-year-old agency as part of his quest to send education “back to the states.” This effort comes while much of the oversight and funding of schools already occurs at the state and local levels.
“I know I don’t just speak for myself when I say I can’t believe we’re here having to actually defend the existence of the Department of Education,” said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education.
“As Education committee members, we came here to work on improving education and opening doors of opportunity and addressing the civil rights disparities, but here we are having to defend the actual existence of the Department of Education,” the Oregon Democrat said.
Civil rights in the spotlight
Employees at the Office for Civil Rights — tasked with investigating civil rights complaints from students and families — were targeted in March as part of a broader Reduction in Force, or RIF, effort and put on paid administrative leave while legal challenges against the administration unfolded.
Though the agency moved to rescind the RIF against the OCR employees in early January while legal challenges proceeded, a Government Accountability Office report released earlier in February found that the Education Department spent between roughly $28.5 million and $38 million on the salaries and benefits of the hundreds of OCR employees who were not working between March and December 2025.
The government watchdog also found that despite the department resolving more than 7,000 of the over 9,000 discrimination complaints it received between March and September, roughly 90% of the resolved complaints were due to the department dismissing the complaint.
“We’re extremely concerned of what this means for OCR to actually uphold its statutorily defined duty of protecting the civil rights of students in schools, including the rights of Black students, other students of color, girls, women, students with disabilities and members that identify with the LGBTQI+ communities,” said Ray Li, a policy counsel at the Legal Defense Fund.
Li, who previously served as an attorney for OCR, called on Congress to ensure that the unit “remains in a functioning Department of Education” and not transferred to the Department of Justice or another agency.
He also urged Congress to provide “adequate funding for OCR” and to “play an important role in transparency, sending oversight request letters to get information on the quantity of complaints that are being received, the types of discrimination that they allege, how OCR is processing those complaints and what the basis of dismissals are.”
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
President Donald Trump gives a speech at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21, 2026. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education reinforced the right to prayer in public schools in guidance issued Thursday.
Under the guidance to state and local education agencies, students, teachers and school officials have “a right to pray in school as an expression of individual faith, as long as they’re not doing so on behalf of the school,” the department said.
President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to protect religious liberty in public schools and beyond, and a growing number of GOP state legislators have tried to infuse Christianity in public education.
Trump announced the guidance during remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, calling the move a “big deal.”
The president predicted that Democrats would sue over the guidance, but said he was confident his administration would win any legal challenge.
The guidance also makes clear that “public schools may not sponsor prayer nor coerce or pressure students to pray.”
In 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school-sponsored prayer in public schools violates the Constitution.
The new guidance calls on school officials to “allow the individuals who make up a public school community to act and speak in accordance with their faith, provided they do not invade the rights of others, the school does not itself participate in religious action or speech as an institution, and the school does not favor secular over religious views or one religious view over another.”
The guidance leans on a handful of recent Supreme Court rulings surrounding religious expression and religious freedom in public schools, such as Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which found that the actions of a Washington state high school football coach who prayed at the 50-yard line after games were constitutionally protected.
The Education Department is required by law to periodically reissue guidance on prayer in schools, according to the department.
The president established that commission in May 2025 in an effort to “safeguard and promote America’s founding principle of religious freedom.”
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the administration is “proud to stand with students, parents, and faculty who wish to exercise their First Amendment rights in schools across our great nation,” in a statement alongside the announcement.
“Our Constitution safeguards the free exercise of religion as one of the guiding principles of our republic, and we will vigorously protect that right in America’s public schools,” she said.
The funding package President Donald Trump signed Feb. 3, 2026, includes $79 billion for the U.S. Education Department, representing a rejection by Congress of the president's plan to close the department. (Photo by kali9/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s attempts to dramatically slash funding for the U.S. Department of Education amid a broader push to dismantle the agency hit a major roadblock this week in the form of bipartisan approval of a spending law that gives the department a small raise.
The president signed a measure that funds the department at $79 billion this fiscal year — roughly $217 million more than the agency’s fiscal year 2025 funding levels and a whopping $12 billion above what Trump wanted.
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, wrote in a social media post after the signing that the law was a direct rebuke of several Trump priorities, including eliminating the department.
“Our funding bills send a message to Trump,” she wrote. “Congress will NOT abolish the Department of Education.”
The measure also rejects efforts to dramatically reduce or fully slash funding for a host of programs administered by the department for low-income and disadvantaged students.
Trump and his administration have sought over the past year to take an axe to the 46-year-old agency as part of a quest to send education “back to the states.” Much of the funding and oversight of schools already occurs at the state and local levels.
Those dismantling efforts included six interagency agreements with four other departments in November that would shift several Education responsibilities to those Cabinet-level agencies.
The spending package also holds full-year funding for the departments of Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, State and Treasury. The measure includes a two-week stopgap measure for the Department of Homeland Security.
‘Inefficiencies’
The measure does not offer ironclad language to prevent the outsourcing of the Education Department’s responsibilities to other agencies — despite efforts from Senate Democrats to block such transfers.
However, in a joint explanatory statement alongside the measure, lawmakers expressed alarm over the “assignment of such programmatic responsibilities to agencies that do not have experience, expertise, or capacity to carry out these programs and activities and lack developed relationships and communications with relevant stakeholders, including States.”
Lawmakers added they were “concerned that fragmenting responsibilities for education programs across multiple agencies will create inefficiencies, result in additional costs to the American taxpayer, and cause delays and administrative challenges in Federal funding reaching States, school districts, and schools.”
Due to those concerns, the funding measure directs the Education Department and the agencies that are part of the transfers to provide biweekly briefings to lawmakers on the implementation of any interagency agreements.
The briefings are supposed to include information on “staffing transfers, implementation costs, metrics on the delivery of services” and the “availability of technical support for programs to grantees,” among other matters.
The Education Department clarified when announcing the interagency agreements in November with the departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services and State that it would “maintain all statutory responsibilities and will continue its oversight of these programs.”
‘Necessary’ staffing levels
The funding agreement also mandates that the department “support staffing levels necessary to fulfill its statutory responsibilities including carrying out programs, projects, and activities funded in (the law) in a timely manner.”
The department took heat last summer when it froze $6.8 billion in funds for K-12 schools and informed states just a day before the money is typically sent out.
The measure also maintains the total maximum annual award for the Pell Grant from the prior fiscal year at $7,395, according to a summary from Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee. The government subsidy helps low-income students pay for college.
Trump’s budget request called for cutting nearly $1,700 from the maximum award for the 2026-2027 award year, a proposal that stoked alarm last year from leading House and Senate appropriators in both parties overseeing Education Department funding.
Funding levels maintained for TRIO, GEAR UP
The administration also called for defunding the Federal TRIO programs and the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, or GEAR UP, in fiscal 2026 — a move rejected in the measure.
The Federal TRIO Programs include federal outreach and student services programs to help support students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and GEAR UP aims to prepare low-income students for college.
Appropriators maintained funding for the programs at fiscal 2025 levels — with $1.191 billion for TRIO and $388 million for GEAR UP, per the Senate Democrats’ summary.
The administration also sought to axe funding for the Child Care Access Means Parents in School Program, which, according to the Education Department, “supports the participation of low-income parents in postsecondary education through the provision of campus-based child care services.”
Instead, the measure allocates $75 million for the program.
The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment on the funding package.
The administration expressed its support for the entire, multi-bill package, in a Jan. 29 statement of administration policy that barely mentioned the education provisions.
The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education exhausted millions in taxpayer dollars trying to eliminate a chunk of its Office for Civil Rights, a government watchdog found in a report released Monday.
The department spent between roughly $28.5 million and $38 million on the salaries and benefits of the hundreds of Office for Civil Rights, or OCR, employees who were not working between March and December 2025, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
OCR employees — tasked with investigating civil rights complaints from students and families — were targeted in March as part of a larger Reduction in Force, or RIF, effort at the department and placed on paid administrative leave while legal challenges against President Donald Trump’s administration unfolded.
Amid a mounting backlog of discrimination complaints, the department said in December it would be bringing back the affected employees. The agency moved to rescind the RIFs against the OCR employees in early January while legal challenges proceeded.
Complaints resolved
The department resolved more than 7,000 of the over 9,000 discrimination complaints it received between March and September, GAO, an independent, nonpartisan body that reports to Congress, said.
However, roughly 90% of the resolved complaints were due to the department dismissing the complaint, the watchdog found. The dismissal rate ranged from 49% to 81% during academic years in the 2010s, GAO found in a 2021 report.
The department “has not made complete information publicly available about potential costs and has not made any information available about potential savings associated with its OCR RIF actions,” GAO said, calling on the agency to provide those estimates and document its analysis.
Trump has taken significant steps to try to dismantle the 46-year-old department as part of his quest to move education “back to the states.”
In response to a draft of the report, Kimberly Richey, the assistant secretary for OCR, said the matter is rendered “moot” because the agency brought OCR employees back to work in December and rescinded the RIFs.
“We do not concur with the recommendation,” Richey wrote.
‘Unacceptable’
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who requested the GAO report, blasted the millions of dollars the department spent as “unacceptable” in a Monday statement.
“Every child in America should be able to get a good education no matter where they live, what their religious beliefs are or whether or not they have a disability,” said the Vermont independent, who serves as ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
“Instead, the Trump administration fired half of the Education Department employees working to protect the civil rights of students and wasted as much as $38 million in taxpayer dollars by preventing investigators from doing their jobs,” he added.
Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, said that “instead of following court orders and federal law, the Trump Administration chose to keep these civil rights professionals on paid administrative leave rather than letting them do their jobs, while students, families, and schools paid the price.”
Gittleman added that Education Secretary Linda McMahon “has made clear that she would rather play politics than uphold her responsibility to protect students’ rights,” and “her actions have undermined the Department’s mission, harmed families, and subjected dedicated federal employees to needless uncertainty, abuse, and harassment.”
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon takes in a selection of grade school students’ patriotic artworks and high schoolers’ recent output in a special installation set up at Exeter-West Greenwich Regional Junior High and High School in Rhode Island on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education, for now, is backtracking on plans to garnish wages and seize tax refunds of student loan borrowers in default, the department announced Friday.
Less than a month after the agency said it would begin garnishing wages by sending notices to roughly 1,000 borrowers in default the first full week of January, the department said that the temporary delay would allow it to implement “major student loan repayment reforms” under Republicans’ tax and spending cut bill that President Donald Trump signed into law in 2025.
The delay would “give borrowers more options to repay their loans,” the department said.
It was not immediately clear from the announcement how long the pause would last.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon signaled earlier this week during the Rhode Island portion of her Returning Education to the States Tour that wage garnishment has been “put on pause for a bit.”
The agency resumed collections for defaulted federal student loans in May after a pause that began during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A borrower can have their wages garnished as a consequence of defaulting on their loans, and a loanholder can order an employer to withhold up to 15% of their disposable pay to collect defaulted debt without being taken to court, according to Federal Student Aid, an office of the Education Department.
The delay also applies to the Treasury Offset Program, which “allows the federal government to collect income tax refunds and certain government benefits (for example, Social Security benefits) from individuals who owe debts to the federal government,” per FSA.
Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director for the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, said in a Friday statement that “after months of pressure and countless horror stories from borrowers, the Trump Administration says it has abandoned plans to snatch working people’s hard-earned money directly from their paychecks and tax refunds simply for falling behind on their student loans.”
“Amidst the growing affordability crisis, the Administration’s plans would have been economically reckless and would have risked pushing nearly 9 million defaulted borrowers even further into debt,” she added, while pointing to a Jan. 7 letter from Protect Borrowers and other organizations calling on McMahon to “immediately halt its plan to resume garnishment of millions of struggling borrowers’ wages.”
Student protesters shout during a “Hands Off Our Schools” rally in front of the U.S. Department of Education’s Washington, D.C., headquarters in April. Students from several colleges and universities gathered to protest President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle the department. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats on Tuesday blasted ongoing efforts from President Donald Trump’s administration to dismantle the Department of Education, including plans to shift several of its responsibilities to other Cabinet-level agencies.
Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono hosted a forum on the issue with several Democratic colleagues. The lawmakers, joined by education leaders, advocates and leading labor union voices, said the restructuring would lead to a loss of expertise, create more bureaucracy and weaken support for students and families.
The administration announced six agreements in November with the departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services and State as part of a larger effort from the administration to dismantle the 46-year-old Education Department.
Trump has sought to axe the agency in his quest to send education “back to the states” and tapped Education Secretary Linda McMahon to fulfill that mission. Much of the funding and oversight of schools already occurs at the state and local levels.
Losing expertise
Sen. Elizabeth Warren slammed the transfers as “illegal” because of federal laws assigning specific responsibilities to the Education Department.
“Congress already passed the laws on this,” she said. “Every one of the programs that’s moving out of the Department of Education specifically says we have allocated the money for a program in the Department of Education, not in whatever random other place Secretary McMahon decides to put it.”
The Massachusetts Democrat said that if the transfers go through, “we’ve got now four federal agencies that have no experience with education suddenly in charge of more than 50 different educational programs, including ones that fund literacy, education for veterans, kids in rural school districts — you name it, it’s moving somewhere else.”
Even before the announcements of interagency agreements, the Education Department had seen several changes since Trump took office, including layoffs of hundreds of employees that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in July could temporarily proceed.
In a late Tuesday statement to States Newsroom, department spokesperson Madi Biedermann said the transfers were part of a wider effort to initiate a sorely needed overhaul of the federal education bureaucracy.
“The opposition is protecting a system that produces dismal results for our students,” she said. “The Trump Administration demands better than the status quo.”
‘Nothing but chaos’
Under one of the agreements, the Education Department said the Labor Department would take on a “greater role” in administering elementary and secondary education programs currently managed under the Education Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, said “nobody wins, the least of all, students and educators,” when the Labor Department takes on massive education programs, noting the current workforce at Education has the right experience.
“Our staff have decades of experience with the complicated programs we’re talking about today,” Gittleman said. “These moves will cause nothing but chaos and harm for the people they’re intended to help.”
In general, the agreements “swap a highly efficient system for a chaotic, underfunded one spread across multiple agencies,” Gittleman said.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, also rebuked the administration’s efforts to gut the agency.
“What is happening here is not simply the dismantlement of the Department of Education,” she said. “It is taking away — it is abandoning the federal role in education.”
Weingarten, who leads one of the largest teachers unions in the country, added that “we should be, as a nation, expanding the federal role in public education, not supplanting states.”
Rhode Island commissioner condemns Brown shooting
Angélica Infante-Green, Rhode Island’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, said the administration’s attempts to gut the agency are “already putting our nation’s education system and our students at a disadvantage.”
Communication from the Department of Education “lacks detail,” she added.
“We get these one or two sentences with edicts that often conflict with state and federal law. What do we do? The chaos has resulted in protracted legal battles across the country, raising serious constitutional questions,” she said.
At the top of her remarks, Infante-Green also expressed her condolences for the victims, their families and the entire Brown University community after two students were killed and nine others were injured in a shooting on campus over the weekend.
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
Following public outcry, the U.S. Department of Education has restored funding for students who have both hearing and vision loss, about a month after cutting it.
But rather than sending the money directly to the four programs that are part of a national network helping students who are deaf and blind, a condition known as deafblindness, the department has instead rerouted the grants to a different organization that will provide funding for those vulnerable students.
The Trump administration targeted the programs in its attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion; a department spokesperson had cited concerns about “divisive concepts” and “fairness” in explaining the decision to withhold the funding.
ProPublica and other news organizations reported last month on the canceled grants to agencies that serve these students in Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin, as well as in five states that are part of a New England consortium.
Programs then appealed to the Education Department to retain their funding, but the appeals were denied. Last week, the National Center on Deafblindness, the parent organization of the agencies that were denied, told the four programs that the Education Department had provided it with additional grant money and the center was passing it on to them.
“This will enable families, schools, and early intervention programs to continue to … meet the unique needs of children who are deafblind,” according to the letter from the organization to the agencies, which was provided to ProPublica. Education Department officials did not respond to questions from ProPublica; automatic email replies cited the government shutdown.
When the funding was canceled, the programs were in the middle of a five-year grant that was expected to continue through September 2028. The funding from the center is only for one year.
“We don’t know what will happen” in future years, said Lisa McConachie of the Oregon DeafBlind Project, which serves 114 students in the state. McConachie said that with uncertain funding, her agency had to cancel a retreat this fall that had been organized for parents to swap medical equipment, share resources and learn about services to help students when they get older. She hopes to reschedule it for the spring.
“It is still a disruption to families,’’ she said. “It creates this mistrust, that you are gone and back and gone and back.”
Oregon’s grant application for its deafblind program, submitted in 2023, included a statement about its commitment to address “inequities, racism, bias” and the marginalization of disability groups, language that was encouraged by the Biden administration. It also attached the strategic plan for Portland Public Schools, where the Oregon DeafBlind Project is headquartered, that mentioned the establishment of a Center for Black Student Excellence — which is unrelated to the deafblind project. The Education Department’s letter said that those initiatives were “in conflict with agency policy and priorities.”
An advocate for deafblind students said he was happy to see the funding restored but called the department’s decision-making “amateurish” and disruptive to students and families. “It is mean-spirited to do this to families and kids and school systems at the beginning of the year when all of these things should be so smooth,” said Maurice Belote, co-chair of the National DeafBlind Coalition, which advocates for legislation that supports deafblind children and young adults.
Grants to the four agencies total about $1 million a year. The department started funding state-level programs to help deafblind students more than 40 years ago in response to the rubella epidemic in the late 1960s. Nationally, there are about 10,000 children and young adults, from infants to 21-year-olds, who are deafblind and more than 1,000 in the eight affected states, according to the National Center on Deafblindness.
While the population is small, it is among the most complex to serve; educators rely on the deafblindness programs for support and training.
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Analysis on upcoming TSD Conference education, National Association for Pupil Transportation election results, the Federal Brake for Kids Act and the Federal Communications Commission revoking E-Rate eligibility of school bus Wi-Fi.
Jeff Cassell, president of the School Bus Safety Company, discusses the need for safety leadership training, removing risk and reducing accidents in student transportation.
Glenna Wright-Gallo, vice president of policy at neurotechnology software company Everway, has worked at the state government level and served as the assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services. At the TSD Conference this November, she brings her perspective as a person with a disability on educating and empowering individuals with disabilities.
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Alverno College, Herzing University, Gateway Technical College and Mount Mary University could lose millions of dollars in aid after the U.S. Department of Education announced plans to end grant programs it deemed unconstitutional.
The grant programs offer federal aid to colleges and universities where designated shares of students are Black, Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, Asian American or Pacific Islander.
The Wisconsin colleges that would see the greatest impact are Hispanic-serving institutions, which means at least 25% of their students are Hispanic, among other requirements.
Experts say the grant programs were meant to level the playing field, and colleges often created supports with the federal funding that affect students of all demographics.
In addition, several Wisconsin colleges that could soon become Hispanic-serving institutions told Wisconsin Watch they plan to continue to pursue the designation.
Wisconsin colleges and universities with significant Hispanic and Latino populations could lose millions after the U.S. Department of Education announced that it plans to end several long-standing grant programs it says violate the Constitution.
In Wisconsin, the change would affect Alverno College, Herzing University, Gateway Technical College and Mount Mary University.
The seven grant programs in question award money to minority-serving schools for things like tutoring, research opportunities, counseling or campus facilities.
The funds are available only to schools where a designated share of students are Black, Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, Asian American or Pacific Islander, though the money can be used for initiatives that serve students of all demographics at those schools.
“Discrimination based upon race or ethnicity has no place in the United States,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “The Department looks forward to working with Congress to reenvision these programs to support institutions that serve underprepared or under-resourced students without relying on race quotas.”
The $350 million previously allocated for grants for the 2025-26 school year will be “reprogrammed” to programs that “advance Administration priorities,” the department said.
The department will also discontinue existing grants, meaning schools that were previously awarded multi-year funding will not receive any remaining payments.
The largest share of the affected schools are Hispanic-serving institutions, including four in Wisconsin. More than 600 colleges hold that designation, which the Department of Education has awarded for about 30 years to colleges that meet several qualifications including having an undergraduate student body that’s at least 25% Hispanic.
The announcement does not affect funding for tribal colleges or historically Black colleges. The Department of Education announced $495 million in additional one-time funding for historically Black colleges and for tribal colleges.
It’s unclear how much funding Wisconsin’s schools stand to lose in total. The newest on the list, Gateway Technical College, applied for funding for the first time in July, seeking $2.8 million over five years, spokesperson Lee Colony said. The school was still waiting for a decision when the department announced it was canceling the program.
Wisconsin’s other three Hispanic-serving institutions did not answer questions from Wisconsin Watch.
The list also includes both of Wisconsin’s women-only schools, Mount Mary University and Alverno College, the latter of which has recently faced money troubles. Its board of directors declared a financial emergency in 2024. After cutting 14 majors, six graduate programs and dozens of staff and faculty, the school and its accreditor say it’s now in a stronger financial position, but the school did not respond to further questions.
The cuts could be especially consequential in Wisconsin because the state’s minority-serving institutions are smaller schools with smaller budgets, said Marybeth Gasman, executive director of the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions.
“If they lose funding, it will hurt students — especially low-income and first-generation college students,” Gasman said.
But the announcement doesn’t necessarily seal the fate of these grant programs. Gasman anticipates lawsuits over the funds that were already awarded to institutions, on the grounds that the administration can’t rescind funds that Congress has allotted.
“My hope is that Congress will step in and support these important institutions,” Gasman said.
Meanwhile, the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities released a statement calling the decision “an attack on equity in higher education” that “erases decades of progress and hurts millions of students.”
The organization said it would “continue to fight alongside students and institutions to defend these essential programs and ensure that opportunity, equity and investment in higher education are not rolled back.”
The case for HSIs
More than two-thirds of all Latino undergrads attend a Hispanic-serving institution, according to the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities. Proponents of the grant program say it helps a group of students who haven’t always been well supported in U.S. schools and colleges, and that, in turn, helps the economy.
“There are communities that have been excluded from educational opportunity, and they deserve the right to a high-quality education. That’s what democracy looks like,” said Anthony Hernandez, an education policy researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies Hispanic-serving institutions.
“By concentrating these federal resources, we can help them gain momentum to get into white-collar pathways and imagine that they could become nurses, they can become doctors, captains of industry, they can become scientists,” he said.
Hernandez disputes the Department of Education’s claim that it’s discriminatory to set aside funds specifically for minority-serving institutions.
“For most of U.S. history, minority students were either explicitly excluded from higher education or funneled into segregated, underfunded schools,” Hernandez said.
Minority-serving institutions were created to level the playing field, which remains slanted by bias, economic inequality and disparities in funding across K-12 schools, he said.
“This policy change presents itself as a defense of fairness, but effectively punishes institutions that were created to repair unfairness,” Hernandez said. “It withdraws critical support from communities still facing barriers and undermines the very schools helping to expand opportunity and strengthen the economy.”
He argues the program should be grown, not dismantled. The number of Hispanic-serving institutions has soared, he said, and the available funds haven’t kept up.
“They’ve constantly had to fight for funding,” Hernandez said. “They’ve never been adequately funded.”
If the Department of Education succeeds at cutting these grant programs, he anticipates that graduation and transfer rates at these schools will drop.
The cuts so far don’t affect grants issued to minority-serving institutions by other departments, including the Department of Agriculture and the National Science Foundation. But Hernandez worries more cuts could be coming.
“We imagine that that is eventually going to encompass all of the different arteries of the federal government that dole out monies to the minority-serving institutions,” Hernandez said. “I don’t think it’s finished.”
Gasman agrees. “I think the Trump administration is challenging the entire MSI framework, which has had bipartisan support in Congress,” Gasman said.
Wisconsin colleges serve growing Hispanic population
Watching from the sidelines are eight other Wisconsin colleges that have spent years trying to become Hispanic-serving institutions. At those schools, designated by the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities as “Emerging Hispanic-Serving Institutions,” at least 15% of full-time undergrad students are Hispanic.
In the 2023-24 school year, there were 425 such schools in the U.S. In Wisconsin, the group includes a mix of private colleges, public universities and technical colleges.
They say they’ll keep up working to better serve Hispanic students even if the federal funds disappear.
Jeffrey Morin, president of the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. (Courtesy of the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design)
The Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design joined the Emerging list in 2021, and its Hispanic enrollment has risen each year since, President Jeffrey Morin said.
About 19% of the incoming freshman class is Hispanic, and the city of Milwaukee is 20% Hispanic.
“For us, it is a natural reflection of the community that we serve,” Morin said, though he notes that the school selects students based on their academic record and a portfolio of their work, not their demographics.
“We are not sculpting a freshman class. We are serving the people who want to join our community,” Morin said. “And when a … noticeable portion of our population comes from a particular background, we want to make sure that we meet the needs of that population.”
Being designated as an Emerging Hispanic-serving institution hasn’t brought new funds to the school, but it “puts us in a community with other regional higher ed institutions so that … we can discuss and discover best practices and trends,” Morin said.
The Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design is an Emerging Hispanic-serving institution. (Courtesy of the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design)
Hispanic students are the fastest-growing group in higher education. As their numbers boom, more Emerging schools could meet the 25% benchmark and become full-fledged Hispanic-serving institutions.
That’s the plan at the institute, Morin said, adding that the funds would help non-Hispanic students too. For example, he said, many Hispanic students are also the first in their families to go to college. The grant funds could be used for programs that would support first-generation students, regardless of their race or ethnicity.
“A rising tide lifts all boats,” Morin said. “The funding support that would come in to help one population will help other populations as well.”
‘Emerging’ schools not deterred
Despite recent news, MIAD officials say the school isn’t changing its plans. Supporting Hispanic students is particularly important now, Morin said, as the national rhetoric around immigrants grows increasingly hostile.
“What changes is that we’ll lose particular opportunities to partner (with the federal government) in service to the Hispanic community,” Morin said. “What doesn’t change is our commitment to serving the Hispanic community. We will simply look for new partners in that work.”
A student at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design uses virtual reality goggles in a studio on the college’s campus. (Courtesy of the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design)
Several other Emerging institutions expressed similar sentiments.
The mission of the federal program “aligns with our Catholic, Jesuit mission to keep a Marquette education accessible to all,” said Marquette University spokesperson Kevin Conway. The university announced in 2016 that it intended to become a Hispanic-serving institution. Since then, the Hispanic share of its student body has grown from 10% to about 16% in fall 2024.
“Like all colleges and universities, Marquette is monitoring changes in the higher education landscape and the resources available to help the students we serve,” Conway said. “One thing that will not change is Marquette’s commitment to its mission and supporting our community.”
A spokesperson for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where about 15% of students are Hispanic, said the school “remains steadfast in its access mission, ensuring higher education is attainable for all, regardless of background or income.”
Milwaukee Area Technical College, meanwhile, announced last year that it was “on the verge” of achieving full HSI status with 23.4% of its full-time students identifying as Hispanic.
“We’re very, very close,” MATC President Anthony Cruz said at the time.
Asked about the latest developments, spokesperson Darryll Fortune said the school “will continue to pursue HSI status regardless.”
This story was updated to include an announcement made by the Department of Education that the agency will award historically Black colleges and tribal colleges $495 million in one-time funding.
Glenna Wright-Gallo’s upcoming keynote at the Transporting Students with Disabilities and Special Needs (TSD) Conference will feature her expertise in inclusive disability policies and background in work with special needs students to guide student transporters through the world of federal and state requirements.
Wright-Gallo’s will present her keynote, “Staying Mission-Focused: Leading Through Policy Shifts with Clarity and Confidence,” Sunday, Nov. 9 in Frisco, Texas. She recently served as the assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), from May 2023 until February of this year. Her work there and most recently as vice president of policy at Everway, an educational software company, gives her unique insights into navigating accessible training programs, technology and updated policies regarding transportation services.
During her keynote, she looks to provide TSD Conference attendees with strategies to keep pace with implementing updated policies and ensure reliable and safe transportation services for students with disabilities, and infants and toddlers.
In addition to her keynote, Wright-Gallo is presenting a breakout session the afternoon of Nov. 9 on the importance and role of Dear Colleague Letters issued by the U.S. Department of Education.
Glenna Wright-Gallo is sworn in as the assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services in May 2023. (Photo courtesy of Utah State University)
Wright-Gallo received her bachelor’s degree master’s degree in special education and teaching as well as a master’s in business administration. She became a special education teacher in 1997 and then served as the state director of special education at the Utah State Department of Education from 2010-2017. She then became an assistant superintendent at the Washington Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for five years before President Joe Biden nominated her her U.S. Department of Education post in 2023.
Her work in Washington, D.C., included development of national policy, best practices for students with disabilities, recruitment of diverse personnel in special education and furthering state compliance to advance inclusive practices. At Everway, she is leading the Policy Center of Excellence and looks to amplify the voices of individuals with disabilities and people who are neurodivergent. She is also utilizing her experience in systems improvement to use neurotechnology software in the support of those with disabilities and further accessibility in education and workplaces.
Save $100 on main conference registration with the Early Bird Discount, available through Oct. 3. The TSD Conference will be held Nov. 6 through Nov. 11 at Embassy Suites Dallas-Frisco Hotel and Convention Center. Visit tsdconference.com to register and view the conference agenda, which includes four keynotes and dozens of educational sessions all focused on transportation of students with special needs.
A program at Marquette University that trains Milwaukee-area teachers to incorporate the city’s untold stories – particularly those of communities of color – into their classrooms is losing federal funding.
The U.S. Department of Education sent a letter that stated it will not continue the grant, saying the program – called MKE Roots – reflects “the prior administration’s priorities and policy preferences and conflict with those of the current administration.”
The decision means funding will end this fall, leading to staff cuts and scaling back of programming.
It’s a loss for the teachers who participate – but one that will affect thousands of Milwaukee students, said Melissa Gibson, faculty director of MKE Roots.
“Students realize that their communities have this whole rich history of organizing and advocating, making our city not only what it is but also a better place,” Gibson said. “They feel more empowered to be their own community and civic leaders.”
‘A rich tapestry of cultural experiences’
MKE Roots is a professional development program for Milwaukee-area teachers that includes a weeklong summer training in which they visit local landmarks and meet with historians and community leaders.
Places this summer included America’s Black Holocaust Museum and Sherman Phoenix Marketplace.
Before the school year begins, teachers get help developing lesson plans that reflect what they’ve learned, then they meet at least four more times to collaborate.
There is also an online map with lesson plans and primary sources tied to Milwaukee neighborhoods.
“We are heralding the men and women – the legacies of our city’s past – so that our students understand that they are part of a rich tapestry of cultural experiences,” said Robert Smith, director of Marquette’s Center for Urban Research, Teaching & Outreach, which houses MKE Roots.
Milwaukee schools often teach local history through a curriculum that focuses largely on traditional narratives – such as beer barons and European immigrants, Gibson said.
“Students don’t know that Black Milwaukeeans have been here since the 1800s” before Wisconsin was a state, she said. “They don’t know how and why Mexican migrants came to Milwaukee in the 1920s. They don’t know that Wisconsin was one of the first states to pass anti-LGBTQ discrimination laws.”
“No matter where you are as a teacher, you do something like this, and it gives you perspectives that I think truly, as a teacher – especially today – you need,” said Jeffrey Gervais, a fifth-grade teacher at Hamlin Garland School who is participating in this year’s training.
The letter
In 2023, the Department of Education awarded MKE Roots a three-year grant for $1.27 million. However, on June 18, the department sent a letter to Gibson that stated it will not fund the program for the third year.
The letter gave four possible reasons for the decision: The program violates the letter or purpose of federal civil rights law; conflicts with the department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness and excellence in education; undermines the well-being of the students the program is intended to help; or constitutes an inappropriate use of federal funds.
It did not specify which reason – or reasons – apply in this case.
The Department of Education did not respond to questions about its decision, but Smith said he can only assume it is because of the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion, often known as DEI.
It calls for eliminating federal funding that supports “gender ideology” or “discriminatory equity ideology” in K-12 curriculum, instruction, programs or activities, as well as teacher education, certification, licensing, employment or training.
DEI or not DEI?
Smith rejects the idea that MKE Roots is a DEI program.
“The notion of DEI is fundamentally based on people having equal access to institutions,” he said. “What we are doing is actually attending to the various populations of students we serve.”
Smith also disputes the reasons listed in the letter from the Department of Education.
“None of the reasons are accurate relative to what we do with MKE Roots,” he said. “This is civics education at its purest – making sure our teachers have the tools to engage in important conversations with their students about Milwaukee, Wisconsin, their neighborhoods and communities, and their role in shaping those neighborhoods and communities.”
Smith and Gibson said they are appealing the decision.
Gibson said she is considering applying for a new Department of Education grant for civic education programs that develop “citizen competency and informed patriotism” especially among low-income students and underserved populations, according to the grant’s description.
It would require redesigning aspects of MKE Roots to put “founding documents in conversation with local context,” Gibson said.
“We would need to find a different funding stream to maintain what MKE Roots currently does,” she added.
Regardless of the outcome, she said, the work will continue.
“I was doing this work before I had funding, and I’ll do it after I have funding.”
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