Prepping for big test?

Changes to US Department of Education could impact aid, grants, loans and more across NJ

By: Mary Ann Koruth
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... Few doubted President Donald Trump's intention to act on his campaign promise to give states greater control over public schools, but his efforts to eviscerate the U.S. Department of Education have alarmed some New Jersey school officials and national education experts, who worry about the loss of money for key programs.
..... Trump has told reporters that the agency - responsible for handing out student loans and billions of dollars in aid to low-income students and students with disabilities, not to mention providing oversight of state education departments - was "a con job," and that he wanted tit to be "immediate closed."
..... He has also argued that it pushes liberal ideologies.
..... Local school districts retain the majority of control over how New Jersey schools are run and what gets taught in them, but the state receives significant federal aid for low-income students and those with disabilities in its K-12 districts.
..... And hundreds of thousands of New jersey college students and their parents receive federal aid in the form of grants and subsidized loans to pay for college tuition. That federal aid all gets process and distributed through the U.S. Department of Education.
..... The agency, education experts note, also has an Office of Civil Rights to protect students from harassment and discrimination. and it issues contracts for nonpartisan research on the nation's education system to track progress and problems and craft policy aimed at improving the vast system.
..... Although Trump's nominee for education secretary assured senators at a hearing this month [02/2025] that federal money for students won't be affected by a department overhaul, at least one Republican senator - as well as many education experts and New Jersey school officials - wondered how aid could possibly be unaffected if the department is gutted.
..... For New Jersey the total federal funding for K-12 schools totals about $1 billion - about 5% of what the state spends for programs to help children with the highest need.
..... That includes low-income students and students receiving special education services in all districts, but also many students in a complex blend of federal and state dollars that fund a myriad of school programs, form high-impact tutoring to preschool programming.
..... New Jersey receives two main streams of funding form the U.S. Education Department: Federal title I funds for low-income districts and students, and IDEA funds for students with disabilities.
..... Both streams are appropriated by Congress and can be eliminated only through their action. During testimony, Trump's nominee for education secretary, Linda McMahon, acknowledged to senators that Trump could not completely shut down the federal Education Department without Congress approval.
..... McMahon said she supports overhauling the department, but stressed that the Trump administration doesn't intoed to take money away from students.
..... Last summer, [2024] House Republicans approve a 25% cut in federal Title I funding for the 2025 fiscal year - a total of $4.3 billion, according to AfterSchool Alliance,a group that advocates for school children. But the Senate did not go along that time.

What New Jersey gets in K-12 education funding

..... New Jersey stands to lose $116 million in Title I funding and $115 million in IDEA funding if the Trump administration were to cut those funding steams by 25%, according to a data tracker published by the Education Law Center, an advocacy group.
..... Cuts of 25% in Title I funds would "translate initially to teacher layoff, because schools won't be able to afford the support staff they need," Robert Kim, the Education Law Center's executive director told NorthJersey.com . "That will result in bigger class sizes and special education students not receiving services."
..... If the state tried to cover a 25% loss in federal money for Title I and IDEA programs, it could mean diverting the money that would pay for nearly 4,000 entry-level teaching slots, the law center said.
..... "There are a lot of ripple effects if there are changes in these key funding schemes," Kim said. "It will put more pressure on New Jersey lawmakers to make up the difference by raising the money - using local sources - to meet educational needs."
..... Districts are already pressed for funds, and special education costs are rising, said Tony Trongone, a retired Milliville schools superintend and former president of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators.
..... Many New Jersey districts also have a unique model that blends federal Head Start funding - which pays for programs to ensure that low-income toddlers and preschoolers are prepared for school - with state preschool funding. Cuts to Head Start could "destabilize the state's entire early education system," Trongone said.

Pell Grants and other federal aid to pay for college

..... Then there are the federal programs to assist student with college tuition. In New Jersey, 180,000 federal Pell Grants totaling $790 million were awarded to students with exceptional financial need in 2022, according to data compiled by the Nation la Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
..... In addition, 39,000 students in New Jersey received Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, provided to low-income college students, totaling a combined $25 million, and nearly 13,500 students received work-study payments totaling $25 million.
..... The federal direct subsidized loan program - which provides low-interest loans - awarded nearly 98,000 New Jersey students $380 million. the federal subsidized loan program provided 127,000 students a combined $831 million in loans, and the direct PLUS loan program provided 16,700 loans to parents totaling $303 million.
..... In her Senate testimony, McMahon told senators that the Pell Grant program would not be affected by department cuts. Neither would the Title I program, she said.
..... Sean tor Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine, wondered how the administration could gut the Education Department without affecting those federal programs.

Education cuts and project 2025

..... The Education Department, crated by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, employed around 4,200 people, including career public servants who make sure federal aid dollars are disbursed correctly.
..... Trump's moves to drastically shrink or close the department appear to be guided by Project 2025, a highly controversial plan crated by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, experts say. Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 while campaigning, but his words echo its proposals, one of which is closing the department and diverting its functions to other government arms.
..... One possibility is moving the Education Department's funding role to the Treasury Department, which would take over K-12 Title I and IDEQA funding, said Aaron Pallas, an education professor at Columbia University's Teachers College.
..... The Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, which enforces laws intended to protect students from discrimination base dona variety of factors including race, religion, ethnicity and gender, could move to the Justice Department.
..... "Project 2025 did not call for eliminating those funding streams, but it recommended shifting them to state or local funning streams over a 10-year period," Pallas said.
..... "At this point, having seen what we've seen over the last weeks, all bets are off," he said, referring to a blitz of executive orders that upended funding, aid programs and job security in federal agencies.
..... Many universities, including Rutgers in New Jersey, canceled conferences and updated polices hat could be linked to culture wars and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, following the Trump administration's threat to withhold federal funds form them. After Trump issued another order prohibiting men form participating in women's sports, the NCAA charges its rules to that effect. As a result, Princeton, among others, can now bar athletes assigned female at birth who have begun hormone therapy form participating in women's sports.

What Title I funds do

..... If the Trump administration want to follow the Project 2025 playbook of returning this burden to states in the long term, "that could be a scary thought for sates who are used to receiving a couple billion dollars a year in Title I funding," Pallas said.
..... Title I funds, which go to schools through states but come from the federal government, serve low-income communities, many of which exist in rural areas and inner cities. suburban schools also receive Title I funds, based on how many students qualify for free and reduced-cost lunches. Title I funding totals around $18 billion annually, Pallas said.
..... "There's a lot of expertise that goes to administering those federal grants, including making suer civil rights or accountability conditions are followed by states," said Jessica Levin, litigation director at the Education Law Center.
..... The Office for Civil Rights within the Education Department is the other critical arm used to protect students in colleges and K-12 schools from harassment and discrimination. The Biden administration received 4,307 Title VI complaints in the 2024 fiscal year related to just one civil right category: discrimination due to race, religion or national origin, an area that saw an uptick during campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza.
..... "There is a great amount of knowledge and expertise contained within the Education Department's lawyers, which t would be lost" if it is closed or moved to the Justice Department, Levin said.
..... "If the trump administration is talking about efficiency, then resolving civil rights investigations without lengthy and costly litigation should be prized," Levin said.
..... The Education Department uses interactive approaches, where helping both sides to resolve a program is more effective and more efficient, because more complaints can be resolved that way, she said.

Controlling waste and inefficiency, or adding to it?

..... One argument the Trump administration has made to close the Education Department is to cut wasteful spending. Elon Musk, as head of the new Department of Government Efficiency,or DOGE, was scrutinizing jobs to cut at the department, according to an internal phone call whose details were reported by The New York Times this month. [02/2025]
..... "There's always a slight risk that money will be misused, but there are lots of checks and balances in place," Pallas said.
..... Shrinking the department would have "the opposite effect" of controlling waste and inefficiency, Pallas said, "because it's going to remove professional civil servants who know how to do their job to ensure money is spent in the way that Congress intends."
..... "The Education Department is not a big-ticket item," he said, even though its scope has increased from its initial role as a statistic-gathering agency. It spent $268 billion in fiscal year 2024, just 4% of the federal budget, reported the nonprofit group USAfacts.org .
..... "I'd say there's very little waste of these dollars, and neither President Trump nor Elon Musk have been able to show this," Pallas said.

Canceling research contracts

..... One move that angered researchers and education watchers was canceling contracts within the Institute of Education Sciences, the Education Department's research arm, which oversees several initiatives, including the National Center for Education Statistics, which produces the annual National's Report Card to track math and reading skills among school-age children.
..... The latest report card showed that forth grades were lagging in reading nationwide compared with before the COVID-19 pandemic - the sort of metric used to guide and change education policy.
..... The Education Department canceled dozens of multi-year research contracts this month. [02/2025]
..... The Institute of Education Sciences is a centralized clearinghouse on K-12 schools, which was created under George W. Bush with bipartisan support, Pallas said. "IES research, collects information on the well-being of American schoolchildren ... and on interventions that help students be more successful in Math and science and literacy," he said.
..... "It's not political. It provides insights on how to better educate children, something I hope any administration will support," Pallas said.
..... The Education Department does not historically tell schools what to teach or how to teach - it keeps a distance from the "nuts and bolts" of classroom education," he said.
..... Another impact of shrinking the Education Department's reach is that the move also "destabilizes knowledge produced in universities," Pallas said. The Trump administration also said it was moving to reduce "indirect costs" associate with research grants and funding in colleges and universities

..... This story includes material from USA Today.

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