As federal COVID relief funding for schools expired last year, education leaders worried that high-impact tutoring programs helping to drive academic recovery would end. Encouragingly, new research suggests many schools are working hard to stay the course on tutoring, one of public education’s most effective responses to learning loss during the pandemic.
But the Trump administration’s education budget for the current fiscal year and funding legislation in the Republican-led House of Representatives would gut the federal resources that many schools are using to keep their tutoring programs alive, threats compounded by administration efforts to shrink key Department of Education offices and move them elsewhere in the federal government.
Congressional leaders in both political parties have voiced concern about the slow recovery of student achievement post-pandemic and have promoted tutoring as an evidence-based solution. They should be heartened that a new national survey of school leaders by RAND and the Partnership for Student Success found that 93% of schools offering tutoring in 2024-25 served the same or more students than during the previous school year. But rather than expanding the Department of Education programs that states and school districts are using to fund tutoring, the president and his congressional allies have them on the chopping block. If they don’t reverse course, students are going to pay a heavy price.
Take Title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the major federal K-12 education law administered by the department. This year, the program is supplying $18.4 billion to schools that have significant portions of students living in high-poverty communities or low-income households. This is the largest source of federal funding for schools, and the most flexible federal funding for tutoring programs. The House appropriations bill voted out of committee in September would cut it by 26%, or $4.7 billion.
Title II of ESEA provides funds that can be used to train teachers or other staff to serve as effective tutors and provide stipends to educators who take on additional tutoring responsibilities. The president’s budget and the House bill propose eliminating Title II entirely, a roughly $2.2 billion cut. They would also end all $890 million in funding for Title III, which schools and districts can use to pay and train tutors providing supplemental assistance to English learners.
Title IV, Parts A and B fund tutoring during and after school. The president’s budget would eliminate this $2.7 billion program, as well as $220 million that districts receive through the federal Rural Education Achievement Program, which can be used to hire tutors.
Proposed cuts in higher education programs would also undermine tutoring in the nation’s schools.
Colleges and universities can use federal Work Study funds to cover up to 100% of the wages of students employed as reading or math tutors for school-aged children. But the president’s budget would cut the program by $980 million, or nearly 80%; the House bill would reduce it by $450 million.
Proposed and enacted cuts to the AmeriCorps program, the federal agency that supports national service and volunteerism across the country, are already impacting tutoring. Many affiliated programs have lost staff and are providing less aid for students. The president’s budget cuts AmeriCorps by over $1 billion, or 91%, while the House would reduce it by $619 million.
The threats to federal support for tutoring go beyond funding cuts. Earlier this year, the Trump administration eliminated the Office of English Language Acquisition, which oversees Title III. During the recent government shutdown, it attempted to eradicate nearly all staff in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which manages Title I, Title II and the majority of federal K-12 funding. And, of course, the recent announcement that the department is transferring the administration of funds to the Department of Labor has only caused more confusion, as has the department’s messaging that staff would be switching departments even as it attempts to fire these same employees.
The Trump administration and House Republican proposals have failed to leverage the potential of the federal government to help sustain the growth of high-quality tutoring in the nation’s public schools as they work to shrink the size of the federal government. Rather than promoting their frequently stated aim of helping states lead on education, their budget proposals would sabotage state and local efforts on a widely recognized driver of student achievement, making it harder for states to do right by their students. Congress should push back, protecting programs that fund tutoring and the staff that manage them.
This piece originally appeared in The 74.