June 2025

On May 30, the Trump administration began its rollout of the full budget request for the 2026 fiscal year (FY). A “skinny budget” that was released May 2 provided high-level budget summaries for federal agencies, but did not include many of the specific details that typically accompany the budget request. Overall, the FY 2026 budget request would significantly slash funding for federal agencies that support education research and statistics.

“We are extremely concerned about the proposed cuts for education research and the entire scientific enterprise that will decimate research and data that inform evidence-based policy and practice,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine. “As Congress prepares its appropriations bill for FY 2026, we urge a rejection of this harmful proposal that would have a significant impact on the conduct of science and the careers of graduate students and early career scholars.”

Details on specific agencies follow.

Institute of Education Sciences

The FY 2026 budget request would fund the overall top line to the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at $261.3 million, a 67 percent cut compared with the top line included in the FY 2025 full-year continuing resolution (CR). Of this amount, $137.3 million would be allocated for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), with the remaining $124 million classified as “unallocated.”

* FY 2025 funding reflects top line included in CR, NAEP funding allocated in FY 2026 budget appendix

** FY 2026 funding for IES "unallocated" with exception of Assessment

While the FY 2025 CR carried over the top line for IES as it was listed in the FY 2024 bill text, amounts for specific budget line items within IES were included in the explanatory statement that accompanied the final FY 2024 appropriations law. The FY 2025 CR did not carry over those specific line items. In addition, the budget summary did not include any information on how the FY 2025 top line amount would be distributed across IES budget lines, although the budget appendix included an allocation for NAEP that provides flat funding for that line item for FY 2025. All other funds were listed in the budget appendix as “unallocated.”

The budget request summary notes that the unallocated funding for IES would be “to enable IES to meet statutory requirements, continue critical data collections and studies, and fund administrative expenses in the short-term.” The Department of Education summary also details that the Trump administration is reimagining a more efficient, effective, and useful IES. On May 30, the Department announced the appointment of Amber Northern as senior advisor to the education secretary Linda McMahon to lead an effort to reform IES.

National Science Foundation

Reflecting the top line provided in the skinny budget, the FY 2026 budget request includes $3.9 billion for the National Science Foundation, representing a cut of $5.16 billion, or 56.9 percent. The budget request for NSF also indicates how this would have an impact on the success of research funds, with its award rate for research grants dropping from an estimated 24 percent in FY 2024 to 6 percent in FY 2026.

Under the budget request, the STEM Education (EDU) Directorate would be consolidated into the Research and Related Activities (R&RA) account. In appropriations language, EDU has historically had its own line item in bill text with funding for the other NSF directorates provided in the R&RA account. The overall R&RA account, also accounting for inclusion of the EDU Directorate, would be reduced by $3.9 billion, or 54.3 percent. The budget request would also eliminate funding for several cross-agency programs in FY 2026, including the Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) and the Eddie Bernice Johnson INCLUDES Initiative.

National Science Foundation (in millions)

NSF has the discretion to allocate funding in the R&RA account to its directorates, and the budget request provides details on how NSF would plan to distribute the proposed FY 2026 R&RA investment. The EDU Directorate would see a 75 percent cut to its budget, with its FY 2024 amount of nearly $1.2 billion reduced to $288.4 million. Many of the core programs that the EDU Directorate has invested in—including EDU Core Research, Advancing Informal STEM Learning, Discovery Research PreK-12, and Improving Undergraduate STEM Education—would be eliminated with zero funding for FY 2026. EDU would be focusing its funding on three priority areas: artificial intelligence, quantum information science and engineering, and biotechnology and nuclear sciences.

Similarly, the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Directorate would be reduced by 67.6 percent or $196.3 million. Most notably, the Build and Broaden program would be defunded under this request. SBE would plan to support five priorities that include, “enable and support the science of a 21st-Century American education.”

National Institutes of Health

The budget request includes $27.5 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), representing a cut of more than 40 percent compared with what had been enacted for FY 2024 and carried over in the FY 2025 CR. The FY 2025 reduction was due to the phase out of 21^st Century CURES mandatory funding for the BRAIN initiative that was not carried over into the CR.

Under the budget request, NIH’s institutes and centers would be consolidated into 8 total, in addition to the elimination of the National Institutes for Nursing Research and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

Among the institutes to be consolidated are the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). These two institutes would be combined into a new National Institute for Child and Women’s Health, Sensory Disorders, and Communication (NICWHSDC). A similar proposal was advanced last year by House Republican leadership of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and included in the House FY 2025 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (LHHS) bill that would have combined those two institutes into the National Institute for Disability Related Research.

The proposed budget for the consolidated NICWHSDC would represent a reduction of 38.3 percent with FY 2024 funding levels of NICHD and NIDCD combined.

The president’s budget request was released much later this year than it usually is due to the late resolution of the FY 2025 appropriations process with the enactment of the full-year CR in March and the transition between administrations. In the meanwhile, Congress has begun its process on FY 2026 appropriations.