The Education Department left more than $75 million in congressionally appropriated funds unobligated at the end of fiscal year 2025, according to an Education Week analysis of the agency's monthly SF-133 spending reports published by the White House Office of Management and Budget. Across eight separate accounts with funding that expired Sept. 30, 2025, the department failed to commit the money before the deadline. The figure is 7.5 times larger than the combined unobligated total for the same eight accounts over the entire prior decade, from fiscal years 2015 through 2024, a period that includes the Obama, first Trump, and Biden administrations.
A sharp break from historical spending patterns
For the same eight accounts across fiscal years 2015 through 2024, the department left a combined total of $9.9 million unspent. The FY2025 total alone is more than seven times that decade-long sum. The analysis draws on SF-133 reports, the same accounting documents used by Congress and the Government Accountability Office to monitor agency spending compliance. Former OMB official Joe Carlile, speaking to Education Week, said agencies typically leave no more than roughly 3 percent of appropriated funds unobligated by the original expiration date. In FY2025, four Education Department accounts exceeded that threshold.
Program-level breakdown
- Approximately $21 million for department staff salaries (5 percent of the appropriation)
- $14.2 million for the Office for Civil Rights (10 percent of the appropriation)
- $20 million for mental health grants
- $12 million for education research, including the Institute of Education Sciences and the Education Innovation and Research program
- $4.8 million for the inspector general's office
- $3 million for career-and-technical education
The $14.2 million left unspent by the Office for Civil Rights in a single year exceeds by seven times the total OCR unobligated funds over the first Trump administration's four years, which amounted to less than $2 million. The Institute of Education Sciences, which had an approximately $800 million budget, left more than $7 million unspent in FY2025, compared with less than $650,000 each year between 2015 and 2024.
Contrasts with prior administrations
The pattern under the second Trump administration differs markedly from how the department handled spending under both parties previously. During the Biden administration, the department estimated that 1 to 3 percent of the $122 billion in American Rescue Plan school relief would go unspent by the September 2024 obligation deadline. Unspent ESSER II funds totaled no more than $662 million, about 1 percent of the $54 billion allocated. The Biden administration also granted every state request for late liquidation extensions for ESSER I and ESSER II, approving applications from at least five states and Puerto Rico for the first round and 19 states plus Puerto Rico for the second.
In March 2025, Education Secretary Linda McMahon reversed that posture. She sent a letter to state education chiefs canceling all previously granted extensions for spending COVID-relief ESSER funds, setting a same-day deadline of 5 p.m. EST for all remaining funds to be spent. The abrupt action affected roughly $130 billion Congress had approved in March 2021.
Legal and operational context
Federal law requires the executive branch to spend the full amount Congress appropriates within prescribed timelines. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 allows a president to propose rescinding appropriated funds, but only with congressional approval. Education Week noted that President Trump requested no such approval for any Department of Education dollars, meaning the unspent funds represent administrative non-execution rather than a lawful rescission. An Education Department spokesperson said in a statement that having unobligated funds is not uncommon and that the department remains dedicated to using appropriated funds effectively to meet statutory obligations and support research and innovation for students.
Continuing risk for fiscal 2026
The spending slowdown may extend into the current fiscal year. As of June, the Institute of Education Sciences had yet to spend more than $223 million set to expire in fall 2025. That amount is larger than the total IES unobligated balance at the same point in either FY2024 or FY2025, and is far above the sums in the previous five years under both Biden and Trump's first term. Separately, the White House Office of Management and Budget has withheld fiscal 2026 appropriations for more than 20 competitive grant programs the Trump administration proposed to eliminate. Roughly $206 million for those grants could expire on Sept. 30, 2025, if OMB does not release the funds. For 11 competitive education grant programs totaling $795 million, OMB apportioned fiscal 2026 funding four months later than in previous years.
A bipartisan group of 19 U.S. senators wrote to Secretary McMahon in May 2025 urging release of IES research funds. They noted that IES received about $793 million in FY2025 and $789.6 million in FY2026, with approximately $290 million at risk of lapsing on Sept. 30. In early 2025, the department canceled nearly $900 million in Institute of Education Sciences contracts. IES houses the National Center for Education Statistics and had an approximately $807 million budget, a small portion of the Education Department's $79.1 billion total budget.