A new report, How Medicaid Cuts Will Harm Students & Schools, presents the findings of a nationwide survey of over 1,400 school district leaders, including superintendents, school business officials and school health coordinators, on the impact Medicaid cuts would have on school health services, student resources and district funding. The executive summary and related graphics highlight key data points and respondents’ quotes.

The report was published by Healthy Schools Campaign (HSC) in partnership with The School Superintendents Association (AASA), Association of School Business Officials International (ASBO), National Alliance for Medicaid in Education (NAME) and Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE). 

A public dissemination toolkit is available to help share the report with your networks.

Cuts by the Trump administration has all but eliminated the U.S. Department of Education’s (USDE)  statistical research arm, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which has conducted statistical research by collecting, analyzing, and reporting U.S. education data for over 150 years. The loss of almost all of the staff in the NCES, which traces its existence to an 1867 law establishing a federal statistical agency to conduct research, analyze everything from graduation rates and student outcomes to teacher and principal development, and provide the Nation’s Report Card.

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Leading Democrats on the congressional appropriations committees sent a 10-page letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon demanding information about the mass layoffs in the Department of Education (USDE). The March 11 layoffs cut the USDE’s workforce nearly in half and many want to know what the impact will be on the agency’s ability to perform a variety of required oversight functions.

Among major areas of concern identified in the letter are accountability under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, services for students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, federal student aid programs at colleges and universities, and students’ civil rights.

The letter requests details regarding the following:
-The number of staff terminated in each program office;
-Expected savings in salaries and benefits for fiscal 2025;
-How many remaining staff were assigned additional duties due to staff reductions since January 20, 2025;
-The average per-staff number of new duties assigned; and
-A complete list of office teams that were cut and the specific responsibilities transferred from those teams to other offices.

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On Thursday, March 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities calling on U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities.” At the signing ceremony, Trump stated that, “We’re going to be returning education, very simply, back to the states where it belongs. And this is a very popular thing to do, but much more importantly, it’s a common sense thing to do, and it’s going to work, absolutely.”

However, an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll taken in late February 2025 found that 63% of Americans surveyed said they would oppose getting rid of the U.S. Department of Education (USDE), compared with 37% who supported its closure.

Trump administration already laid off many USDE staff, reducing the a department that had 4,133 employees when Trump took office and has now 2,183 employees left. Nearly 600 workers resigned or retired and an additional 1,300 lost their jobs as part of a reduction in force.

Although the USDE was created by Congress and cannot legally be ended without congressional approval, it appears that the department may well be significantly crippled by the actions thus far taken against it.

To view the executive order, click here.

Source: NPR

As a result of the elimination of hundreds of its employees charged with protecting the civil rights of students and educators, the U.S. Department of Education has put over 6,000 active cases in seven Office of Civil Rights (OCR) offices that have been closed — including the Philadelphia Office.

In toto, the agency closed its offices in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, Dallas, San Francisco, Boston and Cleveland, which are seven of its 12 civil rights enforcement offices. Those offices oversaw nearly 60,000 K-12 public schools, which house over 30 million students.

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