The first five months of President Donald Trump’s second term have delivered a flurry of new proposals and policies — and school district leaders, along with education companies, are largely pessimistic about some of the administration’s biggest K-12 initiatives.
A pair of surveys conducted by the EdWeek Research Center share how school district leaders and education company officials view some of the Trump administration’s most sweeping actions so far.
Those policies include federal funding cuts, the imposition of far-reaching tariffs, the expansion of school choice, and policies meant to restrict the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The conclusion: Leaders of school systems and education businesses, by and large, are fearful that the administration’s actions will have a negative impact on their finances and their bottom lines.
The nationally representative, online survey of K-12 officials was conducted in March and April by the EdWeek Research Center of 157 district leaders and 126 principals.
The second survey, taken of 400 education company representatives, was also put forward by the research center in March and April.
About This Series
EdWeek Market Brief’s series of stories uses original surveys of K-12 leaders and education company officials—surveys conducted by the EdWeek Research Center—to explore the impact of Trump administration policies and proposals on school district demands for products and services.
This story, based on those results, is part of EdWeek Market Brief’s continuing series looking at how the Trump administration is changing the K-12 market, and how districts and companies are responding.
The new survey findings give vendors a window into how positively or negatively their district clients view the raft of policies coming out of Washington, so that vendors understand how districts may react through budgets and policy — and how vendors should be talking about the political environment.
For now, anxious district officials and education company leaders are in somewhat of a holding pattern, while court cases involving several of the president’s policies play out, and Congress debates a new budget for the U.S. Department of Education, said Hillary Knudson, vice president at Whiteboard Advisors, a communications, research, and consulting firm.
“The implications of all this for the [K-12] industry and for district leaders all hinge on some of these things that remain quite uncertain right now,” said Knudson, who advises a range of education organizations, including nonprofits, foundations, and ed-tech companies.
“But what we do know is that the tightening of [district] budgets is very real.”
The Biggest Fear: Spending Cuts
In the surveys, district officials and K-12 business leaders were asked essentially identical questions: How positively or negatively do they see a specific Trump administration proposal or policy affecting either district finances or company revenues over the next four years?
An overwhelming number of district officials — 73 percent — said Trump administration changes to federal spending will have a very negative or somewhat negative impact on their budgets.
Sixteen percent said the changes would have no impact, while 11 percent responded somewhat positive or very positive.
An even larger percentage of business leaders — 81 percent — said Trump administration changes to federal spending will have a very negative or somewhat negative impact on revenue, while 9 percent said the impact would be neutral.
Eleven percent of business leaders said the changes would have a somewhat positive or very positive affect.
And on tariffs, 64 percent of district officials and principals said that the Trump administration’s trade restrictions — which in some cases have been proposed, only to be altered or rescinded later — would have a very negative or somewhat negative impact on their budget.
A quarter of respondents said the trade policies would have no impact. Only 11 percent said it would have a somewhat positive or very positive impact on school finances.
Currently, the White House is proposing $12 billion in cuts to the U.S. Department of Education budget for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1 — on top of separate cuts previously made to hundreds of grants and contracts supporting teacher preparation and education and research.
The president’s budget proposal maintains flat funding for two vital pots of money for schools, Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
However, nearly four dozen other grant programs that provide services for specific K-12 student populations, pay for teacher training and professional development, and fund education research and data collection are on the potential chopping block as part of the budget proposal.
Emily Makelky, vice president of the Curriculum Leadership Institute, a nonprofit that works with school districts in five states to provide professional development for curriculum implementation, said her company is already feeling a financial pinch from the new policies.
At the beginning of the year, CLI launched a marketing campaign and hired a consultant to help win new school district clients, Makelky said.
“I’d say by February all of the interest that we had been receiving came to a halt,” she said. “And the feedback from the prospective clients we were talking to was, ‘We just don’t know what’s going to happen with our budget, so we can’t sign anything right now.’”
While new district leads are frozen, Makelky said all of her organization’s existing district clients have continued with their contracts and purchased services for next school year.
Separately, CLI has seen a recent uptick in interest from charter schools. But none have signed contracts yet, Makelky said.
Across the country, state efforts to ramp up private school choice programs have gained momentum, with Texas, Indiana, Idaho, Tennessee, and Wyoming either enacting or expanding voucher efforts this year. Wyoming is one of the states where CLI has current district clients.
Many public school officials view voucher programs negatively, reasoning that they siphon students and funding from public systems. Some also contend that private schools don’t have to meet the same standards for accountability and serving all students that public schools do.
The Trump administration has proposed $60 million in new annual funding in grants for charter schools — often associated with public school choice —as part of the fiscal year 2026 budget. The Department of Education also announced last month it was increasing charter school funding by the same amount for fiscal year 2025, raising the program’s total budget for the current fiscal year to $500 million.
The survey asked respondents to weigh in on the Trump administration’s school choice proposals.
Sixty-two percent of district officials said the Trump administration stance on school choice would have either a somewhat negative or very negative impact on their finances over the next four years. A minority of those surveyed, 21 percent, said it would have no impact, and 16 percent said it would be somewhat positive or very positive.
Meanwhile education company representatives seemed to have a bit of a more welcoming stance toward the Trump administration’s attempts to expand school choice.
Almost one-quarter of business leaders, 24 percent, said the White House’s proposals for school choice would be somewhat positive or very positive for their revenues. Forty-four percent said it would have a very negative or somewhat negative effect on revenues, and 31 percent said it would have no impact.
Trump’s DEI Policies
Earlier this year, the Trump administration sent a warning shot to districts by telling them that it wanted to withhold Title I funding for school systems with diversity, equity and inclusion programs. A group of federal court rulings have restricted Trump’s ability to enforce that policy.
In addition, the Trump administration has repeatedly attacked DEI programs in the federal government, including education, and in the private sector.
According to the survey, 53 percent of school district officials and principals said the anti-DEI policies from Washington would have a somewhat negative or very negative impact on school finances. Nearly a third, 32 percent, said it would have no impact, and 14 percent said it would be somewhat positive or very positive.
Cross-tab data shows that rural districts view the anti-DEI policies a bit less harshly than their urban and suburban counterparts.
Forty-four percent of rural district respondents said the policy would have a somewhat negative or very negative impact, compared to 54 percent of suburban districts and 64 percent of urban districts.
For their part, three out of four business leaders, 75 percent, said the Trump administration’s anti-DEI proposals would have a somewhat negative or very negative impact on their company’s revenues.
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Only 8 percent said it would be somewhat positive or very positive, and fewer than one in five respondents, 19 percent, said it would have no impact on the company’s finances.
Kevin Gray, the CEO of education consulting firm Product & Process, pointed out that DEI was already under political fire in some states prior to Trump winning a second term. But now it “has gotten a lot worse,” he said.
And that is undermining the work of K-12 publishers, said Gray, the former president and chief content officer for Westchester Education Services, a company that does curriculum-writing and culturally responsive audits for ed-tech companies and education publishers.
Publishers and ed-tech companies that create content or curriculum, he said, “are being more cautious in what they’re creating and kind of waiting to see what happens.”
“They don’t know where the market’s headed,” Gray said. “There are still [education] companies that are very committed to it, but they just don’t know what to do.”
Gray’s consulting firm has also lost work because of recent Trump administration policies. He was working with a nonprofit based in Africa to create storybooks in communities with oral-only languages.
Once federal grants used for that program were cut earlier this year, Gray was informed the project was being canceled.
Lynn Gerber, the executive director of WriterCoach Connection, a nonprofit based in the California Bay Area that provides writing coaches to school districts, said that the districts her company is working with have remained “fairly positive” about Trump administration K-12 policies.
And their commitment to DEI and social-emotional learning — which has also been drawn into culture wars in school districts — appears to be unwavering even with threats coming from Washington, Gerber said.
“They feel very strongly that they are going to continue those programs,” she said.
In the Long Term, Cause for Optimism?
For Makelky, the vice president of the Curriculum Leadership Institute, there’s a sense of optimism that the Trump administration’s whirlwind policy-setting pace will eventually slow down, and her nonprofit’s business will again start signing up new districts once everything settles.
“It feels like our prospective clients are just on hold,” she said. “People are just uncomfortable, and nobody is spending money unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
There has been some easing of the cloud of uncertainty hovering over the K-12 industry, said Knudson, vice president at Whiteboard Advisors.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s recent testimony before Congress for the department’s budget provided a silver lining when she affirmed support for Title I and IDEA funding at current levels, she said.
And the president’s pick to oversee K-12 policy at the Department of Education — North Dakota State Superintendent Kirsten Baesler — recently advanced her nomination out of a U.S. Senate committee. She still needs to be confirmed by the full chamber.
Having leadership at the Department of Education with tangible K-12 experience will be helpful, Knudson said.
She’s hopeful school districts and K-12 business leaders can find a “steady state.”
Districts are going to “find ways to make it work best for students, so it’s not so much about whether things will stabilize,” she said.
“What I’m hearing the most from superintendents,” she said, “is we’ll have to figure it out as we go.”
Takeaways: Education companies trying to gauge districts’ views of how Trump administration policies will affect their finances should know that cuts to funding are top of mind.
Changes to federal funding, the disruption from tariffs — which have already raised K-12 cost — and anti-DEI policies are seen as dragging down districts’ abilities to spend.
Vendors that go into conversations with districts seeking to pitch products, or keep existing ones in the budget — should know the context, and be ready to help school systems take creative steps to find solutions, through smart budgeting and other strategies.