Sweeping cuts to foreign aid imposed by the Trump administration have severely disrupted education organizations with portfolios that span school-focused projects both in the U.S. and globally.
Those reductions have implications not only for education providers’ bottom lines, but also for the products and services they provide to governments, schools, and students in developing countries around the world.
Earlier this year, the White House issued an executive order calling for a 90-day pause on new obligations and disbursements in United States foreign development assistance.
What seemed like a temporary hold shortly turned into a stop-work order, as the U.S. Agency for International Development laid off thousands of its workers, paused payments for completed work, and terminated thousands of contracts.
Ultimately, the federal administration cut 90 percent of USAID foreign aid contracts, including those focusing on education fronts worldwide.
Many of these actions have been challenged in court, with aid recipients and other nonprofits filing lawsuits to contest the funding freeze. At least one of those fights wound its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which this month rejected a Trump administration funding freeze but did not set terms on when the money would be restored.
Key Takeaways: Cuts to Foreign Education Programs
- Many education organizations, particularly those on government contracts, work both in the U.S. and in developing countries.
- USAID funds about $1 billion per year in education-focused projects worldwide.
- Education providers say the Trump administration’s cuts have ended programs focused on teacher training, literacy, basic access to school, and other areas.
- An EdWeek Market Brief survey shows many education companies are active in foreign markets, including Latin America and Asia.
The cuts to foreign aid have been squarely focused on gutting the USAID, which for more than 60 years has served as the independent agency responsible for providing civilian foreign aid and development assistance.
Last year, USAID disbursed more than $32 billion across a range of sectors — including agriculture, health and population, and humanitarian efforts — down from the almost $44 billion it spent in 2023, according to the federal government’s foreign assistance website.
One billion dollars of that lump sum in 2024 specifically went to education, including $750 million to basic education — serving countries like Ukraine, Jordan, and Ethiopia.
In tandem with widespread cuts this year, the U.S. Department of State approved specific waivers to the foreign aid freeze to continue “life-saving” programs, including those related to education.
However, many aid organizations that have sought to access the department’s systems since the Trump administration’s announced cuts say they’ve run into problems accessing online platforms for payment and other information.
With reduced budgets, many education vendors that do business in the U.S. and internationally are being forced to cancel projects that support underserved populations.
They’re also imposing staff cuts, delaying payments to implementing organizations, and ending relationships with foreign partners. In some cases, those organizations say it’s unlikely they will be able to keep their doors open.
EdWeek Market Brief recently spoke to K-12 education organizations that receive significant funding from USAID or have partners who depend on agency support to learn more about the impact of the cuts to their operations.
Many representatives for those organizations say the cuts have created enormous uncertainty and raised the possibility that a significant portion of work in the global education sector will simply go away and not return.
The Ripple of Effects
Many education companies — both for-profit and nonprofit — work outside of their national borders. Opportunities in foreign education markets have greatly expanded with schools’ ever-expanding use of online tools and platforms, which make delivery of everything from classroom resources to administrative systems much easier for providers of all sizes.
In addition to marketing and selling their products to individual public and private schools abroad, some education organizations have partnered with foreign governments intent on expanding access to classroom resources and other tools to a broader, traditionally under-resourced population of students.
Many education companies focused on the K-12 market have a strong presence internationally, according to survey data from the EdWeek Research Center.
Join Us for EdWeek Market Brief’s Virtual Forum
Join our virtual forum June 10 & 11, 2025, to hear directly from school district leaders and industry peers about important trends playing out in the sector—and the support school systems need from education companies.
Thirty percent of company officials said their organizations work in Mexico, for instance, and 21 percent work in Brazil. Thirty-four percent have a presence in Latin American countries other than those two nations, according to the survey data, collected for EdWeek Market Brief last year.
The share of companies working in other global markets vary. Twenty-four percent work in China; 29 percent work in Asian nations other than China; 24 percent work in India; and 26 percent are in South Asian markets other than India.
Education is a force multiplier for safety, strength, prosperity, national security, influence abroad.
Paige Morency, director of outreach and communications, Basic Education Coalition
For organizations like the Basic Education Coalition, based in Washington, D.C., effects hit hard across the wide swath of organizations they represent.
The group works to promote and expand equitable access to quality basic education around the globe by helping to secure funding for international programs. Its efforts in advocacy also help to influence policy and legislation.
The coalition is almost entirely member-funded, and the organizations that belong to this group — whether they’re doing work domestically or internationally — are struggling to hang on.
“Our industry was gutted overnight,” said Paige Morency, director of outreach and communications for the group. “If member organizations are struggling to get the funding to implement their programs, they will have a very hard time continuing to operate, and they will have a very hard time paying their dues into our membership.”
Some groups that belong to the coalition include RTI International, Unbounded Associates, and Team4Tech.
Many of the Basic Education Coalition’s members have had 50 to 75 percent layoffs across their U.S. offices and in any offices abroad, Morency said.
“Education is a force multiplier for safety, strength, prosperity, national security, influence abroad,” Morency said. The cuts have weakened education organizations’ ability to support “a more stable world and greater contributions to economic development.”
In addition to layoffs, the coalition’s members are facing the shuttering of projects and the inability to pay implementing partners for work that has already been done.
Many of the education programs that have been halted are ambitious in scope and focus on a broad array of interests.
One aborted USAID-funded project in Malawi focused on improving teachers’ instructional skills in literacy and numeracy to improve foundational education.
The end of foreign aid will result in almost 90,000 primary school teachers in Malawi missing out on professional development opportunities for early-grade instruction, Morency said, leading teachers to continue using outdated and ineffective methods that can exacerbate low student learning outcomes and high dropout rates.
Other projects that the coalition has seen come to an end include those that would have provided pre-service and in-service training to teachers across Uzbekistan, support for women-owned businesses in Algeria, and professional development to educators in Zambia.
“Even if funding came through [for an organization], they can’t continue operating because there’s no staff left,” Morency said.
There’s a long list of international education programs that are facing similar cancellations, she added.
“This is not the kind of work you can pause for 90 days, and then everything’s right where you left it,” Morency said. “You spend decades building the trust with the ministries of education, and then all of a sudden, you up and leave. The relationships are broken, those diplomatic ties are severed.”
Forced Into a ‘Thoughtful Closeout’
One nonprofit that works in education told EdWeek Market Brief that eight of its nine USAID projects have been brought to a halt.
The total value of those projects, which were at different levels of maturity, was tens of millions of dollars, said a representative for the group. A representative of the organization spoke on the condition of anonymity to not risk jeopardizing the possibility of receiving future funding.
The organization’s work has included helping other countries strengthen literacy and providing education to students around the world who cannot attend formal schools.
Because of the cuts, the organization has furloughed large numbers of staff at its headquarters. It has also terminated staff contracts in the field in different countries.
“This impacts our partners, it impacts vendors, because they have not been paid for work that was done,” the source said. “It has effects, not only for the business of it, but also has reputational impacts as well.”
It reflects decades of experience, and now it is gone. We’re just feeling grief.
An anonymous education organization that was funded by USAID
The organization’s leaders are working with teams to have a “thoughtful closeout” as its projects end, the individual said. That work requires the group to carefully document where teams were in the process before the project received its termination notice.
Online resources, such as the USAID website, and other digital repositories and project reports of all the work the department has supported are no longer publicly accessible.
“It reflects decades of experience, and now it is gone,” the representative of the aid organization said. “We’re just feeling grief.”
The organization is also — like many education organizations working abroad — trying to pursue financial support from other sources, including philanthropies, corporations, international organizations, and foreign governments.
To date, however, those sources have provided organizations with relatively limited funding, compared to USAID.
Global Impacts
A recent survey of education organizations working in one country, South Africa, captured the scope of the USAID cuts in that region.
The survey, conducted by a group of research organizations, found that nearly half of education-focused respondents to the poll have been forced to halt projects or are facing financial uncertainty.
“There was a sense of bewilderment because how can someone just renege on a contract?” said Tara Polzer Ngwato, director of Social Impact Insights Africa, one of the research organizations that conducted the survey.
“There was also a sense of uncertainty whether this was a 90-day freeze as it was originally communicated, or if this was a breaking of contract and a withdrawal,” she said. “But it’s very clear now that this is the end. Some organizations are still hoping that work already done will be reimbursed, but most are not holding their breath.”
Many layers of teacher support, translation and development, and systemwide learner assessments have been lost in the country because these kinds of projects were significantly supported by USAID, Ngwato said.
There was a sense of bewilderment because how can someone just renege on a contract?
Tara Polzer Ngwato, director of Social Impact Insights Africa
At the same time, the education organizations that were surveyed indicated that they’re adapting.
Fifty-one percent of respondents said they’re devising new strategies to find new forms of income or non-donor means of covering costs, while 39 percent said they plan on cutting down fixed costs.
Other approaches groups are taking include engaging with other nongovernmental organizations to take over threatened activities, and selling assets.
“This is a very large hole — 40 percent of the global aid budget [missing],” Ngwato said.
She likens the situation to a bridge that’s missing 40 percent of its infrastructure.
“You can no longer use that bridge; there is no longer a pathway to get across the river,” she said. “You have to find other ways to swim, to build rafts, to hold hands, wade across — whatever you can do.”