The Institute of Education Sciences had spent $587 million of its $768 million fiscal 2025 appropriation as of Aug. 26, leaving roughly $180 million that must be obligated before Sept. 30 or return to the Treasury, according to a court declaration filed by IES Acting Director Matthew Soldner.

The figure is far above the typical unspent balance at this point in the two-year spending cycle. During Trump's first presidency, IES never had more than 3 percent of its annual appropriation left 22 months into the 24-month cycle, federal spending reports show. Under the Biden administration, the agency consistently spent at least 90 percent of its budget by Aug. 1 of the second year. Today the agency must burn through 24 percent of its fiscal 2025 budget in a single month.

The disclosure came in the Education Department's response to an ongoing lawsuit alleging that the department and the White House Office of Management and Budget have illegally suppressed education research funding under President Donald Trump, OMB Director Russell Vought and Education Secretary Linda McMahon. "IES intends to spend all funds appropriated by Congress in a timely manner, in full compliance with all statutory and regulatory requirements, and in accordance with the operation of the programs it administers," Soldner wrote in his Aug. 26 declaration.

Spending $180 million in 35 days may strain an agency that lost more than 160 of its roughly 190 staffers during last year's governmentwide cutbacks. A federal spending report through July shows IES had more than half of its $40 million staff-salary allocation still to spend with two months left in the 24-month window. The agency did not answer detailed questions about how it plans to prevent funds from lapsing.

"IES intends to use its remaining FY25 funds to fully fund existing research grants, as well as to support other high-quality statistical and evaluation activities in service of its statutory obligations," press secretary Savannah Newhouse wrote in a statement.

Reprogrammed funds shift congressional priorities

Of the remaining $180 million, a department budget-service staffer told key congressional committee heads last month that the agency plans to spend more than $68 million differently from what lawmakers intended, per the court filing. The changes include trimming $50 million Congress set aside for data collection, $16 million for regional education laboratories and $2.7 million for studies of state and local implementation of federal special education law.

Those dollars will move to general-purpose research grants ($24 million more), research grants on education for students with disabilities ($28 million more) and statewide longitudinal data systems ($17 million more). The department appears to have followed the legally required reprogramming steps, but neither the court filing nor the congressional notification explains the rationale.

For researchers who depend on IES data infrastructure, the shifts carry workflow consequences. The department already returned $6.8 million in unspent IES funding to the Treasury last September. Last year IES carried over $510 million from fiscal 2025, and more than one-third of that remains unspent with a month to go.

Fiscal 2026 pipeline is nearly untouched

The fiscal 2025 backlog sits atop a larger constraint. Congress supplied $791 million earlier this year with an expiration date of Sept. 30, 2027, but OMB is withholding $465 million of it — more than six months after the point when those funds typically become available. As of Aug. 1, IES had obligated only $60 million in fiscal 2026 funds, all for the National Assessment of Educational Progress. More than $700 million now likely carries into the second year.

Federal law requires agencies to spend appropriations within the period lawmakers prescribe. Failure risks violating the Impoundment Control Act, the Nixon-era statute barring the president from unilaterally canceling approved appropriations. The Government Accountability Office found seven instances of the Trump administration violating that law last year; none involved the Education Department, though GAO had dozens more investigations underway.

IES is the department's slowest-spending unit, but not the only one. The office for civil rights had nearly one-third of its $140 million annual budget left as of Aug. 1, and the department had roughly 29 percent of its $399.4 million staff-salary budget to dispense in August and September.

Researchers are recalculating grant strategy

The disruptions are already altering research portfolios. Melissa Arnold Lyon, an assistant professor of public policy at the University at Albany, SUNY, sent IES staff preliminary findings more than a year ago from her analysis of proprietary IES data on child-labor policies and educational outcomes. She has not heard back. "We essentially gave up on that study, unfortunately," Lyon said.

She also awaits a new longitudinal dataset tracking children's academic progress from kindergarten through third grade; the most recent version covers the 2010-11 school year. "I would like to update my dataset because 2010-11 is a long time ago, but I am not sure what data I'll use," Lyon said.

Grant seekers are weighing whether the investment still pays. Applications "often take months of preparation and, in many cases, are revised and fine-tuned over years of rejection and resubmission," said Cameron Anglum, an education and public policy researcher at Lehigh University. "The calculus around devoting substantial time and effort to such endeavors has changed sharply."

Some losses cannot be recovered. "We cannot go back and gather data from this time period when the grants and grant reviews have been halted," said Sarah Beach, director of research at the Education Rights Institute at the University of Virginia School of Law. "Therefore, we have and will continue to have a huge gap in educational research that would have informed better interventions and systems for our nation's learners."

Whether IES can clear its $180 million balance by Sept. 30 — and whether OMB releases the withheld $465 million — will determine how much of the fiscal 2026 research pipeline resumes before the next appropriation cycle begins.