The Math They Don't Want You to Do

claire@brightminds-ai.com (Claire Smizer-Muldoon) — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 19:57:29 GMT

Federal funding cuts aren’t a budget story. They’re a values story - and the numbers tell you exactly whose kids get left behind.

Let's walk through some math.

Not the kind that kids are doing in classrooms - not 'new math', 'old math', girl math, dog math.

Politician math.

The kind that we're seeing in board meetings, when a CFO is trying to explain why the district needs to cut the reading specialist and the counselor in the same year.

The proposed FY2026 federal education budget cuts over $6 billion from K-12 public education.

Not one program.

Not one state.

Across the board.

And the way those cuts land isn’t random. It’s patterned. It’s predictable. And if you look closely enough, it’s by design.

What $6 Billion in Cuts Looks Like

Numbers this large tend to lose their meaning. So let me break it down into what actually disappears.

Migrant Education: $1.3 billion, gone.

English Language Acquisition: gone.

Title I funding to high-poverty schools: $4.7 billion cut, gone.

Eighteen grant programs - programs that fund everything from gifted education to after-school programs - consolidated from $6.5 billion down to $2 billion, a 60% reduction. Gone.

Community Schools grants: $168 million, gone.

These aren’t abstractions. The Education Law Center’s analysis lets you look up what your specific district loses. The Learning Policy Institute identified $5 billion in formula funding alone hanging in the balance between White House and Senate proposals. And New America’s district-level analysis shows the average district would lose over $600,000 - roughly $212 per student.

But averages lie. Because the cuts don’t land evenly.

The Part That Should Make You Stop Scrolling

Districts serving the most students of color would lose nearly double the funding of majority-white districts.

From the Desk | memos on the state of education

The Math They Don't Want You to Do

Federal funding cuts aren’t a budget story. They’re a values story - and the numbers tell you exactly whose kids get left behind.

What $6 Billion in Cuts Looks Like

The Part That Should Make You Stop Scrolling