Trump officials are giving Iowa flexibility with federal education money. More countries could follow

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is giving Iowa more power to decide how to spend federal education money, signing a proposal expected to be the first of many as conservative states seek a new domain from the White House that promises to “bring education back to the states.”

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Iowa was the first state to apply for an exemption from some spending rules after Education Secretary Linda McMahon called on states to request flexibility last year. Such waivers have been offered for years but are finding new attention as Trump officials use all available tools to remove the federal government from local education.

McMahon formally approved Iowa’s plan Wednesday at an event in the state. Indiana and Kansas have also applied to be exempt from certain parts of federal education law, and other state leaders have expressed interest.

McMahon told The Associated Press that the new flexibility will save time and money now allocated to ensuring compliance with federal rules. With fewer restrictions, states can pool their federal funds toward priorities of their choice, including literacy or teacher training, she said.

“We’re kind of removing that bottleneck, not just the additional compliance with the mandates, and that’s going to be very beneficial to the state,” McMahon said.

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“It won’t go through the Department of Education, it will flow more directly to the states,” McMahon said.

Iowa’s newly approved waiver applies primarily to education funds used by the state education agency, not the large sums of money that flow to the state’s more than 300 public school districts.

Under the arrangement, federal money from four programs — aimed at teacher training, English language learners, after-school programs and academic enrichment — would be pooled into one pot with fewer restrictions on how it can be spent. Iowa’s plan would consolidate about $9.5 million over the course of the waiver, which runs through September 2028. How much goes toward one purpose versus another is up to state officials.

Iowa said it will save about $8 million in staff time that would have been devoted to making sure spending complies with regulations.

The state will be required to show that it continues to meet the spirit of the federal laws behind each funding source.

This funding model, known as block grants, is a longtime dream of conservatives who say money from the federal government comes with too many strings attached.

Opponents say block grants would allow states to redirect money away from students most in need of federal aid, including low-income students and English language learners, and toward Republican priorities. Congressional Democrats urged McMahon to reject block grant requests in a letter in May, saying they would fail “the very students these provisions are intended to support.”

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The waiver approved for Iowa is much narrower than the waiver the state initially proposed in March. This required McMahon to consolidate 10 funding sources into one block grant, either to the state education agency or to the state’s school districts. The early proposal asked for flexibility for programs including Title I, which sends more than $100 million to Iowa schools with large shares of low-income students.

Iowa’s new plan leaves Title I funding unchanged.

Education Department officials said Iowa’s new plan reflects the flexibility that can be afforded under current law. McMahon separately asked Congress to pass a budget that would consolidate much of the nation’s federal education funding into a single grant. Her proposal would not eliminate the four spending programs being combined in Iowa.

In her formal endorsement, McMahon called Iowa’s plan “the nation’s first proposal to return education to the states by providing commonsense flexibility, within the letter of federal law and while maintaining its spirit.”

The waivers are the latest example of the Republican administration using the tools of the federal bureaucracy in its mission to dismantle the Department of Education.

It is not uncommon for states to apply for exceptions to the law because Congress created the exemption to give states flexibility on initiatives that improve academic achievement. However, it has never been used overtly as a means of ceding federal power to the states.

McMahon has separately used a federal action to outsource much of her agency’s work to other departments, using interagency agreements typically reserved for smaller tasks.

Trump promised to close the Department of Education, saying it had been overrun by liberal thinking. Only Congress has the authority to revoke the agency, but Trump directed McMahon to terminate the agency to the fullest extent legally possible. It has cut its staff in half and is offloading some of its largest grant programs to other agencies.

Opponents fought it in court every step of the way, but the Supreme Court ruled last July that the dismantling work could continue.