One federal grant program changed the trajectory of Joshua Sparks’ life.
Now, that program is at risk.
As a teen, Sparks knew he wanted to go to college and become a teacher. But growing up in rural Kentucky in a low-income household without role models who had attended college, he didn’t know where to start.
He found the help he needed in the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) initiative. Through the program, Sparks connected with mentors who helped him learn about financial aid, how to fill out a FAFSA form and how to look through a college course catalog. States, colleges, school districts and community organizations apply for federal money to support this work with students like him each year.
Sparks graduated from high school — something his grandfather, who helped raise him, never did — attended college and went on to earn multiple graduate degrees, including his doctoral degree.
“There’s almost an unofficial playbook about how to make it through college financially, academically — all these things,” said Sparks, who now teaches statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles and helps young Kentuckians find their path toward higher education. “And without those resources, I had no idea about how to make that happen.”
Nationwide, more than 568,000 low-income students were enrolled in the GEAR UP program in the 2022-23 school year, according to the National Council for Community and Education Partnerships. But under the Trump administration’s 2026 proposed budget for the Department of Education, this program would be eliminated.
““The GEAR Up Program has accomplished what it set out to do – help students prepare and enroll in college,” said Ellen Keast, a Department of Education spokesperson, in a written statement to PBS News. “Through access to federal student aid, states and institutions of higher education have the ability to continue these programs.”
The Department of Education distributes grants and loans like GEAR UP to the nation’s schools and students for a wide variety of support programs, for elementary to college students and beyond. But the department has become a target for the Trump administration’s goal of slimming the federal government. In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. Nearly 2,000 employees were laid off that month, including those responsible for fielding complaints about federal student loans, training state and district officials on how to secure and comply with competitive federal grants, and monitoring data for trends in graduation rates and student need nationwide.
On Thursday, a federal judge blocked Trump’s order with a preliminary injunction following a lawsuit filed in Massachusetts by multiple school districts and education groups, U.S. District Judge Myong Joun ordered the federal agency to reinstate its fired workers.
A department spokesperson told PBS News that the administration plans to immediately challenge the judge’s ruling.
“President Trump and the Senate-confirmed Secretary of Education clearly have the authority to make decisions about agency reorganization efforts, not an unelected Judge with a political axe to grind. This ruling is not in the best interest of American students or families,” Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the Department of Education, said in a written statement.
Some workers who have been fired outright or have been placed on administrative leave say the cuts make it harder to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent on education in the ways Congress intended and will make it harder for local communities and states to support students or plan for the future.
Education research scientist Joseph Murphy was on a team of six people that tracked data tied to federal grants designed to help the nation’s students and communities with the highest needs.
They collected and analyzed data from all U.S. states and territories and assisted with quality control, making sure services, such as how many elementary students needed an aide to help them read, were counted the same way across the country.
Murphy sees the elimination of his team as “a complete purge of anything data-related.”
“This is an open war on data – on anybody who has truth and facts and figures to back up what they’re saying, to prove the folks that were saying that the education system is a mess, to prove them wrong,” he said.
People do not really understand what the federal government does and what cuts to the Education Department or its services mean, Murphy said.
Different states and school districts rely on federal dollars by varying degrees. For decades, the government has relied on data to determine where needs are greatest and if those dollars generated results. Murphy is unsure whether that data can be collected for the upcoming academic year or if anyone will be in place to understand and evaluate it.
Without reliable data to track federal funding and their associated outcomes, Murphy does not know how those decisions will be made — if at all.
Taken together, Donald Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, said these changes will erode the ability to determine how the nation overall is performing in the classroom, what should be done differently and how to reach those goals.
“President Trump and his supporters do not think we should have a national vision for education, that there shouldn’t be a body that’s empowered to do things like collect data on performance of students,” he said. “‘Increasingly, we end up flying blind.”
What the Education Department does
The Department of Education became a Cabinet-level department in 1979. For decades, Congress has passed laws to govern how those dollars would be distributed to communities.
Moynihan said while the department does not provide teachers, it sets standards and collects data to track if those standards are being met across the country, monitoring for disparities.
“While regulations can be cumbersome, they’re there to make sure people’s tax dollars are used according to the will of Congress and that everyone is a good steward,” said David Downey, a former management analyst at the department who trained more than 100,000 people on how to apply for and manage federal grants, including the GEAR UP program.
Since the Reagan administration, presidents have threatened to get rid of the Department of Education, but hadn’t because “we collectively assumed this was a congressional responsibility,” Moynihan said.
Today, the Trump administration argues that states can do a better job than the department of serving the needs of students and families.
But in South Bend, Indiana, school administrator Chad Addie says a federal grant has changed the face of education in his city over the last four years.
The GEAR UP initiative allowed educators and business leaders to introduce more than 2,300 students to emerging job and college opportunities in Addie’s district alone. Looking at the students this program helps daily, Addie said the work is far from over.
“There are students right now who are counting on us because this is their moment in high school, this is their moment in middle school, and it’s important that we’re responsive in this moment for those students,” Addie said.
What comes next?
Murphy’s administrative leave is scheduled to end in June, and he does not know what he is going to do next.
He is very concerned about the students, educators and school districts across the country that will need to scramble to fill budget holes to avoid laying off teachers or losing services without those federal dollars. When Murphy was put on administrative leave, he was unable to access his work email and had to turn over his badge and office computer. Many department employees lost their email access so quickly, they were unable to notify colleagues in state offices and school districts who they had been working with.
Months later, no one has contacted him about transitioning his work to a different person or office. Following the federal judge’s injunction against the Trump administration to stop its efforts to eliminate the Department of Education, federal human resources officials said in court documents that they had contacted all employees through personal e-mail about notice and copies of the May 22 court order. Murphy said no department officials had contacted him with updates about his employment status.
“But did anyone expect them to?” Murphy asked.
For Downey, the court’s decision “is a win for ED staff, but it might take a while for folks to see and feel it.” That includes him. Filing for early retirement and the department’s fate uncertain, Downey said his paperwork must be received by June 9. “The clock is ticking against many of us even with the good news.”
In California, Superintendent Mike Matsuda leads Anaheim Union High School District, where roughly 4 in 5 students qualify for free or reduced meals, he said. He says his biggest challenge right now “is the ambiguity and the uncertainty around budgeting.”
The district, home to 25,000 students, risks losing a tenth of its $425 million annual budget if federal funding for services such as professional development and English-language instruction goes away.
Matsuda said this crunch comes at a strategically terrible time, when high school students are entering a job market disrupted by rapidly evolving technology, including artificial intelligence.
Anticipating what these changes could mean for students whose families do not have money to fill in the gaps left by possible funding cuts, Sparks said if federal programs like GEAR UP are zeroed, “the opportunities go away.”
“When those programs are gone, that route is not even gravel road. They have to pave their own route. When you hit a bump in the road, you don’t know if that’s the end or if you should keep going,” Sparks said. “Children coming from homes that are impoverished should not be penalized more for not having that social safety net.”