What Are Teacher Training Grants?

Teacher training grants are programs funded by the federal government which ensure pipelines into the teaching profession, often for individuals who are underrepresented in teaching such as students of color, students attending minority-serving institutions, and students intending to work in special education or bilingual education. Federal involvement in teacher preparation began in 1950, but expanded in scope following the push for standards-based teaching in the 1990s.

Teacher training grants have received overwhelming bipartisan support from both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations in recent decades. These grants serve to both increase federal involvement in teacher training as well as bolster teacher recruitment and retention to fill employment gaps in high-need school districts.These grants can cover a variety of education-related costs, depending on the program, including tuition, housing, textbooks, and fees.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton’s State of the Union Address laid out a “Call to Action for American Education in the 21st Century” where he stated that a number of teacher training grants including the Eisenhower Professional Development program, Goals 2000, and the National Science Foundation’s Teacher Enhancement Program would provide support for professional development. In 2000, President George W. Bush planned to continue the same trajectory, combining existing funds to streamline the certification and recruitment processes for teachers. In 2010, under President Obama, The U.S. Department of Education awarded an additional $100 million under the Teacher Quality Partnership program to improve the recruitment and licensing of teachers in high-need school districts. In 2023, President Biden’s Departments of Education and Labor released “National Guidelines for Apprenticeship Standards for K-12 Teacher Apprenticeships” to expand apprenticeships in education and reinforce recruitment pathways.

How Are Teacher Training Grants Changing Under Trump?

While teacher training grants have a long history of support in both Republican and Democratic administrations, the Trump administration is taking a new stance, deeming the grants largely unnecessary. On February 17th, 2025 President Trump’s Department of Education canceled $600 million in grants that funded what it terms as “divisive teacher training grants.”

The cuts themselves faced months of legal battle until April 4th, 2025 when the Supreme Court decided to reverse a lower court’s decision which halted $65 million in cancelled grants, causing the programs to be diminished significantly. While some argue that this will drastically affect high-need school districts, the research on whether or not these grants are effective in attracting and retaining teachers is largely inconclusive.

Arguments in Favor to Cuts to Teacher Training Grants

Teacher Training Grants Propagate Divisive Ideologies

President Trump’s rollback of teacher training grants falls within his administration’s rollbacks of DEI programs across the federal umbrella. In Executive Order 14137, released on January 21, 2025, he states, “Illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement.”

Some argue that the nature of the curriculum in teacher training grant programs is antithetical to the tenets of DEI, with few going as far to claim that these grant programs serve as a disincentive for people to enter the teaching profession. Neeraja Deshpande states in her Op-Ed that, “… ideology like DEI is, ironically, un-inclusive: many people who might otherwise make excellent teachers but disagree with the partisan bent in teacher training programs will choose to avoid the profession altogether.”

Teacher Training Grants are Insufficiently Effective

The research on the effectiveness of these programs is largely inconclusive. Some teacher training grant programs have been found to have no impact on the number of people who hold degrees in education. 

Even where these programs are seen to have positive effects, they often serve as  a temporary solution to a much deeper, systematic problem. Some research suggests that targeted grant aid is a necessary but incomplete solution for increasing the supply of prospective teachers. One analysis of the federal TEACH Grant program suggests that the program did slightly increase the number of bachelor’s and master’s degree teachers in high-need education fields and for racially underrepresented teacher candidates. However, the analysis made clear that those small improvements are unlikely to fully address teacher labor supply issues.

Often, these programs do not attract the teachers needed to fill high-need subjects; Other studies have found that, “financial incentives do not appear to work well for STEM teachers, contrary to findings from a review into incentives for attracting teachers into hard-to-staff areas.” Furthermore, these programs do not attract the teachers needed in high-need communities; one study found them to be effective at “… attracting teachers to high growth and high performing schools, but less successful in getting teachers into schools with a high proportion of low-income pupils or hard-to-staff schools.”

Critiques of Cuts to Teacher Training Grants

Rural Districts Rely on Grants to Attract Teachers

Critics of the cuts argue they will significantly weaken the flow of teachers into rural school districts. The playing field is largely unequal to begin with as rural districts consistently find themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to teacher retention. Considering that, rural schools which serve low-income students, and those serving mostly students of color, have a much higher rate of turnover than schools serving similar demographics of students in urban and suburban areas, these cuts are thought to have a most drastic effect on rural districts.

The cuts leave rural schools in a funding limbo, unsure of where this loss of funding will be made up, or if it will be made up at all. A study by the Center for American Progress found that the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget request would actually eliminate a $220 million individual funding stream for rural public schools, which eliminates the requirement for states to give previously rural-designated funding to rural schools.

Federal dollars also make up a greater percentage of the funding pool for rural districts which have less property tax revenue than urban and suburban communities. This thus makes teacher retention an uphill battle for rural schools because federal dollars make up roughly 10% of education spending nationally, that percentage is markedly higher in rural districts, making them especially reliant on federal programming.

High-Need and Poor Districts Rely on Grants to Attract Teachers

Beyond rural districts, these funds are needed to attract teachers in all high-need and poor districts. One article finds that the cancellation impacts about 3,200 students in rural districts that were damaged by Hurricane Helene in 2024. Thus, these programs are more than a solution to a pre-existing teacher shortage; they are also an integral facet of disaster relief programs for districts that face a sudden need for teachers.

The research on these programs is far from entirely negative. Analysis of one grant program found that the grant caused teacher vacancies to drop 40 percent. Therefore, some of these grants, despite the  aforementioned research that suggests otherwise, accomplish exactly what they seek to.

Furthermore, many of these programs are met with acclaim for their effectiveness in districts which are often the most difficult to staff. Through the CREST‑Ed residency in Georgia, a five-year, Teacher Quality Partnership grant-funded program which sought to strengthen teacher pipelines to high-need urban and rural districts, teacher residents were found to represent predominately minoritized populations and to remain longer in high-need and low-income school districts.

What is the Future Outlook?

The cuts to teacher training grant programs were initiated nearly one year ago, so their effects have yet to be fully felt by rural and high-need districts. Whether state governments or local municipalities will be able to make up for this loss in funding is yet to be seen. While rural districts undoubtedly relied on these programs to attract teachers, their effectiveness, as the aforementioned research conveys, is not certain. What is certain is that districts struggling to attract and retain teachers are facing a novel amount of pressure to innovate solutions that address the nationwide teacher shortage which most drastically affects rural, high-need, low-income districts.

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