Trump Admin Cancels $48.6M in Career-Tech Grants It Once Created
February 28, 2026 · 2 min read
Jared Klein
The Department of Education has terminated $48.6 million in Career-Connected High Schools (CCHS) grants, forcing all 19 funded projects to scale back programming — despite the program's origins in the first Trump administration.
The cancellations are part of a broader pattern: more than 700 Education Department grants across dozens of programs have been revoked since the start of the second Trump term, reshaping the landscape for education-focused grant seekers nationwide.
What Happened
The Career-Connected High Schools program funded projects designed to integrate career and technical education into high school curricula. Grants were awarded during the Biden administration, but the program concept traces back to Trump's first term. Recipients expected their second year of funding to begin February 1, 2025 — days after the new administration took office.
For nearly six months, grantees operated in limbo. The funding never arrived. The Department ultimately discontinued the grants in July, and by February 2026, all 19 projects had been forced to cut programming, staff, and student services.
Meanwhile, the administration has transferred many workers from the Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education to the Department of Labor through interagency partnership agreements, fragmenting federal CTE oversight.
Congress Pushed Back — Partially
The FY2026 Labor-HHS-ED appropriations bill rejected the administration's proposal to eliminate postsecondary CTE funding entirely, maintaining stable funding levels for core Perkins Act programs. But that congressional protection did not extend to the CCHS discretionary grants, which fell under executive authority.
The result is a split landscape: formula-based CTE funding remains intact, but competitive grant programs are vulnerable to administrative action regardless of congressional intent.
What Grant Seekers Should Do
Education organizations relying on federal discretionary grants face a new risk calculus. The CCHS cancellations demonstrate that even programs with bipartisan origins can be terminated mid-cycle. Organizations should diversify funding sources, build state and foundation relationships as backstops, and track executive actions that could affect active awards.
For education nonprofits and school districts navigating this shifting federal landscape, Granted can help identify alternative state and foundation funding streams that reduce dependence on any single federal program.
Deeper coverage of federal education funding policy is available on the Granted blog.