Trump Guts School Mental Health Funding as Student Behavior Crisis Deepens

Teachers Are Drowning, and Trump Just Cut the Lifeline

Amy Smith has been teaching for 37 years. She has never seen anything like this.

In her Advanced Placement Literature class at an Austin, Texas high school, seniors who should be college-bound are failing with 15 percent grades. They are not turning in work. They are not engaging. Smith calls it "avoidance behavior," but the pattern extends far beyond her classroom.

Nearly half of educators surveyed by Education Week in 2024 said student behavior was "a lot worse" than before the pandemic. Teachers report widespread apathy, defiance, and constant phone use. Elementary teachers say they need more classroom management training, with requests jumping 14 percent since 2022.

The Trump administration's response? Cut $600 million in teacher training grants.

Mental Health Services Ripped Away

The funding cuts go deeper. Trump has disrupted at least $12 billion in previously awarded federal education funds, including roughly $1 billion earmarked for mental health services in schools.

"To be able to provide those services and then have it ripped away for something that is completely out of our control, it's horrible," Superintendent Derek Fialkiewicz in Corbett, Oregon told NPR. "I feel for our students more than anything because they're not gonna get the services that they need."

These cuts come as schools face a teacher shortage crisis. Pandemic-era veteran teachers left in droves. Their replacements are often inexperienced or emergency-certified, and a 2024 Massachusetts study shows they are more likely to over-discipline students through detentions and suspensions, even though these methods are less effective long-term.

Replacing a teacher costs large school districts an average of $25,000. Taxpayers are paying more for worse outcomes.

The Suspension Trap

For decades, American schools have relied on a simple discipline playbook: kick kids out when they act out. Detentions, suspensions, expulsions. In cases of violence, removal may be necessary. But millions of suspensions every year are for vague offenses like "defiance" or "disruption," which can mean ripping up homework, doing a cartwheel, or cursing.

These suspensions do not work. A 2016 UCLA study found that 10th grade suspensions contributed to 67,000 dropouts nationwide and generated more than $35 billion in social costs. Research links frequent suspensions to worse academic outcomes and higher rates of criminal justice contact, even after controlling for background factors.

A 2014 Department of Education analysis found that Black students were disciplined at substantially higher rates than their peers. The Obama administration responded by encouraging schools to limit suspensions and expulsions. Between 2014 and 2019, at least 36 states passed legislation restricting exclusionary discipline or promoting alternatives.

Evidence-Based Reforms Under Attack

Alternative approaches have shown promise. Restorative justice focuses on conversation-based conflict resolution, aiming to make harmed parties whole while ensuring accountability. In Evanston, Illinois, a partnership with the nonprofit James B. Moran Center for Youth Advocacy has reduced youth arrests over five years.

"Teachers are saying that these practices have transformed classrooms, how teachers engage with students, how students engage with each other, [and] how administrators mete out school discipline," Moran Center Director Patrick Keenan-Devlin said.

Another reform, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), is used by almost 30,000 schools nationwide. It is a rewards-based system tailored to each school community. More than two dozen randomized controlled trials show it reduces suspensions and office referrals.

Now Trump has issued an executive order attacking what it calls Obama's "discriminatory equity ideology" approach to reducing racial discrimination in classrooms. The order calls for a return to "common sense" school discipline policies, which is code for the suspension-heavy methods that have already failed for decades.

Cutting Research While Demanding Results

Trump's cuts to research on school crime may prevent further data collection on what actually works in classrooms. The administration is eliminating evidence-based programs while simultaneously making it harder to study whether its preferred "common sense" approach produces any results beyond higher dropout rates and taxpayer costs.

Teachers like Amy Smith are left to manage unprecedented behavioral challenges with fewer resources, less training, and less support. Students who need mental health services will not get them. Schools that invested in proven reform methods are being told to abandon them for policies that research shows do not work.

The crisis in school discipline is real. Trump's response is making it worse.