Assistance program
Special Education Grants to States
$118.2 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, Education, Department of
- Assistance
- Formula Grants
- CFDA number
- 84.027
- What it does
- To provide grants to States to assist them in providing special education and related services to all children with disabilities.
- Who benefits
- Children with disabilities will benefit.
- Who applies
- State educational agencies in the 50 States, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam and Virgin Islands, the Department of the Interior, and freely associated States. Local educational agencies apply to their State educational agency for subgrants.
- Authorized by
- Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), as amended, Part B, Sections 611-618
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
How the money flows
Committed dollars by how this program's money is paid out.
Direct payments
$478.9M
<1%
Grants
$117.7B
100%
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
Administering agencies
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments