Assistance program
Special Education Preschool Grants
$3.4 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, Education, Department of
- Assistance
- Formula Grants
- CFDA number
- 84.173
- What it does
- To provide grants to States to assist them in providing special education and related services to children with disabilities ages 3 through 5 years, and at a State's discretion, to 2- year- old children with disabilities who will reach age three during the school year.
- Who benefits
- Children aged 3 through 5 with disabilities, and (at the State's option) 2-year- old children with disabilities that will reach age 3 during the school year, that require special education and related services.
- Who applies
- State educational agencies in the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Local educational agencies apply to their State educational agency for sub-grants.
- Authorized by
- Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), as amended, Part B, Section 619, 20 U.S.C. 1419.
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.
Top recipients
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