May 14, 2026 The Future of American Foreign Assistance for Basic Education was a roundtable held on June 12, 2025 among some forty-eight international education experts convened together over Zoom by the Global Coalition for Education-US, the Basic Education Coalition, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, George Washington University, and the World Hunger Education Service (WHES) – the publisher of Hunger Notes.
It sought to chart a path forward for America’s assistance to child education in lower and middle income countries.
It was held in the context of a major disruption to America’s ongoing support to basic education around the world. The US had been the world’s largest bilateral donor for basic education, annually reaching over 34 million learners, training 2.9 million teachers, and distributing 174 million textbooks. Programs covered early grade reading, education in emergencies, disability inclusion, and teacher capacity building across more than 50 countries. The abrupt termination in early 2025 of 163 of 165 USAID education programs decimated implementing organizations, cost nearly 20,000 American jobs, and prompted parallel cuts by other donors including the UK.
US comparative advantages in supporting basic education: Participants identified early grade reading expertise, global field presence, strong higher education networks, convening power, catalytic leverage of donor funds, and leadership in evidence generation and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as areas where the US stands apart.
Key recommendations for future aid looking ahead 5-10 years:
- Embed basic education within the restructured U.S. State Department programming for aid
- Shift further toward locally-led, government-owned programs rather than parallel systems
- Break down sectoral funding silos to enable whole-of-child approaches linking education, nutrition, and health
- Expand the timelines of individual programs to ten years to allow systemic change
- Invest in AI and technology while ensuring equity and accessibility
- Preserve and publicly catalog institutional knowledge at risk of being lost.
- Restore funding for education to FY2024 levels and comply with the Congressional READ Act
Participants agreed a follow-on roundtable should include voices from recipient-country governments and local organizations to complete the picture. In the meantime, the sponsors have been conducting additional research, field interviews with local educational organizations, and planning additional publications.
