Education Committee Marks Up Legislation to Codify ED IAAs

On July 15, the House Education and Workforce Committee passed a series of bills meant to codify many of the Inter Agency Agreements (IAAs) announced by the U.S. Department of Education over the past year.

The ‘Less Bureaucracy, Better Education’ Legislative Package would do more than make the interagency agreements permanent. It would shift nearly all federal K-12 responsibilities from the US Education Department (USED) to the Department of Labor, significantly reducing the Secretary of Education's authority and diminishing USED's role in overseeing elementary and secondary education. Democrats offered numerous amendments to the package including those that would study the impact of transferring K-12 education programs on states and localities and prohibit moving the Office of Civil Rights and the Office of Special Education out of the Department of Education. These amendments failed.

AESA opposes several of the K-12 bills in the legislative package. Unlike the Interagency Agreements, which transferred some day-to-day administration and oversight of key education programs to other federal agencies while maintaining that major policy decisions would remain with the Department of Education, the Secretary, and other political and career officials, this proposal would transfer all authority over critical K–12 programs to the Secretary of Labor, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training, and their designees. We believe removing responsibility for major federal education programs such as Title I from the Department of Education weakens the federal infrastructure dedicated to advancing educational opportunity in America, diminishes the visibility and priority of K–12 education at the federal level and undermines academic achievement for our nation’s students.

It is not clear whether this package will move to the floor of the House, but the package in its current form has no chance of passing in the Senate.