TEACHER EDUCATION DIVISION   |   COUNCIL FOR EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN

Washington Update

This Week: The Senate Draws Its Line on Special Education, and Nine More Bills Move

July 31, 2026

Dear colleagues,

This...

Read more >

A quick map of this update: the House committee voted to advance ten bills codifying the interagency transfers, with special education conspicuously left out, and Senate HELP will take that question up at a markup on July 29... but maybe the 30th. The House passed a stopgap through December 4 while the Senate writes its own. A federal court ruled OMB cannot cancel grants over shifting priorities. Workforce Pell is live. And the White House released its 123-page blueprint for American science, with real implications for educator preparation. Read more >

Since I last wrote you, the House introduced a ten-bill package to write the interagency transfers into law, every Democratic senator signed a letter arguing the transfers exceed the Department’s authority, a lawsuit was filed over withheld education research funds, and the Department launched a public hub explaining its side of all of it. Add the regulatory agenda, the loan-cap litigation, and the oversight record from earlier in the week, and this is the fullest picture of the reorganization we have had since the agreements were signed. Read more >

This is the news many of us had been bracing for, and it came in the form most of us expected: not a statute, not an executive order, but a set of administrative agreements. On June 15, the U.S. Department of Education signed four Interagency Agreements (IAAs), three with the Department of Justice and one with the Department of Health and Human Services, and announced them the next day. Read more >

Earlier this week the numbers for our priorities were still sealed in the Committee Report, and I asked you to be ready rather than draw conclusions. The report is now public. Read more >