Washington Update, April 27, 2026
Dear Colleagues,
Last week’s update was held back so a fast-moving stretch could settle. Several developments since then sharpen the picture, particularly on workforce legislation, student loan policy, and implementation timelines. What follows is the revised readout: what changed, what matters now, and where engagement is still meaningful.
The Item Most Likely to Land on Your Desk: Earnings-Based Accountability
The Department’s proposed accountability rule, authorized by HR 1, would tie federal student aid eligibility to earnings benchmarks. Undergraduate programs whose typical graduates earn less than the typical earnings of a high school graduate would lose loan eligibility. Graduate programs would be benchmarked against bachelor’s-level earnings. Programs failing two of three consecutive years lose eligibility.
The structural concern for our field has not changed. Programs preparing educators for moderately compensated public-service careers are misaligned with the rule’s earnings logic. Special education starting salaries do not move the way finance or engineering salaries do, and a program meeting field need can underperform a benchmark that does not account for sector, geography, or public-service mission.
What has become clearer in the past week is that implementation is moving faster and more unevenly than the rulemaking text suggests. Comments are due May 20, 2026, with roughly three weeks left in the window. This is the most actionable item in this update.
WHAT A STRONG FIELD COMMENT COULD SAY
▸ Earnings benchmarks must account for public-service career pathways or risk penalizing programs meeting national workforce needs.
▸ Federal policy cannot simultaneously identify teacher shortages as a priority while disqualifying the programs that address them.
▸ Graduate-level preparation requires a distinct accountability framework, not one modeled on undergraduate-to-high-school earnings comparisons.
Recent precedent is on the field’s side here. ED added a universal design for learning subcomponent to the AI priorities rule after public comment in that cycle. Field voices shape final language when they show up. TED will circulate a suggested comment framework in early May; if your program or coalition wants to coordinate, reach out.
WIOA Reauthorization, From Proposal to Partisan Divide
On Tuesday the House Education and Workforce Committee approved A Stronger Workforce for America Act on a 19-14 party-line vote. Chair Tim Walberg’s bill reauthorizes the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, expired since 2020, and transfers federal adult literacy and adult education programs under the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act from ED to DOL. CTE stays at ED.
What was a developing issue is now a structural disagreement over where education policy lives. Democrats framed the AEFLA transfer as part of a broader effort to dismantle ED. Rep. Lucy McBath called the approach the wrong direction for what should be a bipartisan negotiation. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici introduced an amendment to block ED from sharing programs with other agencies; it failed. Republicans argued for consolidation under one workforce agency. Rep. Mark Harris cited current arrangements as creating unnecessary silos.
Two complications matter for the political path. First, lawmakers came close to a bipartisan WIOA reauthorization in 2024 before the end-of-year package collapsed; Tuesday’s vote reverts WIOA to a partisan posture, and Senate passage is now uncertain. Second, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer stepped down the day before markup amid a misconduct investigation, which Democrats raised as a reason to question whether DOL has the operational capacity to absorb additional programs.
Student Loan Policy, Quiet Changes with Immediate Impact
Two under-the-radar developments this week signal rapid movement and inconsistency in federal student aid policy.
Loan rehabilitation modernization (early signals)
Education Undersecretary Nicholas Kent told an American Enterprise Institute audience on Thursday that ED and Treasury are exploring how to automate the rehabilitation pathway borrowers in default use to repair credit. The current process requires a printed and mailed form, which Kent described as long and arduous. Automation could use AI; Kent credited Treasury with proposing the work and gave no timeline. The first phase of default collections is still scheduled for July 2026, beginning with approximately 500,000 borrowers, with administrative wage garnishment reportedly held until after the midterms.
Two notes for the field. First, automating through IRS data sharing would brush up against the Future Act, which limits how IRS data moves between agencies for student aid purposes. Second, doctoral students and faculty in default will be among the borrowers contacted in the July phase. Programs may want to prepare to refer affected colleagues to current servicer guidance.
Grad PLUS counts toward the new lifetime borrowing cap
ED reversed its January proposed regulatory position and has now told the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators that Grad PLUS loans, which sunset this July, will count toward the $257,500 lifetime cap on federal student loans. An April 17 webinar produced conflicting answers, then ED reached out to NASFAA and several aid administrators directly on Monday with the reversal. NASFAA President Melanie Storey has asked for formal guidance, citing financial aid offers already going out to students.
This matters for our field because graduate students preparing as special educators, related-services providers, and researchers carry meaningful Grad PLUS balances. A reversal communicated by phone calls without formal guidance complicates aid award decisions programs and students are making right now. Programs advising master’s and doctoral students on financing should track ED’s formal guidance closely and keep current on the cumulative figure.
Budget Hearings, Where Things Settled
OMB Director Russell Vought appeared before the House and Senate Budget Committees, and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before House Appropriations. The Senate HELP Committee hearing on the interagency agreements remains in process. In HELP, Chair Cassidy has requested testimony from Secretary McMahon and Secretary Kennedy on the ED-Labor structure; the McMahon hearing is unscheduled as of this update in HELP; however, she will testify before LHHS-Education Subcommittee this week.
On the special education line specifically, the FY 2027 request totals $16 billion for IDEA, a 3.5 percent increase over FY 2026 enacted. IDEA Part B grants to states would receive $15.4 billion, a 1.4 percent increase that averages roughly $1,846 for each of the 8.3 million eligible students. IDEA Part C would receive $590 million, a 9.3 percent increase the Department targets at families expecting a child with a disability. The headline increase masks pressure points elsewhere in the special education ecosystem, including discretionary lines that support personnel preparation infrastructure.
THREE QUESTIONS TO PASS TO YOUR HOME-STATE SENATOR … IF YOU WANT
▸ Why does the FY 2027 request compared to ED’s FY 2025 operating plan rather than the FY 2026 enacted level, and what does that baseline choice obscure?
▸ What is the Department’s methodology for keeping the dedicated federal investment in the educator pipeline visible if Part D is consolidated into the State Grant line?
▸ How will the proposed earnings-based accountability rule interact with Department-designated teacher shortage areas?
Implementation Updates
▸ ED-Labor interagency agreement expands to K-12. Last month’s Talent Search competition was the first postsecondary program to move under the IAA. This month Teacher and School Leader Incentive and Innovative Approaches to Literacy moved to Labor’s grant management platform. Both programs are proposed for elimination or consolidation in FY 2027, which means the current competitions may be the last round in their present form.
▸ AI in Education and Workforce Readiness priorities final. Effective May 13. ED replaced the plain-language AI descriptions with the statutory definition from the National AI Initiative Act of 2020, retitled the priority “Advancing Artificial Intelligence in Education,” and added a universal design for learning subcomponent after public comment. Future competitions in this space will rest on this definition.
Bills to Watch, No Position Required
Funding Early Childhood is the Right IDEA Act (HR 8465)
Introduced April 23 and referred to House Education and Workforce. The bill addresses funding for IDEA Part C, the early-intervention infrastructure for infants and toddlers ages birth to three with disabilities. The framing lines up with the FY 2027 request’s 9.3 percent Part C increase, and a member-led IDEA Part C bill in the same window gives faculty and doctoral students a current case to teach with. Worth tracking for committee action and any Senate companion.
Pay Paraprofessionals and Support Staff Act (S 2451)
In the Senate HELP Committee. Addresses compensation for school paraprofessionals and support staff. The substantive question for our field is how para and support-staff compensation interacts with role definition, scope of work, and the supervision structure in special education service delivery, particularly in inclusive settings. Useful teaching case in personnel preparation programs whether or not the bill moves.
21st Century Dyslexia Act (S 3010, HR 5769)
Senator Bill Cassidy hosted a bipartisan roundtable on dyslexia identification with Senators Collins, Hassan, and Hickenlooper. The bill would establish a federal definition of dyslexia and create a separate disability category within IDEA rather than continue identifying dyslexia under Specific Learning Disability. The empirical question about identification and evidence-based instruction is real and answerable. The policy question about IDEA categorization structure is distinct, and amending that structure outside the full reauthorization process is itself a choice worth examining with faculty and doctoral students.
Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act
Senators Mark Kelly and Mazie Hirono, joined by 28 Senate colleagues, introduced legislation to repeal the federal private school voucher provision enacted through HR 1, a tax credit of up to $1,700 for contributions to scholarship-granting organizations scheduled to take effect in 2027. The thread for our community is statutory rights. When families use federal dollars in settings not bound by IDEA, they may give up procedural protections the statute guarantees. That is a rights question, and it shapes how we teach the next generation of special educators.
Based on our policy priorities, TED endorses the Funding Early Childhood is the Right iDEA Act and does not taking a formal position on any of the bills above. They are surfaced because they create teachable material the field can use immediately.
TED in the News
Last month we celebrated Dr. Matthew Marino at UCF, named a 2026 Pegasus Professor, and Dr. Sarah Nagro at Texas A&M, quoted reminding the field to keep the bar high. If you or a colleague has been honored, quoted, published, or are presenting, send it. Nominations from colleagues are as welcome as self-nominations, and we will build them into the next update.
Across earnings accountability, WIOA reauthorization, student loan changes, and interagency shifts, a consistent pattern is taking shape. This is not a series of isolated policy updates. It is a coordinated restructuring of how education policy is defined, delivered, and evaluated at the federal level.
On budget baselines specifically, the headline FY 2027 cut figures do not all match because ED, OMB, and congressional press statements are using different comparison points. The cleanest baseline remains the FY 2026 Labor-HHS-Education statement of managers, which the Committee for Education Funding’s FY 2027 comparison table uses. When a number does not match what you expect, the question is always: compared to what?
The near-term engagement points are clear: the earnings rule comment window through May 20, ongoing WIOA negotiations, the remaining Senate HELP hearings, the Grad PLUS guidance question, and the new IDEA Part C bill. Each is a place where field voice still has leverage if used with precision and timing.
If your program or institution is looking to engage on any of these, reach out and I will connect you to the right entry points.
Thank you for the work you do preparing the educators, researchers, and advocates who will carry our field forward.
With appreciation and resolve,
Kait
DR. KAITLYN BRENNAN
Policy Advisor, TED | Teacher Education Division, Council for Exceptional Children
@brennan_kait
