TEACHER EDUCATION DIVISION   |   COUNCIL FOR EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN

Washington Update

September 2026: A Stopgap to December, a House Bill to Match the Senate's, IES Reopens With a Clock Running, and Two Deadlines Worth Your Calendar

September 2026

Friends and colleagues,

It has been a minute. August did what August does: recess for them, a fall semester bearing down on you, and a draft that never quite made it from my email to your desktop. So this edition does double duty- we’re going to catch you up on what moved while Congress was home, and it brings you to the present: a stopgap signed last Wednesday, a bipartisan House bill on special education administration, and an IES grant pipeline that reopened with our workforce named on the front page. Grab a coffee- it’s a long one. 

Two dates to remember if you forget other things: October 1 (IES tranche one applications) and October 6 (Head Start comments close).

1. Funded Through December 11. Then What?

Start with the good news: no shutdown this fall. The continuing resolution, H.R. 6500, cleared the Senate 90 to 6 on August 8 and the House 370 to 48 on September 1, and the President signed it September 2 (Public Law 119-103). Every program runs at fiscal year 2026 levels through December 11. (If you remember July's version ending December 4, that was the House draft; the Senate added a week.)

The stopgap carries one provision our field should notice: it blocks OMB from finalizing its rewrite of the Uniform Grants Guidance, the proposal that would have put political appointees in charge of approving federal grant awards, for the life of the CR. No anomalies for IDEA or Title II, so the FY26 numbers you are operating on today should hold for the fall term.

Now the harder part. Congress will write the real FY27 education bill in a lame-duck December, after the midterms, and only one side has a draft. The House Appropriations Committee approved its Labor-HHS-Education bill (H.R. 9260) on June 9, 34 to 28, at a $189.3 billion topline, about $5.6 billion below current levels. For the Department of Education that is $70.7 billion against $78.8 billion enacted, a ten percent cut. Inside it, per the committee report (H. Rept. 119-696): Title I grants to districts down about $1.9 billion to $16.5 billion; Title II-A (the $2.19 billion Supporting Effective Instruction program) eliminated, which the report notes is consistent with the President's request; Title III eliminated; the Teacher Quality Partnership program eliminated; IES cut to $493 million from $790 million, a 37.5 percent reduction, with NCSER's Research in Special Education line held at $64 million; and IDEA Part B grants to states up $35 million. The bill has not gone to the floor, and the Senate never marked up a counterpart.

Remember, the President's FY27 request proposes folding IDEA Part D National Activities into Part B State Grants, which is why the request shows the Special Education account at $16.0 billion, up from $15.5 billion: it zeroes every Part D line except Special Olympics and moves the money into the state formula. Personnel Preparation (the 84.325 line, $115 million this year) would stop existing as a dedicated stream. The House committee rejected that. Its bill funds IDEA National Activities at $258.6 million, the FY26 level, line by line: Personnel Preparation $115 million, State Personnel Development $38.6 million, Technical Assistance and Dissemination $39.3 million, Parent Information Centers $33.2 million, and Educational Technology, Media, and Materials $32.4 million. So the consolidation lives in exactly one document, the President's request, and the House bill is the only congressional text on the table, because there is no Senate bill. That is the December risk in one sentence: with no Senate mark to conference against, the House committee's Part D numbers are the floor, and the request is the other bidder.

FY27 Labor-HHS-Education: where the education lines stand (dollars in millions)

Source: H. Rept. 119-696, the House Appropriations Committee report on H.R. 9260 (account tables and program narrative). The Senate Appropriations Committee did not mark up an FY27 Labor-HHS-Education bill before the recess.

IDEA Part D National Activities, line by line (dollars in millions)

2. Special Education Administration: The House Joins the Senate

For anyone who took the summer off from this story (no judgment), here is the skinny: June 15, the Administration signed interagency agreements moving special education administration from the Department of Education to HHS. July, the House Education and Workforce Committee advanced ten bills codifying transfers across five agencies and wrote nothing about special education. July 30, Senate HELP took up two answers: S. 5038, Chairman Cassidy's Special Education Administration Protection Act, which bars outsourcing special education programming to HHS, and S. 5046, from Senator Kaine with Republican Senators Collins and Murkowski, which prohibits transferring OSERS, OESE, OPE, and the Office of Indian Education to any agency and closes the interagency-agreement workaround (agreements in effect as of February 1, 2025 are exempt). S. 5046 was reported and sits on the Senate calendar. S. 5038 has not moved.

On September 2, the House answered. H.R. 10232, introduced by Representative John Mannion of New York with Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, and Ranking Member Bobby Scott, is the House companion to S. 5046. It sits in Education and Workforce, the committee that marked up the transfer package, so its path runs uphill. The Department's response was blunt: “The era of coddling a failed status quo must end.” Fourteen interagency agreements are now in place with six agencies.

3. IES Reopens the Pipeline, With a Clock Running on September 30

On August 6, Acting Director Matthew Soldner announced that IES will resume FY27 grantmaking in three tranches. Tranche one, due October 1 through Grants.gov, includes Research Training Programs in Special Education (84.324B) and the longitudinal data competition for special education (84.324S). Tranche two, expected late September or early October, is Transformational Research in Special Education (84.324T). Tranche three, in December, brings back the core NCSER Education Research Grants (84.324A), the R&D Centers (84.324C), and the Networks (84.324N). And the priorities: NCSER's focus areas for FY27 through FY29 are “The Special Education Workforce” and “Low-Incidence Disabilities.” That is the first time in this administration the federal research agency has named our pipeline as a funding priority in its own words. Requests for applications are at ies.ed.gov/funding.

Fiscal 2025 dollars expire September 30. Of the $768 million Congress appropriated to IES for FY25, Education Week reported September 2 that $587 million had been spent as of August 26, leaving about $180 million with a month to go. Soldner has said in a court declaration that all remaining unrescinded FY25 funds were apportioned, that NCSER's FY25 research funds were fully expended, and that IES “intends to spend all funds appropriated by Congress in a timely manner.” The National Center for Learning Disabilities and the Knowledge Alliance, who sued over the delays, argue the spending plan is opaque and that even full spending cannot undo the lost year. A hearing was set for September 3; I have not seen a ruling as of this writing. Meanwhile, more than $450 million of FY26 IES money still sits unapportioned at OMB, by FABBS's count, and IES is doing all of this with roughly 30 of its former 190 staff.

4. Same Shortages, and a Pipeline Being Built Around Us

The Learning Policy Institute's 2026 shortage accounting (July 13) is the number to carry into every meeting this fall: 425,412 teaching positions nationally either vacant or filled by someone not fully certified for the assignment. That is about 1 in 8, the third straight year of growth, and special education leads the list, with 45 states reporting shortages, then science (41) and math (40). Nearly three quarters of the teachers who leave do so voluntarily, not for retirement. LPI's State Teacher Shortages Vacancy Resource Tool will pull your own state's numbers in about a minute. A legislator hears “1 in 8” politely; they hear their own state's count personally.

Meanwhile, the fastest-growing preparation pathway in the country is being built largely outside colleges of education. New America's late-August analysis of Labor Department data finds registered teacher apprenticeship programs in all 50 states, degree-earning pathways in 44 states plus D.C., and an apprentice pool that is 63 percent without a bachelor's degree and considerably more diverse than the profession it feeds. Where apprenticeship runs through us, it works. Where it does not, quality varies with the sponsor.

One more, from the other side of the ledger. On August 21, the Labor Department published a final rule rescinding the Section 503 provisions that set a 7 percent utilization goal for hiring people with disabilities among federal contractors, plus the self-identification and data requirements behind it (nondiscrimination and accommodation duties remain). Many universities with federal contracts had built that goal into their affirmative action plans.

5. Head Start: Comments Close October 6

HHS proposed on August 7 to rescind and replace the Head Start Program Performance Standards (Federal Register, docket ACF-2026-0595, “Reducing Federal Burden for Head Start Programs”). The rule would eliminate more than 1,400 provisions, defer classroom ratios and group sizes to state child care licensing, cut the administrative cost cap from 15 percent to 5, make parent committees optional, and require English-only instruction with a tribal exception. HHS projects roughly 160,000 new slots by 2031 and about $2.2 billion a year in savings. The statutory 10 percent enrollment requirement for children eligible under IDEA stays, but First Five Years Fund's analysis notes that the specific disability-services procedures and the limits on suspension and expulsion would give way to general compliance language, and that the savings attributed to the ratio change assume a teaching workforce roughly 25 percent smaller. Head Start has held bipartisan support for six decades, and the politics here are more complicated than the framing on either side.

6. Three Letters From the Department in Nine Days

August 18: the Office for Civil Rights (Assistant Secretary Kimberly Richey) directed districts to end race-conscious discipline policies and opened Title VI investigations in Fayetteville, Arkansas and Milwaukee. August 20: OESE released “Responsible Use of Education Technology in the Classroom,” five questions for evaluating ed tech that restate last year's AI principles; no mandate, no money. August 26: the Student Privacy Policy Office told schools that mental health screenings and student surveys are subject to PPRA's advance written consent requirement, that an opt-out policy is not sufficient, and that violations can cost federal funds. No compliance deadline on any of the three.

Thank you, as always, for the work you do. If you take a meeting with a member or a staffer this month, tell me how it went; if you would like to prep in advance or debrief after never hesitate to reach out. 

With appreciation,

Kait Brennan, PhD

Policy Advisor, Teacher Education Division, Council for Exceptional Children

Sources:  Congress.gov and GovInfo records for H.R. 6500 (P.L. 119-103), H.R. 9260 and H. Rept. 119-696, S. 5038, S. 5046, and H.R. 10232; White House signing statement (September 2, 2026); House Appropriations Committee FY27 Labor-HHS-Education release (June 9, 2026); Senate Daily Press roll call record (August 7 and 8, 2026); Rep. Mannion press release (September 3, 2026); U.S. Department of Labor, Office of the Secretary; K-12 Dive and Higher Ed Dive reporting; IES, Announcing IES's Planned FY27 Grantmaking (August 6, 2026) and Federal Register notice 2026-16259 (August 10, 2026); Education Week (September 2, 2026); Inside Higher Ed (August 13, 2026); FABBS (August 2026); Learning Policy Institute, An Overview of Teacher Shortages: 2026 (July 13, 2026); New America teacher apprenticeship analysis as reported by K-12 Dive (August 25, 2026); OFCCP Section 503 final rule (Federal Register, August 21, 2026); HHS/ACF, Reducing Federal Burden for Head Start Programs (Federal Register, August 7, 2026) and First Five Years Fund analysis (September 1, 2026); Federal Student Aid and NASFAA (2027-28 FAFSA); U.S. Department of Education press releases (June 16, August 18, August 20, and August 26, 2026).

A nonpartisan, informational summary for TED membership. The views expressed in this update do not necessarily reflect the views of the Council for Exceptional Children.