Federal Updates
- The House brought its first FY20 appropriations bills to the floor in a “minibus” that included the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education, Defense, State-Foreign Operations, Energy-Water, and Legislative Branch bills last week and is expected to vote on the package early this week.
- The Department of Education published a notice in the Federal Register proposing regulations regarding “Student Assistance General Provisions, the Secretary’s Recognition of Accrediting Agencies, the Secretary’s Recognition Procedures for State Agencies”. The deadline for public comments is July 12, 2019.
- The Treasury Department recently released rules that shield private school vouchers and other school choice programs from the new cap on state and local tax deductions. The Secretary of Education announced support for the new rules.
State Updates
Fifteen states are currently in session with six adjourning at the end of June.
- In the final days of its session, New York is considering several bills to further regulate for-profit institutions of higher education (S 5598/A 7965; S 5581/A 8170).
- In New Hampshire, the legislature passed a commission to study teacher preparation and education programs (HB 258). The California State Assembly passed a bill to require the State Department of Education to develop and implement the Literacy Academy for California Educators as a statewide professional learning infrastructure to provide evidence-based support to educators in teaching, reading and literacy across grades and across the content areas (A 1684). The measure is now being considered by the Senate.
- The Louisiana legislature passed SR 182 which establishes the Louisiana Early Literacy Commission. The purpose of the commission is to study and make recommendations to develop and implement an aligned system to provide effective evidence-based reading instruction for children from birth through third grade.
- Recent legislation in Nevada and Texas regulates the autonomy of charter schools. Nevada AB 462 prohibits state education authorities to open a charter school until January 1, 2021. Texas SB 372 gives authority to open-enrollment charter schools to expand school safety personnel.
Read more in education policy on the McGuireWoods Consulting website.