The Education Department Breakup Won’t Change How Your Child Learns to Read

Last updated: July 19, 2026

If a headline this week announced the end of the U.S. Department of Education, you probably felt either dread or relief, depending on which feed delivered it. Here is what happened: on July 16, a House committee approved ten bills that would move most of the department’s programs to five other federal agencies. The bills leave special education and civil rights enforcement in place, and they face long odds in the Senate. What none of the headlines mention is the fact that matters most for your family. No reorganization in Washington has ever taught a child to read, and this one will not either.

TL;DR

On July 16, 2026, the House Education and Workforce Committee approved a 10-bill package transferring U.S. Department of Education functions to five other agencies.
The Less Bureaucracy, Better Education bills move K-12 programs and career and technical education to Labor, federal student aid to Treasury, and other programs to State, Interior, and HHS.
Special education and civil rights enforcement are excluded, though amendments to bar their future transfer were rejected.
The bills need 60 Senate votes; the majority holds 53 seats, and no Senate companion bill exists yet.
On the 2024 NAEP, 30% of eighth graders scored proficient in reading (lowest since 1994) and 28% in math.

A House committee voted to move most U.S. Department of Education functions to five other agencies. Here is what the bills change, what they leave alone, and what decides whether your child learns to read.

Common questions

Is the U.S. Department of Education being eliminated?

No. A House committee approved bills that would transfer many of its functions to other federal agencies. The bills still need the full House and 60 Senate votes, and no Senate version exists yet.

Will my child’s IEP or 504 plan change because of these bills?

No. The package does not move special education or civil rights enforcement, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act remains federal law regardless of which agency administers programs. If you suspect your child needs formal accommodations, a professional evaluation is still the route to an IEP or 504 plan; a screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis.

What happens to Title I funding and student loans?

The bills would move Title I and other K-12 programs to the Department of Labor and federal student aid to the Treasury. The programs themselves continue under the bills; the item to watch is administrative delays during any transition.

What should parents do right now?

Nothing about this vote changes your child’s school year yet. Keep daily reading practice going at home, and this fall ask your district whether any services your child receives depend on programs slated for transfer.

A House committee voted to break up the Education Department. Special ed isn't moving. And no org chart ever taught a child to read. Here's what parents should watch instead. Tweet Now Follow Learning Success

Ten bills, five agencies, one committee vote

On July 16, 2026, the House Committee on Education and Workforce approved, nearly along party lines, a ten-bill package introduced a week earlier by committee chair Tim Walberg of Michigan under the name Less Bureaucracy, Better Education. The bills would make permanent the transfer of core Education Department functions: elementary and secondary programs including Title I, plus career and technical education, to the Department of Labor; federal student aid and its $1.7 trillion loan portfolio to the Treasury; international education to the State Department; tribal education to the Interior Department; and family engagement programs to Health and Human Services.

Walberg called the vote a “first step toward ending the Department of Education’s reign over our nation’s education system.” The committee’s ranking member, Bobby Scott of Virginia, answered that “it’s difficult to articulate how impractical these proposals are, to say nothing of the pain and suffering they’ll inflict on students, educators and their communities, if they were to become law.”

The package excludes special education and civil rights enforcement, though the committee rejected amendments that would have barred moving those functions later. The bills still need the full House and then sixty votes in a Senate where the majority holds fifty-three seats. No Senate companion bill existed as of July 17.

Author Quote "

Today’s bills put forth by the House Education and Workforce Committee move us closer to a leaner, results-driven government—one that empowers families, supports educators, and delivers better outcomes for students by ensuring each federal responsibility is carried out by the agencies best equipped to manage them

What the coverage gets wrong

Most coverage frames this vote as either the destruction of public education or its liberation, as if the federal org chart decides whether children learn. The evidence points elsewhere: with the department fully intact, 30 percent of eighth graders scored proficient in reading on the 2024 Nation's Report Card; learning-styles teaching persisted worldwide long after researchers debunked it in 2008 (a 2020 review found nearly nine in ten educators still believe in it); and guessing-based reading instruction survived decades of contrary eye-tracking research until the 2019 podcast Sold a Story forced new state laws. Whichever way this vote goes, what moves a child's outcomes is whether instruction follows the science, and that is decided far closer to home than Washington.

The org chart was never the reason kids struggle to read

Here is the question both sides of this fight skip: under the current structure, were schools delivering what the science of learning says works? The 2024 Nation’s Report Card answered that. Thirty percent of eighth graders scored proficient in reading, the lowest share since 1994, and 28 percent scored proficient in math. Those numbers happened with the Department of Education fully intact, and they cap decades of results that no administration of either party reversed.

The pattern runs deeper than one test. Researchers showed in 2008 that teaching to “learning styles” does not help children learn, a finding independently reconfirmed as recently as 2024. A 2020 review of educators across 18 countries found nearly nine in ten still believe in it. Cognitive scientists knew for decades that teaching children to guess words from pictures trains them to read like struggling readers, yet it took a 2019 investigative podcast, Sold a Story, to push states into corrective reading laws, most of them only a year or two old.

That is not a science problem. It is a systems problem: the evidence exists, and the machinery between the evidence and the classroom moves at a crawl no matter who runs it. The letterhead on a federal grant does not decide whether your child’s school teaches reading the way the research says. What does move outcomes is instruction matched to how a child’s brain builds the underlying processing skills reading depends on, at school and at home.

Key Takeaways:

Committee vote, not law: Ten bills moving Education Department functions passed committee July 16 and face steep Senate odds.

Special education stays put: The package leaves special education and civil rights enforcement out of the transfers entirely.

Org charts don't teach reading: Reading outcomes stalled for decades under the current structure; instruction quality moves them.

What to watch if your child gets extra help at school

If your child has an IEP or a 504 plan, nothing in this package changes those rights. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act stays federal law no matter which agency processes the paperwork, and these bills leave special education administration where it is. The scariest version of this story is not the accurate version.

The honest watch-item is friction during transitions. Representative Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon pointed to the earlier shift of career and technical programs to the Labor Department, which she said brought “significant” funding delays. Handoffs of this size tend to slow payments and blur accountability before they streamline anything, so the practical question for your district this fall is whether promised services and timelines hold, not whether the law protects them.

The bigger takeaway is the one this fight keeps obscuring. Whether these bills pass or die in the Senate, your child’s reading progress this year will be decided by daily instruction and daily practice, not by a federal reorganization. Parents who act at home while Washington argues give their children the one advantage no committee vote touches.

Author Quote "

Whatever you say about the problems at the Department of Education, these bills will only make things worse

You are the constant in your child’s education while agencies trade programs like furniture. The villain here is not a party or a department; it is the idea that a reorganization anywhere decides whether a child learns, an idea that has excused decades of classrooms ignoring what reading science already proved. Your child’s brain builds reading skill through the right daily practice, wherever Washington files the paperwork. The All Access program gives you the tools to start tonight, with a free trial and a personalized Action Plan you keep either way.