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.
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?
Will my child’s IEP or 504 plan change because of these bills?
What happens to Title I funding and student loans?
What should parents do right now?
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.
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.
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
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
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.
Whatever you say about the problems at the Department of Education, these bills will only make things worse
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
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.
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Your school district must evaluate your child free of charge if you ask in writing, whatever your income and whatever the outcome (US, 34 CFR 300.111 and 300.301(b)). That route takes time and answers a different question than you do. This one starts today, from what you already know.
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A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation too. That is the only route to those supports.
References
- K-12 Dive — House panel OKs permanent moves for some Education Department functions
- Higher Ed Dive — House panel OKs permanent moves for some Education Department functions
- CT Mirror (States Newsroom) — US House Republicans take 'first step' toward dismantling Education Dept.
- The Nation's Report Card — 2024 NAEP Reading Assessment, Grade 8
