All4Ed Applauds Bipartisan Senate Action to Protect Critical Education Functions and Advance the Reading Excellence and Achievement for Development (READ) Act
Date: Thursday, July 30, 2026
Contact: Enrique A. Chaurand
Email: echaurand@all4ed.org
Washington, D.C. – Today, the Senate HELP Committee took bipartisan action to protect critical offices and functions within the U.S. Department of Education and address the nation’s literacy crisis by advancing the Reading Excellence and Achievement for Development (READ) Act. In response, All4Ed CEO Amy Loyd released the following statement:
“Ever since Linda McMahon testified before the Senate to become Secretary of Education, she has worked to dismantle the department she’s been entrusted to run. Today, on a bipartisan basis, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions stepped in. By a vote of 13 to 9, the Committee voted to prevent the Trump administration from transferring four key offices within the U.S. Department of Education to other departments. The bill includes an amendment offered by Senator Patty Muray (D-WA) requiring the administration to publicly report the cost of the interagency agreements it is implementing to transfer the Department’s functions.
“Let’s be crystal clear: these transfers are illegal. The Department’s actions violate existing appropriations law, a point Congress reaffirmed on a bipartisan basis in the fiscal year 2026 Labor-HHS-ED Joint Explanatory Statement. If these agreements were already authorized, Congress would not need to pass legislation permitting them. Yet that is exactly what House Republicans sought to do last week through ten partisan bills authorizing the same interagency agreements being used to transfer the Department’s core functions.”
“While the HELP Committee’s move sends an important, bipartisan message in opposition to the Administration’s top education policy priority, we urge Congress to enact legislation protecting the entire Department of Education.
“More than a year ago, the Trump Administration transferred the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) to the Department of Labor. The result has been diminished support to the field, funding delays, additional bureaucracy, and increased costs for taxpayers and states. The Administration’s own Fiscal Year 2027 budget request illustrates the inefficiency of this approach: the Department of Labor is requesting more than $9 million to hire 26 full-time employees, along with additional operating funds, to administer OCTAE’s programs after the Department of Education reduced OCTAE staffing by roughly one-third.
“The Administration is also in the process of transferring the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to the Justice Department. This is abhorrent. The Department fired half of OCR’s staff and closed seven of its twelve regional offices. According to the Government Accountability Office, between March and September of 2025, OCR received over 9,000 discrimination complaints. However, roughly 90 percent of the complaints were resolved by dismissal, not investigation. Further, OCR reached just 112 resolution agreements in all of 2025, the fewest in more than a decade. Under this administration, OCR reached zero resolutions related to sexual harassment, sexual violence, or racial harassment. Congress must ensure that the Administration’s campaign to weaken the Department of Education comes to an end.
“The Committee also advanced bipartisan legislation to strengthen literacy through the Reading Excellence and Achievement for Development (READ) Act (S. 4689). The legislation responds to an urgent national challenge: only 35 percent of twelfth-grade students scored at or above the Proficient level in reading, and 32 percent scored below Basic, on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress. This is the largest share of 12th grade students scoring below Basic on record.
“Literacy is at the heart of economic mobility. By 2031, 66 percent of good jobs will require at least a bachelor’s degree, yet too many students leave high school without the reading skills postsecondary education demands. The READ Act will help to ensure our learners graduate from high school prepared for postsecondary education and positioned to thrive in learning, work, and life.
“Today’s votes send a clear message: while partisanship is at an all-time high, common- sense measures like maintaining the U.S. Department of Education and strengthening student literacy can still garner bipartisan support. We urge lawmakers to build on this momentum by protecting the entire Department and investing in policies that expand opportunity for every learner.”
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