11. Department of Education · Major · Needs Congress
Block-grant federal education funds to states without strings
Printed page 320 11. Department of Education
“To the extent that federal taxpayer dollars are used to fund education programs, those funds should be block-granted to states without strings, eliminating the need for many federal and state bureaucrats.”
What has happened
- Attempted
Approving Arizona, Nevada and South Carolina brought Ed-Flex authority to 25 states. Under the Education Flexibility Partnership Act, an Ed-Flex state education agency may waive federal statutory and regulatory requirements for its districts without ED review — for example releasing districts from Title IV-A spending caps. This is an existing waiver authority used at scale, not a block grant enacted by Congress.
- Attempted
The Department made "Returning Education to the States" one of its standing supplemental priorities for discretionary grant competitions (effective 2025-10-09), steering federal grant dollars toward state and local control. A funding priority is not a block grant: the programs, their formulas and their conditions are unchanged.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Congress has not block-granted anything. H.R. 2691 (2025-04-07) would abolish the Department and send elementary and secondary funding directly to the states; it was referred and never moved (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119hr2691ih/html/BILLS-119hr2691ih.htm). No bill among those we keep and search creates an education block grant.
- Negative search: a search of the titles of the bills we keep and search for “block grant” returns only community development, community services, energy, substance-abuse and TANF measures — none in K-12 or higher education.
- Program-specific block-grant asks are tracked separately: #807 (Title I, Part A to HHS), #816 (IDEA) and #808 (Title I revenue responsibility).
- Action
- transfer
- Object
- Federal education program funding
- ID
- 804