Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

11. Department of Education · Notable · Needs Congress

Create education savings accounts for Bureau of Indian Education students

Partially done

348 11. Department of Education

“Federal officials should design a federal education savings account option for all children attending BIE schools.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The design exercise ran to a conclusion, and what it produced is a funded choice mechanism that is not an education savings account. Interior's Tribal Consultation Report on Executive Order 14191, dated 2026-01-22 and published on bie.edu on 2026-02-11, records the whole sequence: two consultation webinars on 2025-03-14 (484 and 315 participants; 85 written and 54 verbal comments), a Dear Tribal Leader Letter of 2025-05-23 announcing the mechanisms developed from that feedback, three further sessions on 14 and 15 July 2025, and a determination. The determination is that "existing 1003A Direct Student Service funds will serve as the mechanism for this initiative": nearly $1.3 million of BIE's Title I allocation reserved under ESEA section 1003A so that BIE-funded schools can offer direct student services "that allow parents to exercise a choice in their child's education" — courses not otherwise available at the student's school, credit recovery, dual and concurrent enrolment, Advanced Placement fees for low-income students, and high-quality tutoring — with priority to comprehensive support and improvement schools, a grant application "ready for use", staff trained by ED in the week of 18 August 2025 and technical-assistance webinars held in autumn 2025. Title IV, Part A is named as a second source. `partial`, under §3's "achieved by a different instrument that covers only some of it": federal money now follows BIE students to educational options beyond what their assigned school offers, which is the purpose behind the ask, but there is no account held by a family, nothing portable to the private, faith-based or charter schools EO 14191 §7 asked BIE to review, and the reservation reaches priority schools rather than "all children attending BIE schools". Interior published no plan to the President; this report is the public record of the review that plan was to rest on.

  2. Attempted

    A year on, the interagency work has produced coordination rather than accounts: Education, Interior and Labor announced tribal consultation on an Indian Education Partnership interagency agreement, framed around program delivery and grant-making to tribes. No BIE education savings account has been established and no Interior plan for one has been published.

  3. Attempted

    Executive Order 14191 section 7 gave the Secretary of the Interior 90 days to review “any available mechanisms under which families of students eligible to attend BIE schools may use their Federal funding for educational options of their choice” and to submit a plan for implementing them for the 2025-26 school year. A plan directive with nothing published behind it is the `attempted` rung; the program itself needs Congress, and the one bill that would create it — the Native American Education Opportunity Act, which would fund tribal education savings account programs out of ESEA money — was introduced on the Congress's first day, before the evidence window opened, and never moved (see Research notes).

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • One negative search covered this ask and #874 and #875.
  • H.R. 84, the Native American Education Opportunity Act (tribal education savings accounts funded from ESEA section 2101(a) transfers), was introduced 2025-01-03 and referred to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce with no further action. Its date falls before the 2025-01-20 evidence window, so it is recorded here as a lead rather than as Evidence: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119hr84ih/html/BILLS-119hr84ih.htm

Status move, 2026-09-06: attempted → partial. An open lead named bie.edu as a place a person could look. The Bureau’s sitemap can be read in full (1,592 addresses), and searching it for “executive-order” finds the three EO 14191 consultation pages that carry this trail, one of which links the Tribal Consultation Report. Nothing on ed.gov, doi.gov or in the Federal Register carries it, which is why three earlier searches missed it: the record of Interior’s EO 14191 work lives on the Bureau’s own site and nowhere else. The 2026-01-09 event’s closing sentence, “no Interior plan for one has been published”, is left standing as written — it is still true of a plan for an education savings account, and the 2026-01-22 event says what was published instead.

Judgment call: why partial and not a second attempted. The Quote asks that federal officials “design a federal education savings account option”. A reviewer could hold this at attempted on the strict reading that ESEA section 1003A direct student services are awarded to schools, not to families, so no account exists and none is portable — “progress is measured on this ask” would then leave the Status alone, the way posting guidance online is not limiting guidance (#1633). The reading taken here is the other one the rules allow: the design was performed and produced a mechanism that is in place — money reserved, a grant application ready, staff trained, technical assistance delivered — which is more than a directive without effect, and it delivers a piece of what the account was for. Both limitations are stated in the note so a reader can see exactly how far the mechanism falls short.

Action
create
Object
Education savings accounts for Bureau of Indian Education students
ID
872