Transfer all Indian education programs to the Bureau of Indian Education

Attempted

Printed page 326 11. Department of Education

“Transfer all Indian education programs to the Bureau of Indian Education.”

What has happened

Jan 9, 2026 Attempted
Education, Interior and Labor announced tribal consultation on the Indian Education Partnership, the first implementation step. Still no statutory transfer.
- ED press release: Education, Interior and Labor Announce Tribal Consultation on the Indian Education Partnership
  Primary Executive branch Jan 9, 2026
Nov 18, 2025 Attempted
The ED-DOI Indian Education Partnership, one of six interagency agreements announced this day, gives Interior a growing role in administering the Department's Indian and Native education programs across four offices: OESE's Indian Education Grants to LEAs, professional development and demonstration grants, STEP, NALED, NALRC, the Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian programs; OPE's Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities programs; OCTAE's Tribally Controlled Postsecondary CTE Institutions program; and OSERS's American Indian Vocational Rehabilitation Services program. It is an Economy Act service contract - the fact sheet says ED "will maintain all statutory responsibilities, including policymaking authority" - and it names the Department of the Interior rather than the Bureau of Indian Education.
- ED press release: U.S. Department of Education Announces Six New Agency Partnerships to Break Up Federal Bureaucracy
  Primary Executive branch Nov 18, 2025
- Fact Sheet: Department of Education (ED) and Department of Interior (DOI) Partnership
  Primary Executive branch Nov 18, 2025

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

The fact sheet’s footnote records that ED is “winding down several grant programs that allocate resources based upon the racial or ethnic composition of an institution’s student body, with preferences for students who are Native Alaskan or Native Hawaiian”, and that Interior will help wind them down. That is the opposite of a transfer for those programs; it is recorded here because it bears on how much of “all Indian education programs” the agreement can reach.
Only Congress can move a program’s statutory authority to the Bureau of Indian Education. The half of this ask that needs an act of Congress rests on one negative search, run once for the program transfers and eliminations on pp. 325–327.