The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) has introduced new laws to update how the U.S. Department of Education administers financial aid. This includes new rules for undergraduates, graduate students, and parents. 

Some of the OBBBA requirements started immediately after the bill was signed. However, most OBBBA requirements for Direct student loans and financial aid will start on or after July 1, 2026.

For additional information on how this may impact students and student loans, please visit the PHEAA OBBBA Student Loan webpage.

Special education and disability groups have been joined by some state attorneys general in pushing back against a U.S. Department of Education (USDE) plan to drop certain data collections tracking racial disparities. In a March 23 Federal Register notice, the USDE sought public comment on proposed changes to the federally required State Performance Plans and Annual Performance Reports for special education. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), each state must develop these documents to evaluate their efforts to implement IDEA requirements and detail how it will make improvements.

Specifically, the USDE has suggested eliminating data collections used in these reports for:
-Significant discrepancies in suspension and expulsion rates for students with disabilities.
-Significant discrepancies in suspension and expulsion for students with disabilities by race and ethnicity, and policies contributing to those discrepancies.
-Disproportionate representation of racial and ethnic groups in specific disability categories that result from inappropriate identification.

Opponents say the data collections on racial disparities are essential to states’ compliance with IDEA.  For example, the Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE), in a May 22 public comment submission, said it “feels strongly that these indicators are critical to shining a light on inequities regarding discipline and disproportionate representation in special education.” CASE also took issue with the USDE’s rationale that there is already a “wealth of discipline data related to students with disabilities” from Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reporting. However, CASE called this approach “deeply flawed” given that OCR has undergone significant staff reductions under the Trump administration.

The USDE’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget recommends reducing OCR staffing to 271 and shrinking the office’s budget to $91 million in FY 27. OCR had 530 staffers and a $140 million budget in FY25.

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The U.S. Department of Education (USDE) is facing pressure from K-12 and college groups, as well as a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, to release nearly $300 million in funding for education research.

In fact, both groups sent letters to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon this month, calling for the USDE to disperse unallocated money for the agency’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) from fiscal years 2025 and 2026 and claiming that the FY25 funds will expire after September 30, 2026 if not allocated.

In a May 11 letter, a bipartisan group of 19 U.S. senators, including Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said the USDE received $793 million in FY25 and $789.6 million in FY26 for IES activities and there was a remaining balance of about $290 million that would lapse September 30th. According to Senator Merkley, a lack of spending at IES has led to “the sharp decline of special education research and data gathering,” The senators also criticized what they said are the closeouts of hundreds of unreviewed IES FY25 grant proposals within the National Center for Education Research and the National Center for Special Education Research, which resulted in no new awards being made over the past year, and these awards are crucial to addressing urgent educational challenges facing students.

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