The date has been set for U.S. Education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon’s hearing for her to serve as It will be held on Thursday, February 13, 2025 at 10 AM ET at 562 Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Click here for live video of the hearing.

At a February 5, 2025 hearing, Republican and Democratic members of a U.S. House education panel agreed that K-12 schools need a stronger focus on improving academic outcomes for students — but they had vastly different views on the direction the nation’s schools should take.

For more information on the three-hour hearing, click here.

On February 6, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened Title IX investigations into a middle and high school athletics association and two universities that it says have allowed transgender women and girls to participate on teams corresponding with their gender identity. The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, San José State University, and the University of Pennsylvania, are being investigated. In addition, it is reported that OCR is reviewing athletics participation policies at “a number of schools.”

The investigations are in response to an executive order barring transgender women from playing on women’s sports teams and threatening to pull federal funding from educational institutions that don’t comply.

OCR is also taking aim at the term “transgender ideology,” which according to the Southern Poverty Law Center is often used by anti-LGBTQ+ groups to imply that someone’s transgender identity “is not real but is instead a belief system that is imposed on others.”

For more from K-12 Dive, click here.

The House Ways and Means Committee is suggesting cutting $12 billion in school meal programs over 10 years by adjusting school qualification for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) and requiring income verification for national K-12 breakfast and lunch programs, according to a document on the committee’s budget reconciliation options.

Specifically, the committee proposed raising the minimum threshold for low-income schools and districts to qualify for CEP, which allows low-income schools to serve free meals to all students. To participate in the program, 25% of students enrolled in a school have to be certified as eligible for free school meals. The House proposal calls for a 60% threshold. 

The proposal would strip away 24,000 schools’ ability to participate in CEP, impacting over 12 million children, according to the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), a nonprofit anti-hunger advocacy group. In fact, according to a report by FRAC, participation in the CEP increased by almost 19% during the 2023-24 school year as half of all National School Lunch Program (NSLP) schools now use the provision that lets low-income schools serve free meals to all students.

For more from K-12 Dive, click here.

On January 31, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) released a Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) directing school districts and colleges to follow the 2020 Title IX rule for investigating sex discrimination in schools, closing the chapter on a Biden administration rule that faced much legal turmoil.

Subsequently, a February 4, 2025 DCL replaced the January 31, 2025 DCL issued on the same topic and stated that it will enforce Title IX only under the provisions of the 2020 Title IX Rule, and that all open Title IX investigations initiated under the 2024 Title IX Rule should be immediately “reevaluated to ensure consistency with the requirements of the 2020 Title IX Rule.”

To view the January 31, 2025 DCL, click here.

To view the February 4, 2025 DCL, click here.

Click to view the 2020 updates to Title IX regulations.

Resources pertaining to Title IX and the 2020 Title IX Rule are available here.