Here’s a quick look at the news from last week in Washington.

House

The House Education and Workforce Committee passed H.R. 2445, the “State and Local Funding Flexibility Act” by a straight party line vote of 23 to 17.  Several amendments offered by Committee Democrats to remove programs like Titles I and III from the list of those impacted by the bill and to reduce additional requirements were defeated on straight party line votes as well. No floor time has been scheduled for this or the other two ESEA bills at this point.

As he announced last week, Chairman Kline next plans to introduce a teacher bill.

The House Postsecondary Education subcommittee held ajoint hearing on Friday, July 8 with the House Government Reform Committee on the Department of Education’s gainful employment regulation. A few days after the hearing, Chairman Issa of the Government Reform Committee called for an SEC investigation on possible insider trading violations between various hedge fund traders and government officials surrounding the congressional hearings and the Department’s development of regulations affecting private sector colleges.

House Leadership has yet to decide when it will bring the Foxx bill (H.R. 2117, The Protecting Academic Freedom in Higher Education Act) to repeal the clock credit hour and state authorization regulations or a bill to repeal the gainful employment regulation to the House floor.

House Labor/HHS/Education Committee staff say they will try to mark up an FY 2012 appropriations bill in Committee before the August recess.

Senate

Senators Harkin and Enzi and their staff continue to meet on ESEA reauthorization. The markup of the WIA reauthorization has been rescheduled to August 3.

The HELP Committee will hold a hearing on Improving For-Profit Higher Education: A Roundtable Discussion of Policy Solutions on Thursday, July 21.

Administration

The White House held an event Monday with business leaders on education.

ED held a stakeholders forum on Thursday, July 15, focused on the regulatory burden and NPRM.