Here’s a quick look at the news from last week (May 28 – June 1) in Washington.

ADMINISTRATION
The Department of Education announced the approval of eight ESEA state waivers from the second round of waiver applications – Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Rhode Island. There are 18 additional waiver applications from Round Two that are still under review by the Department.

The White House has released a memo that was sent to the heads of Executive Departments and Agencies, on the use of evidence and evaluation in the 2014 budget. The memo asks recipients to demonstrate the use of evidence in their FY14 budget submissions. Some groups are seeing this as a significant and far reaching policy that could be particularly relevant to education as noted in a recent blog post by Robert Slavin, Director of the Johns Hopkins School of Education, Center for Research and Reform in Education.

HOUSE
The House Committee on Education & the Workforce may markup H.R. 4297 (the Workforce Investment Improvement Act) as early as next week.

SENATE

The Senate was in recess last week.

House Speaker Boehner and Senate Minority Leader McConnell sent a letter to President Obama offering two sets of offsets to pay for the one year subsidized student loan interest rate fix.  Discussions on this issue continue behind the scenes.

APPROPRIATIONS/BUDGET
The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education will likely mark up a FY13 Labor, HHS, Education Appropriations Bill in early to mid-June.