HOUSE and SENATE

The House Judiciary Committee passed the Dream Act (H.R. 2820) on a 19 to 10 vote, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients.

The Senate passed a disaster relief package on a 85 to 8 vote, that would provide $165 million in funding for schools and institutions of higher education (IHEs) and $55 million for Head Start programs affected by recent natural disasters.

The House Appropriations Committee passed the Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill on a 30 to 22 vote. The National Science Foundation (NSF) would receive a $561 million increase over FY2019 under the bill.

The deadline to submit written testimony to the Senate Labor, Health and Human Service, and Education (LHHS) Appropriations Subcommittee on the FY2020 budget is June 3.

ADMINISTRATION

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) published an updated version of the College Scorecard, which includes the addition of many certificate-awarding IHEs, provides some program-level loan repayment data and uses more current Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data to include some transfer and part-time students in the calculation of an IHE’s graduation rates.

ED updated its unified regulatory agenda, which projects when ED will take certain regulatory actions. ED’s proposed rules on State authorization and accreditation issues under the Higher Education Act (HEA) are expected in June 2019. ED’s proposed rule on significant disproportionality under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and proposed rules related to TEACH Grants, faith-based issues, competency-based education and direct assessment under HEA are all expected in December 2019. ED’s final rules on gainful employment (GE) and borrower defense to repayment (BDR) are projected to be released in June and September 2019, respectively. ED is projected to publish its final Title IX rule in September 2019 and proposed Family Educational Rights and Privacy Employment (FERPA) rule in February 2020.

ED announced that it would launch a pilot program to allow some IHEs to use Federal Work-Study benefits for off-campus employment and that it will expand the Second Chance Pell pilot program to additional IHEs.

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) released its annual Condition of Education report summarizing the latest data on education in the U.S. Notably, this year’s report includes new data on college enrollment and persistence for students with different levels of family income.

ED will implement the Obama-era Significant Disproportionality rule under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) after a court decision determined that an earlier delay of this rule was improper.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a final rule that raises the visa fees for international students.

GRANT OPPORTUNITIES 

Penn Hill Group provides a list of grant opportunities and summaries for select grants. Please visit our website for more information.