CONGRESS

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) published the House’s legislative calendar for 2025.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) announced the Senate’s legislative calendar for 2025.

Sen. Thune (R-SD) announced a potential budget reconciliation plan focused on border security, defense and energy matters, signaling that a separate reconciliation bill for tax issues would occur later in the year. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has stated that there is not yet consensus on what specific budget reconciliation plan will follow.

The House passed, by a 327 to 62 vote, H.R. 5349, the Crucial Communism Teaching Act. The bill would direct the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation to develop a civic education curriculum and oral history resources for high school students regarding certain political ideologies such as Communism.

A group of Democratic lawmakers, including Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Ed Markey (D-MA) and Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA), sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, urging the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to quickly cancel the remaining student loan debt of defrauded borrowers.

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic published a report titled “After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward,” which discussed school closures among other pandemic-related matters.

ADMINISTRATION

ED unveiled new guidance to help school district and school leaders as they develop or revise their policies to guide the presence and use of personal devices in schools.

ED released new guidance on using Title II, Part A funds to strategically support educator recruitment, retention, professional learning and improved student outcomes.

The Institute of Education Sciences released new data on “Graduation Rates for Selected Cohorts, 2015-20; Outcome Measures for Cohort Year 2015-16; Student Financial Aid, Academic Year 2022-23; and Admissions in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2023.”

EVENTS

Penn Hill Group plans on providing clients a summary of the following events next week:

December 11: House Committee on Education and the Workforce Subcommittee Hearing on “Examining the Policies and Priorities of AmeriCorps and Its FY 2024 Audit Failure.”