The Republican-led House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education has advanced a funding bill that would eliminate funding for Title III English language acquisition programs for fiscal year 2025. The subcommittee bill proposes cuts of $11 billion from the Department of Education in total—a 13% drop from last year. This $11 billion cut includes a nearly $5 billion reduction for Title I, and 17 federal education programs, including Title II and Title III, would be eliminated altogether.
House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) decried the cuts as “attacking education on all levels” and called out the elimination of “funding for English language acquisition and teacher training opportunities used to increase the number and improve the quality and effectiveness of teachers and school leaders.” The House Appropriations Committee is set to mark up this bill on July 10, and the full House will consider it in late July. The Senate has not yet released its education funding proposal.
Over 160 national and local organizations in support of multilingual learners of English (MLEs) in the US federal budget for fiscal year 2025 submitted a joint letter to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees in May, calling for $2 billion in funding for Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which provides MLEs resources to attain English proficiency and meet the same challenging academic standards as their peers.
