ICE at school.
Money missing.
Phones nobody
answers.

For sixteen months, the chaos has come at parents from every direction. The Department of Education lost half its workforce. The administration withheld $6.8 billion in money Congress had already appropriated. ICE started arresting parents outside school buildings. And the committee with jurisdiction over every one of these things has not held a single hearing on any of them.

§ 01The $6.8 billion that disappeared

The withheld funds covered Title I-C (migrant education), Title II (teacher professional development), Title III (English language acquisition), Title IV (after-school programs and academic enrichment), and adult basic education. This is roughly 10% of federal K-12 funding in every state.²

The committee did not hold a hearing. It took 150 House Democrats writing a public letter and weeks of legal threats from 21 state attorneys general before the administration released the funds. No formal oversight by the committee whose job is oversight. No subpoenas to the Office of Management and Budget. No demand for an accounting.

§ 02Then they did it again

The committee has not investigated. Not one hearing. Not one report. Not one demand letter to OMB Director Russ Vought.

§ 03ICE at the schoolhouse door

In January 2025, the administration revoked a longstanding Department of Homeland Security policy that had designated K-12 schools as "protected areas" from immigration enforcement.⁵ Within weeks, the data was clear: ICE operations near schools push attendance down, traumatize kids, hurt test scores, and disenroll English learners at higher rates than non-ELs.

• CA California Central Valley (five districts): 22% jump in daily absences after ICE raids in early 2025. Youngest students most affected. Peer-reviewed in PNAS.⁴
• NC Charlotte-Mecklenburg: 30,339 students absent on Monday, Nov. 17, 2025, days into the federal immigration enforcement operation "Charlotte's Web." Roughly 1 in 5 students of a 141,000-student district.⁶
• CT/RI Connecticut and Rhode Island: Documented attendance declines and chronic absenteeism increases specifically among students classified as English learners.⁴
• TX Texas (2023 study, ongoing pattern): Increased absenteeism, declines in reading and math test scores, sharp rises in high school students leaving the district after a workplace raid.⁷
• US National: 10% of adults from immigrant families surveyed by the Urban Institute reported not sending their children to school due to immigration enforcement concerns.⁴

Seventy-five House members signed a public letter in 2025 sounding the alarm.⁸ The House Education and Workforce Committee did not respond with hearings. It did not demand testimony from DHS. It did not produce a report on the impact of immigration enforcement on K-12 outcomes. It held nine hearings on a college campus issue instead.

§ 04The Department of Education in disarray

The cuts hit the offices that matter most to kids: the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Office of Special Education Programs, the Office for Civil Rights, the Institute of Education Sciences, the office that administers Impact Aid for school districts that educate military and Native American kids.

• OESE Office of Elementary and Secondary Education: Layoffs in October 2025 left "few staffers" administering programs that distribute Title I, Title II, Title III, Title IV, and Impact Aid funds.¹⁰
• OSEP Office of Special Education Programs: "Virtually wiped out" in October 2025 layoffs. The federal office that administers IDEA, which funds services for 7.5 million students with disabilities.¹⁰
• $$ Late-liquidation grants: States and districts trying to draw down ESSER and other COVID-era recovery funds in 2025 had requests delayed, emails sent to addresses that no longer worked, and approval processes that used to take days suddenly taking weeks.¹¹
• ↻ Reduction-in-Force chaos: The administration laid off staff in March, again in October. A federal court briefly reversed it. The shutdown deal then reversed it again. Staff returned. Many left anyway.¹⁰

§ 05The oversight Congress did not do

The committee with jurisdiction over every one of these things is the House Education and Workforce Committee. Its job is oversight. Its job is appropriated funds. Its job is asking the executive branch why $6.8 billion went missing for two weeks in July 2025, why half the agency disappeared, why kids in California stopped coming to school.

Here is what the committee did instead: