Democrats have a good chance of winning a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections coming up on Nov. 3.
If that happens, Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, currently the top Democrat on the House education committee who served as its chairman from 2019 to 2023, may be back in a position to set much of the chamber’s agenda on K-12 policy and conduct oversight of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education.
Scott, an architect of the Every Student Succeeds Act, will have competition for the gavel from Rep. Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon, the top Democrat on the chamber’s K-12 subcommittee.
Bonamici has introduced sweeping K-12 legislation that would fund special education grants at levels promised when IDEA’s predecessor passed in the 1970s; triple Title I funding; examine how states and districts use standardized testing, with an eye toward eliminating unnecessary assessments; and promote project-based learning, career-technical education, and universal pre-K.
Another member of the committee, Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut, also would seek the chairmanship. Hayes did not respond to Education Week’s request for comment.
Education Week spoke with Scott about his priorities should he retake the committee’s gavel. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Will a Democratic-controlled House be all oversight all the time, or is there a possibility of passing bipartisan legislation?
There’s always room for bipartisanship if the goal is to advance education. We have done that with the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015. We came to a four-corners agreement—House Democrats, House Republicans, Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans—and were able to pass the bill.
Regrettably, we went right into COVID when it was time to start enforcing it. And by the time we came out of COVID, I was no longer chairman, and so enforcement provisions were never followed through.
We need to get back on course to see if the states are complying with the provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act. Do they have an assessment? What is their credible plan to eliminate achievement gaps?
What might be some areas for oversight?
There are things we repeatedly ask the administration about: gun violence, child nutrition, federal education research. I mean, they’ve cut back on research, eliminated it, basically.
The way they’re handling civil rights, or the fact that they’re not handling civil rights, is a problem. When you did not have a Department of Education, you had stuff going on like racially segregated schools.
If we take the House, we will also be doing oversight on all these interagency agreements, which, to me at least, don’t make sense, waste money, and are inefficient—like moving K-12 to the Department of Labor? Are you kidding me?
What are you picturing oversight on dismantling the department might look like? Are you envisioning having Cabinet secretaries testify? School district officials?
I would invite experts in education to comment on the policy, and then, having all of that background, have the secretaries come in and defend themselves. Just having the secretaries come in and have that back-and-forth—we’ve seen that’s not particularly productive.
I want to have really an issue-based, evidence- and research-based foundation about whether these initiatives make any sense. That could include school officials that have to administer these programs or national advocacy organizations that have done research and can lay out a research-and evidence-based foundation as to whether or not the policy makes any sense.
You want to be substantive.
What about the new tax-credit scholarship program? Do you see that as an area that’s ripe for oversight as well?
We’ve been targeting it for repeal. There’s no indication Republicans have an interest in where it goes, or whether it’s an effective use of the taxpayers’ money.
Some estimates have been that it will cost as much as the entire K-12 budget.
It seems to me if you’re going to spend that much money on K-12, there are a lot of other things that the money could be spent on, school construction being one. More Title I assistance to low-income areas, professional development for teachers. There’s a lot of stuff you can spend that kind of money on in public education.
Would you consider working on a reauthorization of either the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (renewed in 2004) or the Every Student Succeeds Act (renewed in 2015)?
We just make IDEA work. Make sure that the Department of Education enforces IDEA. Make sure we enforce it. You don’t need to change the law when the law says what needs to be done. If it’s not getting done, let’s focus on getting it done.
There’s a lot that can happen on enforcement without opening it up and running the risk of the law being watered down.
What are some of your legislative priorities, should you become chairman again?
The Strength in Diversity Act would provide technical assistance to school divisions that want to develop school integration plans that can withstand litigation. You need expertise to be able to do that. A lot of school systems, regrettably, have regressed back to essentially segregated schools. Schools are as segregated now as they were in the 1960s.
The Equity and Inclusion Enforcement Act, which essentially would restore this private right of action if a local school system has a policy, a discipline policy, where the only people that are getting kicked out of school are the African American students and not the white students.
A school construction bill that would provide $130 billion for facilities and modernization. This would go a long way into upgrading our schools, building new schools when necessary, providing technology and broadband and everything else that a school actually needs to function in in the in the 21st century.
There’s a lot of talk about how the Democrats are divided between traditional Democrats and Democratic socialists. Do you think that’s going to be a problem on K-12 education?
I think people want children to be better educated. We may debate about the details. I think that we’re going to be limited to what we can afford. I think Democrats have a sense of fiscal responsibility, and so we have to do it within a budget.
We’ll get as much done as we can. But I don’t think there’s going to be much confusion in the direction we’re going.
