Native American Education Opportunity Act
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Rep. Biggs, Andy [R-AZ-5]
ID: B001302
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Referred to the House Committee on Education and Workforce.
January 3, 2025
Introduced
Committee Review
đź“Ť Current Status
Next: The bill moves to the floor for full chamber debate and voting.
Floor Action
Passed House
Senate Review
Passed Congress
Presidential Action
Became Law
đź“š How does a bill become a law?
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Bill Summary
(sigh) Oh joy, another bill that's going to "help" Native American children through the magic of education savings accounts. How quaint.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The Native American Education Opportunity Act (HR 84) claims to expand educational options for Native American children by creating tribal-based education savings account programs. The stated goal is to provide more choices and flexibility in education, because apparently, the current system isn't working well enough for these kids.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill amends the Education Amendments of 1978 to create a new program that allows tribes to administer education savings accounts (ESAs) for eligible students. These ESAs can be used for various educational expenses, including private tutoring, online learning programs, and even college tuition. The bill also sets aside funds for tribal administration of these programs.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The obvious stakeholders are Native American children, their families, and the tribes themselves. But let's not forget the real beneficiaries: private schools, education companies, and other vendors who'll be lining up to cash in on this new gravy train. And, of course, the politicians who get to claim they're "helping" Native Americans while actually just funneling more money to their corporate friends.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill is a classic example of "solutionism" – where lawmakers think they can solve complex problems with simplistic, market-based solutions. In reality, this will likely lead to:
* Further privatization of education, which will only exacerbate existing inequalities. * Increased administrative burdens on already underfunded tribes. * More opportunities for corruption and waste, as private companies swoop in to "help" manage these ESAs.
The real disease here is the systemic neglect and marginalization of Native American communities. This bill is just a symptom – a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. It's a cynical attempt to appear concerned about Native American education while actually perpetuating the same failed policies that have led to this point.
In short, HR 84 is a legislative placebo, designed to make politicians feel good while doing little to address the actual problems facing Native American communities. (eyeroll) Next patient, please...
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Rep. Biggs, Andy [R-AZ-5]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 348 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise materials, private school tuition, transportation and more—accounts modeled after the accounts in Arizona, Florida, West Virginia, and seven other states. l Members of Congress should design the same account system for students in active-duty military families, including students attending schools that receive funding under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).18 Heritage Foundation research found that if even 10 percent of the students eli- gible for accounts under such a proposal transferred from an assigned school to an education savings account, the change for the sending district would be 0.1 percent of that school district’s K–12 budget. Even in heavily impacted districts (districts with a large number of students receiving Impact Aid), the budgetary effect would be less than 2 percent. Yet these children would then have the chance to receive a customized education that meets their unique needs. As with state ESA programs, families who are homeschooling are distinct in statute from families who use an ESA to customize an education at home. Furthermore, research from the Claremont Institute used documents pro- vided by a whistleblower demonstrating how educators at Department of Defense schools around the world are using radical gender theory and critical race theory in their lessons. This instructional material discards biology in favor of political indoctrination and applies critical race theory’s core tenets advocating for more racial discrimination. Such ideas are highly unpopular among parents, accord- ing to nationally representative surveys, and the course material attempts to indoctrinate students with radical ideas about race and the ambiguous concept of “gender.” Finally, schools on tribal lands and under the auspices of the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) are among the worst-performing public schools in the country. Research from Rep. Burgess Owens’ office reports that the graduation rate for BIE students is 53 percent, lower than the average for Native American students in public schools around the country, and nearly 30 percentage points lower than the national average for all students. In 2015, Arizona lawmakers expanded the state’s education savings account program to include children living on tribal lands, and by 2021, nearly 400 Native American children were using the accounts. l Federal officials should design a federal education savings account option for all children attending BIE schools. The next Administration should make the K–12 systems under federal juris- diction examples of quality learning opportunities and education freedom. — 349 — Department of Education Washington should convert some of the lowest-performing public school systems in the country into areas defined by choices, creating rigorous learning options for all children and from all backgrounds, income levels, and ethnicities. Expand Education Choice Through Portability of Existing Federal Funds Setting education policy on the right track long term would require sunsetting the U.S. Department of Education altogether. Doing so would not result in fewer resources and less assistance for children with special needs or from low-income families. Rather, closing the federal behemoth would better target existing taxpayer resources already set aside for these students by shifting oversight responsibilities to federal and state agencies that have more expertise in helping these populations. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is the federal law gov- erning taxpayer spending on K–12 students with special needs. The law stipulates that students have a right to a “free and appropriate education,” and 95 percent of children with special needs attend assigned public schools. The education is not always appropriate, however: Special education is fraught with legal battles. Some argue that the education of children with special needs is the most litigated area of K–12 education. Thus, despite a nearly 50-year-old federal law that sees regular revision and reauthorization and approximately $13.5 billion per year in federal taxpayer spending, parents still struggle to establish intervention plans for their students with public school district officials regarding the physical and educational requirements for their children with special needs. State-level education options often exclusively serve children with special needs for these very reasons. Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina, and North Carolina, to name a few states, all have education savings accounts or K–12 private school scholarship options for children with special needs. l Federal lawmakers should move IDEA oversight and implementation to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. l Officials should then consider revising IDEA to require that a child’s portion of the federal taxpayer spending under the law be made available to families so parents can choose how and where a child learns. l IDEA already allows families to choose a private school under certain conditions, but federal officials should update the law so that families can use their child’s IDEA spending for textbooks, education therapies, personal tutors, and other learning expenses, similar to the way in which parents use education savings accounts in states such as Arizona and Florida. These micro-education savings accounts
Introduction
— 351 — Department of Education as the Educational Choice for Children Act. This bill would create a federal scholarship tax credit that would incentivize donors to contribute to nonprofit scholarship granting organizations (SGOs). Eligible families could then use that funding from the SGOs for their children’s education expenses including private school tuition, tutoring, and instructional materials. ADDITIONAL K–12 REFORMS Allowing States to Opt Out of Federal Education Programs. States should be able to opt out of federal education programs such as the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success (APLUS) Act. Much of the red tape and regulations that hinder local school districts are handed down from Washington. This regulatory burden far exceeds the federal government’s less than 10 percent financing share of K–12 education. In the most recent fiscal year (FY 2022), states and localities financed 93 percent of K–12 education costs, and the federal government just 7 percent. That 7 percent share should not allow the federal government to dictate state and local education policy. l To restore state and local control of education and reduce the bureaucratic and compliance burden, Congress should allow states to opt out of the dozens of federal K–12 education programs authorized under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and instead allow states to put their share of federal funding toward any lawful education purpose under state law. This policy has been advanced over the years via a proposal known as the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success (APLUS) Act. HIGHER EDUCATION REFORM HEA: Accreditation Reform Congress established two primary responsibilities for the U.S. Department of Education in the HEA: 1) to ensure the “administrative capacity and financial responsibility” of colleges and universities that accept Title IV funds; and 2) to ensure the quality of those institutions. Congress did not endow the Department of Education with the authority to involve itself in academic quality issues relating to colleges and universities that participate in the Title IV student aid program; the HEA allows the agency only to recognize accreditors, which are then supposed to provide quality assurance measures. Unfortunately, the Biden Administration has followed closely in the footsteps of the Obama Administration by engaging in a politically motivated and incon- sistent administration of the accrediting agency recognition process. As a result, accreditors have transformed into de facto government agents. Despite claims by — 352 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise the department and accreditation agencies that accreditation is voluntary, the fact that Americans are denied access to an otherwise widely available entitle- ment benefit if the institution “elects” to not be accredited makes accreditation anything but voluntary. Today, accreditation determines whether Americans can access federal student aid benefits, transfer academic credits, enroll in higher-level degree programs, and even qualify for federal employment. Unnecessarily focused on schools in a specific geographic region, institutional accreditation reviews have also become wildly expensive audits by academic “peers” that stifle innovation and discourage new institutions of higher education. Of par- ticular concern are efforts by many accreditation agencies to leverage their Title IV (student loans and grants) gatekeeper roles to force institutions to adopt policies that have nothing to do with academic quality assurance and student outcomes. One egregious example of this is the extent to which accreditors have forced col- leges and universities, many of them faith-based institutions, to adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that conflict with federal civil rights laws, state laws, and the institutional mission and culture of the schools. Perhaps more distress- ingly, accreditors, while professing support for academic freedom and campus free speech, have presided over a precipitous decline in both over the past decade. Despite maintaining criteria that demand such policies, accreditors have done nothing to dampen the illiberal chill that has swept across American campuses over the past decade. The current system is not working. A radical overhaul of the HEA’s accreditation requirements is thus in order. The next Administration should work with Congress to amend the HEA and should consider the following reforms: l Prohibit accreditation agencies from leveraging their Title IV gatekeeper role to mandate that educational institutions adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. l Protect the sovereignty of states to decide governance and leadership issues for their state-supported colleges and universities by prohibiting accreditation agencies from intruding upon the governance of state-supported educational institutions. l Protect faith-based institutions by prohibiting accreditation agencies from: 1. Requiring standards and criteria that undermine the religious beliefs of, or require policies or conduct that conflict with, the religious mission or religious beliefs of the institution; and
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.