Congress launches probe into pandemic education funding use

Last week, House Republicans announced they will investigate the alleged misuse of coronavirus pandemic education funds, and as a part of their investigation, the lawmakers requested documents from the Department of Education to verify the use of federal education funds.

The Hill reported that the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman, James Comer (R-Kentucky), Education and Workforce committee chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina), and Coronavirus Crisis Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio).

The three Republican lawmakers said that they believe that billions of federal dollars for emergency coronavirus education funding were used to fund “left-wing agendas” and were not used to address learning loss and other education issues. They also sent a letter to the Department of Education cabinet secretary, Miguel Cardona, to ask for “all documents, communications, and policies guiding the Department’s administration [of] COVID-19 education funds.”

Several examples that the lawmakers cited were the potential misuses of funds to back teacher trainings on “implicit bias,” “anti-bias strategies, environmental literacy…ethnic studies, and LGBTQ+ cultural competency.”

The Department of Education has a deadline of April 17 to produce the requested documents.

As The Hill said, this is the second time that congressional Republicans claimed that pandemic funds were misused. The first occasion was in October 2022, when the Republicans were in the minority.

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