Accreditation and Innovation Neg Reg Opens to Controversy over Significant ED Proposals – CooleyED
The US Department of Education and the panel of 20-plus negotiators this week concluded their first round of discussions on a sweeping set of proposed new rules affecting the regulation of accrediting bodies, distance education and other matters.
Despite winter weather that shut down the remaining parts of the federal government on Monday, the US Department of Education and the panel of 20-plus negotiators this week concluded their first round of discussions on a sweeping set of proposed new rules affecting the regulation of accrediting bodies, distance education and other matters. The frigid weather matched the chilly atmosphere in the negotiating room, as the Accreditation and Innovation Committee began its deliberations.
This negotiated rulemaking has been marked by several significant procedural changes from prior sessions. Typically, ED provides negotiators with issue papers intended to initiate discussion and generate proposals before developing regulatory language, but in this case, ED distributed advance copies of its proposed rules to launch the discussions, with full details of the desired changes. In a major procedural change, ED abandoned the usual approach of seeking consensus on an entire slate of regulations, and instead divided the proposed revisions into three groups or “buckets,” with the intent of seeking consensus on each one separately. They are: