Most of the education-related federal statutes are codified in Title 20 (Education) of the United States Code, some are codified in Title 42 (Public Health and Welfare). The U.S. Department of Education has a policy page that includes legislation, regulations, guidance, and other policy documents for topics from adult education to vocational education. For information on statutory research more generally, see the library's Statutory Research Tutorial and Legislative History Research Tutorial.
For an introduction to statutory research, see our Statutes Research Guide guide. The following is a list of sources for the full text of federal laws:
Below is a list of some important federal statutes related to education law:
If you want to investigate the legislative intent behind a piece of legislation, you will need to review some or all of the documents created during the process of enacting that piece of legislation. For many federal education laws, there are compiled legislative histories available through the library on a number of different platforms. A compiled legislative history will usually include all the bills, Congressional Record debates, committee reports and hearings that were generated in the legislative process. For complete legislative history information, read our Legislative History Research Guide or work through our Legislative History Tutorial.
Much of education law is actually conducted at the state level, so individual state statutory compilations or codes will include legislation on education topics for that jurisdiction. The following links highlight resources for finding 50 state statutory surveys.