This report is a descriptive profile of recent U.S. foreign aid education sector activities, outlining actors, policy, funding levels, and programs. The education sector has long been considered an important element of the U.S. foreign assistance program. As noted in a 1980 Government Accountability Office report on U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) education programs, "Education is a vital element in the successful socio-economic development of a country. Ignorance and illiteracy hinder developing-country economic development and block the poor from participating in and benefiting from economic development." Today, the value of education assistance continues to be advocated. The State Department's 2015 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review identifies education as a means of lifting developing countries out of poverty, countering violent extremism and promoting global stability, and strengthening global health initiatives. USAID, the leading development agency of the U.S. government, sees the expansion of quality education as "foundational to human development and critical to broad-based economic growth and democratic governance." Many organizations have found statistical support for the claim that education is crucial to bettering livelihoods and improving economic stability in developing countries. Research supports the claim that the benefits of education extend beyond individuals, with ripple effects on the greater community. According to the World Bank, direct benefits of education include the following: E conomic growth : An increase of one standard deviation in student reading and math scores is associated with an increase of two percentage points in annual GDP per capita growth. E conomic stability : Households with more education cope with economic shocks and exploit new economic opportunities better than less-educated households. D ecrease in infant and child mortality rates : Of the 8.2 million fewer deaths of children age 5 and younger between 1970 and 2009, one-half can be attributed to more education among women of reproductive age. A daptation to environmental change : Countries with better-educated female populations are more capable of coping with extreme weather events than countries with low levels of female education. The international community has widely accepted the importance of education in international development. In 2000, member states of the United Nations made achieving universal primary education one of the eight Millennium Development Goals meant to serve as a development roadmap for both donors and developing countries from 2000 to 2015. Moreover, in 2015, they included quality education as one of the follow-on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). According to the U.N. resolution establishing the SDGs, the goal for 2030 is to provide "inclusive and equitable quality education at all levels." Much progress has been made in recent years; between 2000 and 2013, the number of children in primary and secondary schools has increased by 20%. Nevertheless, the challenges remain great. According to 2014 school year data collected by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics, approximately 263 million children and youth are out of school, a figure that does not include most refugees and internally displaced children. Of those, 61 million (23%) are of primary school age (ages 6-11), 60 million (23%) are of lower secondary school age (ages 12-14), and 142 million (54%) are of upper secondary school age (ages 15-17). Regionally, sub-Saharan Africa faces the largest out-of-school rates, with 21.2% of primary, 34.1% of lower secondary, and 57.7% of upper secondary school-aged children out of school. And girls in general continue to be left behind—15 million girls of primary school age will never set foot in a classroom, compared with approximately 10 million boys. For those who attend school, the quality of education is often lacking. Studies of educational attainment in individual countries show that many children are leaving school without acquiring basic reading and math skills. One estimate suggests that 25% of the 530 million children worldwide who complete four years of primary school—130 million children—have not learned basic literacy and numeracy. Congress affects education assistance in two ways: through policymaking and annual appropriations. Congress first made education a distinctive policy objective of foreign assistance in 1973, when it added sector-specific objectives to the aid program's key authorizing legislation as part of its "New Directions" policy which sought to target assistance on satisfying the basic human needs of the poor in developing countries. Section 105 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (P.L. 87-195, as amended) seeks "to reduce illiteracy, to extend basic education, and to increase manpower training in skills related to development." More recently, in the FY2008 State, Foreign Operations appropriations ( P.L. 110-161 ), Congress mandated establishment of a position within the State Department to oversee and coordinate all basic education assistance in the U.S. government and to provide a strategy for such assistance. A Basic Education Coordinator was appointed in 2007 and served in that position for one year, after which no other individual occupied the post. Although the FY2012 Consolidated Appropriations Act ( P.L. 112-74 ) shifted the post to USAID, the agency has, instead, divided responsibilities for basic education between a Senior Advisor for International Education appointed in March 2013 and other officials in the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and the Environment. A number of bills are currently under consideration in the House and Senate focusing to some degree on education assistance policy. These include the following: H.R. 4481 (Lowey) , the Education for All Act of 2016 , amends the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to make it U.S. policy to achieve sustainable quality universal basic education and directs the President to develop a comprehensive strategy in this regard. The legislation includes provisions specifically addressing countries affected by conflict and crises, as well as directives to focus programs on girls' education and marginalized groups. It requires that programs seek measurable goals with appropriate metrics and be subject to rigorous monitoring and evaluation. The legislation calls for designation by USAID of a Senior Coordinator on basic education and submission by the President of an annual report on education strategy implementation. On September 7, 2016, the bill was approved by the House of Representatives. S. 1632 (Collins) , To Require a Regional Strategy to Address the Threat Posed by Boko Haram , including plans to strengthen security for schools and protection of girls' access to education. A sense of Congress notes that increased access to education would diminish Boko Haram's ability to radicalize and recruit individuals. On September 22, 2015, the bill was approved by the Senate. S. 1875 (Menendez) , the Afghanistan Accountability Act of 2015 , which lauds the increase in the number of girls enrolled in primary education in Afghanistan from 5,000 under the Taliban to more than 2,400,000 as of 2010, and notes that assistance programs in direct support of Afghan women and girls, such as those supporting education, remain a priority for the United States. On April 28, 2016, the bill was approved by the Senate. With regard to funding, Congress supports U.S. government education activities through annual appropriations legislation and has for many decades directed in legislative language that a specific amount be spent for basic education purposes and, since FY2009, for higher edu cation. Most education development programs are funded through the annual State-Foreign Operations appropriations. In FY2016, combined USAID and Department of State education programming of about $856 million composed nearly 4% of total USAID/State economic (i.e., nonsecurity) assistance program appropriations. At roughly $1.2 billion, total education obligations in FY2014 from all U.S. agencies, including the Peace Corps and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), accounted for nearly 4% of total economic aid obligations in that year. As shown in Figure 2 , education assistance, based on available figures for USAID and State alone, has risen considerably since FY2001. In FY2001, the total funding obligated for education was $252 million. The funding level then reached an all-time high in FY2009, when the total funding provided was $1.2 billion. Since 2010, the funding level has varied from year to year but averaged about $1 billion. The FY2017 request level is $788 million—$562 million for basic education and $226 million for higher education—which, if met, would represent the lowest level of funding for education in 10 years. In most years, the basic education component has represented 75%-80% of total education assistance. Nearly 41% of State/USAID education funding in FY2015 was directed at sub-Saharan Africa, followed by the Near East/North Africa and South and Central Asia at 22% each ( Figure 4 ). Multiple U.S. agencies fund and implement education programs. In FY2014 (the most recent year for which data were available for all agencies), such agencies included USAID, Peace Corps, the Departments of State, Commerce, and Interior, the African Development Foundation, the Inter-American Foundation, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Together, three of these agencies account for 92% of all education funding ( Figure 3 ). These three—USAID, Peace Corps, and MCC—are discussed below. Contributing more than two-thirds of education spending, USAID plays the most significant role in U.S. government education assistance programs. Under its Education Strategy 2011-2015 , USAID adopted three primary goals for its education initiatives: improved reading skills for 100 million children in primary grades by 2015; improved ability of tertiary and workforce development programs to generate workforce skills relevant to a country's development goals; and increased equitable access to education in crisis and conflict environments for 15 million learners by 2015. According to USAID, 155 basic education projects in 45 countries benefitting over 41 million children have been established to support these goals during the 2011-2015 strategy period.