U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos made some surprising remarks to state education officials about the plans they are developing under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). What did she say and what was the reaction from Capitol Hill?
The U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights has started dismissing hundreds of disability-related complaints, following new guidelines that say such cases will be dismissed when they represent a pattern of complaints against multiple recipients.The office enforces laws such the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, both of which prohibit public entities from discriminating against individuals based on disability. It also enforces Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, and other laws that prohibit discrimination based on age, race, color, or national origin.
Marcie Lipsitt, a special education advocate in Franklin, Mich., estimates that over the past two years, she has filed more than 2,400 complaints to the Education Department over educational entities that have websites that are inaccessible to those who are blind or visually impaired, or who cannot use a mouse to navigate a website. Lipsitt’s targets have included school systems, universities, library systems, and state departments of education.
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By Charlene Crowell
Beginning with a controversial nomination that ended in a tie-breaking Senate confirmation vote and continuing throughout her tenure as Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos has faced unceasing criticism. While Administration officials would be inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, many across the country would argue that she is not serving the public’s interests.
A recent interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes provided an opportunity to address the nonstop criticism before a national audience. Instead, it prompted a new wave of critiques from viewers and news outlets alike.
More important than these recent headlines, however, is the Department’s attempt to stop states from holding student loan servicers and collectors accountable. Claiming that state consumer protection laws “undermine” federal regulator requirements, a non-binding memo is yet another assault on the 44 million Americans who together struggle with a still-growing $1.5 trillion in student debt.
It was about this time last year that Secretary DeVos withdrew three memos that would have required loan servicers, in their renegotiated contracts, to provide more intensive “high touch” servicing for borrowers threatened with default. Then late in the summer of 2017, she withdrew inter-agency working agreements between the Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) commonly known as Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs). Prior to her joining the Education Department, these same MOUs led to a series of major enforcement actions against for-profit colleges like Corinthian and ITT Tech, as well as the nation’s largest student loan servicer, Navient.
With rollbacks in oversight and enforcement, the Education Secretary must think the department is doing a great job serving student loan borrowers that states should just butt out. A new departmental memo claims as much.
In response, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Healey, who filed a lawsuit earlier this month that alleged overcharges to students by the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency was just as direct as she was quick to speak up.
“Secretary DeVos can write as many love letters to the loan servicing industry as she wants, I won’t be shutting down my investigations or stand by while these companies rip off students and families,” Healey said in a statement to The Intercept. “The last thing we need is to give this industry a free pass while a million students a year are defaulting on federal loans.”
Thank goodness for state AGs like Healey. Federal enforcement of consumer protection is currently at a real low.
When Mick Mulvaney was named Acting CFPB Director, a change of direction from consumer enforcement to education and information was promptly announced with a series of more changes. In Mulvaney’s view, CFPB would no longer use aggressive enforcement to hold financial service providers accountable. On his watch, consumers have basically been told not to expect much from CFPB, while businesses have been catered to and even asked to advise Mulvaney and company of what appropriate regulation looks like.
So, if the Department of Education is not going to work with CFPB to resolve complaints and CFPB is not interested in consumer enforcement, why try to tie the hands of states who only seek to protect their own residents?
Whitney Barkley-Denney, a policy counsel with the Center for Responsible Lending, addressed the impacts to consumers of color. “Due to racial disparities in income and wealth, the consumers hardest hit by these debts are consumers of color. While the federal government continues to find ways to placate these companies, states are ready and willing to serve the best interests of borrowers and taxpayers.”
The National Governors Association (NGA) agrees with Barkley-Denney.
In a related statement, the NGA said, “Last week’s declaration on student loan servicing from the U.S. Department of Education seeks to preempt bipartisan state laws, regulations and ‘borrower bills of rights’ currently in place and under consideration in more than 15 states…. States have stepped up to fill the void left, we believe, by the absence of federal protections for student loan borrowers, from potential abusive practices by companies servicing student loans.”
Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers was even more candid.
“With this move, she [Secretary DeVos] has castrated any state legislators and attorneys general from providing meaningful oversight of student loan services, yet she continues to fail to do so herself,” said Weingarten.
In 2017, a CFPB report showed that during the past five years, more than 50,000 student loan complaints were filed. Additionally, more than 10,000 other related debt collection complaints were filed on both private and federal student loans.
Where these complaints originate is equally eye-opening. In just one year, from 2016 to 2017, the growth in the number of student loan complaints exceeded 100 percent in 11 states: Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington State and West Virginia.
It’s enough to make one wonder, ‘Who is our federal government actually serving?’
The post DeVos gets pushback on attempt to preempt state consumer protection appeared first on The Westside Gazette.
By Frank LoMonteWhen a deadly or life-threatening crime takes place at an educational institution, the public justifiably asks: Did the school do enough to maintain safety? At such times, “we can’t say anything because of student privacy” is a profoundly incorrect answer—legally, morally, and practically.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) was enacted in 1974 to protect students against law enforcement snooping into secret files their schools might be keeping without their knowledge. Over the years, aggressive lawyering by school and college attorneys has distorted the statute to encompass much more—but not nearly as much as school administrators insist.
Journalists and concerned parents have been unable to obtain many documents from the Broward County school system that might help the public understand whether school authorities responded to the Parkland, Fla., mass shooter’s capacity for violence with adequate urgency. Instead, they have met the “FERPA wall of secrecy” in asking about the background of Nikolas Cruz.
Government records, including those maintained by public schools, are normally presumed to be open for public inspection, even when the records contain sensitive or embarrassing information. But schools have widely come to misunderstand FERPA as preventing them from providing the public even with an anonymized factual description of serious disciplinary incidents or safety problems that involve students.
As a result, parents and community members regularly hear that “something bad happened” at a school but that they can’t be told what it is or whether anyone was punished. This makes it impossible for the public to hold schools and colleges accountable for how they use their governmental authority…
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U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced today new federal assistance for students and schools impacted by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and the 2017 California wildfires. An additional $2.7 billion, authorized by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, will be used to help K-12 school districts and schools as well as institutions of higher education (IHEs) in their recovery efforts.
“The long road to recovery continues, but these funds should provide vital support to schools and institutions to help them return to their full capabilities as quickly and effectively as possible,” said Secretary DeVos. “I continue to be inspired every day by the dedication shown by educators, administrators and local leaders to getting students’ lives back to normal.”
Secretary DeVos has visited each of the hurricane-impacted areas and continues to be in frequent contact with education leaders as they restore their learning environments. In the immediate aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, the Secretary deployed more than a dozen volunteers as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s Surge Capacity Force across Florida, Puerto Rico, Texas and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Department continues to regularly send staff to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Island to provide on-site assistance.
The new Federal assistance announced today will allow the Department to launch the following programs:
Under this program, the Department is authorized to award funds to eligible State educational agencies (SEAs), including those of Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Texas and U.S. Virgin Islands. These SEAs, in turn, will provide assistance or services to local educational agencies (LEAs), including charter schools, and private schools to help defray expenses related to the restart of operations in, the reopening of, and the re-enrollment of students in elementary and secondary schools that serve an area affected by a covered disaster or emergency.
Under this program, the Department will award Emergency Impact Aid funding to SEAs, which, in turn, will provide assistance to LEAs for the cost of educating students enrolled in public schools, including charter schools, and private schools, who were displaced by the hurricanes during the school year 2017-2018 and California wildfires in 2017.
Congress appropriated a combined amount of approximately $2.5 billion for both the Restart and Emergency Impact Aid for Displaced Student programs. The amounts awarded under each program will be based on demand and specific data received from eligible applicants.
Congress appropriated $25 million for additional grants to SEAs for LEAs to address the needs of homeless students displaced by the covered disasters and emergencies. The Department anticipates using data on displaced public school students collected under the Emergency Impact Aid program to make allocations to SEAs under the Assistance for Homeless Children and Youths program. SEAs will award subgrants to LEAs on the basis of demonstrated need. LEAs must use the funds awarded under this program to support activities that are allowable under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.
Congress appropriated $100 million for this program, which will provide emergency assistance to IHEs and their students in areas directly affected by the covered disasters or emergencies, for activities authorized under the Higher Education Act of 1965.
Congress appropriated $75 million for this program, which will provide payments to IHEs to help defray the unexpected expenses associated with enrolling displaced students from IHEs directly affected by a covered disaster or emergency, in accordance with criteria to be established and made publicly available.
The Department will be sharing additional information soon, including the application packages and technical assistance, on its “Disaster Relief” webpage at https://www.ed.gov/disasterrelief.
For additional information on the programs for K-12 schools and school districts, please contact David Esquith, Director, Office of Safe and Healthy Students, at David.Esquith@ed.gov. For additional information on the programs for IHEs, please contact Adam Kissel, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Higher Education Programs, Office of Postsecondary Education, at Adam.Kissel@ed.gov.
By Mark Alter, Marc Gottlieb, and Jay Gottlieb
Last spring’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District reaffirmed the importance of providing, in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, an “appropriately ambitious” education for the nation’s 6.7 million children with disabilities. The court ruled that in order for school districts to meet their obligations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, they must offer students with disabilities an individualized education plan that enables them to make progress and be adequately challenged to meet their full potential.
The court described this standard in its ruling as a “fact intensive exercise.” From our vantage, that fact-intensive exercise must include processes to ensure that schools actually provide the mandates that appear in each student’s IEP.
In recent years, there have been substantial structural improvements to existing special education practices. Schools now typically place greater emphasis on educating students with disabilities in general education classes and have adopted stringent guidelines to ensure that students with disabilities have access to the general education curriculum.
Despite these improvements, the U.S. Department of Education determined in July that fewer than half of the states are meeting their obligations under IDEA. Most of those states failing to follow educational guidelines have done so for at least two years…
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Since 1837, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have been educating and preparing, primarily, but far from exclusively, African American students – nearly a quarter of HBCU students are non-Black – to contribute to the American experience. These institutions help fill the nation’s dual pipeline of productivity: providing diversely talented employees and creating employment opportunities. They consistently add both workers and job-creation to their state and local economies.
Despite being historically under-resourced, in 2014, the nation’s 101 accredited HBCUs injected $14.8 billion in direct spending impact to the national economy, adding more than 134,000 jobs, on- and off-campus, according to a recently published landmark study, HBCUs Make America Strong: The Positive Economic Impact of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, commissioned by the United Negro College Fund (UNCF).
The study sheds an important light on HBCUs in the modern era. The institutions, spanning 19 states, Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands, disproportionately take on the challenge of providing first-generation, low-income, minority, rural and inner-city students the opportunity to earn college degrees.
Impressively, for example, HBCUs comprise just three percent of all nonprofit colleges and universities, but enroll 10 percent of African American college students, and are responsible for 17 percent of African Americans earning their bachelor’s degrees and 24 percent of African Americans earning their credentials in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. The UNCF study is a wonderful contribution – a foundation stone on which we can pursue new areas of exploration to develop enduring strategies and attract commensurate investment to increase the all too often unheralded or overlooked value of America’s HBCUs.
To build on our nation’s leadership position in the global economy, over the past half-century, America has invested heavily in developing the world’s most advanced countrywide network of regional innovation ecosystems to support talent development, creativity, research, commercialization, entrepreneurship and job creation. Unfortunately, the government, philanthropic, business and community leaders who have led the rise of – and maintain stewardship within – these fantastic ecosystems have not been successful connecting these forward-looking investments to HBCUs and the populations and communities they principally serve. This undermines prospects to grow and equip a deep and diverse enough pool of Americans to power national prosperity for generations to come.
The absence of inclusive and diverse innovation ecosystems demands the development and adoption of frameworks and strategies embedded with the magnificent contributions of HBCUs. The ROI: HBCUs can help more Americans improve their connectivity to and productivity within the 21st century economy.
For most of the 20th century, those principally served by HBCUs were not able to contribute their full talent to the national economy. Yet, in those days, America could economically lead the globe with proverbially one hand tied behind her back.
In other words, back then, U.S. economic competitiveness was assured even without optimal productivity from large swaths of our population. This is no longer the case.
In today’s economy, where relentless global competition for jobs and opportunity is the new normal, the immutable laws of economic prosperity do not allow America to sustain global leadership without greater contributions from more Americans – especially the latent and untapped abilities of those principally served by HBCUs.
In January, President Trump attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Of note, Klaus Schwab, Founder of the World Economic Forum, may have put it best when he said, “Capital is being superseded by creativity and the ability to innovate – and therefore by human talents – as the most important factors of production. If talent is becoming the decisive factor, we can be confident in stating that capitalism is being replaced by talentism.”
In the age of “talentism,” awakening the dormant abilities of more Americans and connecting them to the economy is the most promising path to new wealth generation, greater new job-creation and increased business output. These enhancements will improve our national economic competitiveness and quality of life for Americans, and, importantly, strengthen our national security.
Quite simply, the American economy grows more competitive when educational access is widely available. Our nation’s HBCUs broaden education access, and their positive impact on the country is undeniable. The White House Initiative on HBCUs is excited to partner across the federal government and with the private sector to foster investment in HBCUs to grow their contributions to America; as such, contributions are vital to the competitiveness of the United States.
President Donald Trump is seeking a roughly 5 percent cut to the U.S. Department of Education’s budget for fiscal 2019 in a proposal that also mirrors his spending plan from last year by seeking to eliminate a major teacher-focused grant and to expand school choice.
Trump’s proposed budget, released Monday, would provide the Education Department with $63.2 billion in discretionary aid, a $3.6 billion cut—or 5.3 percent— from current spending levels, for the budget year starting Oct. 1. That’s actually less of a cut than what the president sought for fiscal 2018, when he proposed slashing $9.2 billion—or 13.5 percent—from the department.
In order to achieve those proposed spending cuts, the president copied two major education cuts he proposed last year: the elimination of Title II teacher grants and the 21st Century Community Learning Centers. Those two cuts combined would come to about $3.1 billion from current levels. Overall, 39 discretionary programs would be cut, eliminated, or “streamlined.”
“Decades of investments and billions of dollars in spending have shown that an increase in funding does not guarantee high-quality education,” the Office of Management and Budget states in the budget document. “While the budget reduces the overall federal role in education, the budget makes strategic investments to support and empower families and improve access to postsecondary education, ensuring a future of prosperity for all Americans.”
On the other side of the ledger, Trump is seeking $1 billion for new private and public school choice programs called Opportunity Grants. This new funding could also help schools that go for the weighted-funding pilot. He also wants $500 million in federal charter school funding, an increase of roughly 50 percent from current spending levels, which is also the same as his first budget blueprint.
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President Donald Trump is expected to release his latest federal spending wish list on Monday. And the U.S. Department of Education may not fare well.
The proposal could include a billion or two more in cuts than last year’s budget pitch, which sought to slash more than $9 billion from the department’s nearly $70 billion budget.
This is going to be a confusing year because Congress still hasn’t finalized last year’s spending plan, for fiscal year 2018, which started on Oct. 1 and generally impacts the 2018-19 school year. Congress recently passed legislation extending funding for all programs at fiscal year 2017 levels.
Trump’s newest proposal, though, will lay out his administration’s asks for fiscal year 2019, or the 2019-20 school year for most programs.
The president’s budget is almost always dead-on-arrival in Congress, which is already poised to reject many of the cuts Trump proposed last year, including getting rid of the $1.1 billion 21st Century Community Learning Centers program.
But budgets are a clear signal of the administration’s priorities. So what should you look for in this one? Here’s a quick rundown…
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The Trump administration’s budget, due out later this month, is likely to combine three significant research programs—the State Longitudinal Data System grants, the Regional Educational Laboratories, and the Comprehensive Centers—advocates with knowledge of the proposal say.
Money for all three programs—nearly $140 million all told—would instead be rolled out to states through formula grants, said Michele McLaughlin, a senior adviser at Penn Hill Group, a government-relations organization.
McLaughlin is also the president of the Knowledge Alliance, a lobbying coalition for the education research community, who learned of the proposal ahead of the budget’s release. Another advocate in the research community with knowledge of the details also confirmed the proposed changes.
“This proposal is nonsensical and does not reflect congressional intent,” said McLaughlin. She noted that the Education Sciences Reform Act, or ESRA, which was last renewed in 2002, keeps all three programs separate. So does a bipartisan bill to reauthorize ESRA—the Strengthening Education Through Research Act—which passed the House in 2014 and the Senate in 2015 but still hasn’t made it over the finish line.
The budget change the Trump administration intends to propose would require a legislative change, she said.
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