Valentine for The 74: National Parent Union’s Keri Rodrigues on Public School Disenrollment Amid the COVID Crisis

America’s education system continues to reckon with the enormous disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although some students and families became well-acclimated with the distance learning process overall, many others found it challenging—and often impossible—to participate in because of persistent barriers like job losses, lack of stable housing, insufficient internet access and dysfunctional devices. And across the country, educators quickly became aware of a widespread trend: children were flat-out missing from school, virtual or otherwise. Some parents had turned to homeschooling or pods; others enrolled their children in private schools that opened in-person learning, and some moved to distant cities or states where they felt their children would have a better chance learning.

Comprehensive national data is not yet available to show the full scope of disenrollment from public schools, but throughout the current school year, individual districts from Florida to Alaska and points in between reported significant enrollment declines ranging into the tens of thousands.

To examine these issues from the perspective of parents, the Progressive Policy Institute’s Curtis Valentine sat down for a Q&A with Keri Rodrigues of the National Parents Union, who shared her thoughts on the impact of parents pulling children out of schools during the pandemic.

Read the full interview on The 74.

Osborne for The 74: How Can We Make School Quality Matter? By Creating Consequences for Success and Failure

In the education wars of the past 20 years, one of the most contentious issues has been what to do when a school is rated as failing for four or five years in a row. In some cities, at some times, district leaders have replaced such schools — the administrators and staff, not the buildings — with more promising teams. But 2015’s Every Child Succeeds Act removed any pressure to do that, and outside of a few districts, little of it is happening.

As a result, millions of urban children are stuck in failing schools, which should be a national scandal. Experience is clear: Replacing a struggling school is far more effective than trying to turn it around.

The Obama administration poured billions of dollars into School Improvement Grants for struggling schools, to strengthen them. Studies show some improvement, but hardly enough to justify the huge expenditures. It is very difficult to turn around a failing school when the staff remains largely the same and the bureaucratic web of rules and constraints within which it must work remains unchanged.

A research team recently reviewed 67 studies that examined such turnaround efforts. On average, they showed only moderate improvement. The one exception came when states or school districts replaced failing schools with charter schools. This replacement strategy yielded double the impact of the turnaround efforts on math test scores and almost 10 times the impact on reading/English language arts.

Replacement strategies in cities from New Orleans to Chicago to Newark have produced rapid improvement. After Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, the Louisiana legislature voted to move all but 17 New Orleans public schools into the state’s Recovery School District, which over the next 10 years replaced them with charter schools. Over that decade, New Orleans experienced the most rapid school improvement in the nation. A respected research team at Tulane University concluded that replacement of failing schools accounted for 25 to 40 percent of that improvement.

Read the rest on The 74.

Preventing Failure to Launch: Creating More School-to-Work Pathways for Young Adults

Today’s high school students and young adults face a difficult job market. The Covid pandemic has been particularly hard on less educated workers without a college degree. The 10 million jobs lost by Americans at the pandemic’s onset disproportionally impacted young adults between the ages of 16 and 24, and especially Black and Hispanic workers. Some estimate that as many as 25 percent of our youth will neither be in school nor working when the pandemic ends. 

Research shows that employers are less likely to hire workers with little to no experience for the “first jobs” that many younger workers rely on to build their skills and credentials. Without those first jobs, many will face fewer paths to enter the workforce. To help the non-college-bound, our education system needs to create alternative pathways to careers.

The Biden administration and Congress have the opportunity to create a revamped system that addresses inequality by building continuous pathways between high school and work. As part of his Build Back Better plan, President Biden has called for grants to states to accelerate students’ attainment of quality credentials, degrees, and opportunities in job training programs. As we discuss in this paper, there are promising existing models to draw on in thinking about how to provide more job opportunities to young adults.

This paper reviews several case studies to provide evidence-based examples of how to better connect students to careers. We first address the need for broad-based pathways to careers and then focus on four key themes across school−to−career models, including: (1) the importance of work-based learning that connects students to employers; (2) curriculums that emphasize soft skills and social capital to prepare young adults for their first jobs; (3) the need for supportive or wraparound services to help students get across the finish line; and, (4) high schools that help students earn credits toward postsecondary education along the way to graduation.

Read the full report here

 

The Alarming Truth about Biden’s Latest Education Nominee

Supporters of Cindy Marten, President Biden’s nominee for Deputy U.S. Secretary of Education, laud her success in closing achievement gaps during her eight years as superintendent in San Diego. Unfortunately, such claims are false.

Linda Darling-Hammond, who led Biden’s transition team on education, cites Marten’s “enormous work” and “knowledge base on how to improve schools and close opportunity and achievement gaps” for poor and minority students as her lead qualification. When the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee holds its hearing on Marten this Wednesday, it should scrutinize that claim.

Complaints against Marten include inequitable treatment of families with special needs students, disproportionate rates of suspensions and expulsions for Black and Brown SDUSD studentsfinancial mismanagementmishandling sexual abuse cases, a serial lack of transparency, and retaliation against truth-tellers.

Read the rest on RealClearEducation.

To Build Back Better, Biden Must Invest in Modern Apprenticeship System

Now that the historic American Rescue Plan has been passed in Congress and signed into law, President Biden will turn to his Build Back Better plan to help the more than 10 million unemployed Americans return to the labor force. As part of this effort to lift the job prospects of laid-off workers and young Americans without college degrees, America needs to go big on investing in a modern apprenticeship system built for the needs of our 21st century workforce.

More than ever before, Americans – especially young adults – need pathways to careers that don’t require a traditional four-year college degree. While Millennials are the most educated generation in history, as of 2015, only about a third of Americans ages 25-to-34 were college graduates. That number is even lower for older Americans. Apprenticeships offer an on-ramp to well-paying careers for those who did not go to college. The average starting annual salary for registered apprentices is $60,000.

Even though most Americans don’t go to college, the U.S. has historically underutilized apprenticeships compared to European countries. European apprenticeships span a range of industries, including those on the cutting edge. For example, German biotechnology company BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer on a COVID-19 vaccine, hires and trains large numbers of apprentices as part of its business model.

Read the full piece here.

Osborne for The 74: Test Scores Give Only a Partial Picture of How a School Is Doing. School Quality Reviews Can Help Fill the Gap

Standardized testing has become controversial in a way few predicted a decade ago. As I wrote in the first piece in this series, test scores give us important information about the quality of schools, but they leave out a lot of other important information.

Consider, for instance, the school that suddenly had to take in 60 new students midyear, because a nearby school closed. The newcomers’ scores on tests given two months later would not tell us much about the quality of that school.

Or how about schools that were closed for a month because of a hurricane and flooding? Wouldn’t their scores misrepresent their quality?

And what about specialized schools, like those that focus on dual-language immersion or the performing arts? Would reading and math scores really tell us what we need to know about their performance, if we don’t also rate them on how well kids are learning their second language or their singing, dancing or acting.

Outstanding schools do many things that test scores don’t measure, such as engaging families, motivating students, regularly assessing their progress, offering remedial help for those who are behind and paying attention to social-emotional learning. Science tells us that these are all important practices. Wouldn’t it be nice if state accountability systems encouraged schools to use them?

Read the rest of the piece here.

WEBINAR: Schools That Excelled During the Pandemic – How and Why They Pivoted Effectively to Remote Learning

On Wednesday, February 24th our Director David Osborne and Associate Director Tressa Pankovits co-moderated an engaging conversation on public schools that have effectively made the switch to remote learning entitled, “Schools That Excelled During the Pandemic: How and Why They Pivoted Effectively to Remote Learning.”

The dynamic panel of school leaders included Diane Tavenner (Summit Public Schools), Shatoya Ward (Purdue Polytechnic High School), and Priscila Dilley (Leadership Academy Network). With an audience of parents, educators, advocates, and policy makers, the panel discussed the keys to their success, what they have learned, and their advice for other public schools and districts.

As school systems across the country return to in-person instruction, our project highlighted what school leaders learned about how impactful autonomy can be ensuring student success.

 

The Progressive Way to Ease Student Debt Burdens

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) want to give up to $50,000 in debt relief to every American with student loans. Though they claim to be progressives, there is nothing progressive about this. It would benefit households in the top half of the income scale far more than those in the bottom half. Almost half of those with student debt have graduate degrees, after all.

It’s no wonder so many working-class voters have abandoned the Democratic Party. Bailing out college graduates with decent incomes will convince many that the Republicans are correct: The Democrats are elitists who don’t care about those without college degrees.

President Biden proposes to forgive only $10,000 in student debt, targeted to borrowers from low-income families. That is a more progressive approach, but it won’t help those who never went to college. According to the Census Bureau, only roughly 36 percent of Americans over age 25 have four-year college degrees, while 38 percent never attended a day of college. Only 20 percent of U.S. households have student debt.

With a little creativity, the president could help needy borrowers while also investing in non-college goers. Specifically, the administration should propose $10,000 per person in “career opportunity accounts” for working Americans aged 18 to 55 who earn less than $75,000 a year. Roughly two-thirds of all full-time, year-round workers earn less than $75,000. (To avoid penalizing those who earn just over $75,000, the money could be phased out between $70,000 and $80,000.)

Read the full piece here.

Osborne for The 74: States Still Rely Too Heavily on Test Scores to Hold Schools Accountable. Here’s a Better Way for Them to Break It All Down

Despite heated rhetoric to the contrary, most Americans think we need standardized tests, to make sure kids are learning the basics. Last year, 61 percent of adults surveyed by Gallup and Phi Delta Kappa thought it appropriate to use test scores as a main factor in judging school quality. But in a previous version of the survey, five years ago, most respondents said other indicators, such as graduation rates, employment rates, and student engagement, were more important.

There is a lot of wisdom here. We need standardized tests to see if students are learning to read, do math, write, and understand science and history. If we don’t measure such things, how will we know which schools are failing and need to be replaced?

But for the last two decades, heavy reliance on test scores has encouraged cookie-cutter schools focused on preparing students for tests. Instead, we need diverse schools that cultivate the joy of learning, engage students in meaningful thinking and help them develop the character skills — such as conscientiousness and self-control — that lead to success in life.

Read the rest here.

WEBINAR: Parent Choice… Is It a Civil Right?

On Tuesday, February 2nd our Deputy Director Curtis Valentine moderated an engaging conversation on the rights of all parents to choose where their children attend school entitled “Parent Choice…is it a Civil Right?” The  all-star panel of experts in civil rights and education included George Parker (formerly with Washington Teacher’s Union), Lakisha Young (The Oakland REACH), Shavar Jeffries (Democrats for Education Reform), and T. Willard Fair (Urban League of Greater Miami).

With an audience of parents, educators, advocates, and policy makers, the panel debated the connection between parent choice and the promise of a quality education. As America celebrates Black History Month, our project celebrates those who fight for the civil rights of all parents, especially the right to a quality public education for their children.

Biden’s Education secretary must seize the bully pulpit — and quickly

President Biden’s nominee for Education secretary appeared before the Senate’s education committee today. Miguel Cardona was asked about his stance on issues such as federal support for student civil rights and charter schools. The most pressing questions were centered on the pandemic: Under what circumstances should schools reopen? How much federal aid is needed? How should standardized testing be managed after months of lost learning?

Cardona’s answers are critical to families whose schools have been shuttered for nearly a year. But it’s Cardona’s leadership skills that senators should be most focused on. How strongly will Cardona advocate for America’s children, particularly when adult interests such as teacher unions push in the opposite direction? The secretary of Education doesn’t have authority to open or close schools; that falls to states and localities. But he does have a bully pulpit, and he should use it forcefully to support state and local officials struggling to reengage kids in learning.

Previous Education secretaries under Democratic presidents have forcefully used their voices to support education reforms. Richard Riley’s “America Reads Challenge” during the Clinton administration and Arne Duncan’s “Race to the Top” competition during the Obama administration come to mind. The challenges of this moment are even more daunting.

Read the full piece here.

Biden, Congressional Democrats Have Rare Chance to Highlight, Fix America’s Broken Higher Education Financing Model

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new brief released today from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) commends President Biden’s bold vision to ease student debt burdens. The brief calls on the Administration to help borrowers in more meaningful ways by fixing America’s broken financing model for higher education, and investing in non-college pathways to good jobs.

Key highlights from the brief: 

  • More than 1/5 households hold a student loan, up from 1/10 in 1989.
  • Millennials, who are already saddled with lower wages and lingering economic pains from the Great Recession, hold $497.6 billion in outstanding loans.
  • Education debt is a generational/equity crisis. Borrowers are more likely to be lower-income, Black, and less likely to have generational wealth, making them more likely to default, which can lead to further worsening of poverty and the racial wealth gap.
  • Biden has faced calls to cancel $50,000 in education debt for borrowers but the evidence suggests that this could be regressive and benefit many high-income households who don’t need relief.
  • Education debt relief should not be a one-time fix. President Biden and Congress need to meaningfully address America’s broken financing model for higher education and invest in non-college pathways to good jobs.

The policy brief calls for the Biden Administration to take important key steps, including: 

  • Auto-enrollment in income-based repayment as opt-out for new and existing loans.
  • Modernize the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program to reward national or community service for our public servants and create incentives for public service.
  • Accelerate attainment of credentials by making the process for earning college credit through Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB) programs, and college courses taken in high school at community colleges, more transparent and accessible.

Veronica Goodman, PPI’s Director of Social Policy and author of the brief, said this:

“President Biden and Congressional Democrats have a rare opportunity to move fixing America’s broken higher education financing model to the center of the nation’s agenda.

They should follow targeted education debt relief with bold progressive reforms aimed at two critical national goals: Lowering college costs and thereby reduce the need for borrowing, and boosting public  investment in the skills and career prospects of the majority of young Americans who do not get college degrees.”

Read the full report here.

Memo to President Biden: The Progressive Way to Ease Student Debt Burdens

Note: In this brief, I use the term education debt, rather than student debt, since most affected borrowers are no longer students, and this category of debt affects a wide swath of society, not just students.          

After his inauguration on January 20, one of President Joe Biden’s first official acts was signing an executive order to extend the pandemic-related pause on student loan payments and interest, as well as to halt collection of student loans in default, through September 30. For millions of young Americans struggling to pay off college loans, the order will be a welcome down payment on Biden’s campaign promise to deliver major debt relief.

While campaigning for the presidency last spring, Biden unveiled a plan to forgive a minimum of $10,000 per borrower. The President’s advisers say the administration will submit a legislative proposal for debt relief to the new Congress. 

The case for relief is strong. Over the past four years, the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers have provided little in the way of help for struggling borrowers beyond the temporary pause on repayments. With young people struggling to keep their heads above water amid the Covid pandemic and recession, it is no surprise that Democratic policymakers are looking for ways to relieve their financial stress.  

In May 2020, House Democrats also called for $10,000 worth of education loan relief for “distressed” borrowers as part of their Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) bill. This category of borrowers included those with delinquent or defaulted loans, and others considered “financially distressed.” According to the U.S. Department of Education, as many as 20 percent of education loans are in default. This provision got caught up in partisan wrangling over the size and cost of the HEROES act, and was dropped from the compromise stimulus bill Congress passed in late December 2020. 

Since his victory last November, Biden has faced persistent calls from progressives to forgive education debt for the 45 million Americans who owe close to $1.6 trillion in loans. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer dramatically raised the bidding by urging Biden to take executive action to forgive up to $50,000 of federal education debt. Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alma Adams (D-NC), and Maxine Waters (D-CA) introduced a companion resolution in the House in December 2020.  

Although popular on the left, such calls to “go big” have drawn a skeptical response from many independent analysts. “In sheer magnitude, canceling $50,000 in student debt would rank among the largest transfer programs in U.S. history,” notes the Brookings Institution’s Adam Looney. “At a cost slightly above $1 trillion, it would equal the total amount spent on cash welfare since 1980. And its largest effect would be to improve the finances of college-educated workers, who have already tended to be winners in an economy marked by ever-rising inequality.” 

President Biden likewise has expressed skepticism about the distributive impact of these proposals. He’s also told Congressional Democrats he would prefer a legislative fix to an easily reversible executive order – something that looks more likely after the January 5 Georgia runoffs flipped control of the Senate to his party.

Digging into the data on the demographics of Americans with education debt, it becomes clear that Biden’s approach isn’t just more affordable, it’s also more progressive and equitable. Approximately 48 percent of outstanding student loans are held by those with graduate degrees; that is double the share of those who owe loans and earned an Associate’s degree or less. In fact, slightly over a third of all education debt is concentrated in the highest income quartile – households making over $97,000 per year.

Without better targeting, debt relief would mostly benefit higher-income households, which hold a third of student loans and have greater ability to pay them back. A 2019 analysis by the Urban Institute finds that “forgiving larger amounts of debt would distribute a larger share of benefits to higher-income households, and reducing the amount of debt forgiven should increase the share of benefits going to lower-income households.” Based on this analysis, the $50,000 proposed by Sens. Warren and Schumer would have regressive effects and distribute relief to households at the top of the income scale. 

In contrast, Biden’s plan aims at lower-income borrowers who need debt relief the most. Relief in the amount of $10,000 per borrower would eliminate all debt for 37 percent of borrowers (16.3 million people) and cut in half debts owed by another 9.3 million borrowers at an estimated cost between $250-300 billion. These borrowers are disproportionately young and low-income, and include veterans, single parents, and those in a minority group. Two-thirds of borrowers that default on their payments owe a comparatively low average amount of $9,625. These borrowers also are less likely to repay their loans because they never completed their college degrees or earned only a certificate.

However, it’s not clear whether President Biden’s plan will include an income-based eligibility test to ensure that relief is concentrated on needy rather than affluent families. PPI recommends that the administration target its plan by phasing out relief for borrowers making over $125,000. This would address concerns that about the regressive nature of untargeted debt relief and substantially reduce the cost of the proposal. 

Perhaps most important, the President’s approach recognizes the limits of debt relief and leaves fiscal space for tackling the fundamental problem: America’s broken financing model for higher education. Over the past two decades, the cost of higher education has approximately doubled and ballooning tuition prices have forced students to borrow more to finance their education.

Although federal subsidies – chiefly grants and loans – tilt heavily toward college-going young people, college is not the only pathway to good jobs for young adults and U.S. workers. It’s true that the average college-educated worker reaps a lifetime premium of higher earnings in the labor market. But most Americans don’t go to college. As of 2019, 70.1 percent of Americans 25 and older had not earned a four-year degree, while just 29.9 percent earned a four-year degree or higher. Given his well-known empathy for the struggles of America’s working-class families, PPI recommends that the President pair debt relief with increased public investment in apprenticeships and work-based “career pathways” training programs that connect workers, including those coming out of high school, to well-paying careers.  

PPI has proposed a suite of ideas for how to expand career pathways to employment for millions of Americans including investments for a 10-fold increase in apprenticeships, creating incentives for partnering public and private programs that focus on transferable skills and credentials, and incentivizing private intermediaries who create “outsourced” apprenticeships programs. Although they are beyond the scope of this memo, PPI believes these and related ideas are crucial to ending the bias in federal policy toward college-bound youth. We hope the Biden administration will give high priority to investing more in building a robust system of work-based learning, career training, and apprenticeships for the majority of young Americans who don’t attend four-year colleges.

Recommendations for the Biden Administration

  • Draft legislation to provide $10,000 in immediate education debt forgiveness for those with an annual income of less than $125,000 per year. This will deliver relief for those at greatest risk of defaulting on their student loans, especially students from low-income and minority families. The estimated cost of President Biden’s plan is $250-300 billion, and it would eliminate all education debt for 37 percent of borrowers (16.3 million people) and cut in half debts owed by another 9.3 million borrowers. Our recommendation of an income-based eligibility test is expected to reduce the overall cost.
  • Continue giving borrowers a break on payments and interest by extending the pause on federal student loan payments for the duration of the pandemic and Covid recession. President Biden has extended the pause through September 30.
  • Make income-based repayment more accessible and generous for borrowers. Switching to a universal IBR system that is opt-out for new and existing loans, and which automatically re-enrolls borrowers, would make payments more manageable and automatically tied to income, decreasing the likelihood of default and missed payments. 
  • Modernize the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program to reward national or community service for our public servants by offering $10,000 of education debt relief for every year of service up to five years—after which the loan would be forgiven. This would include individuals with up to five years of prior service and automatically enroll workers in schools, government, and other nonprofit organizations. This would encourage workers to pursue careers in public service.
  • Accelerate attainment of credentials by making the process for earning college credit through Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB) programs, and college courses taken in high school at community colleges, more transparent and accessible, as PPI’s Paul Weinstein has argued.

Education Debt Has Led to a Social Crisis, Which the Pandemic Has Made Worse

Those who have borrowed for degrees are more likely to be lower-income, Black, and less likely to have generational wealth, making them more likely to default, which can lead to further worsening of poverty and the racial wealth gap. To understand why the proposal of $10,000 relief per borrower could have the most impact on lower-income families and those most struggling during the pandemic, it is worth digging into the demographics of who is behind on payments and what groups are holding the most debt:

  • According to the U.S. Department of Education, 20 percent of borrowers are in default, and a million more go into default each year. Two-thirds of borrowers who default never completed their college degrees or earned only a certificate and owe a comparatively low average amount of $9,625. Those who default include veterans, parents, and first-generation college students who are more financially vulnerable to default. Without a credential and with limited access to good jobs, borrowers are forced to default and, in doing so, accrue additional interest and fees on the principal loan. These borrowers are in no position to pay back their defaulted loans.

Default can have catastrophic implications for future access to credit, and result in garnished wages, seized tax refunds, and harm other measures of financial wealth. Given the age at which most of these borrowers took out loans, many begin their adulthood at an economic disadvantage. At this scale, the education debt crisis is not only hurting those who are struggling the most, but it is holding back an entire generation with negative implications for their children’s generation. The financial strain the pandemic has inflicted on workers will make it more difficult for defaulted borrowers to get back on track with payments.

Debt Relief: Down Payment on Reform

As the pandemic rages, and more Americans lose their jobs and businesses, short-term education debt relief can help our most vulnerable borrowers ride out the storm. But we also need longer-term, structural reforms aimed at driving down the tuition costs for both college and post-secondary skills training. 

Short-Term Relief and Considerations

The Trump administration implemented limited short-term relief for education debt by temporarily suspending loan payments through February 2021 on federal educational loans as of March 2020. Further short-term relief is desirable, in line with President Biden’s proposal for $10,000 of forgiveness. As one of his first actions in office, President Biden signed an executive order extending the pause on student loan payments and interest through September 30. Biden should continue to extend the pause as long as the Covid recession continues to place financial strain on borrowers.

Reviewing the data, education debt forgiveness targeted at borrowers with low incomes and the unemployed would have the greatest impact. However, some concerns remain over how policymakers can target relief to those who need it the most. Some experts have suggested that policymakers could isolate undergraduate debt from graduate school debt in order to prioritize these more needy borrowers. This would avoid regressive effects that could give a large portion of relief to those with graduate school debt, such as doctors and lawyers, that are in a better financial position to pay back their loans. At the $10,000 level, however, the Biden plan avoids many of the greatest concerns about the potential for regressive outcomes relevant to higher dollar per borrower proposals. Adding an income cap of $125,000 for borrowers will target relief for households who need it the most.

Following dramatic victories in the Jan. 5 Georgia run-off elections, Democrats have taken control of the Senate. This likely clears the way for legislation to provide debt relief, as President Biden prefers. Citing the need for action during the pandemic and recession, some Democrats have been urging him to use a provision in the Higher Education Act to sidestep legislation and cancel the balances of millions of Americans. That would likely trigger legal challenges, and Biden is right to first seek a legislative fix using budget reconciliation.  

Advisers of President Biden have suggested that education debt relief could be included in anticipated stimulus legislation aimed at pandemic relief. On the other hand, a legislative path for education debt relief could also take longer if additional relief legislation proves difficult to enact in the near term, a worthy consideration given the present economic crisis. 

More difficult to measure are the intangible or second-order benefits that education debt relief would bring to borrowers, especially those who have defaulted. Worries about their debt burdens undoubtedly affect their career choices, such as whether to pursue a public interest job, and their life choices, such as whether and when to buy a house or have a child. Those with significant education debt are more likely to experience depression and anxiety as a direct result of their debt, which can lead to mental health issues down the road. Mental health experts point to Millennials coming of age with slower economic growth than any other generation in history as part of the reason for why their mortality rates, driven by suicides and drug overdoses, have risen sharply since 2008. It is also difficult to capture the effect that education debt relief would have on rates of entrepreneurship in younger generations or how intergenerational wealth might change if millions were no longer in default and saddled with debt.

Long Term Solutions

Targeted education debt relief is only a temporary fix. There are several other policy solutions that would help address the education debt crisis.

Congress should also adopt Biden’s proposal to modernize income-based repayment (IBR), loans. Such programs calculate a borrower’s monthly payment based on their income and other factors, such as family size and location. Currently, borrowers must opt-in to IBR through a lengthy process. Automatically enrolling new borrowers and re-enrolling existing borrowers in IBR and tying their payments to their eligible income would streamline the process, as well as making it easier for existing borrowers to take advantage of the program. By making enrollment automatic for borrowers and the terms much simpler, it is estimated that on-time payments will rise and default rates should decrease on net. 

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program was introduced in 2007 as a way to reward workers who pursue public service by forgiving their federal student loans after 10 years if they make consistent payments and are an employee of a qualifying public service employer. Like IBR, the unnecessary complexity and difficulty of navigating the program has led to low enrollment and success in rewarding public servants. Automatically enrolling employees of qualifying employers would increase take-up and help reduce debt in a way that rewards work and service. The program should offer $10,000 of education debt relief for every year of service up to five years—with full forgiveness after five years. This would include individuals with up to five years of prior service in schools, government, and other nonprofit organizations.

To get at the root of the education debt problem, as President Biden has acknowledged, we need broad higher education reform and more pathways to good jobs beyond college. Periodic education debt relief should not become a band-aid solution for higher education’s broken financing system. Fully addressing these challenges is beyond the scope of this brief, but below are a few points to consider. 

Since the 1990s, the cost of higher education has approximately doubled and institutions have responded to declining state investment by passing off the cost to students through rising tuition prices. Told repeatedly that a college degree is the best pathway to the middle class, it’s little wonder that young Americans increasingly turned to loans to finance their education. For too many, however, the high price of going to college isn’t leading to jobs with earnings sufficient to propel them into the middle class and allow them to pay off their debts.

When considering how to create lasting reforms to higher education, the Biden administration should develop a plan for a systemic restructuring of higher education consisting of two parts: (a) creative ways to reduce college costs rather than expanding subsidies in an endless game of catchup; and (b) a big public investment in building a robust career ladders infrastructure of work-based learning as an alternative route to middle-income jobs.

Many progressives have been thinking creatively about how to tame the rising price of higher education in the longer term. For example, my PPI colleague Paul Weinstein proposes a set of imaginative reforms including leveraging direct federal spending on higher education to force institutions to cut tuition and fees by reducing “administrative bloat,” requiring faculty to teach more, thereby opening up additional spots for students, increasing tuition revenue, and, lastly, by moving U.S. colleges toward three-year bachelor’s degrees.

Conclusion

President Biden and Congressional Democrats have a rare opportunity to move fixing America’s broken higher education financing model to the center of the nation’s agenda. They should follow targeted education debt relief with bold progressive reforms aimed at two critical national goals: Lowering college costs and thereby reduce the need for borrowing, and boosting public  investment in the skills and career prospects of the majority of young Americans who do not get college degrees. 

Why America Should Go To Summer School

America’s school children are falling behind. They have been trailing their European and Asian counterparts in grade school for some time, but our nation’s management of Covid-19 has widened the gap further. One study from McKinsey and Company estimates that by June students will have lost on average 5 to 9 months of learning by June.

The situation in high poverty areas is even worse. According to a Rand Corporation study, 33 percent of teachers in the highest-poverty schools said that their students were significantly less prepared than last school year.

And while the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines offer some hope that we will eventually return to normalcy, their impact will likely not be enough to save the current school year.

But we can act to help our schoolchildren catch up—and give parents some needed relief—by offering free summer school for children grades K through 8.

Read the full piece here.

How Biden Can Cut The Cost Of College

President-elect Joe Biden campaigned on a sweeping agenda to expand access to college — provide free tuition at public colleges and universities for all families with incomes below $125,000, double the maximum value of Pell Grants, and make community college free for up to two years. However, much of this agenda may be difficult to achieve unless Democrats, against formidable odds, can win both upcoming runoffs for the two Senate seats in Georgia. Fortunately, a President Biden could use his executive authority to expand access to college (and more affordable) by making the process for earning college credit through Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB) programs, and college courses taken in high school at community colleges, more transparent and accessible.

During his campaign, President-elect Biden proposed creating a more seamless process for earning credit for college-level work completed prior to enrolling as an undergraduate (dual enrollment). A Biden-Harris administration could fast track this effort in two steps.

Read the full piece here.

PPI’s Osborne, Pankovits on Creating New Innovation Schools Guide at a Moment of Crisis

As our public education system continues to experience unprecedented challenges related to the pandemic, the Progressive Policy Institute’s David Osborne and Tressa Pankovits thought now would be a good time to offer a how-to guide on creating innovation schools.

In this 74 Interview, Osborne acknowledges that many districts are barely managing to operate — never mind innovate — during a crisis that also involves a collapsing economy and a national reckoning on race. But the author of 2017’s Reinventing America’s Schools sees a not-too-distant future when a vaccine is widely available, the system has begun to return to some level of normalcy and education leaders will have to consider fresh solutions to the fallout.

Read the full interview here.