Tag: Trump Education Department

Predatory For-Profit Colleges Benefit From Washington’s Culture of Corruption

Center for American Progress logoPresident Donald Trump’s culture of corruption is pervasive: He has put lobbyists in charge of regulating the industries they previously worked for and perverted the legislative process to help wealthy donors at the expense of everyone else. One of the most concerning examples of this corruption is the Trump administration’s cozy relationship with predatory for-profit colleges. Their close relationship has negative consequences for millions of Americans, including low graduation rates, less valuable credentials, and higher tuition and student debt costs.

Trump and his administration are currently propping up for-profit institutions, where students are four times more likely to default on their loans compared with their counterparts in less expensive community colleges. Eighty-eight percent of borrowers who graduated from for-profit colleges did so with student loan debt—a higher rate than that of both public and private nonprofit colleges.

While not all for-profit institutions are bad actors, the sector has been rife with predatory and fraudulent practices that make it easier for unscrupulous education corporations to take advantage of students. Predatory for-profits tend to go after potential students who are disadvantaged or have less economic security such as people of color, single parents, and older students. The institutions continue to survive using campaign donations and high-placed political allies to game the education system at the expense of the average student.

View the complete July 29 article by William Roberts and Marissa Parker-Bair on the Center for American Progress website here.

House panel probes education secretary DeVos’ personal email use

(Reuters) – A U.S. congressional committee on Monday sought records from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos relating to her use of private email accounts, expanding an investigation into how President Donald Trump’s top aides use unofficial messaging services to conduct government affairs.

U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, sent a letter to DeVos requesting copies of all messages relating to official government business she sent or received from private email accounts or electronic messaging services.

The letter gave DeVos a July 29 deadline.

View the complete July 15 article by Jan Wolfe on the Reuters website here.

Betsy DeVos shows her true colors

Education Department Won’t Give Up Blocking Efforts to Help Disabled Minority Students

The U.S. Department of Education’s various attempts to stall the implementation of federal regulations created by the Obama administration to address racial disparities in special education has blown up into a civil rights issue that continues to dog Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and team.

For well over a year, DeVos has been blocking the implementation of the law designed to help disabled minority students despite repeated efforts by supporters to force compliance.

Those regulations, established under the 2016 Equity in IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Act), went into effect in January 2017, but states were given until July 2018 to comply with a standardized program for monitoring how districts identified and served minority students with disabilities. Two days before the full implementation deadline, DeVos pulled the plug, citing concerns that the methodology could incentivize racial quotas, leaving states and students in limbo.

View the complete July 9 article by Jillian S. Ambroz on the DC Report website here.

DeVos Repeals Obama-Era Rule Cracking Down on For-Profit Colleges

New York Times logoEducation Secretary Betsy DeVos on Friday officially repealed an Obama-era regulation that sought to crack down on for-profit colleges and universities that produced graduates with no meaningful job prospects and mountains of student debt they could not hope to repay.

The so-called gainful employment rule was issued by the Obama administration in 2014, right before huge for-profit chains collapsed, leaving students stranded with debt and worthless degrees. Under the new standards, career and certificate programs, many of which operate in the for-profit sector, would have to prove their graduates could find gainful employment to maintain access to federal financial aid. It also would have required schools to disclose in advertisements a comparison of the student debt load of their graduates and their career earnings.

In her first two years in office, Ms. DeVos has delayed critical parts of the rule, and last year, she sought to repeal it entirely, siding with for-profit industry leaders and congressional conservatives who have contended that the Obama administration unfairly targeted for-profit schools.

View the complete June 28 article by Erica L. Green on The New York Times website here.

3 Ways DeVos Has Put Students At Risk by Deregulating Education

Over the course of two short years and through quiet regulatory actions, many of which have not garnered many headlines, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has loosened accountability for U.S. schools and colleges, putting millions of students at risk of civil rights abuses and fraudulent financial schemes. Through aggressive use of its regulatory authority—including what two judges have found to be misuse—the U.S. Department of Education under DeVos has delayed, watered down, or outright eliminated crucial regulations and guidance in an effort to subvert federal laws that ensure students are treated fairly and receive a high-quality education.1

This issue brief documents these incremental changes and explores their potential harm to students, highlighting the necessity of maintaining public vigilance in oversight of the DeVos agenda. Congress should also consider codifying into law regulations and regulatory guidance that it deems important in order to avoid regulatory pingpong between presidential administrations. Overall, DeVos’ actions amount to a de-emphasis of the federal government’s role in education. The brief organizes these actions into three main categories: attempting to de-emphasize the federal government’s role in oversight of education funding; eliminating key student protections; and weakening accountability for school and college performance.

1. DeVos is de-emphasizing the federal government’s role in oversight of education funding

States are responsible for providing a free public primary and secondary education to all their students. However, the federal government plays a critical role in this effort as well; it levels the playing field, primarily by providing additional funding for, as well as requiring states to fairly fund, all public K-12 schools.

View the complete May 30 article by Laura Jimenez and Antoinette Flores on the Center for American Progress website here.

The Danger Private School Voucher Programs Pose to Civil Rights

Since Betsy DeVos became the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, she has continued to push for a federally funded private school voucher program. These programs currently exist in 29 states and provide state support—through direct payments or tax credits—for students to attend private schools. (see text box) Voucher supporters such as Secretary DeVos describe vouchers as providing parents with freedom of choice in education. However, some states have historically used private school voucher programs as a means to avoid racially integrating schools, as occurred during the 1950s and 1960s.1 More recently, evidence has shown that these programs are not effective at improving educational achievement.2 Recent evaluations of certain voucher programs have shown no improvement in achievement or a decline in achievement for students who use them. For example, a Center for American Progress analysis found that the overall effect of the D.C. voucher program on students’ math achievement is equivalent to missing 68 days of school.3 Voucher programs are also not a viable solution in many rural areas of the country because these programs can strain funding resources in communities that already have lower densities of students and schools.4 Public funding should be used to ensure that all students have access to a quality public education, but voucher programs divert funding away from public schools. There have been a number of reports detailing how voucher programs provide public funding to schools that can legally remove or refuse to serve certain students altogether.5 This issue brief provides a comprehensive analysis of the various ways that voucher programs fail to provide the civil rights protections that students have in public schools. Continue reading “The Danger Private School Voucher Programs Pose to Civil Rights”

Betsy DeVos emerges a Trump Cabinet survivor

In a presidential Cabinet that resembles a season of “Survivor” more than “The West Wing,” an unlikely contestant is still standing after more than two years.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos remains so disliked in certain circles that her very name is a punchline. She mostly lands in the news for the wrong reasons, such as being forced last month to defend budget cuts for the Special Olympics before angry lawmakers. President Trump has privately complained about her, insulting her intelligence on several occasions, according to a former senior administration official who worked closely with Trump and another senior official who is still at the White House.

Yet the president shows no signs of asking her to resign, reflecting in part his lack of interest in the issue of education and the department responsible for it. And DeVos has no interest in departing. Advisers say she is excited by the tasks ahead. After two years of mostly undoing the work of her predecessors, she has shifted to advancing her own agenda.

View the complete April 28 article by Laura Meckler, Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey on The Washington Post website here.

How the Trump Administration Is Undoing College Accreditation

This month, on April 3, the U.S. Department of Education completed the first part of its monthslong effort to deregulate higher education in the name of “innovation.”1The process was as wonky, arcane, and convoluted as anything in the halls of the federal government. But the result set in motion would be a momentous change for taxpayers and college students: the unraveling of federal oversight of college quality.

The Education Department and a group of stakeholders reached an agreement on the new set of rules, which would rewrite how the department oversees college accreditation agencies and how these organizations are supposed to ensure college quality. The agreed-upon language2 still needs to be published for public comment, but—if finalized—the Trump administration will have accomplished the largest unraveling in history of rules that guide accreditation, weakening the ability of accreditors to serve as watchdogs over colleges and removing mechanisms to hold accreditors responsible for their oversight. If the past serves as a predictor,3 the revised rules will mean that millions more students will enroll in low-quality colleges that fail to leave them with a quality education, and taxpayers will foot much of the bill by covering federal loans that students will be unable to pay.

Although news coverage emphasized that the Education Department abandoned a few of its most incendiary proposals,4 negotiators reached consensus partly because the department filled the negotiating table primarily with representatives of accrediting agencies, trade groups, and the colleges they represent. The final agreement contains regulations that benefit colleges and accreditors rather than the students and borrowers served.

View the complete April 18 article by Antoinette Flores on the Center for American Progress website here.

Internal memo contradicts DeVos on using federal money to buy guns for teachers

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos refused to say yes — or no — when asked last year whether schools could use federal money to buy guns for teachers. She said the law was vague and she couldn’t take a side.

The result was de facto permission for states to go ahead.

On Wednesday, House Democrats released an internal Education Department memo that showed the matter was viewed differently inside the agency. The memo advised that the agency’s general counsel believed DeVos did have the power to make a call about the funding and laid out arguments that could be made on both sides.

View the complete April 10 article by Laura Meckler on The Washington Post website here.

Trump’s tax cuts for Betsy DeVos and the very rich are being paid for by education cuts

The education secretary will testify before Congress Wednesday about the ‘tough choices’ in her proposed $6.7 billion education spending cut.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will testify before Congress on Wednesday about her priorities for the department just weeks after she proposed billions of dollars in cuts for education spending in fiscal year 2020.

DeVos has labeled the cuts “tough choices,” but new analysis from the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) shows DeVos’ personal savings from the 2017 GOP tax bill alone could have covered a significant chunk of them.

(ThinkProgress is an editorially independent news site housed within CAPAF.)

According to her 2018 personal financial disclosures, DeVos’ income was somewhere between $46.8 million and $109 million, mostly stemming from LLCs, limited partnerships, and distributive shares. CAPAF’s analysis estimates the Trump tax cuts likely saved her $10 million or more in the last year alone.

View the complete April 10 article by Josh Israel on the ThinkProgress website here.