What reforms has US Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, made during her first year? What promises is she continuing to work on and which have not been addressed yet?
Khushboo Shah
Jul 21, 2018
Discussion
Greetings, fellow Ambassadors, As we know, the July 2018 topic for the Roundtable Discussion is Education Funding. I recently came across this extremely informative resource about education funding. The resource explores how funding has changed over time, and provides statistical data in understanding the changes made over the local, state, and federal level in the USA. Article: http://apps.urban.org/features/education-funding-trends/ As mentioned on their website, the data they they collected "measured the progressivity of school funding as the ratio of two weighted averages of each district’s per-student revenue: (1) weights are the number of poor students; and (2) weights are the number of nonpoor students. For example, an estimate of 1.1 would imply that, on average, poor students attend districts that receive 10 percent more in per-student funding than the districts nonpoor students attend. " (source: http://apps.urban.org/features/education-funding-trends/) What do you all feel about this article and the information put forward by them? Ambassadors belonging to other nationalities, how does education funding work in your country? Could you please share your insights, or any other resources or articles you find valuable? Thank you so much for all your inputs!
Betsy DeVos has been cutting back at consumer protection for students using federal loans for college, including higher fees for defaulted payments; taking apart "gainful employment rules," which holds vocational programs accountable if their graduates consistently graduate with more debt than they can repay; and removing automatic loan discharges for groups of victims of fraudulent lending companies (instead, they have to individually review claims, which currently has a list of about 64,000 pending applications). Here's my source if you want to read more about these actions: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/trump-changes-higher-ed-with-rollback-of-obama-era-consumer-protections/2017/07/09/89acd78a-59e3-11e7-9b7d-14576dc0f39d_story.html?utm_term=.bd73d6955666
However, the department also secured year-round Pell Grants for students in need, which allows students to receive aid when taking summer classes.
DeVos has also been pushing for rolling back accountability standards under the Every Student Succeeds Act and requirements for teacher preparation. She also supported the Trump Administration's decision to remove protections for transgender students in schools.