SUMMARY: The idea of the TEACH Grant program was simple: Teachers got a grant to pay for college or graduate school, and in exchange they agreed to teach for four years where they're needed. But an investigation by NPR found that inflexible rules were turning free grants into costly loans. William Brangham speaks with NPR's Cory Turner about a federal fix for program recipients.
SUMMARY: The Trump administration has announced new rules governing how colleges respond to allegations of sexual assault and harassment. The changes broaden rights for those accused of misconduct and narrow the definition of sexual harassment. But will they discourage victims from coming forward? Amna Nawaz speaks to Scott Jaschik, editor at Inside Higher Ed, for more on this policy “pendulum swing."
SUMMARY: The Environmental Protection Agency issued new rules making it easier for oil and gas companies to release methane, a potent greenhouse gas. It's the Trump administration's third major step to roll back regulations aimed at combating global warming and climate change. William Brangham learns more from Coral Davenport of The New York Times.
SUMMARY: For years the for-profit college sector boomed, but consumer complaints about fraud led the Obama administration to crack down: Two major for-profit chains were closed, and new regulations provided more forgiveness for student debt. Recently, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has been taking a very different approach. Amna Nawaz talks with Anya Kamenetz of NPR about the changes.
SUMMARY: The Trump administration is rescinding an Obama-era policy that called for considering race in college admissions. The Departments of Justice and Education announced that they'll advocate "race-neutral" admissions instead. Judy Woodruff learns more from Marcia Coyle of The National Law Journal and Nick Anderson of The Washington Post.
SUMMARY: The Trump administration has held up the implementation of Obama-era rules that would have allowed student borrowers to have their debt erased if they had been victims of fraud by for-profit schools. Now 18 states and the District of Columbia have responded with a lawsuit challenging the Education Department. Jeffrey Brown learns more from Anya Kamenetz of NPR.
SUMMARY: Indiana is one of nearly 30 states that offer vouchers or similar programs with the goal of allowing parents to use public funds for private schooling. When the state launched the program, it was designed for low-income students. But enrollment skyrocketed when the program was dramatically broadened by then-Gov. Mike Pence. Special correspondent Lisa Stark of Education Week reports.
LISA STARK, special correspondent: It's the start of the day at Emmaus Lutheran School in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where chapel is held once a week.
About 20 miles away, this is how the day begins at Fairfield Elementary, the city's largest public elementary school.
Fairfield is warm and welcoming. So is Emmaus. Fairfield get top grades from the state for academics. So does Emmaus. But one is a public school, the other a private school that accepts vouchers.
They symbolize opposite sides of the heated voucher debate, only likely to intensify, given the administration's strong support for school choice.
At the heart of the debate, money, and how education dollars are divvied up. Normally, the state distributes tax dollars to public schools to educate students. In Indiana, that's about $5,800 a student. Vouchers change that. A portion of the money, the tax dollars, follow the student instead, allowing parents the use those dollars to pay tuition at the private school of their choice.
That's the voucher program.
Robert Enlow is an advocate.
ROBERT ENLOW, President, EdChoice: We have seen over time our traditional school systems, because they're based on zip code assignment and where you live, not providing always the best options for families.
Let's put the money in the backpacks of the parent and let them choose where they want to go by giving parents the best options for their kids.
LISA STARK: Indiana is one of nearly 30 states that offers vouchers or similar programs. All have the same goal, allowing parents to use public funds for private schooling.
Jerry and Miriam Lunz use vouchers to send their children to private Lutheran schools, rather than their local public schools.
JERRY LUNZ, Parent: I would say the schools in our particular area are not the best from the academic standpoint. That played into some of it, but mostly the moral aspect is what we wanted, the Christian aspect, same taught at the school as at the home.
LISA STARK: Without vouchers, private high school was mostly out of reach.
MIRIAM LUNZ, Parent: We looked at the financial aspect, and we had no idea how we were going to cover the cost. Jerry is the hardest-working truck driver I know, but that doesn't pay a lot.
LISA STARK: More than 300 private schools in Indiana accept vouchers. The vast majority are religious schools.
Keith Martin is the principal at Emmaus Lutheran.
Why does this school participate in the voucher program?
KEITH MARTIN, Principal, Emmaus Lutheran School: Simply because it allows us to serve more students and more families.
LISA STARK: In fact, nearly half of the 193 students at Emmaus rely on vouchers, bringing in about $400,000 for the school, more than a third of its budget.
KEITH MARTIN: It's obviously very helpful, but you know, our school was here 100 years before the voucher program, and I'm confident that we will have it here 100 years with or without the voucher program.
LISA STARK: At Fairfield Elementary, a drop in students and resources due partly to vouchers has strained budgets, according to principal Lindsay Amstutz-Martin.
LINDSAY AMSTUTZ-MARTIN, Principal, Fairfield Elementary: I do know I have lost teachers every year. I have lost allocations of teachers every year, because we're losing students, and sometimes that makes — certain grade levels' class sizes are large.
SUMMARY: Federal guidelines advising schools to let transgender kids use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity are being withdrawn by the Departments of Justice and Education. What will the Trump administration's change mean for schools and students? William Brangham talks to Evie Blad of Education Week.
SUMMARY: In the past week, President-elect Donald Trump has announced several White House appointments and policy ideas. Judy Woodruff speaks with syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks about Trump's choice to oversee the Department of Education, his interview with the New York Times, possible conflicts of interest and the top contenders for secretary of state.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): But first to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
And we welcome both of you on this day after Thanksgiving.
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: David is in Philadelphia.
Let's talk about — we're getting — beginning to get a sense, Mark, of Donald Trump's administration, a little sense. He has named two more people today to the White House. What are we learning from this? What are we — what do you now understand about him that we didn't understand before?
MARK SHIELDS: Not much.
I mean, I would say that there's been the small Donald, the petty, vindictive Donald, who can be rather mean-spirited, as he was on display at The New York Times editorial board meeting, where he gratuitously took out after Kelly Ayotte, the former Republican — senior Republican senator in New Hampshire, who had — after the “Access Hollywood” tape had refused to support Donald Trump and said she couldn't get a job.
And then we see the little bit larger Donald in hiring Nikki Haley, who had, in fact, backed both Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and in the national address, in response — the official Republican response to the President's State of the Union, had warned the party against following the siren call of those — it was a direct allusion to Donald Trump at the time.
So he was larger in spirit in choosing her. And she certainly is a person who has demonstrated leadership and character under stress at the time of the massacre, the racial massacre at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston and leading in lowering the Confederate Battle Flag over the state — on the state capitol grounds.
JUDY WOODRUFF: David?
(CROSSTALK)
JUDY WOODRUFF: Excuse me. I didn't mean to interrupt.
MARK SHIELDS: Sure.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What are you learning about Donald Trump from these appointments or announcements?
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times: Well, I guess it's — yes, of some comfort, I guess.
Sometimes, the campaign seemed to be, as Mark said, vindictive, but sort of a depraved three-ring circus. The transition period has not been that. He's nominated people like DeVos or Haley who are competent people, who are more or less professional, experienced people.
They may not be, on substantive ground, all of our cup of tea. They are very consistent with the way he campaigned, a nationalist campaign on education policy, a campaign that is enthusiastic about school choice.
But they are more or less the sort of professional version of Trump's ideology. And I do think there is just this animating spirit here to create a sort of nationalist, populist conservatism that will in some ways stretch the Republican Party and in some ways offend a lot of conservatives.
But I think there is an animating vision here to try to create a movement that will last post-Trump, a populist movement that may even try to span some of the dividing lines that have existed so far through large economic policies, through infrastructure policies, through a tough anti-terror policy that nonetheless keeps American troops out of war.
There's an animating vision here, and it's being executed, at least in the appointments so far, in some intellectually coherent way.
The move comes after a ProPublica investigation that documented how the government was making it hard for disabled borrowers to get their loans forgiven.
The federal Department of Education said on Tuesday it would offer to write off $7.7 billion of student debt owed by disabled individuals, taking a big step to streamline a loan forgiveness program long plagued by bureaucratic delay and inefficiency.
Starting April 18, loan forgiveness letters will go out to approximately 387,000 borrowers who have been identified as totally and permanently disabled by the Social Security Administration, allowing them to sign and file a simplified application form to have their debt forgiven.
The move was enabled by changes in the department's regulations governing the loan forgiveness program, which resulted from a 2011 ProPublica investigation published in partnership with Columbia's Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism and the Center for Public Integrity.
Under federal law, borrowers who develop severe and lasting disabilities after taking out federal student loans are entitled to have their debts forgiven. As we noted in our investigation, the purpose of the rule was to spare former students who become disabled from a lifetime of ruined credit, garnished Social Security benefits, and spiraling debt.
But the investigation found that borrowers who become disabled faced such a high hurdle for proving their disability to the department — and obstacles such as unclear rejection letters and lack of medical standards for proving disability — that many simply gave up.
In one case, a borrower in a vegetative state was placed into default for failing to provide the department with income verification, according to an internal Department of Education Ombudsman Report that outlined problems with the program.
In another case documented in our February 2011 story, Tina Brooks, a former policewoman who had been severely injured during a training accident, could not get her $43,000 of student debt forgiven despite the fact that a Social Security judge had ruled she was fully disabled.
Internal reports showed the ombudsman had twice warned that the loan forgiveness program was flawed and needed to be reformed. But the Department of Education had ignored calls for reform from within and outside the agency.
That began to change after the story ran. Within a few weeks, the department forgave Brooks' student debt. The following year it proposed reforms which took effect in 2013 and allowed the Department to use the Social Security Administration's disability designation to qualify applicants for loan discharge.
That key reform is now enabling what the department hopes will be a “streamlined and more accurate process” for proactively identifying applicants who are eligible for student loan discharge, according to a statement.
“Too many eligible borrowers were falling through the cracks, unaware they were eligible for relief,” said Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell in a statement regarding the decision.
"Under the new process, we will notify potentially eligible borrowers about the benefit and guide them through steps needed to discharge their loans, helping thousands of borrowers. Americans with disabilities have a right to student loan relief,” Mitchell said.
