Delivered daily by 10 a.m., Morning Education examines the latest news in education politics and policy.
| | | | | |  | | By Michael Stratford | Editor's Note: Morning Education is a free version of POLITICO Pro Education's morning newsletter, which is delivered to our subscribers each morning at 6 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day's biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro. | | | — The Education Department plans to enforce its restrictions on which college students can receive emergency coronavirus relief grants through a new regulation. The policy appears to exclude undocumented students and others who don't receive federal financial aid. — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' partial loan forgiveness policy for handling borrower defense claims is being challenged in court by former for-profit college students. — A credit rating agency estimates that enrollment declines at some colleges could be as high as 20 percent this fall because of the coronavirus pandemic. IT'S TUESDAY, JUNE 9. WELCOME TO MORNING EDUCATION. Drop me a line with your tips and feedback: mstratford@politico.com or @mstratford. Share event listings: educalendar@politicopro.com. And follow us on Twitter: @Morning_Edu and @POLITICOPro. | | | DEVOS SEEKS TO ENFORCE RESTRICTIONS ON PANDEMIC RELIEF GRANTS THROUGH REGULATION: The Trump administration will roll out a new regulation this week that restricts which college students may receive emergency grants to cover expenses like food and housing. — The Education Department says it's moving to publish, as soon as today, an "interim final rule" that requires colleges to exclude undocumented students and others who don't qualify for federal student aid from a more than $6 billion emergency cash grant program under the CARES Act, H.R. 748 (116). Such rules typically take effect immediately. — The new regulation will carry out — now with the force of law — a policy that DeVos first outlined in April. Democrats and college officials have cried foul, arguing that it goes against the intent of the CARES Act, which does not include any explicit restrictions on which students can receive the funding. — Meanwhile, two states — California and Washington — have brought legal challenges against the guidance. In the face of those lawsuits, the Education Department backed away from the significance of the guidance, promising not to enforce it and downplaying it as "preliminary." — It's not yet clear exactly how DeVos' new regulation will be worded. But Education Department officials indicated in documents filed with OMB that the administration will move ahead with its contentious position on who can receive relief — limiting funding only to those students who are already eligible for federal financial aid under Title IV of the Higher Education Act. — Happening today: The expected release of the new regulation this week coincides with a federal judge in San Francisco holding a virtual hearing today on California's motion for a preliminary injunction blocking DeVos' guidance. Another judge has set a similar hearing in the Washington state case for Thursday. | | | | HAPPENING TODAY AT 11 a.m. EDT – "INSIDE THE RECOVERY" PART III: PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW WITH NEW JERSEY GOV. PHIL MURPHY: How is the governor from one of the states hit hardest by the pandemic handling concurrent health, economic and social crises? Join POLITICO Playbook co-authors Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman for a virtual interview with Governor Phil Murphy (D-NJ) to discuss his state's reopening, how the Garden State is handling protests and unrest, and what New Jersey is looking for from the Trump Administration in the weeks and months ahead. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | | | NEW LAWSUIT OVER DEVOS' PARTIAL LOAN FORGIVENESS POLICY: Consumer groups this morning are filing a new legal challenge to DeVos' policy, announced last year, that will cancel only part of the loan debt owed by federal student loan borrowers who are defrauded by their college. — Public Citizen Litigation Group and Harvard Law School's Project on Predatory Student Lending are filing a proposed class-action lawsuit on behalf of former for-profit college students, accusing the Trump administration of illegally imposing the partial loan forgiveness policy on them. The complaint, a copy of which was provided to POLITICO, says the Education Department's policy is "arbitrary and capricious" in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. It also claims the department should have gone through the standard rulemaking process to develop the policy rather than issue it by memo. — The policy doles out loan forgiveness to defrauded borrowers based on a calculation of the median earnings of the programs they attended compared with those of similar programs across the country. Defrauded borrowers who attended the vast majority of programs at giant for-profit colleges Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech will get either partial or no relief under the new policy, according to data posted by the Education Department. — The Trump administration argues that its formula is a fairer way to provide relief that is commensurate with the actual injury that a borrower suffers. The Obama administration, by contrast, fully discharged the loans of the borrowers it determined had been defrauded. — In 2018, a federal judge blocked DeVos' first attempt at a formula that provided partial debt relief for borrower defense claims filed by some former Corinthian Colleges students. But the judge blocked the policy on the grounds that the Education Department illegally used data under the Privacy Act, not that it was an arbitrary formula. — The second partial relief policy covers a larger share of the hundreds of thousands of borrower defense claims that are pending before the Education Department. | | | ANALYSTS PREDICT COLLEGE ENROLLMENT DECLINES AS HIGH AS 20 PERCENT: Fitch Ratings is projecting that declines in enrollment at colleges and universities could range from 5 percent to 20 percent this fall as higher education grapples with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. The credit rating agency said in a report on Monday that it expected private colleges in competitive regions such as the Northeast and that are highly reliant on tuition revenue to be among the most vulnerable. — Fitch added that the financial impact of enrollment declines on colleges could be exacerbated by the fact that they may need to shell out more financial aid to attract students as more families are hit by the economic downturn. | | | ANOTHER LEGAL CHALLENGE TO NEW TITLE IX RULES: New York Attorney General Tish James, a Democrat, on Monday sued DeVos to block her new Title IX rules , which are slated to take effect in August. New York's lawsuit is another lawsuit to challenge the Trump administration's overhaul of Title IX, which mandates how colleges and K-12 schools must respond to reports of sexual misconduct. — Attorneys general in 17 states and the District of Columbia sued DeVos and the department in D.C. federal court last week, asking a judge to halt the Aug. 14 date for the new Title IX rule. The ACLU was the first group to sue to block the rule. — All three lawsuits allege the department violated the Administrative Procedure Act. They also take issue with DeVos implementing the rule during the coronavirus national emergency, giving institutions "a mere 87 days to implement the extensive changes to their policies, practices, and procedures," according to the New York filing. Bianca Quilantan has more. | | | | WINNERS PLAY THE LONG GAME: Interested in building a sustainable future for generations to come? "The Long Game" is designed for executives, investors and policymakers leading the conversation about how society can thrive in the future. Engage with the sharpest minds on our biggest challenges, from pandemics to plastics, climate change to land use, inequality and the future of work. Subscribe today for a nuanced look at these issues and possible solutions. | | | | | | | | — The Center on Reinventing Public Education is out with a new analysis of remote education in a nationally representative sample of 477 school systems. | | | — One option for California schools reopening: 2-day weeks, staggered attendance: POLITICO Pro. — What Democrats' policing bill says about school resource officers: Education Week. — College fund raising is expected to drop sharply in next few years: The Chronicle of Philanthropy. — From Zoom to the streets, students and schools find teachable moments in protests of police violence: The Washington Post. — GAO offers Congress steps to protect independence of federal watchdogs: POLITICO Pro. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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