We Did it: How schools fit into Biden’s infrastructure push — Education Department preps student loan actions — Biden’s bid to reopen schools may hinge on pooled testing

Mar 29, 2021

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Editor's Note: Welcome to Weekly Education: Coronavirus special edition. Each week, we will explore how the pandemic is reshaping and upending education as we know it across the country, from pre-K through grad school. We will explore the debates of the day, new challenges and talk to movers and shakers about whether changes ushered in now are here to stay.

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HOW SCHOOLS STACK UP IN BIDEN'S INFRASTRUCTURE PUSH: President Joe Biden this week will unveil new details about his plan to inject trillions of dollars into the nation's infrastructure — including an effort to upgrade or replace crumbling school buildings. Biden will outline his proposal during a speech on Wednesday in Pittsburgh.

— Biden said during his press conference last week that schools would be a focus of his infrastructure push, lamenting the state of some of the nation's classrooms: "How many schools where the kids can't drink the water out of the fountain? How many schools are still in the position where there's asbestos? How many schools in America we're sending our kids to don't have adequate ventilation?"

President Joe Biden speaks during a news conference.

President Joe Biden speaks during a news conference in the East Room of the White House. | Evan Vucci/AP

— Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the chair of the House education committee, told state education leaders last week that he expects schools will be part of the infrastructure bill. "Usually it's just roads and bridges, but we have a commitment that education — school construction — will be part of it," Scott said at the Council of Chief State School Officers' Legislative Conference.

— Scott's proposal — the Reopen and Rebuild America's Schools Act — passed the House last July as part of Democrats' sweeping infrastructure bill, H.R. 2 (116). The plan calls for $100 billion in direct federal grants, distributed using the Title I formula that targets funding to low-income school districts. It also includes another $30 billion in interest subsidies on bonds that states or school districts issue to pay for school construction.

— Advocates for school infrastructure are pressing lawmakers to prioritize education funding in the bill, as various constituencies gear up to lobby for a piece of the infrastructure pie in the coming weeks. This morning, a coalition of education, business and labor groups is calling on congressional leaders to include the $100 billion plan that cleared the House last year as part of the latest infrastructure push.

— "Like our public roads and bridges, our nation's public schools are a shared public good distributed throughout our nation, provide vital support for a functioning economy, and should be fully integrated into our national infrastructure policy going forward," the groups wrote in a letter to lawmakers organized by the [Re]Build America's School Infrastructure Coalition.

— The groups make the case that the pandemic has highlighted the disparities of years of underinvestment in school facilities. "The need to improve our nation's school facilities was never more acutely apparent than in the monumental effort that many school districts have put forward to make patchwork repairs and upgrades to outdated facilities in an effort to reopen safely during the COVID-19 pandemic," they wrote.

53 percent - The share of public school districts that need major repairs, such as replacing or updating heating, ventilation, air conditioning or plumbing systems.

Annette Choi/POLITICO

— GOP support unlikely: Biden has said he wants to win bipartisan support for his infrastructure plan, but increasing federal funding for school construction isn't likely to be an area of agreement between Democrats and Republicans. House Republicans blasted the $100 billion school infrastructure plan last year over both the price tag and the increased federal role in paying for state and local school buildings.

— A push from the left: Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), the vice chair of the House education committee, is floating a "green stimulus for K-12 schools" proposal that calls for greater funding for school infrastructure. It includes $250 billion in grants to help K-12 public schools retrofit their facilities to make them healthier and more climate-friendly.

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First Look

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT READIES STUDENT LOAN ACTIONS: The Biden administration this week is planning to roll out several student debt actions, according to several Education Department officials familiar with the plans.

— Total and permanent disability discharges: The Education Department is preparing to waive some of the paperwork requirements for borrowers who receive discharges because of their "total and permanent" disability, officials said. The department is expected to ease some of the bureaucracy surrounding how disabled borrowers must continue to prove they have a low income for the three years after their loan is discharged or else have their loans reinstated. Some consumer and disability advocates have called for eliminating that monitoring period altogether and automatically wiping out the debt.

— Flashback: Former President Donald Trump automatically canceled the debts of disabled veterans who qualified for those discharges in 2019. But the Education Department has so far resisted bipartisan calls to automate the loan discharges for hundreds of thousands of other severely disabled borrowers whom it has identified using Social Security Administration data.

— Expanding pandemic relief to excluded borrowers: The Biden administration is also planning this week to halt the collection of defaulted student loans that are guaranteed by the federal government but held by the private sector, officials said. Those borrowers have been excluded from the federal government's pandemic relief, which applies only to loans held directly by the Education Department. The new relief is expected to apply only to borrowers who have defaulted on their debt, not the entire group of about 6 million borrowers with federally backed loans who aren't covered by the existing pandemic relief.

— A department official described the executive actions as a way to provide "targeted relief" to borrowers amid the pandemic. "This is the start and far from the end of what we plan to do," the official said.

— Key context: The announcements come as the White House weighs how to respond to progressive demands to cancel large swaths of outstanding federal student loan debt, as well as some complaints from progressives that the Biden administration is not moving quickly enough on student loan issues. The department recently announced it was scrapping the Trump administration's partial loan forgiveness policy for defrauded borrowers and planned to discharge $1 billion of debt owed by about 72,000 borrowers who were misled by Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech.

— Also on the horizon: The Education Department is preparing to dole out some of the billions of dollars earmarked for colleges and universities that was included in Biden's Covid relief law in the coming weeks.

— "Support for students, borrowers, and postsecondary institutions is critically important, especially as the COVID-19 national emergency exacerbates the existing inequities in our education system," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement to Morning Education. "Additionally, it is crucial that student loans help finance a path to opportunity, not become a lifelong burden. We are committed to college affordability and will continue to address the issue of student loan debt."

CONSUMER GROUPS URGE BIDEN TO EXTEND STUDENT LOAN PAUSE: A coalition of consumer advocacy groups today is calling on the Biden administration to hold off on restarting monthly federal student loan payments until it takes steps to "fix the broken student loan system." Monthly payments and interest for roughly 40 million Americans are set to resume in October when the Biden administration's pandemic relief expires.

— "President Biden must make good on his promises to student loan borrowers before they have to pay back another dime," the nearly three dozen groups said in a statement, which was signed by the Student Borrower Protection Center, Americans for Financial Reform, National Consumer Law Center, Center for Responsible Lending and Student Debt Crisis, among others.

— One year of paused payments: Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of Trump signing the CARES Act, which automatically paused monthly payments for most federal student loan borrowers — relief that was extended via executive action twice under Trump and once under Biden.

Education Department

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION REJECTS STATE TESTING WAIVERS: The Education Department has released a first round of rejections to states that are asking for federal permission to scrap standardized testing in schools this year because of the pandemic.

— The Biden administration has said it will keep federal standardized testing requirements this year but plans to allow more flexibility for how states administer the tests. Cardona has said it's important to "see where students are after this pandemic" and know where to target resources.

— A coalition of civil rights groups, business organizations and the top Democrats overseeing education policy in Congress support the Biden administration's approach. But teachers unions, state officials and some progressive Democrats have all called on the Biden administration to waive testing requirements this year.

— On Friday, the Education Department formally turned down requests from officials in Georgia and South Carolina who had sought to cancel the administration of standardized testing in those states this year.

— The Education Department separately gave the green light to Colorado's plan to reduce, but not completely eliminate, the standardized testing it conducts this year amid the pandemic. The department said in a letter that Colorado "has demonstrated that this request will advance student academic achievement because, based on the specific circumstances in Colorado resulting from the pandemic, it maximizes the ability to obtain high-quality data regarding student learning that Colorado's statewide assessments provide."

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Coronavirus

BIDEN'S BID TO REOPEN SCHOOLS MAY HINGE ON 'POOLED' TESTING: A growing number of the nation's school districts are experimenting with a Covid-19 testing regime they hope will get millions of children back into their classroom — if they can keep up with the price tag.

— The Biden administration's $1.9 trillion Covid relief law is steering $10 billion toward developing a national school coronavirus testing strategy as its latest bid to reopen schools. That plan is still in flux but some attention has turned to the practice of "pooled" testing that uses a collection of swabs from a fixed group of kids attending classes together. The process is meant to limit the spread of a potential outbreak while minimizing the costs of the frequent large-scale testing needed to keep the disease in check.

— Massachusetts is the only state to deploy a broad pooled testing program made available to all of its students and staff so far. But some other school districts across the country, like Baltimore City Public Schools and Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, are looking at starting their own programs. Bianca Quilantan has the full story.

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Syllabus

— As pandemic upends teaching, fewer students want to pursue it: The New York Times.

— After a year of remote classes, teachers are meeting students for the first time: NPR.

— Fully reopening schools is the first task for Boston's new acting mayor: The Boston Globe.

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