E-Update for October 28, 2016

Highlights

• On October 28, the U.S. Department of Education (USED) announced final regulations for borrower defense, which will help to protect student borrowers and clarify the process for loan forgiveness.
• On October 28, the official notice for USED’s teacher preparation regulations was posted in the Federal Register as a pre-publication notice. The regulations had been previously posted by USED on October 12.
• USED’s final regulations for Title I assessment provisions and for the Innovative Assessment Pilot have been sent to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review.

Administration

USED Announces Final Regulations for Borrower Defense: USED announced final regulations to protect student borrowers against misleading practices by postsecondary institutions and to clarify the process for loan forgiveness in cases of institutional misconduct. The final regulations will allow the Secretary to provide debt relief to borrowers without requiring individual applications if an institution has made widespread misrepresentations. USED also announced that it will restore semesters of Pell Grant eligibility for Pell recipients at closed institutions, among other provisions.

In a press release following the announcement, Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA) stated, “This is such great news for students who have faced an abrupt closure of their school” and commended USED on taking her recommendations into consideration. House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MN) and Higher Education and Workforce Training Subcommittee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) also issued a joint statement, stating, “Students deserve a fair process that provides relief if they are ever defrauded by a college or university, and we fully support responsible efforts to ensure that kind of process is in place. Unfortunately, what the department has put forward is far from responsible.” Ranking Member Murray’s press release can be found here. Chairman Kline and Chairwoman Foxx’s joint statement can be found here.
October 28, 2016

USED Announces Requirements for New Federal Student Loan Servicing System: USED announced requirements for a new federal student loan single servicing system, which reflect the Department’s plan to implement enhanced protections and standards. The requirements will provide for improved oversight of vendors, increased cost efficiencies and loan allocation metrics, improved communications to borrowers, an integrated complaints process, and the collection and release of data to the public to increase transparency.
October 26, 2016

IES Releases Report on Race to the Top: USED’s Institute of Education Sciences released a report entitled, “Race to the Top: Implementation and Relationship to Student Outcomes,” which provides information on whether the states that received a Race to the Top (RTT) grant used the policies and practices promoted by RTT, whether the policies and practices used included a focus on ELLs, and whether the receipt of an RTT grant was related to improvement in student outcomes.
October 26, 2016

USED Awards School Improvement Grants: USED announced the awarding of over $427 million in School Improvement Grants (SIG) to states and territories to help turn around lowest-performing schools. The grants will be awarded by states as subgrants to districts that demonstrate the greatest need and strongest commitment to raising student achievement.
October 25, 2016

Higher Education Groups Ask USED for Better Student Loan Data: Multiple higher education advocacy and policy groups sent a letter to USED Secretary John King asking that the Department provide the public with better student loan data. The letter asked that USED release a privacy protected version of the statistical extract from the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS), and that USED publish all routinely produced oversight and monitoring data files related to student loan servicing, portfolio analysis, and debt collection.
October 25, 2016

Obama Administration Announces New Pilot for Emergency Aid and Investments in HBCUs: The Administration announced a new pilot initiative that aims to make emergency funds available to students of minority-serving institutions via USED’s Office of Federal Student Aid. The initiative will pair guaranty agencies with minority-serving institutions and span multiple years. Details of the initiative are yet to be released. The Administration also announced new investments in historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), including a partnership between the United Negro College Fund and the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities to host the HBCU Innovation, Commercialization, and Entrepreneurship Summit in Silicon Valley in November.
October 24, 2016

Period for Institutions to Challenge Draft Gainful Employment Debt-to-Earnings Rates Opens: USED opened the 45-day challenge period for draft Gainful Employment (GE) Debt-to-Earnings rates. During this period, for-profit colleges and career education programs can challenge USED’s calculation for their students’ debt-to-earnings ratios, which they will be held accountable to under the Administration’s gainful employment rule.  The final day of the challenge period will be Wednesday, December 7, 2016.
October 24, 2016

Events

On October 28-30, the White House Reach Higher Initiative, American University, and the National Consortium for School Counseling and Post-Secondary Success will be holding a conference on “Connecting the Dots: Cultural Competence, Counseling, and College and Career Readiness of Underserved Youth” in Washington, D.C. During the conference, USED Secretary King and Executive Director of the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaskan Native Education Bill Mendoza will offer remarks.

Publications

First Five Years Fund Releases Overview of the Head Start Program Performance Standards Final Rule: The First Five Years Fund released a new resource which provides an overview of the quality components of the 2016 Head Start Program Performance Standards Final Rule. The overview helps to explain how the standards will improve program quality and transparency, with the goal of strengthening outcomes for children.
October 28, 2016

Princeton University and the Brookings Institution Release New Report on Prekindergarten: Princeton University and the Brookings Institution released a new issue of “The Future of Children,” entitled, “Starting Early: Education from Prekindergarten to Third Grade” which analyzes the effectiveness of prekindergarten, its impact on later academic learning, and its integration with K-3 education. The issue also provides policy recommendations for strengthening preschool education.
October 27, 2016

NCES Releases Report on 2013 High School Dropout and Completion Rates: USED’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released a report documenting trends in high school dropout and completion rates in 2013. The report includes estimates of the percentage of students who drop out in a given 12 month period, the percentage of young people in a specified age range who are high school dropouts, and the percentage of young people in a specified age range who have high school credentials.
October 27, 2016

NCES Releases NAEP Science Assessment State Reports: NCES released state snapshot reports on the 2015 NAEP Science assessment results. The one page reports present key assessment findings in a condensed format.
October 27, 2016

IES Releases Report on Low-Income Students’ Access to Effective Teachers: IES released a report examining the difference in access to effective teachers between low-income and high-income students across 26 school districts and whether closing this inequity could close the achievement gap. The study finds small inequities in teacher effectiveness overall, but identifies meaningful inequities in low-income students’ access to effective math teachers in a small subset of districts.
October 27, 2016

College Board Releases Studies on College Pricing: College Board released new studies on trends in college pricing, which analyze the difference in prices charged for tuition, room and board, and other expenses associated with attending college across different higher education institutions, revealing wide variation.
October 26, 2016

National Women’s Law Center Releases Report on State Child Care Assistance Policies: The National Women’s Law Center released a report entitled, “Red Light Green Light: State Child Care Assistance Policies 2016,” which analyzes states’ policies based on their income eligibility limits for families, wait lists for child care, and reimbursement rates for providers, among other key areas.
October 25, 2016