Transition 2020: How Joe Biden Will Overhaul Federal Education Policy S K I P to M a I N CO N T E N T

11/9/2020 Transition 2020: How Joe Biden will overhaul federal education policy S K I P TO M A I N CO N T E N T

CA M PA I G N F I N A N C I N G & 3 0 OT H E R S Transition 2020: How Joe Biden will overhaul federal education policy

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Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, prepare to take the stage at a drive-in rally on Pittsburgh's North Shore on Nov. 2.| Alexandra Wimley/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP

Joe Biden accused President Donald Trump on the campaign trail of grossly mismanaging the push to reopen schools during the pandemic.

Now it's his crisis to handle.

When the president-elect is inaugurated in 11 weeks, many U.S. schools and colleges will still be shuttered for in- person classes, and American families will still be grappling with remote learning that could set back academic progress for years to come, particularly for already vulnerable kids.

In his campaign to win the White House, Biden laid out a list of commitments for "safely" returning to in-person learning, vowing to create national standards for reopening schools, invoke emergency powers to boost production of personal protective equipment to make sure schools have enough masks and pass more emergency https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2020/11/how-joe-biden-will-overhaul-federal-education-policy-2016029 1/5 11/9/2020 Transition 2020: How Joe Biden will overhaul federal education policy funding for schools. But that money, like many of Biden’s major education proposals, will be in the hands of Congress.

Biden's victory ushers in an administration that also plans to seek major new investments in K-12 and higher education, crack down on for-profit education and reverse much of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ policies of the last four years.

Biden's administration is expected to move quickly to undo DeVos’ deregulation of colleges and universities, rollback of civil rights protections for transgender students, and changes to Title IX regulations governing sexual misconduct on campus.

A new direction for K-12 education

Teachers unions, which endorsed Biden during the election, are poised to gain more influence over federal education policy after four years of jousting with DeVos, who has made clear that she views unions as a major problem in American education.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called Biden’s election a “new day” for education that would bring about a “fundamental shift” to focusing on public schools.

Weingarten said Biden understands that “resources are needed to fund good policy,” praising his education proposals for an “aggressiveness with resources” that is on par with the Great Society programs of President Lyndon Johnson’s administration.

On K-12 education, Biden calls for tripling federal spending on low-income school districts, boosting funding for special education, increasing teacher salaries and helping states establish universal preschool. His infrastructure plan also calls for $100 billion to fix and modernize public school buildings.

During the Obama administration, teachers unions sparred with the Education Department over school accountability policies, including academic testing. The National Education Association went as far as calling on Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan to resign.

Weingarten said that during those battles with the Obama administration, Biden was her go-to official. “When things happened that were problematic, I went to him,” she said. “I found that he always listened.”

Much of that tension with teachers unions cooled after Obama in 2015 signed bipartisan legislation to overhaul No Child Left Behind. But there remain sharp divisions within the Democratic party over issues such as the role of charter schools and statewide annual assessments.

Uniting behind a dislike for DeVos' school choice policies has helped Democrats paper over divisions within the party over K-12 education policy.

“The Biden administration is going to support public schools, which means not only turning away from the policies of Betsy DeVos — that’s a given — but also turning away from Race to the Top,” said Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education. “It’s going to be very different. I don’t think you’re going to see a recycle of the ideas of Arne Duncan.”

Burris said she still expects “a lot of resistance” against Biden's efforts to scrutinize charter schools. Biden has called for banning federal funding to for-profit charter school operators but has vowed to impose tighter standards on charter schools in general.

Higher education https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2020/11/how-joe-biden-will-overhaul-federal-education-policy-2016029 2/5 11/9/2020 Transition 2020: How Joe Biden will overhaul federal education policy Biden’s $750 billion legislative plan for higher education would send money to states to make community college free for all students and eliminate tuition at four-year public colleges for families earning $125,000 or less. The proposal also calls for setting aside $70 billion to help cover tuition for some students who enroll at historically black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions. It would also double the maximum value of the Pell grant, which is now $6,345.

More immediately, the Biden administration is expected to undo the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks at the Education Department that benefited for-profit colleges. Democrats were livid at the Trump administration’s decision to hire so many top Education Department officials who had ties to the for-profit education industry, including key policymakers who reversed the Obama-era policies designed to crack down on those schools.

Biden has said he will require for-profit colleges to “prove their value” to the Education Department before they can receive federal aid. Many in the industry expect that a Biden administration’s hostility toward for-profit colleges will pose a threat, even as for-profit colleges see booming enrollment during the coronavirus pandemic compared to plummeting enrollment at other types of institutions.

Progressive and consumer groups are also urging the Biden administration to go further than the Obama-era polices on for-profit colleges, including calling for the Education Department to hold company executives personally liable for misconduct.

Student loan forgiveness

The Biden administration will have to immediately contend with the looming expiration of pandemic relief for roughly 40 million federal student loan borrowers. Barring any federal action in the coming weeks, those benefits will end on Dec. 31, setting up a scenario in which tens of millions of loan payments will come due in the new year — even before Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.

It is not clear if the outgoing Trump administration or a lame-duck Congress will further extend the benefits, which include a suspension of interest and payments for most federal student loans.

Biden during the campaign endorsed House Democrats’ stimulus plan, which calls for extending the pause on monthly payments until next November and keeping the interest rate at 0 percent until at least that time.

Progressive Democrats are also gearing up to press Biden to provide sweeping forgiveness of student loan debt. That idea was popularized during the Democratic primary campaign by Biden’s then-rivals, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Biden earlier this year committed to canceling $10,000 in student loan debt for each borrower, as a pandemic relief measure. But he has not yet said whether he would pursue that loan forgiveness through legislation or more immediately cancel debt through executive action, as a group of Senate Democrats, led by Warren and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have advocated.

If Biden doesn’t pursue loan forgiveness through executive action, advocates for student loan forgiveness are eyeing budget reconciliation as a possible tool in the Senate to cancel student loan debt with a simple majority vote.

Picking a new Education secretary

Few Cabinet secretaries under Trump were singled out on the campaign trail like DeVos, who Democrats have targeted as a top GOP enemy since her contentious confirmation process in 2017. Biden accused DeVos of working to undermine public education and repeatedly boasted that he would “fire” DeVos if elected. https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2020/11/how-joe-biden-will-overhaul-federal-education-policy-2016029 3/5 11/9/2020 Transition 2020: How Joe Biden will overhaul federal education policy Biden has promised he will pick an education secretary who has been a public school teacher, though his campaign has not made clear how broad or narrow that criteria will be.

Two teachers union leaders are seen as top contenders for the job: Weingarten and Lily Eskelsen García, who stepped down this year as president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union.

Weingarten declined to say whether she was interested in being considered for education secretary. “I am really happy with the job that I’m doing right now,” she said. “I would really like to work with a Biden-Harris administration as president of AFT.”

Asked about the job before the election, Eskelsen García demurred. “I can't imagine who wouldn't want a chance to undo everything Betsy DeVos has done in the last four years,” she said in an interview last month. “But we need a new president first, and then we'll answer questions like that later.”

Other potential education secretary candidates include Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor emeritus at Stanford University.

Many education policy experts also expect Biden’s wife Jill to play an influential role on education issues. During the Obama administration, Jill Biden helped lead the Obama administration’s outreach to community colleges and its effort to persuade states and cities to make it free.

In 2020, Jill Biden was sharply critical of the Trump administration’s education policies on the campaign trail. She has said education will be one of her top priorities as First Lady and plans to return to her job as an English instructor at Northern Virginia Community College.

Nicole Gaudiano contributed to this report.

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