PROGRESS: FAFSA IMPLEMENTATION
This week, the Department announced a number of updates in support of 2024-25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) implementation (press release).
First, the Department updated how it calculates the amount of aid students will receive, in order to be in full alignment with the FAFSA Simplification Act. The update will not affect the agency’s timeline for delivering completed applications to schools, and, combined with other implementation efforts, a total of 7.3 million students are expected to be eligible for federal Pell Grants in the 2024-25 award year. Since the 2024-25 FAFSA form became available on December 30, 2023, more than 4.7 million forms have been successfully submitted.
Second, the Department began to deploy support from the Federal Student Aid (FSA) office and non-profit organizations to lower-resourced institutions as part of the FAFSA College Support Strategy. Personnel will conduct needs-assessments and provide dedicated help to schools that are preparing for and processing student aid offer packages. The agency has received inquiries from over 100 colleges through FSA’s concierge service and followed up to identify the specific needs for each. The agency has also started proactively reaching out to institutions with high Pell Grant enrollment, resource constraints, and other needs to offer support.
Third, the Department is sending system-generated Institutional Student Information Records, or ISIRs, to schools and their vendors to process student records faster and more efficiently. This action builds on the test ISIRs shared with colleges in February. The agency will continue to update more test ISIRs and open-source tools stored in a public repository (see also FSA Electronic Announcement).
Moreover, last week, the Department shared that contributors without a Social Security number will be able to successfully submit FAFSA forms and outlined a process that allows students affected by this issue who need to meet state and institutional aid or scholarship deadlines to submit an incomplete FAFSA before the issue is fully resolved.
The Department continues to provide updates and resources on its Better FAFSA landing page.
STUDENT LOAN RELIEF
On February 21, the Biden Administration announced that it is automatically discharging more than $1.2 billion in loans for nearly 153,000 borrowers eligible for the shortened time to forgiveness benefit under the President’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan (press release, President’s remarks, press call transcript, and White House fact sheet).
President Biden emailed borrowers in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories (state-by-state data), notifying them that they were approved for forgiveness and would not need to take any action to receive relief.
For borrowers to be eligible for this forgiveness, they must be enrolled in the SAVE Plan, have been making at least 10 years of payments, and have originally taken out $12,000 or less for college. Under SAVE, for every $1,000 borrowed above $12,000, a borrower can receive forgiveness after an additional year of payments. All borrowers on the SAVE Plan receive forgiveness after 20 or 25 years, depending on whether they have loans for graduate school. The benefit is based on the original principal balance of federal student loans borrowed to attend school, not what a borrower currently owes or the amount of an individual loan.
Borrowers who meet these criteria are strongly encouraged to immediately sign up for SAVE at StudentAid.gov/save.
With this action, the Administration has approved $138 billion in student loan debt relief for nearly 3.9 million hard-working Americans.
There are now 7.5 million borrowers enrolled in the SAVE Plan, of whom 4.3 million have a $0 payment. The Department will implement the remaining benefits of SAVE in July 2024 — which will further reduce monthly payments from 10% of a borrower’s discretionary income to 5% (see also the Council of Economic Advisers’ issue brief on SAVE benefits).
EARLY LEARNING RESOURCES
On February 26, the Department released guidance for how states, school districts, and schools can use federal Title I funds to expand access to high-quality preschool for three- and four-year-olds in a range of settings, including schools, Head Start, and community-based organizations. This guidance aims to help more children experience early school success, and it encourages more schools to set up kindergarten to be a sturdy bridge between the early years and the early grades. Secretary Cardona highlighted this guidance during a same-day visit to an early childhood center in Union City, New Jersey (photos).
Given the clear link between high-quality preschool and student achievement, the revised “Non-Regulatory Guidance on Serving Preschool Children through Title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act” will help states, districts, and schools leverage critical resources to expand access to preschool and enhance program quality. This guidance last was revised in 2012, prior to the most recent reauthorization of the ESEA in 2015. The release of this guidance also follows the President’s Executive Order on “Increasing Access to High-Quality Care and Supporting Caregivers,” which directed the agency to update its guidance on how schools could expand access to high-quality preschool.
The Department of Education is coordinating efforts with the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure quality preschool is available through a variety of settings to meet the needs of all families (see joint letter), and the Secretary’s Dear Colleague Letter to Chief State School Officers provides more details about how states and communities can ensure opportunities for all young learners and lay the path for early school success (press release).
CONCERNING CIVIL RIGHTS
The Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released four new resources with information for students, families, and schools addressing the civil rights of students with disabilities and a data snapshot about education access for students with disabilities from OCR’s 2020-21 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) (press release).
The resources delve into common medical conditions that can be disabilities for purposes of Section 504, which prohibits discrimination against students with disabilities by institutions that accept federal funding, including asthma, diabetes, food allergies, and gastroesophageal reflux disease. These resources, applicable at all levels of education, explain when such medical conditions trigger protections, what kind of modifications an institution may need to take to avoid unlawful discrimination, and what an institution may need to do to remedy past discrimination.
The CRDC data snapshot profiles educational opportunities provided to public school students with disabilities during the 2020-21 school year. It reflects troubling differences in the experiences of students with disabilities compared to their non-disabled peers. For example, higher percentages of students with disabilities were physically restrained or secluded than students without disabilities. Students with disabilities were also over-represented in disciplinary actions, when compared to their total student enrollment, while students with disabilities were under-represented in Advanced Placement (AP) courses, gifted and talented programs, and dual enrollment or dual credit programs.
STUDENT VOTER TOOLKIT
The Department also released a “Toolkit for the Promotion of Voter Participation for Students,” offering resources for educational institutions to help them identify and implement actions to assist eligible students with voter registration and voting. The toolkit includes explanations of current legal requirements for schools, recommendations for non-partisan steps to expand voter participation across their student bodies, federal resources to support voters in their communities, and examples from the field with effective and promising strategies. It is responsive to President Biden’s Executive Order on “Promoting Access to Voting,” which called on federal agencies to consider ways to expand opportunities for Americans to register to vote and obtain information about — and participate in — the electoral process (press release).
ODDS AND ENDS
· On February 29, Vice President Harris announced critical steps to lower the cost of child care for over 100,000 working families. A new rule will cap the cost of child care at no more than 7% of income for families enrolled in the Child Care and Development Block Grant program, saving families more than $200 per month, on average. The new rule also allows states to waive payments entirely for some families and helps pay child care providers faster and more fairly, which will help raise wages for child care workers (White House fact sheet).
· Last week, Secretary Cardona visited the Community College of Rhode Island to discuss the need for increased career pathways and career and technical education (CTE) programming and apprenticeships (photos).
· The Secretary also recorded a
celebrating Public Schools Week (February 26-March 1).
· The Department is inviting applications for the School-Based Mental Health (deadline: April 30) and Mental Health Service Professional (deadline: May 15) grant competitions, which seek to expand student access to school-based mental health supports and bolster the pipeline of mental health professionals serving in schools, respectively (press release).
· Leaders from the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) and the Office of Educational Technology (OET) teamed with the Center on Inclusive Technology and Education Systems for a
on the Assistive Technology guidance released in January.
· The Family Engagement Learning Series briefs summarize the Department’s six-part webinar series of conversations designed to raise the bar for family engagement practices between school and home.
· An Institute of Education Sciences (IES) report examines the quality and findings of 148 Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund evaluations and provides information about the focus of the strategies tested.
· The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released a web tables report on student bullying, showing how bullying victimization varies by student and school characteristics and crime-related variables.
QUOTES TO NOTE
“[Relieving student debt] helps everyone, not just the people whose debt is relieved. When people with student debt are relieved, they buy homes, they start businesses, and they contribute. They engage in the community in ways they weren’t able to before. They actually grow the economy. That’s why my Administration is taking significant action to provide student debt relief to so many borrowers…and do it as quickly as possible.”
— President Joseph Biden (2/21/24), from remarks on the SAVE Plan in Culver City, California
“The people receiving the debt relief announced today have sacrificed and saved for a decade or more to make their student loan payments, have lower loan balances, and are more likely to have qualified for [federal] Pell Grants to attend college. Many SAVE forgiveness recipients come from lower- and middle-income backgrounds. Many took out loans to attend community colleges. Some were at high risk for delinquency and default. That’s why the actions we’re announcing today do matter.”
— Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona (2/20/24), from a press call on student debt cancelation
UPCOMING EVENTS
Among other observations, March is Women’s History Month.
The next session in the Lessons from the Field webinar series, scheduled for March 13 from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time, will focus on welcoming newcomer students.
The Department’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) announced a new, self-paced online course from the ADVANCE IET federal initiative. The Integrated Education and Training (IET) Fundamentals course introduces the foundational concepts, elements, and requirements of IET design and implementation. The intended audience for this course is adult education administrators, instructors, and career navigators. (Note: To initiate and/or enhance IET programming, spend some time browsing the new IET Resource Repository.)