- The coming year could be an important one
for America's K through 12 public schools.
And, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos
will be a key part of that.
She's made it clear she wants to expand
school choice options, and she may go further
in rolling back some Obama-era guidelines.
William Brangham has our look ahead of what you
need to know, it's part of our weekly education coverage,
Making the Grade.
- The Trump Administration will also play a key role,
deciding what happens to students who are eligible for DACA.
That's the policy that protects immigrant children.
But first, let's talk about one of the changes
that's happening because of the new tax law.
Parents will now be able to use up to $10,000
from their tax-free 529 college savings accounts
to help pay for private or religious schools,
for any grade, not just college.
So here to help us walk through all of this
and other changes, is Alyson Klein, of Education Week,
and Anya Kamanetz of NPR.
Alyson, I'd love to start with you.
Let's talk about these 529s.
These were the systems
set up so that people could sock away some money,
tax-free, for college.
It's now changed under the tax law.
What's the implication for public education?
- Sure, so parents will now be able to save money
in these funds, which were previously, as you said,
just to use for college savings, for private school tuition,
as you said at both private schools and religious schools.
You mentioned before that school choice
is U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos' favorite policy.
So this is her biggest win so far on school choice.
But it's not gonna really help the kids
that she has said need school choice the most,
poor children from low-income families,
because those families don't tend to pay a lot in taxes,
or their parents may not have a ton of money
to sock away, as you said.
So in the future, Betsy DeVos, I think,
is going to continue to push on some other fronts
on school choice.
She's called this a good start,
but she knows that this isn't going to help
the poorest kids in the country.
- Anya, there's another impact that you mentioned
in the tax bill, that might also have a big impact
on public education, and that's the state
and local tax deduction that people can now take,
or the changes to that.
Can you explain what happened
and what impact that might have?
- Yes.
So public schools get the vast majority of their money
from state and local taxes.
And up until this bill,
those taxes could be deducted in full
from your federal taxes.
So that amounted to a very large subsidy
by the federal government, towards public schools.
Now there's a state and local tax cap
of $10,000 for the total deduction,
and that is going to especially affect
high-property-value areas where they are directing
a lot of that money to schools,
where schools are often very coveted, very well-regarded.
And what it's also going to do, some public school
advocates fear, is it's going to limit the amount of money
that's available that states can use
to try to level the playing field for school funding.
And so, down the road when states are trying
to raise money to pay for public schools,
among other very important functions of the states.
They're going to have a hard time doing that
because that cap on the deduction is going to be felt
by some of the highest taxpayers in every state.
- Okay, another thing that I had mentioned in the intro
was this issue of DACA, which is again,
not something that we tend to think
of with regards to education.
Alyson, can you explain,
obviously DACA applies, this was a sort of granting
of some legal status to immigrant children
who were brought here
by their parents without documentation.
What does DACA have to do with public education though?
- So right now there are thousands of teachers,
the Migration Policy Institute actually estimates
it's 20,000 teachers, who are protected by DACA.
- Teachers themselves? - Teachers themselves, sure.
So if this initiative is rescinded by Congress
and by the Trump administration,
then it's an open question what happens to those teachers.
They could lose their jobs,
they could end up being deported.
Some school districts, like Miami-Dade,
and Los Angeles, have said
that they're gonna do what they can to protect
these teachers but there's a lot of anxiety
out there, among them.
Also, 250,000 school children
have become eligible for DACA since President Obama
put the initiative in place in 2012.
So this affects both sides of the education equation,
both the educators and their students.
- Anya, there's another issue,
the law called ESSA,
the Every Student Succeeds Act.
Can you explain what that is all about
and what might be happening in 2018, with regards to it?
- So ESSA is the big federal education law
that governs K-12 schools.
It's the update to the more famous No Child Left Behind law,
and it has to do with how states evaluate
both their students' and their schools' performance.
And what's been happening so far last year
is that states have been submitting their plans
to the Education Department, for how they're going to update
how they evaluate both schools and students.
And there's been some back and forth
about this about whether Betsy DeVos
is rubber-stamping these plans, or in some cases
being too tough, but what we're going to see
is more emerging trends around how states
might be treating their students.
One of the issues I'm most interested
in is the non-academic indicators.
So the states are now able to include,
or actually they're required to include
a non-academic measure of success.
That could be something like attendance,
or something more broad-based like social
and emotional skills.
And so that's something that's very interesting
in terms of what schools and states
are trying to pay attention to now.
- Alyson, one of the things that you had mentioned to me
was that the argument that the Secretary of Education,
one of their great sources of power
is using their department as a bully pulpit.
This is something the Obama administration did.
And I know that it issued guidance to a lot of schools,
saying the evidence is clear that you
are disproportionately punishing black and brown kids
in schools and we're gonna keep an eye on that.
Is that something that Secretary DeVos
is likely to roll back or continue?
What do you know about that?
- So that's an open question.
She's met with both supporters and detractors
of the Obama administration's guidance,
which was intended to make sure that school discipline
practices are fair to all groups of students,
including minority students.
She hasn't tipped her hand yet, one way or the other,
on how she's gonna approach that issue.
- Anya, same thing on this issue of Title IX.
I understand Secretary DeVos,
she caused a bit of a stir with regards to the guidance
on sexual assault.
Can you tell us what happened there?
- Absolutely.
So the Obama-era guidance was very clear
on the idea that sexual assault and sexual harassment
is a violation of Title IX of civil rights,
and a right to an equal education
for students of both sexes.
What DeVos did was hailed by some people
as rebalancing, as the reinstatement of due process
and the rights of the accused.
And others said this is really sweeping
sexual assault and sexual harassment under the rug.
What I've heard on campuses is that
no campus, whether K-12 or higher ed,
is necessarily going to walk back the steps
that they've made to try to root out sexual assault
and sexual harassment.
But the change in emphasis is certainly going to be seen
when we think of some of those high-profile cases
on both sides, where sometimes people
turn out to be wrongfully accused,
other times there are offenses
that really go to an egregious level.
- Alright, lots of things to keep an eye on.
Anya Kamanetz, Alyson Klein.
Thank you both very much.
- Thank you.
- Thanks.
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