Policy & Reform

Title IX is a federal legislation that prevents public and private schools that receive federal funds from discriminating based on sex. Though this is commonly brought up during issues of athletic programs and scholarships, it also covers issues concerning academic discrimination. Before 1972, it was common for high schools to discriminate based on sex, as they would usually segregate classes according to sex. Boys were prioritized when it came to advanced courses and courses that were considered more important.

Girls were discouraged from enrolling in these same courses. Title IX was used to significantly influence the participation of girls in athletics as well as in the general academic curriculum. This was so effective that currently, girls have a 50% participation rate in athletics which is a huge leap from a time when they were actively discouraged and prevented from participating in athletics. This also had an affirmative effect on the overall academic experience of girls, enabling them to enroll in any courses they chose to.

Title IX is applicable to schools, state and local educational agencies, and other institutions that get federal financial assistance. These recipients include around 17,600 local school districts, more than 5,000 post-secondary institutions, and for-profit schools, charter schools, museums, and libraries. Vocational rehabilitation agencies, as well as education agencies of 50 states, the territories of the U.S., and the District of Columbia, are also included among recipients of federal funds.

All these recipient institutions must run their education program or activities in a non-discriminatory manner. This means they can’t discriminate based on sex, including gender identity and sexual orientation. Some primary issue areas covered under Title IX obligations are admissions, recruitment, and counseling; athletics; financial assistance; sex-based harassment, which includes sexual assault and other types of sexual violence; single-sex education; discipline; treatment of LGBTQI+ students; treatment of parenting and pregnant students; and employment. Additionally, no recipient or other person may threaten, intimidate, pressurize, or discriminate against any person for the purpose of interfering with any privilege or right protected by Title IX or its implementing regulations, or because the person has made a report or complaint, assisted, testified, participated, or declined to take part in a proceeding under Title IX. If a federal fund recipient acts or retaliates in any way as mentioned above, it’ll be deemed a violation of Title IX.

Earlier, Title IX was a powerful tool to stop sexual harassment and violence in schools. But with the Department’s new Title IX rule that came into effect on August 14, 2020, protections for student survivors have been drastically rolled back. This makes it easier for schools to hide sexual harassment cases.

The school-to-prison pipeline features students who have to leave school (either via suspension or expulsion) and checks the link between leaving school in this manner and, at some point, ending up in prison. It has been discovered that those students who get taken out of school either momentarily or forever, also have higher high-school dropout rates than their counterparts who were not removed from the classroom.

The two main factors that produced and now sustain the school-to-prison pipeline are the zero-tolerance policies of schools and the existence of on-campus SROs (School Resource Officers). The zero-tolerance policies mandate exclusionary punishments, such as expulsions and suspensions, often for minor infractions of school rules. On-campus SROs criminalize students for behavior that should have been handled inside the school.

After the series of deadly school shootings across the U.S. in the 1990s, these practices and policies were implemented across schools as educators and lawmakers believed they would help to make school campuses safe. But they created a different set of problems.

In schools with a zero-tolerance policy, any violation of school rules or misbehavior isn’t tolerated, no matter how unintentional, minor, or subjectively defined it may be. Consequently, suspensions and expulsions are common and normal ways of handling incidents of student misbehavior. For instance, in schools with zero-tolerance policies, students have been expelled for bringing scissors or nail clippers to school, chewing Pop-Tarts into the shape of a gun, and pointing their fingers like a gun.

The growing reliance of schools on SROs, who often have little or no training in working with young adults, is another contributing factor to the school-to-prison pipeline. Hence, students in such schools are a lot more likely to be put through school-based arrests, most of which are for non-violent offenses, like disruptive behavior. Such rising criminalization of school children and growing incidents of school-based arrests power the quickest path from the classroom to the jailhouse. 

It is common for those who are not at risk of this school-to-prison pipeline to wonder why they should even be bothered by it, or by the students affected. Nonetheless, this pipeline is of vast importance, apart from the fact that caring about others’ quality of life is a humane quality. In terms of monetary resources, the school-to-prison pipeline costs taxpayers several thousands of dollars. Since prisoners do not contribute to economic growth via the workforce, it also negatively impacts the economy. 

While prison employees and CEOs of big prison corporations may receive monetary compensation for running the prisons, if the economic cost of keeping these individuals in prison is calculated, the country’s economy would be at a loss.

Following an announcement by President Joe Biden on the 24^th of August, federal student loan borrowers will be entitled to debt forgiveness of up to $20,000 starting soon. Those who are so sure about this are about 8 million, and it is so because the Department of Education has their required income data. A population of about 37 million borrowers is still in darkness concerning their fate as far as debt forgiveness is concerned. The following questions with answers will help you attend to your worries.

Who Qualifies for Loan Cancellation Under the New Plan?

If you are a federal student loan borrower and meet the eligibility criteria, you qualify for it.

Eligibility for Biden’s Student Loan Cancellation Plan

If you are an individual or a couple, you must earn less than $125,000 and $250,000 per year, respectively. The same applies to a head of household who is supposed to earn less than $250,000 per year.

It would help if you had a current federal student loan debt, precisely dates before the 30^th of June 2022. It can also include parent PLUS loans.

If you are currently a student who is a dependent, you shall use the income of your parents or legal guardians to determine whether you qualify or not.

You still qualify if, by any chance, you cannot complete your degree.

You still stand a chance if, in any case, you defaulted on your federal student loans.

You won’t qualify if you have private student loans only.

If you work in the military, nonprofits, or state, tribal, local or federal governments, you stand a chance of having all your student loans forgiven. This arrangement will be possible through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program.

You will not qualify if, by any chance, you paid your student loans earlier than March 2020 or you got federal loans later than the 30^th of June 2022.

The administration will refund you the payments you made on federal student loans as of March 2020, which was the start of the payment pause. It would be refunded if you also paid off the loans.

How Much Debt Will Be Canceled?

Non-Pell Grant recipients and those undergraduates who got a Pell Grant will be entitled to $10,000 and $20,000 in debt cancellation, respectively, from the Department of Education.

The borrower’s outstanding debt will directly translate to the relief they will get. For example, if the outstanding debt is $10,000, you will receive a replacement of $10,000 and not $20,000 for the case of a Pell Grant recipient.

How Do I Apply for Loan Forgiveness?

The first thing is to make sure that you know your loan servicer. If you have doubts, you can check the Federal Student Aid Website. Another thing is you have to ensure that your accurate contact information and income data are with the loan servicer and the Department of Education, respectively.

The administration will soon launch an application to ensure your information at the Department of Education is current. Stay tuned so that you can update your information.

According to the Department of Education, about 8 million borrowers will have their debts automatically erased.

It will be good news for those who got their income verified through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) in the last two years because they will likely stand a chance for automatic forgiveness.

How Does the Plan Affect Future Loan Repayments?

According to Biden’s plan, repayments will begin in January 2023 after the pause has elapsed on the 31^st of December 2022. The current income-driven repayment plan will experience changes through a proposed rule. Some of the changes will be:

• Borrowers of undergraduate loans pay 5% instead of 10% of their discretionary income monthly.
• Loan balances of $12,000 and below are to be forgiven after repayments for ten years and not 20 years.
• Borrowers will repay Graduate school debt at 10% of discretionary income.
• The administration would also raise the amount regarded as nondiscretionary income.
• According to the Department of Education, the administration will effect the changes soon.

Does My Pell Grant Amount Matter?

$20,000 is the amount that Pell Grant recipients are entitled to in debt forgiveness, and it doesn’t matter what amount you have received because the debt cancellation will still be up to $20,000. There are also no guidelines as to what amount you should have received to qualify for the whole cancellation amount. The time when a borrower received a Pell Grant also doesn’t matter.

Are My Canceled Loans Taxable?

In the case of loan balances discharged by the Department of Education, borrowers will not pay federal taxes.

A waiver which will expire on the 1st of January 2026, was extended by Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan so that the loans forgiven are not taxed as is the case with income.

However, word has it that borrowers in states like North Carolina, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Minnesota will have to pay taxes on discharged loans.

What Can I Do If I Have an FFEL Loan?

So far, there is no information from the Department of Education regarding the fate of borrowers of Federal Family Education Loans (FFEL) as far as the forgiveness program is concerned.

Reports from loan experts indicate that FFEL loans will also qualify for forgiveness bearing in mind the Department of Education holds about half of the 9.6 million current FFEL loans.

Other reports indicate that the Department of Education will soon give guidance and that a solution is coming as far as FFEL borrowers are concerned.

What If I Paid Off My Loans During the Payment Pause?

It hasn’t been a requirement for student loan borrowers to make payments since March 2020. According to a report by the Office of Federal Student Aid, about 9.1 million borrowers have made payments at least once since April 2020. They will also be able to enjoy debt forgiveness.

When it comes to borrowers with remaining loan debt, they can apply for relief. If they have qualified for additional cancellation above the remaining balance, the Department of Education will refund that difference.

If you are a borrower and you paid the whole amount of their debt during the pause will have to contact the loan servicer so that the servicer can add to the outstanding balance after refunding. The Department of Education will then go ahead and do away with the debt.

 

The poor remuneration for teachers is nothing new. Teachers have protested low pay at state capitals around the nation, and the issue has influenced presidential candidates’ platforms. Competitive compensation is an apparent and significant method to recognize the hard work teachers put in every day, but raising teacher pay has even more advantages supported by research. The top six are as follows:

1. Increasing Teacher Pay Strengthens the Pipeline

Few people desire to become teachers when there are issues with teacher salaries. That’s how easy it is. According to a TIME poll, most respondents (76 percent) agreed that the low compensation for teaching discourages many people from entering the field. As a result, fewer teachers will be looking to fill the increased need for teachers and fewer teacher education program graduates.

Raising teacher salaries may improve the next workforce’s quality. Only 23% of teachers in the United States received their college degrees in the top third of their class. In contrast, practically all teachers graduate at the top of their class in Singapore, Finland, and Korea. The general appeal of teaching as a career would increase with increased remuneration.

2. It Keeps Teachers in the Classroom

Unsurprisingly, research has found that teacher salary lowers turnover (which, in turn, increases student performance). An average of 8% of instructors leave the profession rather than switching to another school, and there is an annual turnover rate of roughly 16%. It’s noteworthy to note that in the United States, the Northeast, where compensation is higher and there is more investment in education, has the lowest teacher turnover rate (10.3 percent).

3. It Helps Staffing in Urban Districts

Urban school systems have a challenging difficulty filling all of their posts. Increasing teacher salaries in areas with significant needs can entice educators to work in those institutions. For instance, a San Francisco study discovered that the quantity and caliber of teacher candidates increased when the pay for teaching was raised.

4. It Means Fewer Teachers Working Second Jobs

18% of teachers in the United States had side occupations in 2015–2016, including anything from retail to online teaching. Compared to non-teachers, teachers are 30% more likely to work a second job. Increasing teacher salaries would help them maintain their focus in the classroom and improve their morale as they wouldn’t need to perform a second job.

5. It Means Less Dependence on Government Programs

Because of their low salaries, it is common for teachers in some places to be eligible for public assistance programs like food stamps or general health care plans (like children’s health insurance programs). This is true for teachers who are the family’s leading income provider or have prominent families. For instance, in states ranging from Minnesota to Maine, mid-career teachers were eligible for up to seven government benefit programs in 2014.

6. Higher Pay for Teachers Means Students Do Better

Students do better when teachers are compensated more. According to one study, a 10% increase in teacher salary would result in a 5–10% improvement in student performance. Students also gain long-term advantages from teacher compensation. Students complete more schooling, earn 7 percent more, and have a lower adult poverty rate when per-pupil spending is increased by 10 percent for every 12 years of education. For families living in poverty, these advantages are much more significant.

It’s unclear why pupils perform so much better when instructors are paid more, possibly because of improved teacher quality or adult assistance. Whatever the cause, it’s evident that teacher salary needs to rise.

The general public is often surprised by the desire of some educators to develop public schools into private schools or support “privatization.” We don’t usually consider handing over our education into the hands of private, for-profit corporations. So, the fact that there is a full-blown movement in progress to privatize the nation’s public K-12 school system fully is a shock.

As each attempt to improve public education over the years has failed, it is fair to assume that privatizing public schools would as well. The privatization movement does not offer a plan for fixing the true problems in our systems, like the pressure of standardized test scores, but instead makes blanket claims that our schools are failing, and this is the only way to save them.

Public Performance

The backbone of the movement is their ability to completely “reform” our public schools and save them from their failure. But what failure are they referring to? Public schools are improving. Over the past few years, dropout rates have decreased from 7.4% to 6.1% in the U.S. and are continuing to fall. While the rates varied by ethnicity, each dropped an average of 2% and the biggest difference being almost 4%.

There is improvement across the board rather than within only a singular ethnicity, gender, or social group. Nothing is ever perfect, but public schools are currently thriving. Students have the lowest dropout rates, highest graduation rates, and the highest test scores ever recorded. Where exactly do privatizers plan to improve our schools in a way that is not currently already happening?

Money Talks

Finding the truth behind privatizers is not hard and is rather easy. The truth is in the money. Privatizers seek to convert public schools over to private management, which is common amongst religious schools. The schools that lack public funding are those that center around a specific religion as taxpayer dollars cannot be given to them due to the separation of church and state.

Out of all students enrolled in private schools, 36% were enrolled in Catholic schools, while 39% were enrolled in another religiously affiliated school. With the number of families focused on religion-based learning along with the increase of pressure on the government to lift the bans preventing public funding of religiously affiliated schools, it is safe to say that these privatizers may be slightly influenced.

The government was created around the idea of religious freedom and the importance of separating church and state. If our religions do not receive government funding, why should religious education?

Facing the Harsh Truth of Privatization

Private schools, such as religious schools or charter schools work against inclusion. Public schools are open to everyone and provide a stable place for everyone to receive an education despite their affiliation, ethnicity, or background. 90% of the population received a public education. Would they have all received an education if all K-12 schools were privatized? Not likely.

Currently, our taxes contribute to the upkeep of public schools and the foundation of our public education system. Some states provide funding to charter schools (schools that are not obliged to follow education requirements) and have already set back public school development. Understanding what privatization means for our educational system is crucial before the movement takes off and destroys our public.

Education is a right, and it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that all kids, irrespective of the racial background, financial capacity, or social status, get access to quality education. This right is, however, facing serious threats from private organizations who want the government to privatize K-12 education across the country.

The Reality of Privatization

There is a movement working toward the privatization of K-12 education in the United States. Now, taking a deep assessment of K-12 education, one can deduce that it is partially run by private organizations already. There are many pieces of evidence that buttress this deduction.

One is the case of charter schools which, despite being established and funded by the government, are run by private, sometimes for-profit companies. The increase in the number of charter schools is a direct threat to public schools because the funds used to run them are government funds which should otherwise be used to run K-12 schools.

But corporations are still not satisfied with this partial privatization, and they are hell-bent on going a step further to ensure that the entire public education system is wholly privatized. They have undertaken several activities geared towards achieving this objective, with one major action being the creation of lobbying groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). This controversial group is made up of private companies working in tandem with conservative legislators to formulate what they call “model legislation.”

In reality, though, the group is a front for promoting privatization. All this points to a united and well-organized movement making concerted efforts to ensure the privatization of the K-12 education sector.

Why are Corporations Want to Privatize K-12 Education?

One school of thought opines that competition – an intrinsic feature of the private sector – would greatly help to drive results in K-12 education. Hence, its growth could be dependent on privatization. However, this is an ostensible assertion, to say the least. Private institutions have always been driven by the desire to make more monetary gains, and privatizing K-12 schools would guarantee this because of the indispensability of education.

Conclusion

K-12 education has no place in the private sector. Everything that education represents is totally at odds with what we have come to know about the private sector. Therefore, it behooves everybody concerned about American education to rally against the privatization of K-12 education in the U.S.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are our unalienable rights. But where does education fit in? It may be surprising, but the right to a quality education is not considered a constitutional right in the United States, even though it is included in all 50 states’ constitutions. To understand why, we’ll investigate the history and regard of education as a constitutional right here in the US, and abroad.

The History of Education as a Constitutional Right

During the reunification of the former Confederacy and the Union states, Congress made it a requirement that the Southern states include education as a right in their constitutions. This condition was explicit, and in fact, three states were denied entry to the Union until they corrected their omission of education as a right. During this time, Congress released a report from the Committee on Education that even expressed “…that the general and universal diffusion of education and intelligence among the people is the surest guarantee of the enhancement, increase, purity and preservation of great principles of republican liberty.” This is a powerful statement and a clear recognition of the importance of education in a country. Still, though, education is not mentioned in our federal constitution.

Education as a Right Internationally

Education is considered a human right by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the  International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Education is also included in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child – a human rights treaty that describes the rights to which children are entitled. Remarkably, the United States is the only member country that has yet to ratify the treaty. Additionally, 193 countries mention “education” in their constitutions – including all 30 countries that outrank the US in math and science test scores. One of the benefits of this inclusion is, according to Pearson, the creation of a national culture of education, and the recognition that “the cultural assumptions and values surrounding an education system do more to support or undermine it than the system can do on its own.”

Education in the Courts

Almost every US state has been involved with a lawsuit based on education inequality. However, only one such case has made it to the Supreme Court. San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez was a case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the way states distribute funding for schools is not unconstitutional, because there is no basis for the assertion that education is a right under the U.S. Constitution. The case was brought forth by a group of (mostly Latino) parents that charged the state with violating constitutional rights by providing more resources to wealthier school districts than to low-income districts. This ruling by the Supreme Court is regarded by some as one of the worst Supreme Court decisions since 1960. “It played a major role in creating the separate and unequal schools that exist today,” says Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of California.

Many scholars point out that the omission of education from our nation’s constitution is not an oversight – it is intentional. It has been a long-held belief that education should be locally controlled and defined by each state. Leaving education out of the federal constitution, though, ignores the responsibility of the government to ensure all of America’s children, no matter where they live, are provided the opportunity for an education that will prepare them not only for a successful career but to become a productive and informed citizen.