The Interlude

American schoolchildren have been suffering through the pandemic. Trying to learn while facing poor internet, loss of income, or mental health challenges could have long-term effects on Gen Z students. And many college students and recent graduates were confronted with a loss of income while trying to pay off their loans. So when he won the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden’s message was clear: he wanted to safely get kids back in school as soon as possible.

The American Rescue Plan, Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package designed to help the U.S. recover from the impacts of COVID-19, allotted $122 billion in total to K-12 schools through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER II), a funding pool originally established under the CARES Act. He also extended the pause on student loan debt repayments, and his administration is working to address student debt, though not necessarily to the extent progressives would like to see.

Biden planned to open most K-8 schools across the nation during his first 100 days in office. It is difficult to judge whether he has been successful given that his administration never clarified what constituted an “open” school. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, a seasoned educator who was confirmed to his role on March 1, has spearheaded the administration’s efforts to get as many kids as possible back in physical classrooms. 

But a survey released by the administration on April 7 showed underwhelming progress, as February’s in-person school options were nearly identical to January’s. Nearly 46 percent of public schools offered five days a week of in-person learning to all students in February, but only 34 percent of students were actually exercising this option, according to the Associated Press. Though some schools have had COVID-19 outbreaks, in-person learning has not been associated with major community transmission, according to a CDC brief.  A slight shift among eighth-graders from fully-remote to hybrid learning provided a glimmer of hope for Biden, but overall, the process of reopening schools has proven both difficult and controversial. 

The American Rescue Plan’s funding toward K-12 schools is supplemented by an additional $10 billion provided by the Department of Health and Human Services for COVID-19 testing in schools. The ESSER funds are specifically meant to support physical school reopenings in a number of ways, from improving building ventilation to funding in-person summer and afterschool enrichment programs. 

Mark Klaisner, president of The Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of School (IARSS), explained that like Biden, Illinois state officials, including the state superintendent and governor, expect that schools across the state will fully reopen in the fall.

“At this point, we have 852 districts in Illinois. As of yesterday, only 12 are still fully remote and the vast majority are hybrid. About a quarter of our districts are fully in-person, so we are moving in that direction,” Klaisner told The Interlude. “We’re looking at using the money from President Biden’s stimulus work to do learning loss recovery in the summer. Our state superintendent is developing a tutoring program to try to intensify tutoring and support for kids.”

Klaisner said that Illinois school superintendents were pleasantly surprised by the amount of money that was allocated in ESSER II funding. The challenge is that school administrators want to ensure they spend the money well, investing in short-term projects like capital improvements, rather than building this spending into annual district budgets by funding long-term projects that will need to be sustained. 

“We know that we’re expecting a similar amount [of funding] right before the opening of the school year,” Klaisner said. “ESSER III will be roughly the same amount of dollars as ESSER II. ESSER I and II had a lot of flexibility, which is fabulous. We’ve got schools in our state that are a year old and we’ve got other schools that are 100 years old, so there are different needs in different corners of the state.” 

While Illinois educators are glad to receive the incremental funding, others have expressed frustration with the Biden administration’s insistence that standardized testing continue this spring. Illinois is one of several states that petitioned the administration in February for a waiver that would exempt them from administering the exams. Education officials in the state argued that the tests would detract from instructional time and pose challenges for the large number of students who are still learning remotely.

Klaisner described the state’s opposition to spring testing as rooted in “logistics, philosophy, and pedagogy.” Now that the administration has denied the waiver petitions, testing must take place. Klaisner noted that Illinois schools could lose about a billion dollars in federal funding if they do not comply with the universal testing requirement to which that “title” money is tied.

Klaisner also said that the conversation around how to allocate ESSER funding has prompted a broader discussion in the education community about the need for states to continue funding schools on an ongoing basis independent of the pandemic. And the current administration seems to also have this in mind. President Biden’s proposed $2.3 billion American Jobs Act considers education to be a crucial aspect of infrastructure — the bill includes a substantial increase in the Department of Education budget, partly for school construction, a measure that is unlikely to receive Republican support. 

Arizona State Representative Judy Schwiebert, a lifelong educator, began her first term in elected office this January. She expressed the need for long-term investments to improve infrastructure in public schools, saying that Republicans in the state have elected to fund private schools with taxpayer dollars instead. (In February, the Arizona State Senate approved an expansion of its school voucher program that would allow parents to use public funds on private schools.) 

“Arizona has long-term education issues because of Republican legislators who have put their own agenda to privatize education ahead of the needs of the 90 percent of students who choose our public schools,” Schwiebert said in an email to The Interlude. “As a result, children in about 1,800 classrooms across the state had no permanent, qualified teacher, and school buildings are crumbling — and that was before the pandemic.” 

The Biden administration spent its first 100 days trying to meet its goal of resuming in-person learning across the country as soon as possible. While that target still remains unmet, the administration is moving forward with its ambitious plans to increase federal funding. Building the consensus they need with Republicans to achieve a more lasting increase in education funding will likely prove to be even more challenging.

And this funding challenge extends to a hot button issue for higher education: student loan debt. The total student loan debt in the U.S. is $1.71 trillion, and during the 2020 Democratic primary campaigns, progressive candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders both advocated for cancelling student loan debt for most or all college graduates. During the campaign, Biden proposed plans to eliminate a portion of federal student debt. 

On his very first day in office, he extended the moratorium on federal student loan payments and interest to September 30, 2021, through an executive order. He then signed into law the American Rescue Plan, which exempts student loan cancellation from being taxed through 2025. 

Since then, Education Secretary Cardona has announced a number of individual student debt relief measures, including a change to the Borrower Defense to Repayment program resulting in student loan debt cancellation for 72,000 borrowers and the easing of onerous requirements for borrowers who have had their loans forgiven due to medical disability. The administration also forgave $1 billion in loans for students who were defrauded by for-profit colleges. Despite taking numerous actions that help disparate groups of borrowers, the administration has not granted any blanket forgiveness of student loan debt.

Prominent scholars argue that eliminating student loan debt would help close the racial wealth gap in the U.S. On the campaign trail, Biden advocated for cancelling $10,000 of student loan debt per borrower, a fraction of the $50,000 per borrower cancellation more progressive Democrats, including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, have called for. Biden has argued in the past that he does not have legal authority to cancel $50,000 per borrower by executive action, but that a $10,000 cancellation is likely to receive Congressional approval. In a February town hall, he defended his opposition to the larger cancellation, saying he does not support eliminating debt for “people who have gone to Harvard and Yale,” though Ivy League graduates account for only 0.2% of the U.S. population.

He appeared to change course on April 1 when he tasked Cardona with investigating whether he has the legal basis to enact a $50,000 blanket cancellation. While the Department of Education has yet to reveal its findings, the consideration gives hope to students, who on average hold $37,000 in educational debt. 

Nick Hillman, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in higher education finance, thinks it is difficult to pick a “magic number” for how much debt per borrower should be cancelled. 

“There’s research consensus that the borrowers who are objectively struggling the most, by and large, have small debts less than $10,000. Because of that, I think that you score a point for the $10,000 side of the debate, and I don’t think there really are any academics who would quibble about it,” Hillman said. “But it’s tricky, because that’s just simply based off of the numbers, and it’s not looking at all the people [who comprise] those numbers. That’s where you score a point on the $50,000 side, because researchers are looking at the ends of the distribution [of borrowers] and they’re saying, ‘Wait a second, there are a lot of people of color, and Black borrowers in particular, who could benefit from even more generous cancellation.’”

While Biden has not voiced support for progressive proposals on student debt, he issued an executive order in early March to ensure a discrimination-free educational environment on the basis of sex, which specifically extended protections to LGBTQ+ people. He has also initiated a review process of the Trump administration’s Title IX policies, which former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos implemented. DeVos increased the burden of proof required to adjudicate sexual assault claims and reduced the liability of colleges in investigating these claims. Biden said DeVos’ policies, which rolled back Obama-era rules, constituted an effort to “shame and silence survivors” of sexual assault.

Nolan Cabrera, a professor of higher education at the University of Arizona, believes that despite the early action taken to re-evaluate Title IX, the Biden administration is not going far enough when it comes to addressing issues of equity. Cabrera said that while Biden has proposed reducing the cost of community college and supporting historically Black colleges and universities, the administration should be implementing more “overtly equity-oriented” policies, such as investing in Hispanic-serving institutions and tribal colleges and universities and protecting undocumented students.

“The theme right now of the Biden administration seems to be not so much that he really wants to fundamentally transform or radically reimagine any of the practices in education and his policy agenda as a whole,” Cabrera said, “but that he is basically just trying to take a lot of the pressure off that the previous administration was putting on.”