Project 2025: Cancel Student Loan Forgiveness & Erase Nonbinary Students
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The Department of Education has been collecting civil rights data from our nation’s public schools since 1968. Called Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), here are the areas of focus:
The CRDC gathers a variety of information including student enrollment and student access to educational programs and services, most of which is disaggregated by race or ethnicity, sex, English learner, and disability.
Source: US Department of Education
Guess which type of civil rights data collection the framers of Project 2025 target? Because with our country’s many issues regarding race relations, our abhorrent treatment of many immigrants/migrants, and numerous challenges for people with disabilities, Project 2025’s discriminatory rhetoric is consistent.
The framers of Project 2025 intend to erase anyone who identifies as nonbinary.
Civil Rights Data Collection On December 13, 2021, OCR published a notice concerning proposed revisions to OCR’s Mandatory Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) in which it proposed to create and collect data on a new “nonbinary” sex category (in addition to the current “male” or “female” sex categories) and to retire data collection that indicates the number of
(1) high school–level interscholastic athletics sports in which only male and female students participate
(2) high school–level athletics teams in which only male or female students participate, and
(3) participants on high school–level interscholastic athletics sports teams in which only male or only female students participate.These poorly conceived changes are contrary to law, fail to take account of student privacy interests and statutory protections favoring parental rights under the Protection of Pupils Rights Amendment, and jettison longstanding data collections that assist in the enforcement of Title IX.
The new Administration must quickly move to rescind these changes, which add a new “nonbinary” sex category to OCR’S data collection and issue a new CRDC that will collect data directly relevant to OCR’s statutory enforcement authority.
Project 2025, pages 331 - 332
Yesterday, we covered Project 2025’s proposed regulatory rollbacks for charter schools. Their recommendation to remove nonbinary students from civil rights data collection will impact ALL schools in blue states and red states alike. It would apply nationwide.
On April 18, 2023, OCR received approval from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget to require all local educational agencies (LEA) in the country that receive federal financial assistance from ED, including every public school district, charter schools, juvenile justice facilities, alternative schools, and schools serving only students with disabilities, to respond to the CRDC for the 2021-22 and 2023-24 school years.
Source: US Department of Education
Student Loans - A Soap Opera
Americans are saddled with high student loan debt for several reasons.
College is expensive. According to Forbes, the cost of getting an undergraduate degree at a US college increased 169% between 1980 and 2020. Many students opted to cover this increase with student debt.
The rise of for-profit colleges that qualify for federal funding. According to the Brookings Institution, a sizable portion of for-profit colleges receive between 80 and 90% of their funding from federal sources without the corresponding scrutiny. (This is similar to the conservative call for more charter schools to receive federal funding with less oversight. We covered this Project 2025 policy recommendation yesterday.)
Students often don’t grasp the long-term implications of student loans. Many American students don’t get much financial instruction in high school. Concepts like interest and the time value of money can be abstract for many adults. One could argue that allowing students to undertake astronomical debt loads as teens is preying on their youth and inexperience.
We once justified the cost of servicing student loan debt by the corresponding salary bump provided by a college degree. Wage growth averaged 6.19% from 1960 to 2024, while the cost of a 4-year degree rose 169% between 1980 and 2020 (see bullet 1 above.)
The same poll called for the federal government to use its muscle to make college more affordable. "I acknowledge that just forgiving student loans without addressing the (cost of college) problem is like draining a tub without turning off the faucet," one borrower said.
Republicans have been trying to roll back student loan forgiveness since the Biden Administration implemented it. The conservative Supreme Court even negated a portion of student loan forgiveness.
Project 2025 aims to rescind all student loan forgiveness implemented by the Biden Administration.
Student Assistance General Provisions, Federal Perkins Loan Program, and William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program Final Regulations Effective July 1, 2023, the department promulgated final regulations addressing loan forgiveness under the HEA’s provisions for borrower defense to repayment (“BDR”), closed school loan discharge (“CSLD”), and public service loan forgive-ness (“PSLF”). The regulations also included prohibitions against pre-dispute arbitration agreements and class action waivers for students enrolling in institutions participating in Title IV student loan programs. Acting outside of statutory authority, the current Administration has drastically expanded BDR, CSLD, and PSLF loan forgiveness without clear congressional authorization at a tremendous cost to the taxpayers, with estimates ranging from $85.1 to $120 billion.
The new Administration must quickly commence negotiated rule-making and propose that the department rescind these regulations.
Project 2025, page 332
Wage growth averaged 6.19% from 1960 to 2024, while the cost of a 4-year degree rose 169% between 1980 and 2020 (see bullet 1 above.).
Wage growth averaged 6.19% from 1960 to 2024, while the cost of a 4-year degree rose 169% between 1980 and 2020 (see bullet 1 above.).
Wage growth averaged 6.19% from 1960 to 2024, while the cost of a 4-year degree rose 169% between 1980 and 2020 (see bullet 1 above.).
This sentence bears repeating over and over and over.
President Biden's SAVE plan cancelled more than $116 billion in student loan debt for 3.4 million Americans. Check this map to see where this relief for students went.
https://thedemlabs.org/2024/01/11/billions-in-student-loan-debt-relief-from-biden-harris-programs/