Earlier this week, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, spoke at the American Enterprise Institute to discuss his priorities for this Congress. Chairman Alexander's remarks focused on reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA), which he has previously identified as his top education priority for the 116th Congress and pledged to address in 2019.
Chairman Alexander first highlighted various bipartisan proposals that he supports, making clear that he intends for HEA reauthorization to be a bipartisan process. Notably, he highlighted the work done by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) to expand Pell grants to short-term programs, which ACTE strongly supports. Drawing from and adding to various bipartisan proposals, Chairman Alexander proposed three major themes for HEA. First, he pledged to simply FAFSA, noting that much of the information is duplicative as it is already collected by the IRS, and that it can discourage people from applying. Second, he proposed streamlining federal loan repayment into two options. In both options, loan payments would be automatically deducted from paychecks. In the option the Chairman thinks students will prefer, borrowers would pay 10 percent of their discretionary income toward loan repayment. In the other option, students would pay through a 10-year repayment plan. Lastly, the Chairman proposed a new accountability system that measures, among other things, postsecondary institutions' loan repayment rates. He also discussed other priorities, like standardizing language in financial aid awards. You can read more about his remarks here, and watch them here.
Last week, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, discussed his upcoming HEA priorities and stressed the importance of bipartisanship. Chairman Scott's priorities largely centered on college affordability, saying that exploring student loan servicing options and increasing Pell grants could be part of the solution. Unlike Chairman Alexander, however, Chairman Scott identified a review of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) as the first agenda item for the committee. Other things that Chairman Scott identified included the Rebuilding America's Schools Act, a bill that funds updates to public school infrastructure; accreditation accountability; and oversight over the Department of Education. You can read more about Chairman Scott's remarks here.
ACTE will continue to work with Democrats and Republicans on both committees throughout the HEA reauthorization process to strengthen CTE. You can find ACTE's legislative priorities for HEA here.
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Posted by: Eshal Fatima | 02/20/2019 at 04:31 AM