Bipartisan short-term Pell bill gets a new pay-for

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Feb 26, 2024 View in browser   By Bianca Quilantan SHORT-TERM PELL HITS THE FLOOR — House lawmakers are expected to vote on a bipartisan deal that expands access to Pell Grants for short-term programs. But the bill that will hit the floor has a different pay-for provision than what was proposed in December. — The Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act, H.R. 6585 , is one of about a dozen bills that will be taken up for a House vote under suspension in the latter half of this week. The legislation must get a two-thirds majority vote to pass, and the vote will be a test of bipartisan support in the chamber around expanding the use of the grants reserved for the nation’s lowest-income college students. — Students would be able to use Pell Grants to pay for programs as short as eight weeks long at all types of institutions, including online and for-profit schools. Currently, the grants can only be used for programs with a 15-week minimum. The hope is that the legislation will boost opportunities for students and workers to quickly acquire skills and earn short-term credentials to advance their careers. — What’s the change?: The bill previously included a provision that would pay for the expansion of short-term Pell Grants by ending new federal student loans for students who attend the nation’s wealthiest universities. Some Democrats on the House education committee and higher education groups slammed the pay-for as a barrier to their full support of the bill. But the new proposal may still present a hurdle for them. — Beginning in award year 2025-2026, most universities subject to the endowment excise tax will be required to participate in a “risk-sharing” program. This means those institutions must annually reimburse the Education Department for the amounts of principal and interest that is not repaid on federal student loans. — Several education groups, including those representing the nation’s community colleges and for-profit colleges, last week urged members of Congress to vote in favor of the legislation. But some emphasized their support for further changes if the bill is taken up by the Senate. “While the proposed policy does not impact community colleges, we continue to oppose all forms of risk-sharing,” a letter from American Association of Community Colleges and Association of Community College Trustees leaders said. “Therefore, we will ask that this provision be changed when the Senate considers the legislation.” IT’S MONDAY, FEB. 26. WELCOME TO WEEKLY EDUCATION. LET’S GRAB COFFEE. Drop me a line at bquilantan@politico.com. Send tips to my colleagues Mackenzie Wilkes at mwilkes@politico.com, Juan Perez Jr. at jperez@politico.com and Michael Stratford at mstratford@politico.com. And follow us: @Morning_Edu and @POLITICOPro.   SUBSCRIBE TO GLOBAL PLAYBOOK: Don’t miss out on POLITICO’s Global Playbook, the newsletter taking you inside pivotal discussions at the most influential gatherings in the world, including WEF in Davos, Milken Global in Beverly Hills, to UNGA in NYC and many more. Suzanne Lynch delivers the world's elite and influential moments directly to you. Stay in the global loop. SUBSCRIBE NOW.     Want to receive this newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories. Congress Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) has launched several investigations into how colleges are responding to reports of antisemitism. | Francis Chung/POLITICO HOUSE STUDENT ANTISEMITISM ROUNDTABLE — The House Education and the Workforce committee is expected to hold a bipartisan roundtable Thursday to hear from Jewish students about their experiences with antisemitism on campus. — Nine universities will be represented at the table: Harvard University; University of Pennsylvania; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Columbia University; Stanford University; University of California, Berkeley; Rutgers University; Tulane University; and Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. — “These students are dealing with antisemitism at their respective universities on a daily basis. Their courage to speak out and share their stories will give the American people a new look at what is truly happening on college campuses around the country,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who leads the committee. “This roundtable will help inform the Committee’s next steps in the antisemitism investigation as it continues to hold postsecondary education accountable for rampant antisemitism.” — What you need to know before the event: The roundtable comes as several of the institutions the students attend are being investigated by the Education Department or the committee for their responses to reports of antisemitic incidents on campus. Earlier this month, Foxx also elevated her investigation into Harvard University by issuing the committee’s first subpoena to a university in recent history. Harvard’s leaders have until March 4 to turn over requested documents. — Planning details: The roundtable will take place at 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 29 in the Cannon House Office Building, room 390. Watch the livestream here.   FUNDING THE GOVERNMENT — House Speaker Mike Johnson and the House’s top Republican funding negotiators spent the weekend trying to reach a final agreement with Democrats on the first four spending bills set to expire midnight on March 1. Lawmakers could seek to push the deadline this week as they head toward two shutdown deadlines on March 1 and 8. All 12 spending bills still need to be passed. — Johnson on Friday told Republicans that their disunity has ceded leverage to Democrats in negotiations ahead of the shutdown deadline. But he feels optimistic about meeting the deadline this week to pass the first four bills to fund the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Transportation and Veterans Affairs. He also acknowledged that a partial government shutdown is still possible because of major disagreements. Read the latest from POLITICO’s Caitlin Emma. In the Courts James Pan, the parent of an eighth-grader, speaks about a lawsuit he and other parents filed against the Fairfax County School Board over its plans to change the admissions process at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. | Matthew Barakat/AP THE TJ MODEL — The Supreme Court last week punted on a challenge against a selective public high school in northern Virginia that had the potential to further restrict the race-neutral tools used to pursue diverse classes. Now, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology’s race-neutral admissions policy is being revered as a national model for institutions that want to diversify their classes without drawing the ire of the Supreme Court. — Still, the decision to deny cert won’t stem a tide of lawsuits claiming other competitive high schools and programs are engaging in discrimination. K-12 schools have long been allowed to pursue racially integrated schools through race-neutral means. But suits against schools in New York City, Boston and Montgomery County, Maryland, led by the Pacific Legal Foundation, argue that many policies are biased against Asian Americans. The case in Boston could be the Supreme Court’s next opening to restrict these practices as lawyers look to file a petition as soon as this spring. — “Schools have already been holding up the 4th Circuit’s decision in the TJ case as an example of what to do and how to make an end run around the Supreme Court. It’s kind of scary,” said Erin Wilcox, a PLF attorney who represented Coalition for TJ, the parents’ group that sued Thomas Jefferson’s school board. “I do think we’ll see a lot of colleges and universities now following TJ’s playbook and saying, ‘Well, now that the Supreme Court said we can’t consider race at all, we’re in the same boat as these high schools. Let’s do what they did, and we’ll find a proxy for race,’” she said. — Civil rights groups, however, argue that the lawsuits are a broader attack on the pursuit of diversity — especially after the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision last summer that dismantled the consideration of race in college admissions. — “It’s the hope of anti-civil rights activists that there will be a bleed-over effect and that they can apply the colorblind ruling in Harvard to K-12, to employment and to so many other sectors,” said David Hinojosa, director of the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonprofit that has defended race-conscious education policies. “The loss of affirmative action was merely a downpayment on their anti-civil rights agenda.” More from your host. Around California SCHOOL BOARD CRT BAN — A California judge last week declined to temporarily block Temecula Valley Unified’s school board from banning critical race theory while a lawsuit challenging the ban is ongoing. The judge also refused to block a policy that requires parents be notified if their child shows any signs of identifying as transgender, POLITICO’s Blake Jones reports. — Riverside County Superior Court Judge Eric Keen denied the preliminary injunction request from parents and teachers, saying he was not convinced the critical race theory ban was “unconstitutionally vague” or that the trans student policy was illegally discriminatory. Keen emphasized that they couldn’t prove irreparable harm from the critical race theory policy and argued that there was no evidence that the policy “seeks to deny information” to students. Additionally, Keen found that the trans student policy did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. Report Roundup — The Council of Chief State School Officers is out with a report focused on how states invested Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds in literacy and their plan to sustain those efforts. Nearly every state is prioritizing literacy in their recovery efforts, and 32 states say their literacy initiatives focus on the science of reading. Nearly $900 million in ESSER investments have been used for literacy initiatives, according to the report, and another $600 million has been used for initiatives prioritizing literacy in other subject areas. Read the report snapshot.   Don’t sleep on it. Get breaking New York policy from POLITICO Pro—the platform that never sleeps—and use our Legislative Tracker to see what’s on the Albany agenda. Learn more.     Syllabus — 10 ways a second Trump term could be more extreme than the first: POLITICO Pro — Why one school district spent $1 million fighting a special-education student: The Wall Street Journal — In video, nonbinary student describes fight in Oklahoma school bathroom: The New York Times — Cal State University system deals with declining enrollment numbers: CBS News   Follow us on Twitter Delece Smith-Barrow @DeleceWrites Michael Stratford @mstratford Bianca Quilantan @biancaquilan Juan Perez Jr. @PerezJr Mackenzie Wilkes @macwilkes   Follow us

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