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Budget Cuts Series: Schools and Students
In Smart Dissent's Budget Cuts Series, we are examining the White House proposed budget cuts to learn what's hidden beneath the surface and later update based on Congressional budget proposals and actions. This post focuses on proposed significant cuts to our schools and Department of Education that we must Be Smart about and Actively Dissent.
Trump's budget proposal for fiscal year 2018...calls for a $9.2 billion, or 13.5 percent, spending cut to education.
Student Debt
- Stop subsidizing the interest on student loans, for a cut of $1 billion in the next fiscal year. This would add thousands of dollars to the cost of college, primarily for low-income graduates.
- Phase out the program known as public service loan forgiveness, which erases student loans after 10 years of employment for the government or a qualifying nonprofit. Almost half a million people are enrolled in this program.
Lauren Asher is a college affordability advocate with the Institute for College Access and Success.... [S]he says... this budget amounts to, "multiple cuts that will exacerbate student debt by increasing the need to borrow, and increase the cost of repayment for many... students."
School Choice
- Title I is the biggest K-12 federal education program. It supports high-poverty schools. Under Trump's budget, regular Title I funding would be flat.
- $1 billion more would be dedicated to a new grant program for states that allow poor students to leave neighborhood schools for other public schools, and take that extra money with them.
It's controversial, because in practice it means redistributing funds from poorer schools and potentially poorer districts to richer ones.
Additional Cuts
- Some of the biggest axes would fall on a $2.3 billion program for teacher training and class-size reduction, and a $1.2 billion after-school program, which serves nearly 2 million children, many of them poor.
- A $190 million literacy program would also be cut.