April 25, 2025
Trump Administration Announces Plan to Get Borrowers Paying Student Loans Again
The U.S. Department of Education announced on Monday that it would resume involuntary collections of defaulted federal student loans on May 5. The announcement means that borrowers who have loans in default could see their tax refunds seized or wages garnished. While many borrowers and advocacy organizations will oppose the move, resuming collections is necessary to incentivize loan repayment….
April 24, 2025
It’s About Time: Bring Back Those Student Loan Collections
This week, the Department of Education announced that on May 5 it will begin collecting on defaulted student loans. This will be the first time since March 2020 that borrowers who have either chosen not to or been unable to make their student loan payments will once again face significant financial consequences for their delinquency. Borrowers…
April 24, 2025
Not Local Enough: The Montgomery County Public Schools Case
The Supreme Court heard arguments this week in Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which parents from Montgomery County, Maryland, challenged the public school system for the right to opt their young children out from exposure to books on LGBT themes. The case appears, on the surface, to reverse long-standing views of the role of local government. Randi Weingarten, president of the…
April 17, 2025
Turn Public Service Loan Forgiveness into a State Block Grant
As Congress negotiates a bill to overhaul the federal budget, lawmakers looking to save money should note $30 billion in potential savings hiding in plain sight. The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which fully discharges the student loans of borrowers who work for the government or a nonprofit for 10 years, is one of…
April 11, 2025
How The Trump Administration Can Address The Student Loan Nonpayment Crisis
After the federal government suspended student loan repayment for four and a half years, payments are finally due again—yet less than half of borrowers are repaying their debts on time. These high rates of student loan nonpayment threaten to ruin many borrowers’ credit records and send millions into default. Low student loan receipts could also cost taxpayers…
April 8, 2025
Could A Higher Endowment Tax Pressure Elite Schools To Expand?
Congressional Republicans are considering a significant hike in the excise tax on the endowments of rich universities as part of a broader tax reform effort. Most private universities with more than $500,000 in endowment assets per student are subject to a 1.4 percent excise tax on their net investment income. Some Republicans have proposed raising that tax rate to…
April 4, 2025
How One State Improved Its NAEP Scores
The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress results had a lot of bad news, but there were some scattered bright spots. Louisiana was one of them. In fact, the Pelican State was the only state in the nation that outperformed its pre-pandemic 4th grade reading scores on the 2024 NAEP. Over the past two…
March 31, 2025
Reimagining Federal Education R&D: DARPA for Education
Earlier in my professional life, I was the head of the political science department at Stony Brook University. When the chairs of the arts and science met, someone from the physical or life sciences would inevitably argue that the “hard” natural sciences deserved more support than the “soft” social sciences. My rejoinder was one of…
March 28, 2025
Cracking the Code Behind Dismal 8th Grade Reading Scores
The most recent round of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results delivered a familiar gut punch: Just 30 percent of eighth graders in the United States read at or above the proficient level, a number that’s barely budged in decades. Even in states like Mississippi and Louisiana, which have earned national attention thanks to literacy reforms that have…
March 25, 2025
Less Than Half of Student Borrowers Are Paying Their Loans
Student loan payments have been due for six months now—yet no one seems to have told the students. The federal government effectively suspended payments on student loans for four and a half years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, leading many borrowers to lose touch with their loan servicers and disengage from the repayment system. False promises of loan cancellation…