DeLauro Tells Secretary Duncan to Keep Pressure on For-Profit Colleges

At Today’s Hearing on Department of Education Budget Request

WASHINGTON, DC—Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) encouraged Education Secretary Arne Duncan to keep the pressure on for-profit colleges at today’s Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the Department of Education’s Fiscal Year 2016 budget request. DeLauro is the senior Democrat on that subcommittee, which is responsible for funding the Department.

During the question and answer period with Secretary Duncan, DeLauro “strongly applauded” the Department’s “efforts to crack down on worthless degrees” from for-profit colleges. She highlighted the fact that such schools enroll one out of every eight students and receive one out of every five dollars of financial aid, but account for nearly one out of every two student loan defaults.

Secretary Duncan agreed on the need to crack down on for-profit colleges that do not provide a real value to their students, particularly veterans.

Last Congress DeLauro introduced the Proprietary Institution of Higher Education Accountability Act, which would end the current incentive for such colleges to selfishly advise their students to go into forbearance or deferment of their student loans, when other options might be in the students’ best interests. Forbearance and deferment are when borrowers temporarily stop making payments on their loans. DeLauro will reintroduce the bill this Congress.

DeLauro also questioned Secretary Duncan over the degree to which the Department emphasizes test scores in teacher evaluations. The entire hearing can be viewed here: https://appropriations.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=394014.

The following opening statement is as delivered at the hearing:

“Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr. Secretary, for joining us today just before the snow hits. God only knows Washington will shut down. Mr. Secretary, as you know, I share your commitment to ensuring all children have equal access to high quality education.

“When I spoke on the House floor last week, I quoted Lyndon Johnson, who said that “education is the only valid passport out of poverty.” Decades later, he is still right. College graduates are less likely to find themselves unemployed. They earn, on average, 80 percent more than their peers without college degrees.

“I believe that the Federal government has a responsibility to help everyone to gain access to a quality education, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Children in high-poverty neighborhoods need our help the most. Kids in schools with fewer than 10 percent of students in poverty come first in the world in reading. Those in high-poverty schools rank second from bottom, between Chile and Mexico.

“Helping those kids is exactly what Congress set out to do 50 years ago when it passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act – two landmark laws that swung open the gates to middle class for millions of poor children. But last week, the Majority introduced a bill that I believe threatens to throw it all away. The radically misnamed ‘Student Success Act’ would gut the ESEA and steal funding from the schools that need it most.

“And this is just the latest in a series of attacks on federal support for education. Since 2010, setting aside Pell grants, we have cut the Department of Education’s budget by $6.4 billion, or 13 percent – that is after adjusting for inflation. We have also made short-sighted eligibility cuts to the Pell program. We have eliminated around 50 critical programs altogether, including programs that supported family literacy activities and student access to mental health. Funding for Title I, a vital support to low-income kids, remains more than $100 million below pre-sequestration levels.

“The madness of sequestration has hit Labor-HHS programs funded by this subcommittee especially hard. After adjusting for inflation, the Labor-HHS-Education bill has sustained cuts of almost $20 billion since 2010. These cuts could not have come at a worse time for America’s children. The number of school-aged children living in poverty increased from 8.5 million in 2010 to 11.1 in 2014. Nearly three-quarters of States are providing less funding per student than they did in 2008.

“That is the troubling context in which we consider the President’s budget proposal for 2016.
Instead of making damaging cuts, we should be putting our resources into universal preschool, quality after-school activities, and the training of good teachers. That is why I applaud this request for beginning to chart a path out of austerity. We still have a long way to go to meet our obligations to America’s students. But I am pleased the request includes a significant increase of $1 billion for Title I. It increases other vital formula grant programs that serve our most vulnerable children, including an additional $175 million to help educate kids with disabilities through IDEA State Grants.

“The President’s budget also contains other welcome increases: $500 million to help States provide high-quality preschool to low-income children; $93 million for Promise Neighborhoods, a program to address the profoundly negative effects of poverty on learning; and $20 million for the Now is the Time initiative to help keep schools and communities safe; $13 million for physical education for our kids. So there is a lot of good in this budget.

“I do not agree with everything in it. I am disappointed that afterschool and summer school programs were only level-funded. I believe they critical they are in supporting learning beyond the school day. Similarly, I would have wanted to see an increase for elementary and secondary school counseling.

“Turning to higher education, I strongly support the President’s goals of improving access and completion, and reigning in college costs. We have to do better by our low-income college students. Only 9 percent of students in the bottom quarter of the income scale have earned a bachelor’s degree by age 24. For those in the top quarter, the figure is more than 8 times that.
There is much to like in the President’s request. Most importantly, I commend the proposal to ensure free community college tuition for responsible students. That would take us a long way toward equal access to higher education. I also support the increase for TRIO, which helps low-income, first generation college students access and complete college. But I am concerned by the fact that most other higher-ed programs are only level funded.

“Overall, this budget request is a step in the right direction. These investments cannot happen unless we undo sequestration. In the meantime, as I have said repeatedly, sequester caps are damaging vital programs. All the while, we spend, and it is spending, close to one and a half trillion dollars every year on tax breaks, loopholes, and other tax expenditures. That is spending. That is more than we spend on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or even Defense discretionary spending. If we are to live up to our duty of providing every American with equal access to education, all of these tax expenditures must be on the table. And we must be prepared to ask our wealthier citizens and our corporations to do more to support hardworking families. Mister Secretary, thank you for your advocacy on these issues and I look forward to your testimony.”


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