One year into President Joe Biden’s tenure, we take stock of the status of some of his key campaign promises surrounding education, including the promise to reopen K-12 schools during the pandemic and provide two years of free community college. Geoff Bennett reports.
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As the president marks one year in the Oval Office, we are continuing to check in on some of his key campaign promises tonight, one, education.
From reopening schools in the pandemic to a plan to offer two years of free community college, Geoff Bennett has this report card.
As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden proposed historic investments across the span of an American education, from pre-K to college.
Joe Biden, President of the United States: We need emergency support funding for our schools, and we need it now.
And, as president, Biden’s top priority, providing immediate relief to public schools shuttered and stretched to the breaking point by the pandemic, a COVID relief plan outlined early on.
Look, we can only do that if Congress provides the necessary funding, so we get the schools, districts, communities, and states the resources they need for those so many things that aren’t there already in a tight budget.
They need funding for testing to help reopen schools, more funding for transportation, so students can maintain social distances on buses. They need it for school buildings, for additional cleaning service, protective equipment, ventilation systems.
President Biden delivered, pouring roughly $122 billion into K-12 education as part of the $1.9 trillion COVID relief package he signed into law last spring, sending students back into classrooms and making up for learning loss.
Add to that the president in November signing a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package, providing money for schools to remove lead pipelines and expand broadband access. One of the president’s most ambitious education proposals called for universal pre-K.
There’s universal pre-K for every 3- and 4-year-old child in America. It’s going to increase academic achievement in all children and give them an even start, no matter what home they come from, no matter how little they have been taught to read or they have been read to.
The $110 billion pitch for free high-quality preschool aimed at offering early learning that research shows helps kids throughout their lives.
Why Biden’s pledges of free college, waiving student debt remain unfulfilled
But the plan, included in his Build Back Better Act, is currently stuck in the Senate. The president initially included in that social spending plan tuition-free community college, which he said would boost the middle class and help the U.Spete with other countries.
But, in October, the White House revealed it dropped the proposal in a massive round of cost-cutting aimed at satisfying conservative Democratic lawmakers.
If that would have got passed, I feel like it would encourage more people to go for a higher education, but now people seeing that community college isn’t even something that I might be able to pay for, just because of how expensive that is.
But payday loans GA, for the past year, President Biden has chosen not to use his executive power to wipe out the student debt that weighs on some 45 million Americans. That’s despite increased pressure from progressives like Senator Elizabeth Warren and establishment types too, like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
If Congress sends him a bill, he’s happy to sign it. They haven’t sent him a bill on that yet.
I thought that, within the last year of his presidency, he would at least ease the burden for me and all of the other Americans who are affected, particularly considering the context of the pandemic.
All told, President Biden proposed the largest federal investment in education in generations, much of it targeted to those who need it most. but proposing policies has been far different from passing them into law.
