College campus protests. Hes appearing before the committee on his department policy. The committee on Education Workforce will come to order. Without objection the chair is authorized to call recess at any time. Mr. Secretary, i was truly excited when your named secretary with your background. You know i have told you that. However, you have not lived up to your potential. The educational decline is not without warning. Upon your confirmation i issued a press release saying, the Teachers Union and leftwing special Interest Groups are keeping our schools closed despite the serious consequences for students academic success and Mental Health. Serious consequences may have been the understatement of the century. Since the last time you testified, the National Assessment of educational progress released its 2022 math and reading scores. The results were disturbing. Reading scores plummeted to the lowest level in the history of the testing. Across all subjects, american k 12 students saw a steep drop in Educational Attainment thanks in large part to the Biden Administration lockdown policies. The negative consequences of learning loss with the this generations future employment and earnings will be devon stated. If i were to rate your tenure on the state of k12 schools i would give you enough and asked. Failing scores are not the only negative development in education since our last oversight hearing. Over the past seven months colleges across the nation have seen an unprecedented regression in moral and institutional legitimacy as antisemitism and prohamas protests have engulfed campuses. Turn on the news and universities such as columbia and ucla look like unrecognizable war zones. From the beginning i urged a firm hand in dealing with anti semitism on campus and i have led by example. You on the other hand refused even to say that the from the river to the sea chant is anti semitic. I saw this as a failure of moral clarity deeming you unfit for Public Office and call for your resignation. With the outbreak of campus riots im even more resolute so i will say it again. You must resign. If i were to rate your time as secretary based on the state of post secondary education i would also give you an f. The final report is based on your tenure as an administrator. Again, i will warn of the potential pitfalls of mismanaging programs such as the fast rollout. The department managed to bungle both. The simplification has been the law for the entirety of your administration. Last year was filled with delays and excuses. In march 2023 after months of refusing to communicate a release date, the department announced it would push the implementation of the simplification act back from october 1 to what ended up being december 30, 2023. The october deadline should have come as no surprise. Congress had already granted the department an additional year and you still cannot get the job done. Then the december 30 soft launch was filled with glitches. Prospective College Students fought through random crashes and lengthy waiting rooms to submit their completed fafsa application only to be met with uncertainty. For the applications that did make it through, large percentages contained errors, were unable to be corrected, or both. In some cases they took months to fix. The Financial Aid administrator surveyed schools just last week found that over 30 of schools have still not even begun to package eight offers thanks to your delays. The delays and uncertainty have crushed students and universities. Fafsa Completion Rates have fallen 30 nationally with declines even higher among low income students. Universities are expecting decreased enrollment in the fall. It could be even worse than the pandemic. Attending college is one of the most consequential choices some may ever make. For many students with limited means who depend on the fafsa that choice has been denied. Some will inevitably put education on the back burner for life. That is what troubles me the most on this. May 1 should have been College Decision day but instead students were still stuck waiting for financial information, paralyzed by your ineptitude. Fafsa should have been a top priority. Instead, your actions proved time and again that it wasnt. When the department shouldve been putting time and resources into fafsa it was pouring time and resources into the latest student debt scheme. This latest scheme could cost taxpayers up to 1 trillion. For perspective, these actions are more expensive than all Postsecondary Education spending before 2020. The Higher Education act passed in 1965, yet you are projected to spend more on just the Biden Student loan debt scheme than all other secretaries spent since 1965 i have completely lost faith in this administration to govern. Your radicalism has alienated loan servicers and force the administration to bungle the return to repayment. Nine million borrowers missed their first repayment. Im not sure this administration ever wanted the payment. I think you see it as politically advantageous to kick the can down the road so you did. Therefore, if i were to grain your grade your tenure as an administrator i would give you an f. On all the Broad Strokes you have a failing grade. There are plenty of other specific issues to discuss today. The department has failed to protect young women with the title ix rewrite. Failed to return to the office to work in person and failed to pass the 2023 financial audit. I see each of these failures as a result of the original failure that the federal government inserted itself into education in the first place. There are good reasons why the word education does not appear in the constitution. Education is done best when it is handled at the local level. The solution is not more of the same which is what the president s budget represents, but less of what has sidetracked our countrys educational system and the department of education itself. As president Ronald Reagan once famously said, the nine most terrifying words of the english language are im from the government and im here to help. With that, i yield to the Ranking Member for an Opening Statement. Thank you and good morning mr. Secretary. Thank you for being with us today. 70 years ago chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the majority opinion, unanimous opinion of brown be board of education. Any child may reasonably be expected denied the opportunity of education such an opportunity the state has undertaken to provide it is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms. The court went on to say that segregation of students by race denies the children of the minority race of an equal education and opportunity because segregated schools are inherently unable. Regrettably today we must acknowledge that in 2024, Public Schools are segregated by race and class as they were in the late 1960s. Today we have a chance to hear from the secretary about how the biden and Harris Administration is working to fulfill this promise and bolster support for students and teachers while also tackling systemic inequities in our Public School system. For example President Biden enacted to pass the American Rescue plan act without the support of a single republican vote. The largest onetime federal investment in k12 education in the nations history. The investment was allocated using the title i a formula meaning that the greatest resources went to the communities with the greatest need. These resources also allowed the School Districts to make up for missed time in the classroom, respond to mental and social emotional needs and support educators. The Research Shows that the federal investments resulted in marked improvement in schoolchildren in chicago, birmingham, nashville and other cities and counties around the country. Additionally, the department of education has also taken historic steps to relieve student borrowers from mountains of unaffordable debt. This administration has forgiven more than 160 billion in Student Loan Debt for 4. 6 million borrowers, including some who were duped by their universities, enhancing the income driven repayment plans and Public ServiceLoan Forgiveness Program, future borrowers now have a clear path to repayment. I look forward to hearing from the secretary about how the department, what the statuses and getting the free application for federal student aid, the fafsa rollout back on track. As you know the committee has communicated with you our concerns about the impact of the many delays for student College Decisions. We have pressed for policies to ensure every student has access to a quality education. At the same time republicans have prioritized divisive culture war issues and politicized classrooms, pushed legislation and were consumed with who uses which bathroom. Moreover, my colleagues frequently speak about the commitment to fighting campus discrimination yet their actions tell a different story. Republicans have advocated significant cuts to the department of Education Office of civil rights funding which would inevitably hinder its ability to investigate and prosecute campus related discrimination claims. Unfortunately this seems to be where the colleagues are on the other side of the aisle. We have come to an impasse because complaining about a problem is not a solution. At the end of the day, if we want to reduce rising tensions on College Campuses, we need to advance meaningful legislation to address the problem. Passing meaningless resolutions week after week and turning the Committee Room into a spectacle only seems to have exacerbated the problems instead of defusing them. Our students deserve more than political ponds and fundraising schemes. I want to thank you for your testimony. I look forward to what i hope to be a productive discussion. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you. Pursuant to committee rolls, all members who wish to insert statements into the record may do so by submitting them to the Committee Clerk electronically in microsoft word format by 5 00 p. M. 14 days after the date of the hearing which is may 22, 2024. Without objection the hearing record will remain open to allow such statements and other extraneous material referenced during the hearing to be submitted for the official hearing record. I now turn to the introduction of our witness. We have as our witness secretary Miguel Cardona from the u. S. Department of education located in washington, d. C. We thank you for being here today and look forward to your testimony. I remind the witness that we have read your written statement which will appear in full in the hearing record pursuant to committee rolls and practice, i ask that you limit your oral presentation to a five minute summary of your written statement. I also remind the witness to be aware of his responsibility to provide Accurate Information to the committee. I now recognize mr. Secretary for five minutes. Thank you. Chairwoman, Ranking Member, distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on President Bidens fiscal year 2025 to request for the department of education. My purpose here today is to propose a budget that helps protect and support our nations students. To be clear its not to create a spectacle for the benefit of the media or promote divisions that promote culture wars and political sideshows but do nothing to help our young people succeed. Our nations parents and students are looking for us to recognize that we have Common Ground and build on that by making responsible choices together to invest in education as the foundation for american opportunity. It is a responsible choice to sustain our academic recovery from the impact of the pandemic through 82. 4 billion in calculated investments to accelerate learning and success. It is a responsible choice to invest in a stronger future for all americans by boosting funding to close opportunity and achieve an act gaps in low income communities through title i, support students with disabilities through ide a. Support learners and recruit, prepare, retain, and develop great teachers. It is the responsible choice to invest in safer schools. The Mental Health of our students by making more funding available for School Counselors and Mental Health professionals. Its the responsible choice to give more young people access to the American Dream by building more pathways to rewarding careers and Opening Doors to Higher Education by improving college affordability, retention, and completion including through Free Community college and increased student support. It is the responsible choice to fully honor the caps under the bipartisan fiscal responsibility act as this budget does. Let me emphasize. When we get beyond the noise and efforts by self decree division, there is so much Common Ground about what matters most for our nations students. Such as getting all students to read by third grade. Dividing Mental Health support in the midst of a youth Mental Health crisis. Opening up college and Career Pathways so students have more options for rewarding lives and careers and making Higher Education more affordable and more accessible for those who choose that path. I know that we have Common Ground when it comes to our horror at the appalling anti semitism we are seeing on some College Campuses. As the president said last week there should be no place on any campus, no place in america for symmetry antisemitism or threats of violence. There is no place for hate speech. The biden and Harris Administration including the department of education is taking action each and every day to help ensure that schools and colleges are free from discrimination and safer jewish students and all students and will continue to do so. Make no mistake. Antisemitism is discrimination and is prohibited by title vi of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Dissent is essential to democracy. Will it must never lead to disorder or denying the rights of others so they may finish their college education. Hate has no place on College Campuses. Every student deserves to learn in an environment where they feel free to be themselves without discrimination or fear for their safety. That is why the budget provides for more resources for the office of civil rights to continuance strong response. I hope to work with you in partnership and constructive dialogue. We can raise the bar for our students and we can do it together. I look forward to working with you to do so. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Secretary. Under Committee Role nine we will now question the witness under the fiveminute role. I ask members to keep your questions succinct so the witness has time to answer. I now recognize myself for five minutes of questioning. Mr. Secretary, you have been proudly volunteering the taxpayers to take on the Student Loan Debt of largely wealthy College Graduates. Do you believe the students who spend their time in college calling for the destruction of an ethnic religious group or spend their time preventing students of perfect particular ethnic religious groups from walking freely deserve to have their education paid for by taxpayers . I could not your you that well but if you are making reference to the Student Debt Relief plan we have done i am really proud of the work we are doing to provide a lifeline for students who chose to go to college and are living im talking about the students who are being anti semitic and stopping jewish students from being able to go to class and threatening them. Do you want the taxpayers to pay their loans off . I believe that students that are breaking the law and are disrupting the educational environment should be held to account. I believe it is important that all students have access to their Higher Education classes and graduation. Will you commit to ensuring that no student that has harassed other students or prevented other students from going to class or breaking laws receives any form of student loan forgiveness. We are committed to making sure campuses are safe. I condemn any form of hate or any violence on campus. I have spoken to students and educators who have experienced that. We would like you to follow through on those who do break the law and make sure they do not receive student loan forgiveness. Mr. Secretary, the coo at fsa needs to have a deep and fast lawn knowledge of how loa