A class of 2024 charm on a yellow tassel on black graduation cap with a rolled diploma.

WASHINGTON — Though the new version of the form to apply for federal financial student aid has had its fair share of highly publicized hiccups, U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal says the department has made a lot of progress in the past couple of months.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid — better known as FAFSA — got a makeover after Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act in late 2020. But users faced glitches and technical errors during the Dec. 30 soft launch and past the Jan. 8 official debut for the 2024-25 form, which covers the upcoming school year.

Advocates voiced concerns over the form’s failure to adjust for inflation, its formula miscalculation and its tax data errors, prompting processing delays the department has worked to fix. The federal agency has also taken steps to address major issues that prevented parents without Social Security numbers from completing the form.

“We’re fixing things at a rapid pace, and we’ve been keeping the community updated. We have an issues guide on the website that lets people know the problems we’re aware of and what the potential solutions are. In almost every case now, there is a way for students to submit the form,” Kvaal told States Newsroom in an interview.

“It may be a customer service experience that is not what we originally designed, and so we’re gonna continue to try and make this process easier and faster for all students, including those whose parents may not have Social Security numbers, but it is possible now for everyone to submit a FAFSA,” Kvaal said.

He oversees higher education and financial aid, including the Office of Federal Student Aid, which is the largest student financial aid provider in the country.

More than 11 million FAFSA submissions

Kvaal said the department has already received more than 11 million FAFSA submissions for the 2024-25 school year.

Last week, the department said it has made “significant progress” in closing the gap in FAFSA submissions to an 8 percent decrease compared to this time last year, down from a nearly 40 percent decrease in March.

For both undergraduate and graduate students, the FAFSA form is a key indicator for financial aid eligibility, which comes in the form of grants, loans, work-study funds and scholarships.

The form is also not exclusive to first-year college students, and those already enrolled must renew their application each academic year.

“It’s still not perfect for all applicants” 

Though the department has made progress to address major known issues, “the system, certainly six months after it opened, is still not a totally functioning system,” according to MorraLee Keller, senior director of strategic programming at the National College Attainment Network, a nonprofit membership and advocacy organization.

“Right now, the form is working for a lot of applicants, but it’s still not perfect for all applicants,” she added.

The organization monitors FAFSA completion for graduating high school seniors nationally and compares those figures to the previous school year. Keller said “one thing that we’re seeing is the class of ‘24, at this point in time, is almost 13 percentage points behind in the rate at which the seniors have filed a FAFSA” this past academic year.

“We are significantly behind in the number of FAFSAs, particularly for our graduating seniors, so that is ultimately probably going to have an impact in enrollment because completing a FAFSA is a pretty good indicator about whether you plan to enroll in college this fall,” Keller said.

Tennessee, Louisiana, Illinois, Washington, D.C., and Texas have the highest percentages of high school seniors completing the FAFSA form, according to NCAN’s tracker. Nevada, Florida, Arizona, Utah and Alaska have the lowest percentages.

Meanwhile, Kvaal said he thinks “it’s important to note that just about everybody can get their FAFSA through the process now.” He added that “there are some specific instructions that people in certain situations need to follow carefully” and encouraged applicants to pay careful attention to the instructions and help hints.

“The FAFSA is broadly available, and it’s not accurate to say that there are students who can’t get through them,” he said.

New strategy

In early May, the federal agency launched the FAFSA Student Support Strategy, which has now provided more than “$30 million in funding and counting and has reached more than 180 organizations across the country” in an attempt to get more students to complete the form, according to the department.

The department also recently announced that Jeremy Singer, current president of the College Board, would serve as the new FAFSA executive advisor.

In late May, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said the department has taken steps aimed at “modernizing” the Office of Federal Student Aid, including the department’s search for a new chief operating officer, per a news release. That person would replace Richard Cordray, who, in the midst of backlash and criticism toward the department over the botched rollout, said in April he would depart.

Part of the department’s efforts, according to Cardona, also include conducting a “full-scale review” of the Office of Federal Student Aid’s “current and historical organization, management, staffing, workflow structures, business processes, and operations” and hiring an independent consulting firm.

The department is also reviewing “contracts and acquisition procedures” in an effort to hold vendors accountable, Cardona said.

If I haven’t filled out the 2024-25 FAFSA form, what should I do?

Though students have until June 30, 2025, to complete the 2024-25 FAFSA form, deadlines vary based on individual colleges and states.

Kvaal encouraged anyone considering college this fall to visit Studentaid.gov and fill out the FAFSA as soon as possible.

“If you had been hearing that there were challenges with the form or people were encountering obstacles, we’ve made a lot of progress in making the form work in recent weeks, and most people, their form is getting through in one to three days, and we’re sending information to colleges that they need to make financial aid offers,” he said.

Keller also encouraged families to not give up on completing the form.

“The time is not gone — get your FAFSA filed this summer if you want to go to school this fall,” she said.

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Yellow electric school bus plugged in at a charging station.

WASHINGTON — As part of its ongoing effort to replace diesel-fueled school buses, the Biden administration on Wednesday said it will provide approximately 530 school districts across nearly all states with almost $1 billion to help them purchase clean school buses.

The initiative, part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program rebate competition, will give funds to school districts in 47 states and the District of Columbia to help them buy over 3,400 clean school buses. Alaska, Hawaii and Nevada are not part of this round of funding.

Nearly all of the clean school buses purchased will be electric, at 92%, according to the administration.

“This announcement is not just about clean school buses, it’s about the bigger picture,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said during a call with reporters on Tuesday, prior to the announcement. “We are improving air quality for our children, reducing greenhouse gas pollution and expanding our nation’s leadership in developing the clean vehicles of the future.”

Low-income, rural and tribal communities — accounting for approximately 45% of the selected projects —  are slated to receive roughly 67% of the total funding, per the administration.

Regan noted how “low-income communities and communities of color have long felt the disproportionate impacts of air pollution leading to severe health outcomes that continue to impact these populations.”

As for business and economic opportunities, Regan pointed to the development of new, well-paying manufacturing jobs and investment in local businesses stemming from the increasing demand for these clean school buses.

“As more and more schools make the switch to electric buses, there will be a need for American-made batteries, charging stations and service providers to maintain the buses supercharging and reinvigorating local economies,” he added.

The Clean School Bus Program has now collectively awarded nearly $3 billion to fund approximately 8,500 electric and alternative fuel buses for over 1,000 communities across the United States, according to the administration.

The program started through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden, which includes $5 billion over five years to transform the country’s existing school buses with “zero-emission and low-emission models,” per the EPA.

Among many negative health and environmental effects, especially for communities of color, diesel exhaust exposure can lead to major health conditions such as asthma and respiratory illnesses, according to the EPA.

Exposure to diesel exhaust can also “worsen existing heart and lung disease, especially in children and the elderly,” the agency said.

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From left, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts; Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island; Lori Lodes, executive director of Climate Power; and U.S. Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a Democrat from California, urge big oil companies be held accountable for high gas prices on Thursday, May 23, 2024, outside of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — As Democrats continue to ramp up their push against the oil industry, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and others on Thursday called out big oil companies and their executives for high gas prices heading into the heavily traveled Memorial Day weekend.

Republicans in turn have blamed President Joe Biden’s energy policies for high gas prices, with the potency of the issue for both parties illustrated by a new poll in seven battleground states that shows the economy and cost of living at the top of voters’ minds in the 2024 campaign for the presidency.

The Biden administration earlier this week said 1 million gallons of oil will be released from reserves in the northeastern United States, in an effort to curb prices ahead of summer driving. And officials with the Biden campaign pointed out Thursday a Wall Street Journal report that prices are trending downward even before the weekend.

The national average price of a gallon of gas was $3.615 Thursday, according to automotive group AAA, down from an all-time high of $5.016 in June 2022.

The Democratic lawmakers at Thursday’s press conference outside the U.S. Capitol included Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and U.S. Sens. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island; House Assistant Minority Leader Joe Neguse of Colorado; and Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Nanette Barragán and Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, both of California.

“Instead of working to lower gas prices for Americans ahead of a busy Memorial Day weekend, Big Oil companies’ executives are huddling to find ways to keep prices high and keep their profits soaring,” Schumer said.

The press conference was co-hosted by Climate Power, a strategic communications organization in the climate space and the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group.

Earlier in May, the Federal Trade Commission alleged that Scott Sheffield, the CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources, “attempted to collude with the representatives of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and a related cartel of other oil-producing countries known as OPEC+ to reduce output of oil and gas, which would result in Americans paying higher prices at the pump, to inflate profits for his company.”

During Thursday’s event, Schumer said he would be sending a letter to the U.S. Justice Department next week “calling on them to investigate and prosecute collusion and price fixing that may have increased gasoline, fuel and energy costs, based on the report done by the FTC, when they unfortunately allowed (Exxon) Mobil to … merge with Pioneer (Natural Resources), which I thought was a bad idea.”

Schumer added that “the federal government must use every tool at our disposal to investigate the oil industry, hold accountable liable actors and illegal activities. There’s something wrong — very wrong — when big oil companies rake in the cash by polluting the atmosphere and at the expense of the American people.”

Trump and oil companies

The Senate majority leader and his fellow Democratic lawmakers also called out former President Donald Trump over recent media reports saying Trump engaged in a quid pro quo offer with major oil companies’ CEOs in April.

Schumer said “one of the ways big oil companies spend their time these days is cozying up to Donald Trump, who, as we all know, is no enemy to big oil.”

Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, setting him up for a rematch with Biden.

Separately on Thursday, Whitehouse, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, and Oregon U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said their respective committees launched a joint investigation into Trump’s “quid pro quo offer to big oil.”

The senators are asking nine oil and gas companies and their trade associations for information and documents pertaining to the purported quid pro quo proposed by Trump.

Neguse, a Colorado Democrat, said that for him, “all of this boils down to three words: polluters over people.” He noted that “over the last 16, 17 months, we have witnessed in the House an extreme MAGA Republican majority that has taken every opportunity to pass bill after bill to give giveaways to oil companies and to corporate polluters near and far.”

Republicans blame Biden

Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group, is seeking to turn the arguments back on Democrats. The group this week announced a series of events across the country where it will partner with local gas stations to roll back gasoline prices to what they were when Biden took office.

In March, the House GOP Conference said “the surging prices at the pump Americans are facing are a direct result from Joe Biden’s unprecedented war on American energy, which Biden launched on his first day in office in an attempt to appease his Far Left base by implementing his radical Green New Deal agenda.”

Republicans cited the U.S. Energy Department’s move to pause approvals of new exports of liquified natural gas to all countries without a free trade agreement with the United States, as well as the decision early in Biden’s tenure to kill the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline.

Meanwhile, also Thursday, polling and analysis released by The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, in collaboration with Democratic polling firm BSG and Republican polling firm GS Strategy Group, found “the defining issue for this contest is a more traditional one: the economy.”

Over half of likely voters from swing states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, viewed inflation and the cost of living as the “worst/weakest” part of the economy, according to the report. In seven states combined, Trump led Biden 47% to 44% in a head-to-head matchup. Trump led in all states except Wisconsin.

Neither a spokesperson for the Trump Organization nor his 2024 presidential campaign immediately responded to a request for comment Thursday.

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WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 16: Plaintiffs and family members of plaintiffs in the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case Cheryl Brown Henderson (2nd R), John Stokes (2nd L) and Nathaniel Briggs (R) speaks outside the White House with NAACP President Derrick Johnson (L) after meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden on May 16, 2024 in Washington, DC. This week marks the 70th anniversary of the landmark case that ended the segregation of students based on race in the United States. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is commemorating the 70th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education this week while recognizing that the full potential of the decision “remains unfulfilled.”

Friday marks 70 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional in a case that originated with a challenge to the Topeka, Kansas, Board of Education. Since the 1954 decision, racial segregation has not only persisted, but increased, in school districts across the U.S., according to a recent report.

“There is still so much work to do to ensure that every student has equal access to a quality education and that our school systems fully benefit from the diversity and talent of our students — because diversity has always been one of our Nation’s greatest strengths,” Biden wrote in a proclamation on the 70th anniversary of the decision. The president has committed to advancing racial equity during his administration.

Biden on Thursday met with multiple plaintiffs and family members from Brown v. Board and the cases combined under it, including John Stokes, a plaintiff in a Virginia case consolidated with Brown; Cheryl Brown Henderson, daughter of lead plaintiff Oliver Brown; Nathaniel Briggs, son of plaintiff Harry Briggs Jr.; and NAACP president Derrick Johnson. The meeting was closed to the press.

Cases consolidated with Brown include Briggs v. Elliott, from South Carolina; Bolling v. Sharpe, from Washington, D.C.; Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward, from Virginia; and Gebhart v. Belton, from Delaware.

Cabinet members mark anniversary

The White House meeting came after the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Justice’s celebration of the 70th anniversary on Tuesday, part of which featured a conversation with Leona Tate and Gail Etienne. They were among the four students who helped desegregate New Orleans schools in 1960.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona acknowledged the significance of the Supreme Court ruling while highlighting the persistence of segregation in schools.

The work of Brown v. Board is “not just part of our history” but “ongoing,” Garland said Tuesday, pointing to the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division’s enforcement of desegregation orders as the agency monitors more than 130 school districts comprising nearly 900,000 students in more than 1,500 schools.

“Brown v. Board and its legacy remind us of who we want to be as a nation: a place that upholds values of justice and equity as its highest ideals,” Cardona said, adding that “over the course of the last 70 years, we’ve often struggled to live up to those ideals.”

“Black students may no longer need to be escorted to school by U.S. marshals and they may no longer face angry mobs on their way to school or eat at separate lunch tables, but today, we have a system where we have normalized underinvesting in schools that serve a majority of Black communities,” he said.

Segregation on the rise

Large school districts have witnessed a rise in school segregation over the past three decades, researchers at Stanford University and the University of Southern California found. In the 100 largest school districts in the country, segregation between white and Black students has increased by 64% since 1988.

Brown v. Board also put much of the responsibility on Black students, who had to be bused to predominantly white schools, according to Chantelle Grace, assistant clinical professor in social science education at Florida State University’s College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences.

Grace said there was no consideration in the ruling of “other laws that might need to go with it to protect Black students in having to go about this process.”

The Supreme Court decision also left negative consequences for Black teachers and the Black teacher pipeline, according to Grace.

“We saw a big loss of the Black teaching population at the time, too, to the point where we’re still trying to, I think, recover that Black teacher pipeline in getting more Black teachers in the classroom,” Grace said.

“We acknowledge the progress it was signifying with the ruling to say that ‘separate but equal’ is unconstitutional, but we also have to be mindful and aware of the reverberating legacy it left as well on Black communities, the Black teacher pipeline, as well as the ways in which schools are now kind of resegregating themselves due to policies that are not holding up the promise that Brown v. Board of Education initially ruled,” she added.

Biden will make remarks Friday at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. On Sunday, he will deliver the commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta, a historically Black men’s college.

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IOWA CITY, IOWA- FEBRUARY 15: Guard Caitlin Clark #22 of the Iowa Hawkeyes listens as the crowd cheers after breaking the NCAA women's all-time scoring record during the game against the Michigan Wolverines at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on February 15, 2024 in Iowa City, Iowa. (Photo by Matthew Holst/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A congressional watchdog in a new report called on the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to improve its enforcement of Title IX compliance in college athletics.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office in the report issued Thursday appeared critical of the OCR’s oversight in expanding opportunities for women in college athletics, saying the office “conducts few proactive activities.” Women take part in college sports at lower rates than men, even though they enroll at higher rates, the report found.

The criticism also arrives at a time when women’s college sports, particularly basketball, have recently gained more popularity and viewership. The prominence of Caitlin Clark, the former guard for the University of Iowa women’s basketball team who became the NCAA Division I’s all-time leading scorer across women’s and men’s basketball, has helped propel the momentum.

During the more than 50 years since its adoption, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 has prohibited discrimination based on sex in activities or programs receiving federal funding. The federal law also mandates “schools to provide equal opportunity based on sex.” The department’s OCR is tasked with enforcing compliance of Title IX.

U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, released the GAO report with U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education.

“Every student who wants to play a sport in college should have a fair and equal opportunity to do so,” said Scott, a Democrat from Virginia.

“Regrettably, today’s GAO report confirms that while female college enrollment numbers outpace male enrollment, opportunities for female athletes significantly lag behind their male counterparts,” he said.

Bonamici, a Democrat from Oregon, said the federal law “sets a standard of equal opportunity that too many schools have failed to meet.” She added that the GAO report “shows that women enroll in college at a higher rate than men but consistently participate in college athletics at a lower rate than men.”

Gap in women’s and men’s sports participation 

The report highlighted the persistent gap in college sports participation between women and men. Approximately 93% of colleges saw lower athletic participation rates for women relative to their enrollment rate during the 2021-2022 academic year.

Title IX also requires schools receiving federal funding to have participation numbers of men and women in college sports to be “substantially proportionate to their overall enrollment,” according to the Department of Education.

Yet, women’s overall athletic participation rate fell 14 percentage points behind their enrollment rate in the 2021-2022 academic year, the GAO found.

Communication delays

The GAO noted that the OCR made “limited use of available data for oversight purposes” and did not “always communicate with colleges in a timely way during monitoring.”

On average, it took half a year for the OCR to respond to colleges after “they submitted their Title IX athletics monitoring reports,” per the GAO.

The congressional watchdog found “years-long delays in communication between OCR and some colleges.” In 10 of 26 cases, it took at least a year or longer for the OCR to communicate with a college. In one case, it took nearly seven years for the OCR to approve the college’s proposed methodology for assessing whether it complied with Title IX athletics requirements, the GAO said.

In response to the report, Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the department, said the department is “fully committed to work with GAO to ensure the recommendations are implemented, to the extent possible.”

The attention paid to women’s sports is on the rise, thanks in part to Clark’s popularity on the court. Clark now plays for the WNBA’s Indiana Fever.
In April, the women’s basketball championship garnered more viewers compared to the men’s championship game for the first time in NCAA history, according to Nielsen, which measures media audiences.

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