Federal Education Budget Project

... to administer bank-based student loans have evolved into inefficient middlemen that waste taxpayer money, the New America Foundation said today. ...

WASHINGTON, DC--Today the New America Foundation's Education Policy Program released "Rethinking the Middleman: Federal Student Loan Guaranty Agencies," by Benjamin Miller. The policy paper provides an overview of the history and current responsibilities of guaranty

The New America Foundation released its own report today that questions the need for student loan guarantee agencies but offers Congress, should it decide to sustain a role for them, ideas for how to adapt their role.

Each year, the federal government guarantees billions of dollars in loans disbursed through the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program, a public-private partnership that provides financial aid to students attending institutions of higher education. Despite the significant investment of taxpayer dollars, the actual  administration of the FFEL Program is largely handled by participating lenders and a group of 35 non-federal guaranty agencies across the country. Guaranty agencies perform a number of administrative functions, such as disbursing federal default insurance provided… more

But it’s likely the state’s plans will be enough, said Jennifer Cohen, a policy analyst with the Education Policy Program at the Washington-based nonprofit think tank New America Foundation. ...

Analysts at the New America Foundation, which takes a generally skeptical view of the student loan industry and has editorialized in favor of the Obama plan, questioned some of the principles underlying the lenders' alternative proposal.

"This is the sort of program, because it's brand new, people don't understand it or they're not talking about it," said Jennifer Cohen, a policy analyst for the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. Original article

Washington, DC -- Today the New America Foundation's Federal Education Budget Project releases "Equitable Resources in Low Income Schools: Teacher Equity and the Federal Title I Comparability Requirement," by former New America Foundation policy analyst Lindsey Luebchow. The new issue brief details shortcomings of the current Title I comparability provision and provides recommendations for how to improve it.

On Monday, June 8, the New America Foundation's Federal Education Budget Project released "Equitable Resources in Low Income Schools: Teacher Equity and the Federal Title I Comparability Requirement" at an event on Capitol Hill. This event featured representatives from the White House, Representative George Miller's committee staff, and the National Education Association to discuss teacher equity and the comparability requirement in the law. Education Policy Program MaryEllen McGuire introduced the issue using this PowerPoint presentation.

Teachers with the least experience and fewest credentials teach in our poorest schools, putting low-income students at a disadvantage. School finance disparities in teacher spending within school districts are a major cause of this problem. However, school district budgeting techniques mask these intra-district disparities, allowing administrators and policymakers to ignore them.