Can Iowans support school choice while opposing student loan forgiveness?

In the last nine days, we’ve learned that more than double the estimated number of Iowa students have applied for newly available Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) to utilize their equal portion of state education funding at an accredited private school of their choice. We’ve also learned that President Joe Biden’s attempt to cancel roughly a half trillion dollars in student loan debt is a dead on arrival after the U.S. Supreme Court gave it a hard no.

One observation, shared by several readers, is that many who support Education Savings Accounts, informally called “school choice” and quite incorrectly called “vouchers,” also opposed Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, which would have wiped away the full debt of 20 million borrowers. “Hypocrisy,” it was described by one reader. “Double standard,” was a phrase used by another.

Is it a contradiction in principles to support ESAs and oppose Biden loan forgiveness? Stark differences between the two policies tell us that it is not, even if both arose out of the same concept.

A GOOD EDUCATION WITHIN REACH

Both school choice and student loan forgiveness originate from the principle that a first-rate education shouldn’t be out of reach for those who cannot afford it. Both concepts also acknowledge that different people will take different paths to obtain that first-rate education, and that those paths sometimes include attending a private school.

That said, student loans and ESAs differ wildly in policy, practice, and consequence. Among the differences:

ESAs address needs in K-12 education, which is compulsory for all Iowa children up to the age of 16. College, necessitates a student loan, is an optional endeavor, and is not required or necessary for every job, including many well-paying ones.

ESA funding, like all K-12 education funding, comes from the taxpayer, with no expectation of repayment. Student loans are financed by the taxpayer, but repayment is an obligation assumed by the student who accepts the loan.

Like for public schools, the supplemental funding used by ESAs is appropriated equally on a per-student basis, so every student receives the same dollar amount regardless of their chosen institution. Even students attending private schools using ESAs will receive the exact same per-pupil amount, regardless of the school’s actual tuition cost. Student loans are not doled out equally. Amounts are determined based both on need and the choices of the borrower: which school they attend, where they live while enrolled, the major they select, and how much education they pursue. Those choices can be costly: A graduate student can borrow up to $138,500 over the entire course of their education.

Perhaps the most significant difference between Iowa Republicans’ Education Savings Accounts and President Biden’s failed student loan forgiveness plan is the methods chosen for their implementation.

REYNOLDS, STATE REPUBLICANS GET IT RIGHT

Like the federal government, the state of Iowa recognizes a separation of powers between its branches of government. Gov. Kim Reynolds has been a champion for ESAs since assuming the governorship in 2017. Her cause went nowhere for five years because there was no unilateral action her administration could take — only the legislature could enact ESAs. Knowing this, supporters of school choice eventually took their fight to the ballot, engaging in extensive neighborhood canvassing to identify and engage supporters of school choice and successfully oust enough of the Republican holdouts during the 2022 primary.

That success is also owed in part to the failures of ESA opponents. With no issue more pressing than imminent passage of ESAs by new Republican legislators, the Iowa State Education Association (colloquially called the “teachers union”) would have been wise to throw their organizing support — and their hundreds of thousands worth of PAC dollars — behind the Republican incumbents standing firm against ESAs in the 2022 primary. Prioritizing instead their role as an ATM for Iowa Democrats, they gave only tiny morsels of financial support totaling about 3 percent of their PAC donations to only two Republicans with pro-ESA primary challengers, one of whom was defeated. In typical ISEA fashion, $825,500 (90 percent of their donations) went directly to the Iowa Democratic Party, where it failed to trickle down to the Democratic candidates making futile bids to block the new pro-ESA Republicans from winning in the general election. That loss and the school choice movement’s win paved the way for school choice to be enacted in the correct manner: through a legislative majority.

BIDEN GETS IT WRONG

President Biden didn’t have a legislative majority to pass a student loan forgiveness plan, not even when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress last year. Nor was he apparently willing to take the time to build the legislative support necessary to enact any sort of substantive loan forgiveness or other policy change. Wanting instead to demonstrate the fulfillment of a popular campaign promise in the months leading up to the 2022 midterm election, his administration opted instead for the hasty shortcut of executive action.

Biden’s Department of Education relied on the HEROES Act, a 2001 law originally passed to grant authority of the U.S. Secretary of Education to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision” of loan programs for borrowers affected by the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. In 2003, the HEROES Act was expanded to include any war or national emergency — in this case, the COVID-19 national emergency. Only 18 months earlier, the Office of General Counsel of the Department of Education of the previous administration concluded that “the Secretary does not have statutory authority to provide blanket or mass cancellation, compromise, discharge, or forgiveness of student loan principal balances.”

That made for an even clumsier reach, as the Biden DOE first had to formally rescind the legal opinion doubting a Secretary’s authority to waive billions of debt with the wave of his hand and replace it with an opinion claiming that he did. The president took it and ran with it, dangling his carrot in front of 43 million borrowers only months before a big election. Six states including Iowa promptly sued, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona’s request for expedited review was granted, and the Supreme Court found that the authority to modify provisions of student loan programs under HEROES Act “does not allow the secretary to rewrite that statute to the extent of canceling $430 billion” of principal student loan debt.

That’s $430 billion. The debts of 20 million borrowers completely erased. All with the stroke of a pen, completely bypassing the legislative branch in which the actual authority is vested. It was never feasible. It was never going to stand up in court. And by having a new plan ready to roll out only hours after the SCOTUS decision, one might say the Biden administration was expecting that the original would fail.

Meanwhile, nothing changed at the front end of the student loan program, where an 18-year-old can still sign their future away to thousands of dollars of debt — with or without a projected means of paying it off. What a slap in the face. To all of us.

Having examined how ESAs and student loan forgiveness differ substantially, we return to the original reader-initiated question: Is it a contradiction in principles to support ESAs and oppose Biden loan forgiveness? And I now turn that question to the critic and ask the opposite: Is it a double standard to oppose school choice but support student loan forgiveness?

PUBLIC LOANS FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS?

The slogan used most frequently by opponents of ESAs is “public funds for public schools,” intimating that any funding that comes from public dollars should be limited to use by public entities. But no one who echoes that sentiment ever says “public loans for public schools.” Of course they wouldn’t — limiting student loans to public college students would strip millions of their eligibility. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics tells us that a higher percentage of private college students receive student loans than public college students. It also tells us that private college students borrow more than their public college counterparts.

Should any amount of any of those loans be forgiven, the taxpayers will be on the hook for that private school tuition. Is that still something a person should oppose, according to the school choice critic? Or is a 19-year-old taking the maximum loan amount for their $65,000/year Medieval Studies program at Cornell College not as offensive to the taxpayer as a 7-year-old taking their per-pupil allotment to the Lutheran school across town in search of an optimal learning environment?

Perhaps a search for contradictions won’t yield the double standard one is looking for. Or perhaps it yields one we weren’t expecting to find.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com