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President Obama’s Legacy—What Will Remain Of It?

By ASBO USA posted 01-12-2017 10:21

  

Now that we are less than 10 days out from Inauguration Day to swear in the next president, and President Barack Obama gave his farewell speech last night, it’s worth looking back at what Obama achieved during his presidency. What Obama Administration policies will remain under President-elect Donald Trump's leadership? What laws or regulations will be overturned? Let’s look at education and healthcare in particular, as these will have the greatest implications for K–12 school districts.

Obama’s Education Legacy
Last week, Education Secretary John King sent his Cabinet exit memo to President Obama, emphasizing everything that he and the Department of Education had accomplished under Obama’s leadership. The memo included a range of achievements, from “the best high school graduation rate in history” and “greater access to preschool,” to “more rigorous academic standards and better tests.” The exit memo, entitled “Giving Every Student a Fair Shot” outlines progress in education under the Obama Administration’s education agenda, from preschool through college education, during the last eight years. Here are some of the highlights King mentioned with regard to K–12 education.

  • High school graduation rates reached a record high, at approximately 83%. Dropout rates fell to historic lows, from 3 million students (ages 16–24) in 2009 to 2.5 million students in 2014.
    • In 2008, 1,800 “dropout factories” (schools with high dropout rates) were identified; the Obama Administration focused on supporting these schools and worked with their states to reduce the number by half.

  • The Obama Administration created the Race to the Top grant competition in 2009 to support states and schools with adopting education reforms to “better align teaching and learning” to higher academic standards and better assessments across the U.S.

  • The Administration also launched the Investing in Innovation (i3) program in 2009 to support school district and nonprofit educational projects “designed to improve literacy, support rural education, enhance science instructions, and more” and improve student achievement.

  • President Obama prioritized reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and laid out a blueprint to update the law in 2010. He asked the Department of Education (ED) to move forward with a waiver process to allow states flexibility from some of No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB) more burdensome provisions, then signed the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) law to update ESEA/NCLB in 2015.

  • President Obama also prioritized connecting schools to high-speed broadband via the ConnectED initiative. “Today, 20 million more students are connect and the nation is on track to meet the President’s goal” of connecting 99% of students to high-speed Internet by 2018.

  • ED invested more than $3 billion in competitive grants to help “develop educator talent and support teachers and school leaders in high-needs districts” via the Teacher and School Leader Incentive and Teach to Lead programs.


For more information about President Obama’s education legacy, including the role he played in supporting low-income and at-risk students, protecting students’ civil rights, promoting universal PreK and higher education access, and other education initiatives, read the full memo. In the meantime, let’s turn to his healthcare record. 


Obama’s Healthcare Legacy
Last week, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Sylvia Burwell also delivered her Cabinet exit memo to President Obama. Like ED Secretary King’s memo, it outlines all progress that she and her department made during Obama’s two-term presidency. Burwell’s memo includes all the challenges and accomplishments that HHS has faced, from public health crises (e.g., H1N1, the opioid crisis, and the Ebola and Zika viruses) to expanding healthcare access to Americans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Here are highlights regarding President Obama’s landmark healthcare law.

  • 20 million more Americans have healthcare insurance coverage due to ACA provisions, including Medicaid expansions, ACA Marketplaces, and a provision “allowing young adults to stay on their parent’s plan until they turn 26.

  • Thanks to the ACA, uninsured rates have reached an historic low and “no American can be denied health coverage because of a pre-existing condition.” Also, more Americans can get preventive health services without a copayment, and no insurers can impose annual/lifetime dollar limits on coverage.

  • 157 million Americans have employer-covered health insurance. Family premiums have grown, on average, 4.7% since 2010, which is down from an average of 8% over the previous decade. “The average family saved $3,600 in premiums in 2016 compared to if trends before the ACA had continued.”

In addition, the memo notes HHS’ and President Obama’s role in updating the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which served as the foundation for school nutrition standards required under the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. It also mentioned HHS’ role in implementing some of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s (ARRA) programs to “jumpstart the economy” after the Great Recession. “HHS awarded more than $150 billion to help stabilize state budget and maintain health care services for struggling families; expand child care services and Head Start, while improving quality; support state efforts that created subsidized jobs for low-income parents and disconnected youth” and more. Read the full memo to learn more about Obama’s healthcare legacy.


What Will Remain?
Once President-elect Trump takes over the Oval Office, many policy analysts and K–12 stakeholders are wondering what he will do to maintain or overturn President Obama’s education and healthcare policies. Regarding K–12 education policy changes, a lot will depend on the 115th Congress’ and next ED Secretary’s priorities rather than on Trump’s. The President-elect has made it clear that he opposes Common Core academic standards and supports school choice, but he hasn’t made K–12 education a major policy priority in the way that he has emphasized healthcare and tax reform. Various media outlets predict that Congressional Republicans and Trump’s selection for ED Secretary Betsy DeVos will focus on the following education issues:

  • Monitoring ED’s approach to implementing ESSA and rolling back regulations as necessary.

  • Scaling back ED’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and other programs.

  • Reauthorizing the Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship private school voucher program.

  • Reauthorizing the Perkins Career and Technical Education (CTE) law.

  • Expanding 529 tax-free savings plans, federal tax credit scholarships, military student scholarships, and education savings accounts for Native American students, and increasing funding for federal charter and school choice programs.

  • Creating funding portability programs for special education, Title I, and other federal programs.


Trump and his fellow Republicans are expected to seek a smaller federal role in education, especially by rolling back Obama Administration guidance. This includes OCR’s interpretation of Title IX law for students’ civil rights and ED’s burdensome ESSA rules. Congress likely will try to repeal ESSA rules on Title I supplement-not-supplant funding, teacher preparation provisions, and accountability systems. The Obama Administration supported expanding federal support for school choice programs to a certain extent, but Trump and DeVos likely will take that direction to the extreme. CTE was a bipartisan issue that failed to be reauthorized under Obama, so it is possible that the Trump Administration would try to finish this task.

As for healthcare, Trump and Congressional Republicans have been incredibly outspoken about repealing the ACA law. ACA repeal is a major focus for the Trump Administration’s first 100 days and Republicans are seeking to defund major provisions of the law (effectively rendering it useless) via the federal budgetary process. Despite emphasizing ACA repeal, the GOP is still mixed on how to replace the healthcare law and when to do so. While Congress is willing to implement a transition period for replacing the ACA anywhere from two to four years, Trump wants a repeal-and-replace plan to occur simultaneously, if not only a few weeks later. We will have to wait and see how everything unfolds, but it would not be surprising to see major policy changes as soon as February. 

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