A test for Trump and historically black colleges Presented by Comcast

With help from Mel Leonor and Caitlin Emma

A TEST FOR TRUMP AND HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGES: Today will test the Trump administration’s frayed relationship with historically black colleges and universities, which it has sought to woo. College presidents, deans, professors and board members gather in Washington for the White House Summit on Historically Black Colleges and Universities — a downsized version of the annual conference that some HBCU leaders wanted the administration to postpone all together.


— “This conference is critical for Trump,” said Kenneth Tolson, the president and chief executive officer for the Melvin B. Tolson Foundation and a member of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities’ advisory board. Tolson, a Trump supporter, said he believes the president wants to do right by the schools, though he acknowledged that many in the HBCU community are skeptical.

— The administration has tapped Johnathan Holifield to lead the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Holifield, a former NFL player, is an author, speaker and consultant and the co-founder of ScaleUp Partners, which seeks to “improve the productivity of underserved Americans in today’s Innovation Economy,” according to its website. He also says on his website that he he created Ohio’s "first information technology public school, which became a U.S. Department of Education National Blue Ribbon School" and that he secured a "$5 million appropriation to implement the state’s first STEM education and entrepreneurship program."

— Filling the executive director spot is a big step for the administration. President Donald Trump sought to win over HBCU leaders by signing an executive order in February that moved the federal initiative aimed at boosting the schools from the Education Department to the White House, a move school leaders had hoped would give them better access to the president. But the position has been vacant for months — and some college leaders have started to lose patience with the administration.

— College leaders and some members of Congress, meanwhile, had asked the administration to postpone the annual conference after Trump appeared to equate activists protesting racism in Charlottesville, Va., last month with the white supremacists there (a position he repeated last week). The administration agreed to downsize the conference, scheduling a series of meetings with HBCU leaders at the White House today with an eye toward organizing a full-scale conference later. Despite the change in plans, some HBCU officials and students showed up to an empty conference room in a Crystal City hotel Sunday where the conference had originally been planned to take place.

— Holifield will have his hands full. The summit is an example of the “disarray” around the White House’s HBCU efforts, said Johnny Taylor Jr., the president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which represents 47 public HBCUs. Taylor, who last week called on the White House to postpone the summit, said he will not be attending — largely because it’s unclear what the point of the summit is. Taylor said as of Sunday evening, participants had received little information on what was planned for Monday. “I avoid confusion and this feels quite unplanned and confusing,” Taylor said. He said he talked to four college presidents on Friday who said they were canceling flights. “It’s not a silent protest. It’s like, ‘I have a lot to do and I don’t need to fly to D.C. when it’s not clear what the purpose is,’” Taylor said. “If this is a critical issue for this administration, then the way this has been handled doesn’t give me comfort. … It’s not a good look.”

— Still, Taylor said he’s hopeful things will get back on track now that the White House will have a leader in place for the HBCU initiative: “I’m hoping … once that’s done, we can sit down, buckle down and make this an effective office at the White House.”

— “Moving forward ... the Trump administration will have an opportunity to put our own stamp on the HBCU conference,” a senior administration official said. “Our focus [for] this summit was completely on carrying out the objectives outlined in the executive order. And so unfortunately in the executive order, nowhere does it say, ‘You must party.’ So if their experience is different, it’s only because we're getting down to business, and we're focusing on carrying out exactly what the president said he would do. And so that's what our focus is.”

— Trump is also expected to sign a proclamation declaring this week HBCU Week, and calling on the country to “recognize the extraordinary contributions that HBCUs have made and continue to make to the general welfare and prosperity of our country,” Omarosa Manigault-Newman, an assistant to the president and director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison, said during a call with reporters. Manigault-Newman has led Trump’s outreach efforts to the schools. Also on the agenda are “discussions on HBCU capital financing, improving institutional student outcomes, collaborating with the tech sector, challenges and opportunities in achieving the post-secondary degree attainment goals, and of course the implementation of the executive order on HBCUs that the President signed in February,” Manigault-Newman said.

WELCOME TO THE WORKING WEEK. THIS IS MORNING EDUCATION. I’m still buzzing from Arcade Fire’s very great show in D.C. on Saturday. Tips? Feedback? Let me know: [email protected] or @BenjaminEW. Share event listings: [email protected]. And follow us on Twitter: @Morning_Edu and @POLITICOPro.

#CONCORDIA17: POLITICO is the official media partner of the 2017 Concordia Annual Summit taking place in conjunction with the UN General Assembly in NYC on Sept 18 and 19. Join us in the Big Apple as we host conversations with world leaders, industry experts, current and former heads of states, C-suite executives, and senior Congressional and Administration officials. Don’t miss POLITICO reporters: Bryan Bender, Defense Editor, Jack Blanchard, Editor, Playbook London, Helena Bottemiller Evich, Senior Food and Agriculture Reporter, Michael Crowley, National Security Editor, Susan Glasser, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent & Global POLITICO Host, Nick Juliano, Deputy Energy Editor, Matt Kaminski, Executive Editor, POLITICO Europe, Anna Palmer, Senior Washington Correspondent and co-author of Playbook and Ben White, Chief Economic Correspondent. Register here.

NEW TITLE IX GUIDELINES COMING SOON: The Trump administration plans to issue new Title IX instructions to schools — possibly as soon as this week — as it works to permanently replace Obama-era guidance on dealing with sexual violence and harassment in schools, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the plan. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said earlier this month that she plans to scrap the controversial Obama-era guidance, which told school district, college and university leaders they are required to crack down on sexual harassment and violence under Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination, and laid out specific recommendations about how to do that.

— The new, interim guidelines will be put in place while the department works on official rules through a notice-and-comment process that DeVos announced last week. She described the planned rewrite as an "extended" process in an interview with CBS. It’s unlikely that many schools will change the policies they have in place until the new rules are formally set by the administration.

— The Wall Street Journal reported that the new guidelines will let schools adopt a higher standard of proof in disciplinary hearings than the standard pushed by the Obama-era directive. The lower standard, the “preponderance of evidence” — essentially “more likely than not” — is among the biggest complaints of critics of the guidance.

— DeVos’ plan to rewrite the guidance has drawn strong reactions. Women's groups hailed the Obama administration guidance as a crucial step in cracking down on sexual violence on campuses. But critics said it trampled the rights of the accused. DeVos has said that she aims to balance the rights of sexual assault survivors and the accused. “We are focused on doing what’s right for all students: survivors and everyone involved in the horrible case of sexual assaults,” she said last week during a stop at a private Denver autism center. “And we’re committed to doing what is right for all students.”

BIG ESSA DEADLINE TODAY: Today’s the deadline for nearly three dozen states to submit their plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act to the Education Department for federal review and approval. Sixteen states and D.C. already handed in plans this spring, and all but three — Colorado, Massachusetts and Michigan — have been approved. As DeVos last week embarked on her “Rethink School” tour, the six states she visited were working to finalize their plans. For example, Nebraska submitted its plan to federal officials on Wednesday, just a day before DeVos stopped in Lincoln on her tour.

— A look at Nebraska: The Cornhusker State’s long-term goal is to reduce by 50 percent over 10 years the number of students who aren’t proficient on state tests. A key priority for Nebraska: narrowing achievement gaps. “The goals of this model are meant to be ambitious, yet attainable and would narrow the achievement gaps between historically underserved groups statewide over the next 10 years,” the state says in its plan. How would that look for specific groups of students? When it comes to students with disabilities, for example, Nebraska wants to increase the percentage of students who are proficient on English tests from 50 percent to 75 percent by 2026. In math, that would be an increase from 42 percent to 71 percent.

— Two sets of long-term goals: Nebraska is also proposing a series of “challenge” or “stretch” goals for its school systems. If schools and districts are meeting the state’s 50 percent reduction goal, then Nebraska might swap out its long-term goals for more challenging ones. “These long term goals propose a 70 percent reduction in non-proficiency in five years,” the state says in its plan. “These highly ambitious goals get all student groups to at least 80 percent proficiency by 2021 and above 95 percent proficiency by 2026.”

— Speaking of ESSA: The nonprofits Bellwether Education Partners and the Collaborative for Student Success, which have teamed up to independently review state plans, are adding more reviewers to participate in their process. That includes a mix of former state education chiefs, conservative voices, civil rights advocates and a National Teacher of the Year. More.

SOME STATE CHIEFS SURPRISED BY DEVOS’ TOUR: Two state education commissioners — Kansas’ Randy Watson and Nebraska’s Matthew Blomstedt — say they weren’t the first to hear from DeVos’ office about visits to their states for the secretary’s school tour last week. In Nebraska’s case, Blomstedt got the word from school district officials that DeVos was exploring a visit. His office then called the Education Department to confirm. “It caused some confusion around here,” he told Morning Education in a phone interview. “I admit to calling around and going ‘What’s happening?’” He added that “courtesy-wise, it would’ve been nice” to have more of a heads-up.

— Blomstedt said he confirmed Sept. 11 that DeVos would be making stops in Nebraska on Sept. 13 and 14, and he was able to clear his schedule. “We invited ourselves to the show and they didn’t resist that,” he said. But he added that he has heard some complaints from some school groups and state lawmakers, who are asking why they weren’t included in the visit. With more advance notice, those complaints could’ve been prevented, Blomstedt said.

— That aside, Blomstedt said he was “pleasantly surprised” DeVos’ tour “didn’t seem to have a motivation to steer us in a particular direction, but more so encouraged us to be innovative.” If he had been more in the loop, Blomstedt said his office would’ve suggested sites for DeVos to visit. But the Education Department apparently already had locations in mind and he said he was glad to see the secretary visit Midland University, a nondenominational private school, a Catholic school and a science-focused school in his state.

— Watson, Kansas’ education commissioner, in an email confirmed that he was not contacted about the tour. He added that he didn’t accompany DeVos. When asked if he would’ve preferred more notice, his spokeswoman said, “We choose not to question Secretary DeVos’ travel protocol.” A spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Education said DeVos’ office did reach out to Commissioner Katy Anthes prior to the visit, but Anthes couldn’t attend due to a state board of education meeting.

— Education Department spokeswoman Liz Hill said DeVos’ outreach team got in touch with every state superintendent once the schedule was locked in, though word might have spread earlier when schools were being vetted. The department contacted “every governor, state chief school officer, state board president, and state board executive director. They also invited the local mayor, state senator, state representative, and school superintendent.” In addition, all members of Congress whose districts DeVos visited as well as the senators for each state were invited, Hill said.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

— The Coalition for Community Schools’ new Director Jose Munoz started Sept. 6. Munoz was previously the executive director of the ABC Community Schools Partnership in Albuquerque, N.M.

— EdLeader21 announced new leadership appointments to the advisory committee. Superintendent of Virginia Beach City Public Schools Aaron Spence and Superintendent of Fort Thomas Independent Schools Karen Cheser have been named chair and vice chair, respectively.

SYLLABUS

— Teaching English in the age of Trump: POLITICO.

— Four Boston College students attacked with acid in France: The Boston Globe.

— ‘A weird MIT dorm dies, and a crisis blooms at colleges’: Wired.

— Burlington, Vt., teachers to continue their strike Monday: Burlington Free Press.

— University of Nebraska-Lincoln to join long list of smoke-free colleges: Omaha World-Herald.

— Colleges want to diversify campuses. But their financial aid policies often undermine that goal, UCLA official says: The Washington Post.

— A record number of foreign students are choosing to study in Canada over the U.S.: The Boston Globe.

They're calling at me, "come and follow the Pro Education team." @caitlinzemma ([email protected]), @khefling ([email protected]), @mstratford ([email protected]) and @BenjaminEW ([email protected]).

Follow us on Twitter Jennifer Scholtes @JAscholtes



Michael Stratford @mstratford



Nicole Gaudiano @ngaudiano



Bianca Quilantan @biancaquilan



Juan Perez Jr. @PerezJr