No more FAFSA mandate: Kansas cuts new high school graduation requirement
The Kansas State Board of Education on Tuesday voted 8-2 to repeal the new requirement that high school students completed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.
The FAFSA requirement was added in May 2024 as part of a slate of changes to high school graduation requirements. Those changes were the culmination of years of work to update the minimum graduation requirements for the first time in two decades.
But the FAFSA requirement caused consternation among some board members as well as lawmakers on an oversight committee, and the board decided in July to backtrack. Due to the slow speed of the regulatory process, it took until now to formally repeal it.
R. Scott Gordon, general counsel for the Kansas State Department of Education, said public comment during the regulatory process was universally opposed to the FAFSA requirement.
"It was attached to graduation, to a diploma, and that was not OK for me," said board chair Cathy Hopkins, R-Hays. "Should schools be putting it out there? Absolutely, 100%. Everybody needs to know what's available to them. ... I just don't think it should be a requirement to graduate."
Board member Jim Porter, R-Fredonia, was one of the two no votes. He said he had concerns about the FAFSA requirement but had supported it because there were safeguards.
"The fact is we have people that believe that we are emphasizing non-college over college, and it's not a zero-sum game," Porter said. "I believe that we're emphasizing both, and I think that removing the FAFSA sort of plays into that scenario. I believe there will be many first-generation students that won't know what their options that would probably have more options had they gone through that process."
The graduation requirement had mandated that every student fill out a FAFSA, starting with this academic year's freshman class, unless their parent opted them out or their superintendent exempts them. Educators said the intent was to get students to take advantage of federal financial aid that they may not have known they qualified for had they not applied.
Opponents of the idea had suggested that parents shouldn't have to submit information to the federal government, that schools shouldn't have data on whether students completed a FAFSA, that it places a burden on students and families and that it's not an appropriate thing to have as a graduation requirement.
State education officials have said they will look to accomplish the goal in a different way, such as through the accreditation process.
Jason Alatidd is a Statehouse reporter for The Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached by email at jalatidd@gannett.com. Follow him on X @Jason_Alatidd.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas repeals new FAFSA requirement for high school graduation
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
5 hours ago
- USA Today
Trump mum on Ghislaine Maxwell pardon, says he never went to Epstein's island
President Donald Trump said that while he is 'allowed' pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, a key associate of Jeffrey Epstein who's serving a 20-year sentence on sexual abuse charges, no one has asked him about it, and it would be 'inappropriate' to discuss it. Trump made the remarks, which appear to be some of his most extensive to date on Maxwell, during questioning by reporters on July 28 at his Trump Turnberry golf club in Scotland while meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. A reporter asked Trump whether he would 'ever consider' a pardon for Maxwell, who met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche for two days last week to answer questions about Epstein. Critics have said the meetings with Blanche, Trump's former personal defense lawyer, were part of a White House effort to quell the backlash over the administration's handling of thousands of Epstein-related files in its possession. 'Well, I'm allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody's approached me with it. Nobody's asked me about it,' Trump said. 'It's in the news about that, that aspect of it, but right now, it would be inappropriate to talk about it.' More: How Trump and 'terrific guy' Jeffrey Epstein's party boy friendship ended badly Trump on July 28 also hit back at a question about whether his attorney general, Pam Bondi, has told him his name is mentioned in the federal government's Epstein files, as the Wall Street Journal reported last week. 'I haven't been overly interested in it,' Trump said. 'It's a hoax that's been built up way beyond proportion.' Trump then suggested without evidence that former President Joe Biden, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Merrick Garland could have put fake and incriminating material about him into the files. 'I can say this. Those files were run by the worst scum on Earth. They were run by Comey, they were run by Garland, they were run by Biden and all of the people that actually ran the government, including the autopen' during the Biden administration, Trump said. 'Those files were run for four years by those people. If they had anything (on Trump), I assume they would have released it.' The president dismissed another Wall Street Journal report that said he drew a picture of a nude woman decades ago as part of a lewd birthday letter for Epstein when they were close friends. It was part of a book compiled by Maxwell that included contributions from other high-profile people including former President Bill Clinton, the Journal reported. More: Ghislaine Maxwell lawyer says he hopes President Trump pardons her 'In one of my very good moments, I turned it down' Trump in Scotland also categorically denied that he'd ever been to Epstein's Caribbean island where sex trafficking of young girls allegedly occurred. 'I never had the privilege of going to his island, and I did turn it down, but a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island," Trump said. 'In one of my very good moments, I turned it down. I didn't want to go to his island.' Trump also offered an explanation for why he broke off his friendship with Epstein after the two were close friends for many years. 'I wouldn't talk to Jeffrey Epstein because he did something that was inappropriate. … He stole people that worked for me. I said, 'Don't ever do that again.' He did it again, and I threw him out of the place,' Trump said, in reference to his Mar-a-Lago club and residence. 'Persona non grata,' Trump added. 'We haven't spoken to the president,' Maxwell's lawyer says Trump's comments three days after Maxwell's lawyer said July 25 that he is hoping Trump pardons the former British socialite for sex trafficking crimes she was convicted of in connection with the disgraced financier, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on related charges. David Markus spoke to reporters after his client's second day of interviews with Blanche in Tallahassee, Florida, near where Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for trafficking a minor to Epstein for sexual abuse. Asked about Trump's comments earlier in the day about a potential pardon, Markus told reporters, "We haven't spoken to the president or anybody about a pardon just yet.' But, Markus said, 'The president this morning said he had the power to do so. We hope he exercises that power in the right and just way." When Trump was asked last week if he had already considered pardoning Maxwell, he said no. "I'm allowed to do it, but it's something I have not thought about," Trump told reporters. "I certainly can't talk about pardons now." Maxwell's meetings with Blanche, the No. 2 official in the Justice Department, came amid calls from the public and a bipartisan group of lawmakers for DOJ to release more information it has in its possession about Epstein's clients. The public outcry was prompted by announcements by the Justice Department and FBI earlier this month that they won't be releasing their Epstein-related files, despite promising to do so. Pressure has mounted since then for the administration to reconsider, including from members of Trump's own base who were bitterly disappointed by the announcement. That was especially the case after the Wall Street Journal report that Bondi notified Trump in May that his name had appeared 'multiple times' in the files. The president sued the newspaper for defamation for reporting that he wrote the birthday message for Epstein.
Wall Street Journal
9 hours ago
- Wall Street Journal
Listen: The Ins and Outs of Trump's New Tariff Regime
The deadline for a host of countries to clinch trade agreements has passed, and President Trump raises tariffs on virtually every trading partner, including 35% on Canada. Markets have dropped on the news. We speak to reporters across our global newsroom including Journal finance editor Alex Frangos to unpack how the new trade order impacts countries, consumers and the markets. 🎧 Listen to the latest episode of the What's News podcast here.
Vox
9 hours ago
- Vox
5 reasons Democrats are in good shape — and 2 reasons they're in deep trouble
is a senior correspondent at Vox. He covers a wide range of political and policy issues with a special focus on questions that internally divide the American left and right. Before coming to Vox in 2024, he wrote a column on politics and economics for New York Magazine. A delegate wears a donkey hat during the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, on Aug. 22, 2024. Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images The Democratic Party's approval rating is at its lowest point in at least 35 years, according to a Wall Street Journal poll released last week. In that survey, 63 percent of voters expressed an unfavorable view of the Democrats, while just 33 percent voiced a positive one. By contrast, voters disapproved of Congressional Republicans by only 11 points. These dismal figures are broadly consistent with other recent polling: In RealClearPolitics's average of recent surveys, voters disapprove of the Democratic Party by a 59.3 to 36.3 margin. What's more, Democrats don't just have a lower favorability rating than Republicans, but also command less trust on the public's top issues. In the Journal's poll, voters disapproved of Trump's management of the economy, tariffs, inflation, foreign policy, and immigrant deportations. And yet, they said that they trusted Republicans to handle all of those matters better than Democrats would. Of the 10 issues raised in the survey, voters favored Democrats on only two — health care and vaccine policy. These grim data points have spurred some handwringing in blue America. But just how dire is the Democrats' predicament? Is the party temporarily tainted with the stink of last year's defeat — and poised to rally back into power, just as it did after losing in 2004 and 2016? Or is the better precedent for the party's current position 1981, when the party began a 12-year struggle to escape the shadow of a failed presidency? Only prophets can answer such questions with certainty. In my own view, though, two things are true: • The Democrats' putrid approval numbers paint a misleadingly bleak picture of its current standing. • The party is in much worse shape than it was eight years ago, and will likely struggle to secure full control of the federal government any time soon. Below, I'll detail five reasons for believing that first point, and two for accepting the second one. This story was first featured in The Rebuild. Sign up here for more stories on the lessons liberals should take away from their election defeat — and a closer look at where they should go next. From senior correspondent Eric Levitz. Why Democrats might not be in disarray 1. Disaffected, but loyal, Democrats are driving down their party's approval rating In the Journal's poll, the GOP's net-favorability rating is 19 points higher than the Democratic Party's. And yet, in that same survey, voters say that they would prefer a Democratic Congress to a Republican one by a 3-point margin. This seems odd. Voters disapprove of Democrats by a much larger margin than they disapprove of Republicans. Yet a plurality nonetheless say they would vote for the former party over the latter one. As polling analysts G. Elliott Morris and Mary Radcliffe observe, there is only one explanation for this: Unhappy — but loyal — Democratic voters are driving down their party's favorability rating. This interpretation is consistent with polling from YouGov and The Economist, which finds that only 74 percent of Democratic voters approve of congressional Democrats, while 22.6 percent disapprove. By contrast, 88.9 percent of Republican voters approve of their party's congressional causes, while just 8.3 percent disapprove. Partisans often disapprove of their own parties when they suffer defeat. Republicans had abysmal approval numbers in 2009, yet stomped to a historic midterm victory the following year. And that turnaround was not an aberration: According to Morris and Radcliffe, historically, there is no correlation between how well a party performs in favorability polls taken this far from Election Day and how well they ultimately do at the ballot box. It's unlikely that the Democrats' plummeting popularity is entirely attributable to the disaffection of its own base. The GOP's trust advantage on various issues suggests a broader problem. Nonetheless, the Democratic Party is (almost certainly) in better shape than its approval rating would suggest. 2. Trump is more unpopular than Biden was at this point in his presidency The president's approval rating is among the best predictors of an opposition party's midterm success. And Donald Trump has rapidly squandered the American public's goodwill. When Trump came into office, voters approved of him by an 11.6 margin, according to Nate Silver's polling average. Now, they disapprove of the president by 8.8 points. For context, at this point in Joe Biden's presidency, the public still approved of the Democrat by more than 7 points. And although Trump's approval is unlikely to collapse to the extraordinary degree that Biden's did, there's reason for thinking it will follow the same trajectory. Namely: 3. Americans will likely feel the full impact of Trump's tariffs next year Thus far, the economic impacts of Trump's tariffs have been fairly modest. Those duties have pushed up consumer prices and likely slowed economic growth. But they haven't triggered inflation akin to that which America witnessed in 2022, let alone a stagflationary crisis. This is partly because Trump walked back his most radical tariff proposals. Yet the president's trade restrictions remain extraordinarily expansive, outstripping what many deemed the worst-case scenario during campaign season. According to Yale's Budget Lab, America's average effective tariff rate sits at 20.2 percent, its highest level since 1911. And Trump's current tariffs are poised to cost US households an average of $2,700 in annual income. Americans are not yet paying the full price of Trump's trade policy. The US government has yet to begin collecting tariffs on many foreign countries. And American retailers loaded up on foreign goods earlier this year to get ahead of the president's trade duties. But as America ramps up its tariff collection regime — and companies draw down their inventories — consumer prices will rise. Preston Caldwell, chief US economist for Morningstar, recently told Vox that he expects inflation to peak in 2026, when voters will be heading to the polls. 4. Democrats dominated the most recent high-profile, swing-state election Since Trump's conquest of the GOP in 2016, Democrats have gained ground with highly politically engaged voters, and lost support among less-engaged ones. This trade didn't work out very well in the high-turnout environment of 2024. But the fact that Democratic voters are now disproportionately 'reliable' — which is to say, disproportionately likely to cast a ballot in every election — may help them in the 2026 midterms, when overall turnout is sure to be lower. And the results of this year's Supreme Court election in Wisconsin lend credence to this view. That contest was the one 2025 race that 1) pit a Democrat against a Republican, 2) took place in a swing state, and 3) galvanized national attention. And the Democrat won 10 points, outperforming her standing in the polls. 5. Democrats' best issue is gaining salience, while their worst issue is losing it Finally, the American electorate's top concerns have been shifting, in ways that are potentially beneficial for Democrats. For years, Republicans have enjoyed an advantage over Democrats on immigration. And the Journal's poll shows that voters still trust the GOP to better manage illegal immigration by a margin of 17 points. But Americans are also much less worried about that issue than they were a year ago. In Gallup's polling, the share of voters who say they worry 'a great deal' about illegal immigration has fallen from 48 percent in 2024 to 40 percent this April. A more recent Gallup survey showed that the percentage of Americans who want immigration reduced has fallen from 55 percent last year to 30 percent today. Meanwhile, the share of Americans who worry 'a great deal' about health care — perennially, one of the Democratic Party's strongest issues — rose from 51 percent to 59 percent in April. And that was before the GOP enacted sweeping cuts to Medicaid funding. Two causes for concern 1. Democrats are in much worse shape than they were in 2017. All this said, there's still reason to fear for the Democrats' future. For one thing, the party is much weaker than it was at this point in Trump's first term. Eight years ago, voters said they favored a Democratic Congress over a Republican one by roughly 8 points (compared to just 3 points today). Since 2018, the share of Americans who identify with the Democratic Party has also fallen sharply. Seven years ago, 50 percent of Americans said they supported (or leaned toward) the Democrats, while 42 percent said the same of Republicans, in Pew Research's polling. Today, 46 percent support the GOP while 45 percent back the Democrats. Opposition parties almost always gain House seats in midterm elections. And since the Republican House majority is small, Democrats are heavily favored to retake the chamber next year. But current polling suggests that the party's gains will be meager. And in 2028, for the first time in more than a decade, the Republican Party will not be led by Donald Trump. If the GOP retains its advantage on the economy — while shedding its exceptionally undisciplined and scandal-plagued standard-bearer — the party could become even more formidable. This is a very speculative concern, to be sure. But it's worth entertaining the possibility that Democrats' current position is more analogous to its predicament in 1981 — when Jimmy Carter's defeat was followed by 12 years of Republican presidential rule — than in 2017. The previous two times that Democrats lost control of the White House — in 2000 and 2016 — the party's outgoing president had been reasonably well-liked. Bill Clinton had earned a reputation for skillful economic management, thanks to the late 1990s economic expansion. Barack Obama was a singularly magnetic figure, and the US enjoyed relatively low unemployment and inflation in 2016. Both Clinton and Obama's successors won the popular vote in their respective elections, despite the fact that they each were conspicuously uncharismatic. Their losses could therefore be fairly easily dismissed as the consequence of easily reversible tactical errors. By contrast, presiding over post-COVID inflation rendered Biden historically unpopular while devastating the Democrats' credibility on economic management. Related The Democratic Party is ripe for a takeover 2. The party has long odds of winning the Senate anytime soon The Democrats' biggest political problem, however, lies in the Senate. The party's prospects for securing control of Congress's upper chamber — either next year, or in 2028 — look poor. Democrats need to gain four seats to win a Senate majority in 2026. Yet next year's map features no easy targets. The party's best pickup opportunity lies in Maine, a state that Kamala Harris won comfortably in 2024. But that state's incumbent Republican senator, Susan Collins, won reelection by 8.6 points in 2020, even as the national political environment leaned towards Democrats. Her defeat next year is far from assured. After defeating Collins, Democrats' next-best hope for growing their Senate caucus is winning the open seat in North Carolina, a state that backed Donald Trump all three times he was on the ballot, most recently by 3 points. If the party manages to beat Collins and win over the Tarheel State, they would still need to win races in Ohio and Iowa — or else, in places that are even more Republican — to eke out a bare majority in the Senate. Even winning control of the Senate by 2029 would require extraordinary electoral feats. The most plausible path here would involve Democrats beating Collins, winning a race in North Carolina, flipping a Wisconsin Senate seat in 2028, and taking back the presidency that same year (since the vice president breaks all ties in the Senate, Democrats would only need to flip three seats to boast a working majority in 2029, provided that they control the White House). And yet, this path only works if Democratic Senate incumbents also win reelection in every swing state race between now and 2029: Specifically, Democrats would need to win two races in Georgia, one in Pennsylvania, one in Michigan, and one in Arizona. This is conceivable. But it is not especially likely. The fundamental problem facing Democrats is that only 19 states voted for their party in each of the last three federal elections, while 25 US states backed Trump all three times. Put differently, the median US state is more right-wing than America as a whole. In practice, this means that — to win a Senate majority — Democrats don't merely need to beat Republicans nationally, but to do so by a hefty margin. For context, in 2018, Democrats won the House popular vote by 8.6 points and still lost Senate seats. In the US, midterms usually witness backlashes against the president's party. But Democrats need more than an ordinary midterm backlash to put themselves on pace to win the Senate by 2029. And without a Senate majority, Democrats that year would be unable to pass partisan legislation or appoint liberal Supreme Court justices, even if they did manage to win the presidency. Democrats might not need to become drastically more popular to win back the House. But to actually run the federal government, they likely need to make their party more broadly appealing than it was eight years ago. This makes their historically low approval rating more than a little alarming.
