Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a blow to the hopes of tens of millions of students and former students hoping to have their college loans cancelled or reduced when the court rejected President Biden’s debt relief program.

In this episode of Sparking Equity, Lande Ajose, managing director of the Waverley Street Foundation and a champion of college access for all, talks with students about how college debt can have an impact on major life decisions.

But all is not lost. President Biden has finalized his new SAVE program that will provide ongoing relief to students who take out loans linked to how much money they earn after college. And in a series of little noticed initiatives, his administration has already cancelled the loans of 3.6 million students totaling $127 billion.  

The key, however, is to limit the loans students take out in the first place.   To that end, we talk with Dr.  Jhenai Chandler of The Institute for College Access and Success and Aneesh Sohoni of One Million Degrees in Chicago, about an exciting approach called “comprehensive approaches to student success,” or CASS.  Implemented in a growing number of places, it provides comprehensive support to students to help them reach their academic goals more effectively and thus limit the debt they take on. 

Finally, Cody Hounanian of the Student Debt Crisis Center encourages students to make their voices heard in the federal rule making process initiated by Pres. Biden to put in place a new debt relief plan, this time under a different law from the one the Supreme Court objected to.  

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Over many decades, the school curriculum has been whittled down to focus on core academic subjects, often at the expense of arts and music education. 

The shift has been most pronounced in schools serving low-income students and students of color.

In this pilot episode, education leader Pedro Noguera, Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education, makes the case for a robust arts and music curriculum. He talks to renowned actor John Lithgow and "Hamilton" star Daveed Diggs  about the impact arts education had on them. And he discusses California's Proposition 28 with former Los Angeles Unified  Superintendent Austin Beutner, the driving force behind it. 

Veteran journalist and former EdSource Executive Director  Louis Freedberg profiles ArtistYear, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit which places artists in schools for a year through the AmeriCorps program. 

Sign up here so we can keep you posted on future podcasts on how education leaders are responding to the mounting threats against public schools In the United States.