Education

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) will introduce the Love America Act, new legislation to promote patriotism in education and fight back against the spread of anti-American, critical race theory classes in K-12 education. Senator Hawley’s bill would require all schools and school districts that receive federal funding to ensure students are able to read and recite America’s founding documents and bar federal funding from schools that teach those documents are the products of white supremacy or racism.

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) joined Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) in introducing the Transparency for Confucius Institutes Act. The Transparency for Confucius Institutes Act amends the Higher Education Act of 1965 to require program participation agreements between the CCP agency which administers educational programs, known as the Hanban, and American institutions to address the ways in which Beijing exerts undue influence through Confucius Institutes.

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced an amendment to Congress’s proposed budget resolution that would restrict federal relief funds from schools that are refusing to reopen. Recent studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found schools operating in-person have seen negligible spread of the coronavirus yet many schools across the country refuse to reopen, to detriment of parents and children.

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) will introduce the Helping Parents During COVID Act of 2020 to provide immediate financial relief for working families whose children’s education has been disrupted by the pandemic. Senator Hawley’s bill would provide these working families $1,200 in direct cash assistance per month every month through June 2021 to help cover lost work shifts or wages. This bill will also create a fully-refundable tax credit of $800 per child to reimburse parents for the costs of education expenses.

Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) released a video commencement address for the College of the Ozarks and the Class of 2020. Senator Hawley was scheduled to give the commencement address to College of the Ozarks’ Class of 2020 today. Due to commencement being cancelled, Senator Hawley released a video for the students.

U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have cosponsored Senator Josh Hawley’s (R-Mo.) bill to prohibit universities from receiving Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds from the CARES Act if they have an endowment larger than $10 billion, unless they first spend some of their own money on coronavirus-related financial assistance for students. Representatives Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Ben Cline (R-Va.) are introducing companion legislation in the House.

“It has been brought to our attention that federal work-study students are counted in some cases as employees for purposes of PPP. While the CARES Act defines the term ‘employee’ to include ‘individuals employed on a full-time, part-time, or other basis,’ congressional intent is to stabilize small businesses and non-profits in order to incentivize keeping employees on their employers’ payroll. This purpose is distinct from that of the federal work-study program, and including those students in the PPP employee count is not congressional intent,” the senators wrote. “Please use your statutory authority to ensure that institutions of higher education with less than 500 full time employees can use the resources Congress provided to them to weather the coronavirus pandemic. In our state, many of these institutions are faith-based colleges and universities, and they are vital to the Missouri economy.”

Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) announced legislation to prohibit universities from receiving Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds from the CARES Act if they have an endowment larger than $10 billion, unless they first spend some of their own money on coronavirus-related financial assistance for students. Under the proposal, universities with over $10 billion in endowments would have to spend 10 times the amount appropriated to them according to the formula in the CARES Act to be...

Senator Hawley said, “For decades, Americans have been told that you have to go to college to get a good job. But, in more and more places, college costs a fortune. And college degrees are no longer a guarantee of a good job. “American students and workers need more pathways into the middle class, more opportunities to get good work and build bright futures. And they shouldn’t have to further enrich colleges by taking on a mountain of debt or mortgage their lives in order to get a good-paying job.