Education

What Hank believes:

• High-quality education (like health care) must be a right of all Americans, not a privilege.
• Chronic underinvestment in education seriously threatens America’s future competitiveness and well-being.
• The single most important investment we can make is in the literacy, aptitude, productivity, and enlightenment of all Americans, young and old.
• We must strive to make college and higher education a possibility for all Americans who are eager to achieve that level of scholarship and post-secondary and training/re-training opportunities available to everyone. 
• Teaching is among the noblest and most essential callings in society and should be rewarded accordingly.
• Massive inequality within our educational system effectively condemns Americans living in poor and under-served communities to economic hardship.

What Hank has done:

• Rep. Johnson Introduces Legislation in October 2021 to Secure Cybersecurity Grants Funding for HBCUs.
• Launched his 2020 AppChallenge competition and application process for Military Academies.
• Cosponsored H.R. 2475, the Rebuild America’s Schools Act of 2017, to allocate federal funds to the improvement of public school infrastructure. 
• Cosponsored H.R. 137, the Stopping Abusive Student Loan Collection Practices in Bankruptcy Act of 2017, to amend title 11 of the United States Code to stop abusive student loan collection practices in bankruptcy cases.
• Cosponsored H.R. 6537, the Education Department Civil Rights Transparency Act, to require the Secretary of Education to annually report on the Federal civil rights violations of educational institutions, and for other purposes.
• Cosponsored H.R. 6525, the Higher Education Dream Act of 2018, To prohibit discrimination in higher education against certain undocumented students on the basis of immigration status, and for other purposes.
• Cosponsored H.R. 6184, the Patsy T. Mink and Louise M. Slaughter Gender Equity in Education Act of 2018, to support educational entities in fully implementing title IX and reducing and preventing sex discrimination in all areas of education.
• Cosponsored H.R. 6137, the Guarantee Access to Arts and Music Education Act of 2018 or the GAAME Act of 2018, to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to expand access to school-wide arts and music programs, and for other purposes.
• Cosponsored H.R. 5814, Educators Expense Deduction Modernization Act, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to increase the deduction for certain expenses of elementary and secondary school teachers.

What Hank will do:

• Work to drive more funding to struggling public schools.
• Work to protect the futures of college students and other post-secondary students who have taken on debt to attend school.
• Support significant increases in funding for public education nationwide, including full funding of neglected No Child Left Behind mandates.
• Continue to insist that teaching is a vital profession and ought to be rewarded with dramatically higher pay; we must make teaching a career that will lure America’s best and brightest.