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DeVos: Education secretary could fix problem

For an administration that was supposed to put an end to bureaucratic nonsense and return common sense to government, an example from the U.S. Department of Education last month shows things have gotten off to a confused start. According to a report from the Associated Press, dozens of universities and organizations had their applications for federal grants through the Upward Bound program rejected … because of formatting errors such as incorrect margins, the wrong font or lack of double-spacing.

After shouts from both sides of the aisle over such nitpickery, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said last month that requests for the funding, which is meant to inspire low-income, first-generation and rural students to attend college, will no longer be rejected because of such errors. However, applications that were rejected in March will not be revisited.

Upward Bound serves more than 62,000 high school students around the country; 86 percent of Upward Bound students who graduated from high school in the spring of 2014 enrolled in college that fall.

In the spending bill that Congress passed — and President Donald Trump signed — last week, there was language encouraging the Education Department to reconsider the rejections. Separately, about one-quarter of all senators wrote a letter, as did 30 members of the House, asking DeVos to reverse the rejections.

The grant denials are “a clear example of the harm that results from inflexible, bureaucratic procedures,” and allowing applicants to submit corrected applications “could prevent this absurd result,” the senators wrote.

Meanwhile, the Council for Opportunity in Education says the number of rejections for formatting errors has been many times higher this year than in previous years. In other words, Trump’s Education Department is less flexible, more beholden to bureaucratic micromanagement and less able to use case-by-case common sense than Obama’s.

Surely DeVos will take note of that, and the voices of those asking her to take another look, and ask her department to accept corrected applications.

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