I'm in favor of increasing the amount of Pell grant awards. I believe that President Bush is calling for an increase in Pell grant awards for students who plan on studying science, math or technology in college. I do not support that type of plan as the government should do everything possible to allow low income students to have access to a college education of the major of their choice. The worst thing that the government could do is to steer low income students, esepcially those from high schools that did a poor job of preparing them for college, into difficult majors which may lead to these students dropping out of college altogether.
Quote:
Bush Proposes Larger Pell Grants, but With a Catch
Plan would focus $1,000 increase on students in little-known State Scholars program
Map: Showing how President Bush wants to spend $33-million to reward financially needy students in 14 states
Article: U.S. Senate Approves Budget Plan and Drops Disputed Proposal on Pell Grants
By ALYSON KLEIN
Washington
Although President Bush set aside little new money for student aid in his budget proposal for 2005, he did find $45-million for a once-obscure Texas-based program that he hopes will give larger Pell Grants to students who take rigorous courses.
Under the president's proposal, 36,000 financially needy students who participate in the State Scholars program would get up to $1,000 in extra Pell Grant money. Currently the annual maximum Pell Grant is $4,050, an amount that hasn't changed in two years.
The State Scholars program, which operates in 14 states, is intended to help create and promote college-preparatory curriculums in high schools.
"We know that parents and teachers across the country will be encouraging young people to take advantage of this program that rewards hard-working students from low-income families," Secretary of Education Roderick R. Paige said in a statement this month.
The president's idea seems to be catching on among Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, who recently introduced a bill based on the administration's proposal. Republicans in the Senate, too, are pushing to give it a high priority in the proposed budget.
Financial-aid experts say the president's decision to single out the State Scholars program may indicate a move by the administration to introduce a merit-based component to the Pell Grant and provide more money to first-year students. Both ideas have been hotly debated for years. Supporters of a larger Pell Grant for first- and second-year students, an approach called front-loading, say it would encourage more needy students to attend college.
"We want to spend time focusing on academic preparation, trying to get incentives for really good academic preparation so kids get into college and stay," says Sally Stroup, the Education Department's assistant secretary for higher education. Front-loading seemed like a good strategy, she says. "We really wanted to try it, so we tied it to something that we think works, which is the rigorous high-school programs."
But until Mr. Bush included the idea in his State of the Union speech, in January, few college officials knew much about the State Scholars program, which is administered by partnerships between statewide business organizations and local schools. The groups work together to outline a curriculum that includes challenging courses, like physics and foreign languages, in order to prepare students for college and the workplace. While states may vary how the program works, they all start out with the same lesson: Volunteers from local businesses visit eighth-grade classrooms to explain to students that they can improve their career opportunities if they take the required State Scholars courses in high school.
"It creates a brand identity for being prepared," says Drew Scheberle, interim director of the Center for State Scholars, which advises partnerships new to the program. Business leaders are in a unique position to connect academics with the "real world," he says.
Not Statewide Everywhere
Although the State Scholars program operates in 14 states, only Arkansas and Texas run it in nearly every school district. The Bush administration would like to spend $12-million to expand the program to all 50 states within five years, says Richard T. LaPointe, deputy assistant secretary in the Education Department's Office of Vocational and Adult Education. The Center for State Scholars, based in Austin, Tex., would probably be enlisted to help with that expansion.
Some student-aid experts admire the State Scholars program. "If parents and students understand what's required of them for college, they will be in a better position to demand that schools enroll students in courses that will lead them somewhere," says Ann S. Coles, director of the Pathways to College Network, a nonprofit organization that examines ways of improving college access for low-income students. In a recent report on best practices for getting students into college, the organization highlighted the State Scholars program.
State Scholars started in Texas in the late 1980s, when the Eastman Chemical Company, which has a location in Longview, Tex., determined that graduates of the local public-school system were poorly prepared for the workplace. They cooperated with educators to create a program that became the model for State Scholars.
A few college lobbyists wonder whether President Bush, a former governor of Texas, chose to highlight the State Scholars program primarily because of its ties to his state. Indeed, several members of the board that oversees the Center for State Scholars have donated large sums of money to the president's campaign and to Republicans in general.
Eastman executives, including the chief executive officer, J. Brian Ferguson -- who is chairman of the Center for State Scholars' board -- have donated $9,000 to Mr. Bush's re-election campaign. In 2001 and 2002, Eastman donated $62,500 in soft money to Republicans and none to Democrats. Another board member, Robert Mosbacher, who was Secretary of Commerce under President George H.W. Bush, donated $18,000 in soft money in 2001 and 2002 to Republicans and none to Democrats. "Soft money" contributions -- unregulated contributions to political parties by corporations, unions, and wealthy individuals -- were outlawed by campaign-finance reform in 2002.
But Mr. LaPointe, of the Education Department, says politics had nothing to do with choosing to use the State Scholars program to help deliver the larger Pell Grants. "This program was singled out because of its great success," he says. "It's relatively small, but it's had a significant impact in the places where it's been implemented."
Led by Businesses
State Scholars efforts within a state are led primarily by businesses there.
"We are not trying to dictate how the program will be run," says Mr. Scheberle, at the Austin center. "We want to make sure state partners feel ownership of it."
The Bush administration's expansion proposal, though designed to encourage more states to join in, maintains the voluntary model. That's a problem for students in states where some schools may not adopt the program, financial-aid administrators say.
"What concerns me is that you could have two students attending different high schools and taking exactly the same courses, but because one student goes to a participating high school that is designated for State Scholars, they'll be eligible for that extra thousand," says Patricia S. Grimes, a research analyst with Minnesota Higher Education Services. "As this stuff gets publicity, students are going to think they're eligible for an enhanced Pell Grant and not understand that they don't go to the right high school."
Although Thomas J. Kane, a professor of policy studies and economics at the University of California at Los Angeles, likes the idea of encouraging students to take more-challenging courses, he observes that "kids who are more likely to be college-bound may be taking this curriculum anyway."
As a result, he says, data on the Web site of the State Scholars program showing that students in Texas who take the prescribed courses are more likely to attend college may be "overstating" the program's effect.
What's more, students who take college-preparatory courses are usually seeking four-year degrees, while about half of all Pell Grant recipients attend community or vocational colleges, says Donald E. Heller, a professor of education at Pennsylvania State University's Center for the Study for Higher Education.
"This is a little bit of a one-size-fits-all solution," he says, arguing that not all students "necessarily need two years of foreign language to be successful." School districts, he says, should be careful about sending a message to students that "if you don't do this, you can't go to college."
Concerns About Front-Loading
Experts also worry about the implications of giving bigger Pell Grants to first- and second-year students. That policy, which Mr. Bush supports, traditionally has met with resistance from higher-education officials.
Given budget shortfalls in the Pell Grant program, front-loading grants would probably mean diverting aid from juniors and seniors, says Brian K. Fitzgerald, staff director of the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, which counsels Congress on student-aid issues. "One of the problems we identified in our studies," he says, "is that inadequate aid can increase financial pressures on these students and lead them to drop out."
UCLA's Mr. Kane, a proponent of front-loading, says he is uncertain whether this program is the best test for it. "The whole idea behind front-loading is to target more kids who would not have been going to college anyway," he says. "Making it contingent on these course requirements seems to counteract that a little bit."
There is support for the concept of front-loading, however, among lawmakers on the Congressional committee responsible for crafting legislation to renew the Higher Education Act, which governs federal financial-aid programs.
In particular, Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon, the California Republican in charge of the subcommittee that is writing the House version of the legislation, has expressed interest in adding front-loaded Pell Grants to the legislation, although it is unclear whether that would be accomplished through the State Scholars program, says Alexa Marrero, a spokeswoman for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Two of Mr. McKeon's Republican colleagues on the committee, Reps. Ric Keller, of Florida, and Max Burns, of Georgia, have introduced legislation based on the president's proposal, aiming to make State Scholars part of the Higher Education Act. In the Senate, Jim Bunning, a Republican from Kentucky, got the Budget Committee to include the president's proposal in a budget resolution that the Senate approved this month.
Despite the gathering enthusiasm for a proposal that most of them dislike, most higher-education lobbyists say they are unsure of how vigorously they will oppose State Scholars, considering the relatively small sums involved.
"I think we'll be trying to engage discussion about the dismerits of tying this to the Pell Grant program, given the tremendous budget challenges we have for the Pell," says Cynthia A. Littlefield, director of federal relations for the association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. "Combining merit-based aid with need-based aid is not what the Pell Grant program was intended to do."
State Scholars "should be piloted separately from the Pell Grant program," especially since so few students can take advantage of it for now, says Sarah A. Flanagan, vice president for governmental relations at the National Association of Independent Colleges.
"You have to do it right," she says, "and do it in a way that doesn't hurt the other people you're trying to serve."
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EXPANDING THE PELL GRANT -- FOR SOME
President Bush wants to spend $33-million in 2005 to reward financially needy students who take specific college-preparatory courses in high school with an additional $1,000 per student in Pell Grants. Students eligible to receive the money must take part in State Scholars programs, which are offered in only 14 states.
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"If you have the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed." -- David Viscott
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04-25-2004, 05:58 PM
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