At the end of January, in his final State of the Union address, President Bush revealed continuing plans for expanding federal funding of private K–12 schooling with the proposal of a $300 million Pell Grant for Kids program. This program, named after the long-running college Pell Grants program, would provide federal grants to low-income families with children in underperforming schools to help send those children to private, faith-based, or higher performing out-of-district public schools.
The president’s call for congressional support immediately raised questions among lawmakers as to whether the proposed funding would be enough for participating low-income parents to avoid having to take on debt from supplemental private student loans or other financial aid resembling student loans.
Pell Grants for Kids vs. College Pell Grants
Presenting the Pell Grants for Kids proposal as a need-based scholarship initiative modeled after the Federal Pell Grant program for college students, the administration uses as one of its selling points the assertion that “the same choice, flexibility, and support now available to students seeking a quality college education should be offered to low-income families with children in chronically low-performing schools.”
College Pell Grants, unlike federal student loans, do not have to be repaid, and are available to low-income undergraduates to apply toward their cost of attendance at any public or private school that participates in the federal student aid programs.
Pell Grants for Kids, like college Pell Grants, would be “gift” money from the government that wouldn’t need to be repaid. In contrast to the college Pell Grant program, however, Pell Grants for Kids would go beyond an evaluation of a student’s financial need to determine eligibility, also taking into account a student’s educational environment.
Students eligible for a Pell Grant for Kids award would be those currently attending a school that has failed to meet the performance standards of the No Child Left Behind Act for five years, or that has a graduation rate of less than 60 percent.
Grants or Vouchers?
The administration seems to be purposefully attempting to associate Pell Grants for Kids with the college Federal Pell Grant program, perhaps in hopes of garnering the broad bipartisan support that college Pell Grants have received.
Detractors, however, argue that the Pell Grants for Kids initiative, unlike the college version, is actually a school voucher program in the guise of a broad-based federal grant program.
Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, the Democratic chairman of the Health, Education, and Labor Committee, has been quick to criticize the proposal, suggesting that there will actually be a negative impact on educational opportunities for the country’s most needy children as more funds are diverted from public schools in the form of vouchers for private school tuition.
“The president didn’t commit the resources to expand educational opportunity,” said Sen. Kennedy. “Instead, on top of the $70 billion shortfall in funding for his own education reforms, he again proposed to siphon scarce resources from our public schools to create new voucher programs.”
Sen. Kennedy’s use of the word “voucher” may be a strategic political move, as the word does not poll well — which supporters of the program know, and which may explain the administration’s emphasis on branding Pell Grants for Kids a “scholarship program.”
On the other hand, Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who aggressively supports the initiative, doesn’t shy away from the characterization of Pell Grants for Kids as a voucher program. Citing the GI Bill, college Pell Grants, and federal student loans as other federal voucher programs that have been “enormously successful,” Sen. Alexander says there’s “every reason to believe the Pell Grants for Kids would be too.”
Pell Grants for Kids Award Amounts
As part of his commitment to the Pell Grants for Kids initiative, Sen. Alexander has proposed his own budget of $15 billion — a figure 50 times higher than the president’s proposal of $300 million.
But even at that higher budget, the program would only be able to offer each of the country’s 30 million low- and middle-income children enrolled in public K–12 schools a $500 annual voucher. President Bush’s plan would offer each of the 15 million low-income children an annual grant of $20.
To be able to offer students an annual grant amount of $2,500, the Pell Grants for Kids program would have to limit its number of recipients to 6 million students under Sen. Alexander’s plan — 20 percent of the total number of the country’s low- and middle-income children currently enrolled in public schools.
Under the president’s plan, the program would only be able to offer a $2,500 annual award to 120,000 students each year — less than 1 percent of the total number of the country’s low-income children currently enrolled in public schools.
K–12 Private Student Loans
With tuition at the nation’s private K–12 schools averaging $4,689 a year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, it seems clear that even a $2,500 Pell Grant won’t, on average, cover the full cost of private tuition for low-income families.
In this respect, Pell Grants for Kids would also resemble college Pell Grants: Federal Pell Grants for college students were capped at $4,310 for the 2007–08 academic year, while average in-state tuition and fees at four-year public colleges for 2007–08 were $6,185, exceeding the max Pell Grant award amount.
In the same way that college students awarded postsecondary Pell Grants must often supplement their grant award with other financial aid, such as work-study and federal student loans, the low-and middle-income families who would qualify for a Pell Grant for Kids may need to turn to other financial aid options to help meet the full cost of private K–12 tuition.
Parents of elementary and high-school students in private programs can generally apply for credit-based K–12 private student loans similar to the private student loans available to undergraduate and graduate students.
However, whereas undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to seek out low-cost federal college loans and graduate student loans before turning to typically higher cost private student loans, there are currently no such K–12 federal student loan programs available as a low-cost alternative to K–12 private loans for families needing to supplement the money they would receive through the Pell Grants for Kids program.
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