Federal Policy

Senate FY13 Labor HHS Bill Would Partially Restore Pell Grant Eligibility for “Ability to Benefit” Students

/ The Old Crank

The Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (Labor-HHS-ED) Fiscal Year 2013 appropriations bill, (S. 3295), which was approved Thursday, contained a little piece of good news for adult education in the form of an amendment included in the bill by Senator Murray (D-Wash) that would restore Title IV federal student aid eligibility (most importantly, Pell grant eligibility) for “ability-to-benefit” (ATB) students. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of Fiscal Year 2012, (that is, the FY 2012 Federal budget bill), passed back in December 2011, barred individuals without a high school diploma or equivalent from qualifying for this financial aid. In the past, these students could qualify by completing an “ability to benefit” test or by successfully completing six credits towards a certificate or degree.

This eligibility is scheduled to end for all students enrolling in college after July 1st.

Senator Murray’s amendment would not restore Title IV financial aid eligibility for all students, only those enrolled in very rigidly defined career pathways programs. The language in the bill basically mirror previous ATB eligibility requirements but then applies it only to those students enrolled in an “eligible career pathway program.” (See page 133 of the bill.)

In essence, Murray’s amendment protects financial aid eligibility for students enrolled in established programs such as Minnesota’s FastTRAC, Wisconsin’s RISE parternship, and Washington State’s I-BEST program. These programs—especially I-BEST—are the most oft-cited adult education models on Capital Hill. (If there is one thing that Congressional staffers and others policymakers with little knowledge of adult education may have heard of, it would likely be I-BEST.) In addition to the states where these programs are established, groups such as CLASP and Jobs for the Future are highly invested in these models, and those organizations are among the most visible adult education advocates on the Hill. When Congress ended financial aid for ATB students in December, they zeroed in on these models as the basis of their argument to restore financial aid eligibility for ATB students. Politically, it was also in all probability the only realistic strategy of getting any of that eligibility back, since the cost of restoring ATB financial aid eligibility for just those students enrolled in these established programs is probably going to be less than a tenth of the cost of providing full financial aid for ATB students under the old definition. In an excellent fact sheet prepared by CLASP on the subject, they estimated that about 90,000 college students qualified for Pell Grants under the old ATB provision; the number of students who would regain eligibility under Murray’s amendment would be a fraction of that number.

Here is the language in the bill that defines eligible career pathway programs (I’ve bolded what I think are the highlights):

(2) ELIGIBLE CAREER PATHWAY PROGRAM.—In this subsection, the term ‘‘eligible career pathway program’’ means a program that—

(A) concurrently enrolls participants in connected adult education and eligible postsecondary programs;

(B) provides counseling and supportive services to identify and attain academic and career goals;

(C) provides structured course sequences that—
(i) are articulated and contextualized; and
(ii) allow students to advance to higher levels of education and employment;

(D) provides opportunities for acceleration to attain recognized postsecondary credentials, including degrees, industry relevant certifications, and certificates of completion of apprenticeship programs;

(E) is organized to meet the needs of adults;

(F) is aligned with the education and skill needs of the regional economy; and

(G) has been developed and implemented in collaboration with partners in business, workforce development, and economic development.

If passed into law, even this partial restoration seems to me to be a significant win for the adult education community in that it preserves financial aid eligibility for students enrolled in models that have taken the adult education field forward in a promising direction. But it would also narrowly define the “benefit” that a student without a high-school diploma or the equivalent is deemed to be able to gain from a college education, at least for financial aid purposes. Such students would now be deemed to benefit from the education they are receiving only if they are enrolled in a very narrowly defined career pathways program—one that is tied to the skill needs of local employers (see paragraphs F and G, above), not necessarily the needs or interests of the student.

Faith Groups: Republican WIA Reauthorization Bill Steers Federal Support Away from the Most Vulnerable

/ The Old Crank

A group of faith based organizations, including the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, NETWORK, and the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, have written a letter to the Chairman and the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce expressing their concerns with the Republican’s Workforce Investment Act (WIA) reauthorization bill, H.R. 4297, which is scheduled to be marked up tomorrow at 10 am. It’s a good letter, because it focuses on the crux of what many seem to agree is the fundamental problem with the bill:

H.R. 4297 eliminates the current priority of service for low-income adults and those with barriers to employment. Without priority, dislocated workers, youth, older workers, and those in areas of highest unemployment would continue to be at a disadvantage. Low-income adults now represent only about half of those receiving intensive services or training services with adult employment and training funding, despite their increased rates of unemployment. Elimination of the priority of services, including necessary supportive services like child care and transportation, would further weaken access to these services to low-income adults and youth.

Rather than cutting back on the range of services needed by low-income individuals, low-wage workers, and those with barriers to employment, our interfaith community would prefer to see job training and job creation programs focus specifically on low-income communities and vulnerable populations. Unless special and specific efforts are made to include them, certain distressed communities with disproportionately high unemployment or low earnings will be left out of the mainstream economic recovery. Properly crafted WIA reauthorization legislation must consider populations with unique needs— such as people of color, displaced workers, workers with disabilities, older workers, low-income youth, and people with limited-English proficiency—by providing worker retraining, education assistance, job placement and other job related services. (my emphasis)

In fact, a WIA bill that “focused specifically on low-income communities and vulnerable populations” would be an interesting piece of legislation.

Fittingly, Nonprofit Free Speech Curtailed by Congress Before Anyone Had a Chance to Say Anything About It

/ The Old Crank

A leftover nonprofit/1st amendment issue raised by the FY 2012 omnibus appropriations bill passed by Congress last December got some attention this week in the form of a strong opinion piece by Mark Rosenman, director of Caring to Change, and Gary D. Bass, executive director of the Bauman Foundation and affiliated professor at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute. Their article was published in both The Chronicle for Philanthropy and the Foundation Center’s “Philantopic” blog.

The issue concerns some language that was inserted into the bill that, in the author’s opinion, curtails the free-speech rights of certain non-profit organizations. Rosenman and Bass see this is part of a long history of efforts (primarily by right-wing political groups) to prevent nonprofits that receive federal dollars from informing policymakers and the public about issues they care about.

The authors do a nice job of describing the language that was inserted, (although you have to get almost halfway through the article to get to it), and I agree that nonprofit organizations should be concerned:

With the new law, groups that receive money under the appropriations measure cannot use federal grants for “any activity to advocate or promote” any “proposed, pending, or future” tax increase (at any level of government) or any “future requirement or restriction” on a “legal consumer product” (e.g., tobacco and alcohol products, junk foods and beverages, and guns).

None of those key terms is defined. Suppose a group received federal aid to fight cancer by decreasing tobacco use and wanted to educate the public about the health dangers of cigarette sales, especially to minors. Presumably, that wouldn’t be allowed under the law. Or say another nonprofit won a grant to curb obesity. It might want to suggest a surcharge on sodas and other sugary foods as a way to deter consumption, but it probably couldn’t promote that idea.

The new law also forbids nonprofits from using federal money to influence some regulatory and executive-branch actions. That means a charity that receives federal money to provide care and support to families with disabled children, for example, would no longer be allowed to use any of its government money to comment on proposed state regulations that govern residential treatment or in-home services.

The point I want to add to this is about the process. What a lot of people who don’t follow Congress very closely may not realize—and may be surprised by—is that policy language like this often finds its way into appropriations bills. Before I started paying attention to how the appropriations process worked, I just assumed that appropriations bills solely concerned… appropriations. That is, I thought they just described spending amounts, and didn’t include much else. But Congress often inserts policy language into these bills that can have far-reaching consequences.

Rosenman and Bass complain that “charity leaders didn’t find out about [the language] in time to take action to prevent their passage,” which is quite possible, because the omnibus bill was rushed into passage after Congress failed to get FY12 appropriations bills out under the normal process. This raises the question: is it a good idea for Congress to be able to insert legislative language like this into bills during an expedited process where there is little time for advocacy or debate? But overall the authors are more critical of the substance of the language that was inserted into the bill than by the process by which it got in there.

In any case, it’s a good lesson for advocates on the importance of paying attention to the appropriations process, and that it’s especially important to be alert when spending bills come together quickly, like this one did.

Half of the Students Seeking an Associates Degree Require “Remedial Training”

/ The Old Crank

From an article in the National Journal published last Friday:

To achieve the high-tech manufacturing base that Obama envisions, it will be necessary to train hundreds of thousands of workers for skilled jobs that will require technical training and some college-level coursework. That’s a heavy lift in the current climate, in which about half of the students seeking an associates degree require remedial training that they should have gotten in high school, according to Complete College America. (my emphasis)

The article then goes on to argue that there is a lack of coordination between the White House and Congress on career and technical education legislation, citing the career and technical education “blueprint” released by the White House last week and the dueling Workforce Investment Act (WIA) bills in the House as examples. But the specific problem highlighted in the passage above is never mentioned again. According to the article, the WIA legislation would “rejigger job-training programs and help colleges tailor their curriculum to workforce needs,” but no mention is made of whether this or any of the other legislative proposals would address the problem that half the people who want to go to college can’t read or write or perform basic math well enough to be successful at the postsecondary level to begin with (which is what the somewhat cryptic phrase “requires remedial training” means). Nor does the author explore the degree to which those students’ basic skills fall short.

Which was not the point of the article, I realize. I just thought it was interesting that the author made this weirdly-phrased reference to the issue—and then dropped it.