WASHINGTON, DC – Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today issued the following statement after President Bush signed the Higher Education Opportunity Act into law.

“Today we have renewed our commitment to opening the doors of higher education to a new generation of students and helping them fulfill the promise of a college education. The Higher Education Opportunity Act will ensure that students from every economic background have the opportunity to pursue their dreams and reach their full potential. I am proud that so many measures I have long championed to help low- and middle-income and non-traditional students, including adults and veterans, have been included in this landmark law.

These provisions include placing well-trained superintendents, principals, and other school leadership personnel in rural schools in New York and across the country, ensuring new teachers are trained on the components of reading instruction, and expanding current loan forgiveness programs to teachers in the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) and educational service agencies. These hard-working teachers serve students with disabilities and students enrolled in career and technical education classes – two areas in which New York is experiencing teacher shortages. Creating access to loan forgiveness programs will help recruit and retain teachers, while ensuring students are taught by qualified and effective teachers.

The law signed today will create three programs that I championed to help place 10,000 new teachers in disadvantaged communities over the next three years, to put in place steps to increase the college-going rates in disadvantaged communities, and to provide tailored support for veterans going back to college. I’m pleased this new law also strengthens the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness of Undergraduate Programs (GEAR-UP), which helped 8,212 low-income and first-generation New York students last year obtain the fundamental educational tools needed to attend and succeed in college.”

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