Education

Access to a quality public education is the most important issue concerning our nation’s youth and our country’s future. Providing children with a quality education and an environment conducive toward scholastic achievement is the best investment we can make in the future prosperity of our nation. Today’s youth are the doctors, lawyers, engineers, civil servants and teachers of tomorrow.

 Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (H.R. 3221)

I strongly support and voted in favor of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act(H.R. 3221), which the House passed by a vote of 253 to 171 on September 17, 2009. I support this bill because it enables us to accomplish the President’s goal of producing the most college graduates by 2020 by making college accessible and transforming the way our student loan programs operate. It will expand quality early education opportunities that will put our children on the path to success. It will strengthen community colleges and training programs to help build a highly-skilled, innovative, 21st century workforce ready for the rigors of a global economy. Specifically:

Invests the bill’s savings in making college affordable and helping more Americans graduate
 

• Invests $40 billion to increase the maximum annual Pell Grant scholarship to $5,550 in 2010 and to $6,900 by 2019. Starting in 2011, the scholarship will be linked to match rising costs-of-living by indexing it to the Consumer Price Index plus 1 percent.
   
• Invests $3 billion to bolster college access and completion support programs for students. It will also fund innovative programs at both the state and institutional level that focus on increasing financial literacy and on helping retain and graduate students.
• Strengthens the Perkins Loan program, a campus-based program that provides low-cost federal loans to students, by providing the program with more reliable forms of credit from the federal government and expanding the program to include significantly more college campuses.
   
• Keeps interest rates low on need-based – or subsidized – federal student loans by making the interest rates on these loans variable beginning in 2012. These interest rates are currently set to jump from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent in 2012.
• Makes it easier for families to apply for financial aid by simplifying the FAFSA form. The legislation will dramatically cut down the number of questions on the form by allowing students and families to apply for aid using the information on their tax returns.
• Invests $2.55 billion in Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority- Serving Institutions to provide students with the support they need to stay in school and graduate.
• Provides loan forgiveness for members of the military who are called up to duty in the middle of the academic year.

Prepares students and workers for 21st century jobs by providing all Americans with the skills and resources they need to compete

•  Builds a 21st century workforce by encouraging historic partnerships between community colleges, states, businesses, job training and adult education programs. The bill will create a new competitive grant program for community colleges to improve instruction, work with local employers, improve their student support services, and implement other innovative reforms that will lead to a college degree, certificate or industry recognized credential to help fulfill local workforce needs.
• Expands access to education by supporting free, high-quality, online training, high school and college courses. The U.S. Department of Education would be authorized to make competitive grants available to eligible colleges, workforce programs or other entities to help support the development of these courses.
• Ensures that community college students can learn in modern, updated, state-of- the-art facilities by renovating campuses in need of repair.

Ensures that the next generation of children enters kindergarten with the skills they need to succeed in school

• Increases the number of low income children entering kindergarten prepared to succeed by reforming state standards and practices for birth-to-five early learning programs. The legislation would create an Early Learning Challenge Fund, which would award competitive grants to states that implement comprehensive standards-based reform of the state’s early learning system that will transform early education standards and practices, build an effective early childhood workforce, and improve the school readiness outcomes of young children.