United States Senator Lisa Murkowski

Our children need a solid foundation of literacy and social skills, health and nutritional assets, and parents who know how to help them grow strong, healthy, and happy from the moment of their birth.

The federal Head Start program (http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/hsb/) prepares low-income children for school by providing comprehensive, early childhood development services including educational, health, nutritional, and social activities. Senator Murkowski worked closely with her colleagues on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions to write and pass the Head Start for School Readiness Act, which includes many of the priorities of Alaska's Head Start Directors, including authorizing more funding, expanding eligibility, maintaining local control, and additional, guaranteed support for Indian Head Start programs.

Since the enactment of the Head Start for School Readiness Act in 2007, Senator Murkowski continues to assist Alaskan Head Start grantees to work through issues associated with the regulatory process, to ensure full participation for Alaska's Indian Head Start grantees in the Tribal Consultations, and to ensure our small Head Start centers are allowed to open and serve Alaska's children.

Senator Murkowski is pleased that many Alaskan school districts are also using federal funds from the stimulus bill, or American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to establish preschool programs in their schools. She also applauds the Alaska State Legislature for funding a pilot program to fund early childhood education in a few districts across Alaska.

Senator Murkowski is fully committed to ensuring that all children have access to a quality K-12 education. At the end of 2008, she convened a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in Anchorage to hear from Alaskan and national experts about a serious problem in Alaska-our high school dropout rate. Alaska has the highest dropout rate in the nation. Senator Murkowski believes that this is unacceptable, and a symptom of a number of issues that can be improved if educators, policymakers, students, parents, and the community will work together. Expert national and Alaskan witnesses provided moving personal statements and strong recommendations for how the federal government can assist the State of Alaska and our schools to ensure that every student has the tools they need to graduate on time and be well-prepared for a successful adulthood.

Since that hearing, Congress appropriated $50 million to assist middle and high schools with low graduation rates to put in place effective strategies to identify and assist students who are at risk for dropping out. Senator Murkowski believes there should be increased focus on young children that have risk factors associated with not graduating from high school. For that reason, Senator Murkowski will soon introduce legislation to provide states, early childhood education providers, and elementary schools with the resources they need to implement research-based, effective measures to keep students on track in the first place.

When the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was reauthorized as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2001 (http://www.ed.gov/nclb), it laid out a blueprint for reforming our education system. Alaska has embraced the fundamental goals of the Act; to ensure academic excellence for each and every child, to give schools and educators more tools to meet the challenges they face, and to empower parents. After all, the federal government provides approximately 16 percent of Alaskan school districts’ funding, and it is both a federal responsibility to ensure that our children are prepared to compete in a global economy and the responsibility of Congress to ensure that your tax dollars are spent wisely, effectively, and efficiently.

Since ESEA was last reauthorized in 2001 with a greater focus on school accountability for students’ proficiency, the achievement gap is narrowing, not only in Alaska but across the nation. Schools are using data more effectively to develop interventions for struggling students. Parents know more about what is happening in their children's schools and have more opportunities to influence their children's education. But more must be done, both to increase local and state flexibility for innovations and school improvement strategies that work for them and to give our nation’s disadvantaged students more opportunity to prepare to be productive citizens.

There also are, after nine years of implementation, clearly some aspects of the law that need to be improved. That is why Senator Murkowski has re-introduced her legislation-S. 1430, the School Accountability Improvements Act - to fix the top six problems Alaskans have had in implementing ESEA. It includes provisions to: 1) allow multi-subject teachers to show that they are highly qualified in a more sensible, fair way; 2) give credit to schools, rather than punish them, if students are improving but have not yet reached the state's proficiency goals; 3) improve the tutoring and school choice provisions; 4) give flexibility to schools that have Alaska Native language immersion programs; 5) not punish schools if students with disabilities and students with limited English proficiency are making progress; and 6) facilitate more parental involvement in our schools.
In addition to these six problems that have most plagued Alaskan educators, parents, and students, Senator Murkowski also supports changes that will assist schools across the country to move forward with effective school reforms. For example, the Senator does not believe it is appropriate to treat all schools in need of improvement the same. Currently, schools identified for improvement are all on the same trajectory from developing improvement plans to providing school choice and tutoring, to accepting more and more intrusive oversight from the state, and finally to being threatened by closure or takeover. Senator Murkowski believes that schools must be provided expert assistance to improve and that schools that are, in fact, improving should be treated much differently from those that are truly dysfunctional.

At the same time, she has made it clear to the Administration and to her colleagues that she does not support the Administration’s heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all proposals for turning around troubled schools—a federal mandate for local school boards to fire teachers and principals as a first resort. Nor does she support the Administration’s coercive tactics through federal dollars to take over state standards and curriculum.

As a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Senator Murkowski has shared her views at a number of hearings held to examine a variety of issues related improving NCLB. These hearings, held in March, April, and May of 2010, have given HELP Committee members a chance to hear from and question witnesses. These have included Secretary Duncan’s presentation about the Obama Administration’s Blueprint for reforming NCLB as well as educators, researchers, community members, and students from across the country who have testified about school turnaround proposals, teachers and leaders, educating the whole child, standards and assessments, special populations, wellness, early childhood education, and secondary schools.

While the hearing process has concluded, Senator Murkowski continues to work with her colleagues to make federal education law work for Alaskans and all Americans through Committee negotiations on a number of topics, including school accountability, literacy, rural school programs, and Indian education. The changes she offers and the positions she takes on other Committee members’ proposals are informed by the feedback she receives from Alaskan educators, parents, community members, and students. That input continues to be vital to help ensure that this law works for all concerned Alaskans. If you have comments on the reauthorization of ESEA, please contact Senator Murkowski.

Financial Aid Resources

Additional information to help you afford college or job training is available in the many links to student financial aid that are available on Senator Murkowski’s Financial Aid page.

Senator Murkowski wants to ensure that all students can afford to attend and graduate from college. She worked throughout 2007 and 2008 to enact legislation to reauthorize the The Higher Education Opportunity Act that lowered federal student loan interest rates, increased the maximum Pell Grant award, made the cost of college more transparent, protected student aid borrowers from unethical and unscrupulous lenders, simplified the process of applying for student aid, and improved teacher preparation programs. Three provisions in particular benefitted Alaskans directly. First, Murkowski won authorization for the one program that has been successful in Alaska—the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (http://ansep.uaa.alaska.edu). Second, she successfully supported the authorization of Project GRAD (www.projectgrad.org/kenai), a program that has been successful in helping at-risk students graduate from high school and enroll in postsecondary education programs. Senator Murkowski is proud to have authored a provision that made it easier for the lower-paid, lower-rank members of the military and their families to be eligible for federal aid for college or job training. Here are the following summaries: College Cost Reduction and Access Act and Higher Education Opportunity Act.

The reauthorization also made paying back student loans more affordable by putting a cap on student loan payments, providing for loan forgiveness for public service employees, and reducing federal student aid interest rates. Senator Murkowski is particularly proud that the law authorized and paid for the College Access Challenge Grant program, which was designed to help get more Alaskan students into college and job training.

Unfortunately, this year, the Obama Administration and the Congressional Majority were successful in passing the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) as part of the health care reconciliation bill. This new law abolishes the Federal Family Education Loan program (FFEL) and forces students to borrow their federal loans from the Department of Education's Direct Loan program. While this proposal was touted as taking the subsidies away from banks and student loan companies such as Sallie Mae in order to increase aid to low-income students, the reality is different. The U.S. Department of Education will still pay such banks and companies to service the Direct Loans. Senator Murkowski does not believe that SAFRA will be good for Alaskan students or the Nation as a whole.

First, SAFRA will dramatically increase the cost of college loans. Under the Higher Education Act reauthorization that became law in 2007, interest rates were fixed at 5.6 percent and slated to be reduced to 4.5 percent in July 2010 and again reduced to 3.4 percent for the 2011-12 school year. Under SAFRA, rates will be made variable and students can be charged up to 6.8 percent. As a result, the approximately 8,200 Alaskans who take out federal student loans each year may pay an average of $2,210 more for those loans.

Worse, the federal government will be making a profit on students and their families by borrowing capital at 2.8 percent and lending it at interest rates of up to 6.8 percent. These changes will raise billions of dollars that will be used to fund health care and other government programs. Of the $61 billion that the Majority estimated will be "saved" by SAFRA, over $9 billion was used to offset the cost of the health care reform bill. Nearly $14 billion will be used in Fiscal Year 2011 to pay for the shortfall in the Pell Grant budget-money that will not go to students. In addition, colleges and private lenders like Sallie Mae will receive nearly $2 billion to help pay for the transition to the Direct Loan program and to pay for servicing Direct Loans.

While the Administration has suggested that the FFEL program provides unwarranted profits to private lenders that could be best used otherwise, it is important to note that not all private lenders that participated in the FFEL program made a profit. Some states, like Alaska, are fortunate to have non-profit or state agency lenders whose rates were far more affordable. Alaska's state agency lender is the Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education (ACPE). ACPE used that federal support from the FFEL program to lower interest rates and to provide other, tangible benefits to Alaskan students.

In addition, Senator Murkowski believes student loan customer service will decline. Alaskans who borrowed their federal student loans via ACPE will no longer have a 907 area code number to call. All questions about loans and repayment options will now be directed to one of four nationwide call centers. Finally, the intent that SAFRA would increase low-income students' access to federal Pell Grants will, unfortunately, not make a large impact in Alaska. While SAFRA did provide a portion of the funds raised from eliminating FFEL to increase the maximum Pell Grant amount, only about 6.5 percent of Alaskan students who are eligible for Pell Grants take advantage of them. In addition, those low-income students who do attend college with help from a Pell Grant will need to take out the more expensive Direct Loans in order to pay the full cost of college.