The Hall Monitor

President proposes K-12 Pell grants

January

In his state of the union address, President Bush proposed federal education grants for students in grades K-12, calling them Pell Grants for Kids. The program would offer $300 million in scholarships that low-income students could use to attend the school of their choice.

The President’s proposal would give Pell grants to student stuck in public secondary and elementary schools that have failed to meet federal testing benchmarks for five years or that suffer high drop-out rates.

Sounds a lot like a voucher, no?

Pell grants for college last year went out to 5.3 million students, for a total of $14 billion. That’s up from 4.3 million students receiving $8.8 billion at the start of the Bush Presidency, according to the Wall Street Journal.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 1:00 pm by Diana Costello.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Share and Enjoy: | Print This Post | Email This Post

2 Responses to “President proposes K-12 Pell grants”

Carl Korn January 30th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Public schools in Westchester and Rockland are among the best in the state. This type of voucher scheme would merely divert funding from public schools to fund the personal choices of a few people. The teachers’ union supports parents making the choice that’s best for their kids. But—like buying bottled water vs. municipal water, or joining a country club instead of playing the town golf course, it’s a personal choice—if you want to send your children to private or religious schools, don’t ask taxpayers to pick up the tab. Finally, another serious concern should be: if we said that a family could use federal money for a “scholarship” to attend a private or religious school, would we as taxpayers have any say in what kind of schools the money is used for? How about a school that preached hate against the United States? Hey, it’s personal choice, right?
Diana Costello January 30th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Carl,

Thank you for bringing some very serious questions to light in this debate.

It is a condition of your use of the comment features associated with the blogs that you do not: Use the site to post or transmit any unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane or indecent information of any kind, including without limitation any transmissions constituting or encouraging conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any local, state, national or international law. You alone are responsible for the material you post or send. Refer to the Terms of Service.