[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 1 (Tuesday, January 6, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9-S11]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO CLAIBORNE PELL

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, on January 1, Claiborne Pell died. 
Claiborne Pell was a Senator from Rhode Island, the longest serving 
Senator from that State, a Senator whose name is known by most college 
students and by most people who care about education in America because 
he was largely responsible for helping to create in 1973 what we now 
call the Pell grant, a Federal scholarship that follows students to the 
college of their choice. It was originally called the Basic Educational 
Opportunity Grant, but Pell grant is a lot easier to say. It is a 
remarkable success in our country. He deserves to be remembered for 
that success.
  I knew him as a staff member when I came here with Senator Howard 
Baker, who was here just a few hours ago as we were sworn in. That was 
42 years ago. I knew him as Education Secretary in 1991 and 1992.
  The American higher education system is, at a time when we worry 
about some of our institutions, one of our great secret weapons in 
America, one of our great strengths. One reason for that is because of 
Federal grants and loans.
  It all started not with the Pell grant but just at the end of World 
War II with the GI bill for veterans. It was a college scholarship. 
Actually, it was an educational scholarship the veterans could spend 
wherever they wished, and the ``wherever they wished'' point is the 
important point because many of those men and some women who came back 
from World War II used their GI bill money to go to high school. Some 
used it to go to college in other countries of the world.
  No one said you can't go to the University of Delaware or you must go 
to Notre Dame or you can't go to Brown University or you can't go to a 
Historically Black College. The GI bill for veterans followed the 
student to the college of that student's choice.
  It was not universally popular. The president of the University of 
Chicago, Mr. Hutchins, said at the time that it would create a campus 
full of hobos because college at that time was for a very limited 
number of Americans.
  At the end of World War II, only 5 percent of Americans 25 and older 
had completed at least 4 years of college. But today, according to the 
most recent figures, that figure is six times that. Nearly 30 percent 
of Americans have completed 4 years of college.
  First, the GI bill after World War II, then the Pell grant in 1973, 
then the various loans the Federal Government allows for students. So 
today, 60 percent of the men and women who go to American colleges and 
universities have a Federal grant or Federal loan to help them pay for 
college.
  It is never easy to afford college. The average tuition at a 4-year 
private school is about $25,000 today, and you add to that your living 
expenses. It is important to remember that an average tuition at a 4-
year public university is about $6,500, and the average tuition and 
fees for community colleges is $2,400.
  So Senator Pell, by his leadership and his work as chairman of the 
Education Subcommittee of our Health, Education, and Labor Committee, 
helped add to the legacy of the GI bill for veterans and helped make it 
possible for so many Americans to go to college.
  I wish to conclude my remarks and honor Senator Pell with a thought 
about our future. I have always wondered why if the Pell grant was such 
a good idea for colleges, why don't we try it for kindergarten through 
the 12th grade.
  We seem to overlook the fact that American students can choose their 
college and the money follows the student to the college. It might be 
Nashville Auto Diesel College. It might be Harvard University. But we 
don't give the money to the school, we give it to the student to decide 
where to go. That was a happy accident that happened with the GI bill, 
and it was a happy accident that happened in 1973.
  I remember saying to one distinguished Member of this body: You know, 
the Pell grant is a voucher.
  This Senator recoiled from that and said: I am opposed to vouchers.
  I said: But you are not opposed to the Pell grant, are you?
  And she said: Well, no, that is different.
  I would argue that is not different at all. What we have done in 
kindergarten to 12th grade is give the money directly to institutions, 
and we, in that sense, create local educational monopolies and limit 
the amount of competition in choice.
  We can look at our experience with higher education and see how it is 
generally considered to be by far the best in the world. We not only 
have the best colleges and universities in the world, we have almost 
all of them. Then we look at our system of kindergarten through the 
12th grade.
  The Presiding Officer has been Governor of his State. He worked hard 
on charter schools. We have all tried many different ideas to try to 
improve kindergarten through 12th grade, but we have never quite seemed 
to be able to make it as effective as our success with higher 
education.
  That is why in 2004 I suggested on the Senate floor that we try the 
idea of a Pell grant for kids. I ask unanimous consent to have printed 
in the Record following my remarks the remarks I made on the Senate 
floor on May 17, 2004, about Pell grants for kids.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See Exhibit 1.)
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, to summarize them, they were simply 
this: Why not look to the example of our higher education system and 
try it with kindergarten through the 12th grade? The Pell grants for 
kids I proposed was to give every single child from a middle- or low-
income family a $500 scholarship that would follow them to the school 
or other accredited academic program of their choice. These would be 
new Federal dollars so no district would see its share of money from 
Washington cut, and it would give less wealthy families many of the 
same choices that families with money already have.
  As one example, across our country we see art and music lessons cut 
in schools. As budgets get tight, they are the first things that are 
cut. The kids who go to the schools from the areas that have less money 
from property taxes and less money from sales taxes are not able to 
have the art and music courses. If they had a $500 Pell grant for kids, 
they might take it to an afterschool program for art or afterschool 
program for music, or the parents might get together and go to the 
school the children attend and say: Look, there are 20 of us with these 
$500 Pell grants. We will all come here if you hire an art teacher part 
time or a music teacher part time. It would give parents some consumer 
power, it would give children opportunities, and it would give schools 
with less money more money.
  This is an idea I hope we can seriously consider as we look ahead to 
the future of American public education. We should recognize that there 
are a great many school districts with children who have less money and 
less of a tax base than others and that we have had a wonderful example 
with the GI bill for veterans and with Pell grants in colleges and 
universities.
  So why not try it in a limited way to see if it would help improve 
opportunity and education in kindergarten through the 12th grade as it 
has in college.
  My main purpose today is to honor Claiborne Pell. He served 36 years 
with distinction. He contributed greatly to the opportunities of 
education in America. He did it with dignity, and he did it with 
intelligence. We respect

[[Page S10]]

him, we miss him, and we honor his legacy.
  I yield the floor.

                               Exhibit 1

       A half century after Brown v. Board of Education, education 
     on equal terms still eludes too many African-American school 
     children. Secretary of Education Rod Paige has called 
     America's persistent racial achievement gap ``the civil 
     rights issue of our time.''
       By the 12th grade, only one in six black students and one 
     in five Hispanic students are reading at grade level. Math 
     scores are equally disturbing. Only 3 percent of blacks and 4 
     percent of Hispanics test at proficient levels by their 
     senior year. By another standard, about 60 percent of 
     African-American children read at or below basic level at the 
     end of the 4th grade, while 75 percent of white students read 
     at basic or above at the end of the 4th grade.
       There is still a huge achievement gap among African-
     American children and white children. The No Child Left 
     Behind Act's system of standards and accountability is 
     creating a foundation for closing the gap. But funding 
     disparities between rich and poor--too often minority 
     children attend poorer schools--school districts remain a 
     stubborn contributor to inequality. Between 1996 and 2000, 
     poor students fell further behind their wealthier peers in 
     seven out of nine key indicators, including reading, math and 
     science.
       These outcomes cry out for a different model, one that 
     helps address funding and equality without raising property 
     taxes; that introduces entrepreneurship and choice into a 
     system of monopolies; and that offers school districts more 
     federal dollars to implement the requirements of No Child 
     Left Behind with fewer strings--in other words, more federal 
     dollars, fewer federal strings, and more parental say over 
     how the federal dollars are spent.
       Does this sound too good to be true? I would suggest it is 
     not.
       Look no further than our nation's best-in-the-world higher 
     educational system. There we find the Pell grant program, 
     which has diversified and strengthened America's colleges and 
     universities by applying the principles of autonomy and 
     competition. This year, $13 billion in Pell grants and work 
     study and $42 billion in student loans will follow America's 
     students to the colleges of their choice. This is in sharp 
     contrast to the local monopolies we have created in 
     kindergarten through the 12th grade education, where dollars 
     flow directly to schools with little or no say from parents.
       That is why I am proposing Pell Grants for Kids, an annual 
     $500 scholarship that would follow every middle- and low-
     income child to the school or other accredited academic 
     program of his or her parent's choosing. These are new 
     federal dollars, so no district would see a cut in its share 
     of Washington's $35 billion annual appropriations for K-12, 
     and increases in funding for students with disabilities would 
     continue. Armed with new purchasing power, parents could 
     directly support their school's priorities, or they could pay 
     for tutoring, for lessons and other services in the private 
     market. Parents in affluent school districts do this all the 
     time.
       Pell Grants for Kids would give less wealthy families the 
     same opportunities--an example is the Holiday family in 
     Nashville, Tennessee.
       Raymon Holiday is a 6th grader who recently won the 
     American Lung Association of Tennessee's clean air poster 
     contest. I was there when he won the 10-speed bicycle you get 
     for winning this poster competition. I met his father, an art 
     major, and his grandfather, a retired art teacher. They told 
     me his great-grandfather was a musician. So you can see where 
     Raymon Holiday gets his instincts. His grandfather, the 
     retired art teacher, lamented to me that art classes are 
     usually the first to go when school budgets are cut. With 
     Pell Grants for Kids, in a typical middle school of 600 
     students, Raymon might be one of 500 middle- or low-income 
     students who qualify to receive a $500 Pell grant. His middle 
     school would see a $250,000 increase in funding. Raymon would 
     be assured of art lessons.
       The Pell grant model also encourages great American 
     entrepreneurship. Enterprising principals, like Raymon's 
     principal, might design programs to attract parental 
     investment: advanced math classes, writing workshops, after 
     school programs, English lessons--whatever is lacking due to 
     funding constraints.
       Surveys continue to show that while Americans are concerned 
     with the state of public education, most support their own 
     child's public school.
       Herman Smith, superintendent of schools in Bryan, Texas, 
     would welcome the $6 million that would accompany 13,500 
     eligible Bryan students--90 percent of his district. Bryan is 
     right next door to College Station, home of Texas A&M where, 
     according to Smith, their budget cuts are larger than Bryan 
     dreams of spending for new programs and personnel. Property 
     values there are double those in Bryan, as is the per-pupil 
     expenditure. Not surprisingly, Bryan's population is almost 
     half African-American or Latino, while College Station is 
     three-quarters white.
       With 30 million American school children eligible for Pell 
     Grants for Kids, my fellow fiscal conservatives are probably 
     raising an eyebrow. But please listen. Every year, Congress 
     appropriates increases in funding for kindergarten through 
     the 12th grade. What I am offering here is a plan to earmark 
     most of these new dollars--aside from increases in spending 
     for children with disabilities--for parents to spend on 
     educational programs of their choice. Otherwise, we will 
     continue to invest in the same bureaucracies that have 
     disappointed poor and minority families for too long.
       Pell Grants for Kids could be implemented gradually, 
     starting with kindergarten and 1st grade at an initial cost 
     of $2.5 billion. If the program had been in place during 
     President Bush's first two years in office, the extra $4.5 
     billion spent on K-12 education--again, not counting another 
     $3 billion for children with disabilities--would have 
     created $500 scholarships for all nine million middle- and 
     low-income students through the 3rd grade.
       We have had 50 years to deliver an American education on 
     equal terms to all students. But a baffling commitment to the 
     status quo has prevented us from living up to Brown's noble 
     legacy. This anniversary presents the perfect opportunity to 
     inaugurate a new era, one that uses the strategy that helped 
     to create the best colleges to help create the best schools. 
     Let us start with Pell Grants for Kids and move on from there 
     ``with all deliberate speed.''
       I would like to make several additional remarks about Pell 
     Grants for Kids.
       As I mentioned, the idea is a pretty simple one--
     significantly new federal dollars, fewer federal strings, and 
     more say by parents about how the money is spent.
       To give you an idea of how much money that would be, I have 
     taken a quick look at my home state of Tennessee. Tennessee 
     has 938,000 students in kindergarten through the 12th grade. 
     Pell Grants for Kids would be eligible to all those students 
     who are from families below the state median income. The 
     state median income for a family of four in Tennessee is 
     about $56,000. So for families who have an income of $56,000 
     or below, each of their children would have a $500 
     scholarship that would follow that child to the school or 
     other approved academic program of his or her parents' 
     choice.
       In June I hope to introduce a piece of legislation, 
     hopefully with a bipartisan group of senators. In July, Sen. 
     Gregg and I have already discussed a hearing, which we will 
     have in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. 
     And then perhaps next year, the President of the United 
     States might want to make this a part of his budget.
       I believe it is time in this country to recognize we need 
     to give poor and middle-income parents more of the same 
     choices of educational opportunities wealthier families have 
     and that we may be able to do this without harming our public 
     schools. We have had, since World War II, scholarships that 
     have followed students to the educational institutions of 
     their choice, and they have done nothing but help to create 
     opportunity and create the best system of colleges and 
     universities in the world. I think we ought to use the same 
     idea to try to create the best schools in the world.
       We estimate about 60 percent of all of Tennessee students 
     would be eligible for a $500 Pell grant. In some of the rural 
     counties where there are a great many poor children, it might 
     be 90 percent of the students. In other places--such as 
     Davidson County, Maryville, and Oak Ridge--it might be a 
     smaller percentage.
       But all in all, there should be about 562,000 students in 
     Tennessee who would be eligible. This would bring an 
     additional $281 million to Tennessee for K-12 education, and 
     parents would have a say over how that money is spent.
       Often when this issue comes up and we talk about spending 
     more federal dollars for local schools, the senators on my 
     side of the aisle get a little hot under the collar. We do 
     not want to spend any more federal money for local schools. 
     On the other hand, when we say let's give the parents more 
     say on how the money is spent, the collars get a little hot 
     on the other side of the aisle because they are reluctant to 
     give parents more choice.
       This is a conflict of principles. It is the principle of 
     equal opportunity--giving parents more choices. But there is 
     another valid principle on the other side. It is called ``e 
     pluribus unum.'' We have public schools, common schools, to 
     teach our common culture, and we do not want to harm them. It 
     is a proper debate in this body to say--let's ask questions, 
     if we are giving parents more say, more choices. Will that 
     harm our common schools? And there is a proper way to ask in 
     this Senate: Can we wisely spend that much more money? This 
     is quite a bit more money.
       Fully funded, Pell Grants for Kids programs would cost $15 
     billion in new federal dollars a year. It would add about 
     $500 to the $600 we now spend on each of the children in 
     America today from the federal government. Only about 7 or 8 
     percent of the dollars we spend on children comes from the 
     federal government. So it would be about a 70 percent 
     increase in federal funding for every middle- or low-income 
     child fully funded.
       We are proposing to do this over a long period of time. 
     Basically, to add to the new money that we would appropriate 
     every year for K-12 and give most of that to Pell Grants for 
     Kids. This would create more equality in funding for poor 
     districts. It would especially help African-American and 
     minority kids. It would provide extra dollars to implement 
     the standards of No Child Left Behind, and it would introduce 
     for the first time into our K-12 system the principle that 
     has created

[[Page S11]]

     the best colleges in the world--the idea of letting money 
     follow students to the institution of their choice.
       Over the next several weeks, I will be discussing this with 
     individual senators. I have not prepared a piece of 
     legislation yet because I don't want to stand up and say: 
     here it is, take it or leave it. Let's say one team says no 
     choice and one team says no money, then we are back where we 
     were. I am looking for ways to advance the debate.
       I don't believe we are going to be spending much more money 
     through the federal government in the same way we are doing 
     it today. A lot of senators, and I am one of them, do not 
     want to spend more federal dollars through programs that have 
     lots of federal controls. We have seen the limit of command 
     and control from Washington, D.C., with No Child Left Behind. 
     That program will work. But I don't believe we can expect to 
     give many more orders from Washington to make schools in 
     Schenectady, Nashville, and Anniston, Alabama and Sacramento, 
     better. That has to happen in local communities.
       The right strategy is significantly new federal dollars 
     with fewer federal strings and more parental say about how 
     those dollars are spent. This does not have to be a 
     Republican versus Democrat idea. I am not the author of this 
     idea.
       In 1947, the G.I. bill for Veterans was enacted. Since that 
     time, federal dollars have followed students to the colleges 
     of their choice. Today, 60 percent of America's college 
     students have a federal grant or loan that follows them to 
     the college of their choice.
       When I was president of the University of Tennessee, it 
     never occurred to me to say to the Congress: I hope you do 
     not appropriate any money for children to go to Howard 
     University or Notre Dame or Brigham Young or Vanderbilt or 
     Morehouse or the University of Alabama. We give people 
     choices. Or put it another way, in my neck of the woods, what 
     if we told everyone where they had to go to college? What if 
     we said, Sen. Sessions, you have to go to the University of 
     Tennessee. We said to young Lamar Alexander: You have to go 
     to University of Alabama. Civil wars have been fought over 
     such things.
       That is exactly what we do in K-12. We give people choice 
     and have created the best colleges in the world. We give them 
     no choices, and we have schools that we wish were better. So 
     the idea would be to try what worked for colleges here in K-
     12.
       I said I was not the only one to think of this. There was 
     the G.I. bill for Veterans--that was bipartisan--after World 
     War II; maybe the best piece of social legislation we ever 
     passed in the history of our country.
       In 1968, Ted Sizer, perhaps the most renowned educator in 
     America today, proposed a poor children's Bill of Rights: 
     $5,000 for every poor child to go to any school of his or her 
     choice, an LBJ power-of-the-people, liberal, Democratic idea 
     at the time. In 1970, President Nixon proposed, basically, 
     giving grants to poor children to choose among all schools. 
     The man who wrote that speech for President Nixon was a man 
     named Pat Moynihan. He was a U.S. Senator. In 1979, he and 
     Sen. Ribicoff, two Democrats, introduced essentially exactly 
     the idea I am proposing today. In fact, in 1979 Sens. 
     Ribicoff and Moynihan proposed amending the Federal Pell 
     Grant Act and simply applying it to elementary and secondary 
     students.
       At that time, when the Pell grant was $200 to $1,800, a 3rd 
     grader could get a Pell grant, or if you were a high school 
     student and you were poor, you could get a Pell grant.
       Senator Moynihan said to this body in 1979: ``Precisely the 
     same reason ought to apply to elementary and secondary 
     schooling--if, that is, we are serious about educational and 
     pluralism and providing educational choice to low- and 
     middle-income families similar to those routinely available 
     to upper income families.''
       This was the impulse behind the basic educational 
     opportunity grants program as enacted by Congress in 1972. He 
     was talking about Pell grants. It was the impulse by the 
     presidential message to Congress which I drafted in 1970 
     which proposed such a program. It is the impulse to provide 
     equality of educational opportunity to every American, and it 
     is as legitimate and important an impulse at the primary and 
     secondary school level as it is at the college level.
       I am going to strongly urge my colleagues not to make a 
     reflexive reaction to this idea because, on the one hand, it 
     has too much money, or on the other hand, it has some choice. 
     Think back over our history and think of our future and 
     realize we have the best colleges and we do not have the best 
     schools. Why don't we use the formula that created the best 
     colleges to help create the best schools?
       I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the 
     Congressional Record at the conclusion of my remarks Sen. 
     Moynihan's statement in the Senate in 1980, and following 
     Sen. Moynihan's remarks, an article which I wrote for the 
     publication Education Next, which is being published this 
     week, entitled ``Putting Parents in Charge.''
       This article goes into some detail about the Pell Grants 
     for Kids proposal. I look forward over the next several weeks 
     to working with my colleagues, accepting their ideas and 
     suggestions about how we improve our schools.

  Mr. ALEXANDER. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk (John Merlino) proceeded to call the 
roll.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Carper). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The Senator from West Virginia is recognized.

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