Kids Before Cons Act aims to fight Pell Grants for prisoners

The Obama administration moved Friday to make state and federal prisoners eligible for Pell Grants — reversing a two-decade-old policy that was a signature of the “tough on crime” era — and quickly shot back at lawmakers who called it federal overreach.

The plan, first confirmed by POLITICO earlier last week, already has several critics in Congress: A House bill introduced Thursday, the Kids Before Cons Act, would bar the Education Department from its plan to pilot the idea. And Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), who chairs the House education committee, accused President Barack Obama of acting through “executive fiat” and “without regard for the law.”


“The administration absolutely does not have the authority to do this without approval from Congress,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate education committee, which is working to reauthorize the very law Obama is bypassing.

Yet that law — the Higher Education Act — is also where the department found the authority to proceed with its pilot program. It allows for limited “experimental sites” with federal financial aid waivers. (The department has several other experiments underway.)

“We absolutely have the legal authority to do this, and anyone who comes and says we don’t is flat-out wrong,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said during a visit to Goucher College’s Prison Education Partnership at the Maryland Correctional Institution, where he and Attorney General Loretta Lynch officially announced the program.

“Quite frankly, us moving forward might encourage Congress to step up and have a meaningful conversation about who we want to continue to lock up,” Duncan said.

The site, dubbed the Second Chance Pell Pilot, will measure the effects of restoring access to Pell Grants for prisoners, including whether it leads to jobs. It’s not clear how much the project will cost, how many colleges will participate or how many prisoners would benefit.

Republican Rep. Chris Collins, who dropped the bill to head the department off before the program gets underway, is also “actively looking into” blocking the experiment through the appropriations process, an aide said.

But Rep. Chris Van Hollen, ranking member of the House budget committee who also appeared at the prison on Friday, said he’s “confident” the president would veto an appropriations bill squashing the program.

“We will fight any effort to try to end this important initiative,” Van Hollen said.

In all, the federal government doles out about $150 billion each year in higher education grants and loans, and America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 1.5 million prisoners, about 600,000 of whom are in state or federal facilities.

“For the money we currently spend on prison, we could provide universal pre-K for every 3- and 4-year-old in America or double the salary of every high school teacher in the country,” Duncan said in a prepared statement. “America is a nation of second chances. Giving people who have made mistakes in their lives a chance to get back on track and become contributing members of society is fundamental to who we are — it can also be a cost-saver for taxpayers.”

From 1972-95, before Congress issued the ban, inmates received $34.6 million a year in Pell Grants.

Without grants, scholarships or private money to pay for courses or colleges willing to waive all fees and send their staff to teach behind bars, earning degrees in prison is nearly impossible. But proponents tout the long-term payoff: According to a 2013 Rand Corp. study paid for by the Justice Department, every dollar invested in prison education programs saves $4 to $5 on incarceration costs down the road. That study also found that prisoners who participate in education programs are 43 percent less likely than nonparticipants to return to prison within three years, and 13 percent more likely to have jobs upon their release.

Congressional Democrats make the same argument. Rep. Donna Edwards of Maryland, who sponsored a bill that would lift the ban, and House education committee ranking member Bobby Scott of Virginia, a co-sponsor of the bill, also spoke at the prison. The Goucher program offers regular courses to inmates at that facility and the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women. Goucher enrolls close to 200 prisoners.

“We have to do the work of changing the hearts and minds of people in Congress,” Edwards said.

Her Democratic colleague Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, another of the bill’s 44 co-sponsors, was optimistic that more members of the GOP are getting on board with criminal justice reform. He mentioned Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) — “no flaming liberal.”

“I think we are headed in the right direction, and I think this program fits right into that” movement, Cummings said.

Administration officials haven’t discussed whether the ban should be lifted, Duncan said. But prohibiting the aid “didn’t make sense,” he said.

Current law allows adults in local, municipal and county correctional facilities to get grants to pay for college, so long as they meet other eligibility requirements. No prisoners can get student loans, however, and the proposed federal experimental site does not affect eligibility for any other form of financial aid.

Interested colleges must apply by Sept. 1 to participate during the 2016-17 academic year. When weighing applicants, Education Department officials “will consider evidence that demonstrates a strong record on student outcomes” and how well the colleges have administered student aid programs.

Collins’ Kids Before Cons Act would also establish a study on whether students enrolled at charter or private schools as a result of participation in a voucher program are less likely to end up in prison than children in traditional public schools with similar geographic and parental income characteristics. The idea: Reduce imprisonment on the front end, rather than spending money on the back end.

“The Obama administration’s plan to put the cost of a free college education for criminals on the backs of the taxpayers is consistent with their policy of rewarding lawbreakers while penalizing hardworking Americans,” said Collins (R-N.Y.).

Last year, Republicans helped tank a proposal by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to spend tax dollars on college courses for prisoners, even though the $1 million idea paled in comparison to annual state spending on prisons — $2.8 billion.

Some congressional Republicans could be on board with the federal plan, however. Earlier this year, for example, Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on labor and education, said he wanted to explore lifting the ban. (Duncan parroted him Friday: While discussing the idea with POLITICO in March, Cole said, “This is a nation of second chances.”)

But Alexander said any shift should happen during his committee’s work to reauthorize the Higher Education Act this fall.

Under the pilot, prisoners who otherwise meet eligibility requirements in Title IV of the Higher Education Act and are eligible for release, particularly within the next five years, could access Pell Grants to pursue credit-bearing postsecondary education and training. The aid could only be used for tuition, fees, books and supplies required by an education program.

Students can enroll only in programs that prepare them for “high-demand occupations” that they are not legally barred from entering, and colleges must inform them of their academic and financial options if they aren’t able to complete the program in prison or at all.

The experiment will likely last four or five years, Duncan said Friday. He wouldn’t give specific numbers, but called the cost “budget dust.”

Considering that the prison population hasn’t changed much since the ’90s, Correctional Education Association Executive Director Stephen Steurer estimated that at least a few hundred thousand inmates could benefit from the new pilot program.

Steurer, who’s been privy to some of the experimental site details, said it will likely involve many different institutions, several educational options, “a fair amount of money” and multiple years of data collection.

Focusing on job development, certificate programs and associate degrees all at ones could help shine a light on what types of programs are most effective, Steurer said.

“Those are questions that we’ve had for a long time, but we don’t have answers,” he said.

The Pell experiment builds on the administration’s previous work on the issue: A March report from Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper Task Force recommended increasing youth access to a quality education and eliminating unnecessary barriers to re-entry. In December, the Education and Justice Departments clarified that youths in juvenile justice facilities that aren’t federal or state institutions are eligible for Pell Grants. And in recent months, the president has called for reforming mandatory sentencing guidelines that disproportionately put African-Americans behind bars for extended periods for nonviolent crimes.

Several states, including Pennsylvania, Oregon and Indiana, run their own prisoner education programs. And some colleges and organizations use private funds to send professors into correctional facilities.

Bob Cowser, an English professor at St. Lawrence University, teaches inmates — right alongside his regular students — at prisons in New York, through the Education from the Inside Out coalition.

Cowser says all his students benefit — the prisoners, from the coursework and the traditional students, from their new classmates’ perspectives. But even at the institutional level, he said, the idea can be “a political hot potato” among trustees and administrators.

“They have the same objections that the people in all the comment threads have: Why are we giving schooling to all these inmates and not to other ‘needy’ people?” Cowser said. “This is what I think is real political leadership.”

The progressive think tank Demos estimates that if all of the 1.26 million prisoners who left federal and state facilities in 2012 and 2013 had received an education prior to release, 10 percent, or 126,000, would remain free after three years instead of winding up back in a prison cell. After subtracting the cost of a Pell Grant, Demos says, the savings equals $31,000 per individual, or $3.9 billion.

The value of a Pell Grant changes annually and will be worth $5,775 for the coming academic year; the government spent $34 billion on Pell in 2013.

Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, welcomed the experimental site, saying it should produce the data necessary to consider broader implementation.

“We believe all qualified students should have access to a postsecondary education and continue to have that access as long as they continue making academic progress,” Draeger said. “If this experiment proves successful, then we need to have a conversation about giving these students a second chance at opportunity.”

Some key education lawmakers are indicating they’re open to the idea — at least if it’s not imposed on them by the administration.

“How we ensure the long-term sustainability of the Pell Grant program needs to be a national conversation, and as part of that conversation, we should discuss whether this aid can help incarcerated individuals become productive members of society,” Kline said. “If the administration wants to see meaningful change take place, it must stop governing through executive fiat and start working with the people’s elected representatives in Congress.”