High schools across America may be forced to have the rigor of their curricula vetted by the federal government in order for their students to be eligible for new grants under a budget bill pending in Congress.
Last month, Republican senators inserted a new financial assistance program for students into a bill that had previously passed in the House of Representatives.
The program proposes to provide eligible low-income freshmen and sophomores in college with grants of $750 and $1,300, respectively. Eligibility for these grants would be based upon completion of "a rigorous secondary school program of study" as determined by the secretary of education. The education secretary would be required to recognize at least one program in every state as rigorous.
This provision would thus allow for greater federal intervention in education, which has traditionally been governed at the local level.
In addition, home-schooled, private and parochial school students could be disqualified from receiving the grants as the bill requires recipients to complete a "program of study established by a state or local educational agency and recognized by the secretary."
The Department of Education is still considering the potential implications of the bill according to spokesman Chad Colby.
"The details of implementation are still being studied and developed," Colby said.
The way in which a rigorous curriculum would be defined could prove to be contentious, since a national standard will be applied to different systems in each state.
The original House version of the bill would have awarded supplemental Pell Grants to students based on their individual completion of a curriculum modeled after one currently being used in about 300 school districts in 15 states. Introduced by President Bush in 2002, the State Scholars Initiative is modeled after a Texas program introduced by then-Governor Bush.
Under the Texas program, rigorous curricula included four years of English, three-and-a-half years of social studies, two years of a foreign language and a year of algebra, advanced algebra, biology, chemistry, geometry and physics.
Many Democrats have been critical of the budget bill and several of the provisions it contains.
"This was a 744-page bill passed in the middle of the night along strictly party lines," said Tom Kiley, Democratic communications director for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. "The Republican leaders who pushed the bill through Congress shut Democrats out of the process almost completely."
The Senate version of the bill is currently pending a vote in the House of Representatives, which could come as late as February. If passed, President Bush is expected to sign the bill into law.
