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August 13, 2008
Efforts at reforming financial aid for students is stripped from Higher Education Act Refrom Bill
From Students for A Sensible Drug Policy
August 13, 2008
Despite all of our efforts we were not able to secure full repeal of, or even provide judicial discretion for, the aid elimination penalty for drug offenses in the HEA reauthorization bill.
Even though Congressional leadership made a pledge to us at the
beginning of 2006 that they would tackle the aid penalty in the
reauthorization bill, they were not able to muster enough votes,
support, wherewithal (or whatever else you want to call it) to
actually make it happen.
Anyway, despite that Congress failed to adequately address the
concerns of our hundreds of prominent organizations that called for
repeal of the penalty, there was a little bit of good language in the
HEA reauthorization bill.
The bill contains a provision that makes it slightly easier for
students to get their aid back early once they've lost it. Under
current law, students must either wait the specified period of time to
regain eligibility or they can get aid back early by having the
conviction expunged or by completing an approved drug rehab program
that includes two unannounced drug tests. The new HEA bill adds a new
option that allows students to get aid back early by just passing two
unannounced drug tests administered by an approved rehab program (they
don't necessarily have to complete a full, expensive program anymore,
which should make it a lot easier for a lot of students to get back in
school).
The bill also requires institutions of higher education to notify
their students, upon enrollment, that the penalty exists and to notify
those students who lose their aid how they can go about getting it
back.
Finally, the bill requires the Department of Education to do a much
better job tracking who is impacted by the penalty (instead of just
giving us raw total numbers of people who lose their aid). Hopefully,
we'll soon be getting victim numbers broken down by zip code, state,
income level, military status, etc. Those numbers should help us make
an even better case for repeal in the future.
-- Tom Angell, Government Relations Director Students for Sensible Drug Policy http://www.ssdp.org
Posted by lois at August 13, 2008 05:43 PM