Madam President, as the son and grandson of classroom teachers; as a father myself; as someone for whom education played a central role in my life; as a passionate believer in the power of education to change others’ lives, I rise today to talk about a bill that is one of the most important to me that I have moved as a senator.
The fact is if we look at the American national condition: lack of access to higher education, lack of an opportunity for a quality education is one of the greatest problems we face. Inequality in having some real hope, some real promise of a shot at college defines and distinguishes the drivers of social inequality in America in ways it has not in decades. If we want to ensure going forward that American workers can compete in the global economy; if we want to ensure a country that is capable of living up to our promise of liberty and justice for all; if we want to deal with one of the biggest civil rights issues, I think, in our country; then we have to ensure every child has an equal chance for high-quality education regardless of the ZIP code they are born into.
Madam President, long before I was elected to public office, I spent years working with an education-center nonprofit called the “I Have A Dream” Foundation. In my role there, I visited schools all over the United States. More often than not, schools in very tough communities and neighborhoods, schools that were in public housing developments or that were in some of the most forlorn and troubled neighborhoods in all of America.
Something that struck me over and over again when I would go into an elementary school and talk to a group of young kids and say: What do you dream of? What do you hope to be when you grow up? They would raise their hands, and none of them said, “I dream of being in a gang;” “I dream of being in jail;” “I dream of being a drug dealer;” “I dream of dying before 20.” They would say: “I dream of being a senator” or “a lawyer” or “owning my own business” or “being a star in the NBA;” of “being a success.” The dreams you hear from kids in elementary schools are the same regardless of the community you are in in America. Yet the outcomes are so desperately different.
What I saw in the nearly 20 years I was active with the “I Have A Dream” Foundation was that the young people who came from a community, family, or school where there was little or no experience or expectation of a college education, there are powerful, persistent, and negative message at a very early age that college is not for them. They are told indirectly that it is not affordable, it is not accessible, it is not part of the plan for their future. Those messages have a cumulative and powerful and consequential impact.
Very few of the 50 “Dreamers” from the east side of Wilmington that my family and I worked very closely with had any expectation of a college education. In 1988, when our chapter of the “I Have A Dream” program promised them the opportunity for a higher education through a scholarship, you could see the change. First, in their teachers and their parents, then in their mentors and their classmates, and ultimately in them — in their hopes, in their expectations.
The most powerful thing the “I Have A Dream” program did in our chapter, and in dozens of chapters around the country, was to hold up a mirror to young people of their future that was a brighter and more promising future than they had ever dreamed of on their own. Then, to challenge them to walk through that open door and to make college not just a distant dream, not something they heard of or watched on TV, but something that became a part of their lived life, and to change their outcomes.
That experience has inspired the bill I introduced in the last Congress, and I am most personally connected to in this Congress.
Last year I found a Republican partner who shares my passion for expanding access to college and for making it more affordable. That partner is Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Some folks have noticed that here in the Senate we don’t always get along and we don’t always agree and sometimes partisanship divides us. I have been very, very pleased to have this strong and able partner in moving forward a bipartisan bill, which we named the American Dream Accounts Act: a bill that bridges the opportunity gap by connecting students, teachers, parents, and mentors to create a new generation of higher education achievers.
Too many American kids today are cut off from the enormous potential of a higher education. The numbers are grim. If you come from a low-income family, the chance you’d complete a college degree by the time that person turns 25 is about 1 in 10 at best.
These days, in order to have the prospect of employment and opportunity of accumulating wealth, and providing an education and security for our family and kids, a college education is essential. We in the federal government spend billions of dollars on making higher education affordable through Pell grants, yet do almost nothing to make it clear to children at the earliest age that this funding will be available to them.
In my home state of Delaware, our Governor Jack Markell and our first lady Carla Markell have done a wonderful job of incorporating the power of this insight, this lesson of ensuring there is a state-funded scholarship and network of engaged mentors and real reform in our public schools. We don’t tell kids — even in our state — in elementary school of the possibilities that lie ahead of them in a way that changes their expectations.
That is what this bill will hopefully do. It encourages partnerships between schools and colleges, nonprofits and businesses. It allows them to develop individualized student accounts, like a Facebook account married to a college savings account; individual accounts that are secure, Web-based, personal, and portable; accounts that contain information about each student’s academic preparedness and financial literacy. Something that combines a portfolio of their entire education experience with the very real savings for the future of higher education we want to pull them toward from their earliest years.
Instead of forcing motivated parents or concerned teachers or interested mentors or empowered students — instead of forcing all of these folks to track down these different resources separately, this legislation — this idea — would connect them across existing silos and across existing education programs at the state and federal level.
So tomorrow, Senator Rubio and I will reintroduce this legislation as the bipartisan American Dream Accounts Act of 2013. We are working hard to earn the support of our colleagues here in the Senate and in the House, and I will keep at this for as long as it takes.
The American Dream Accounts Act addresses the longstanding challenges and barriers to college access: connectivity, financial resources, early intervention, and portability. Let me briefly speak to each of those.
First, connectivity. The journey from elementary school, to high school, to higher education is a long one, and for a student to be successful it takes lots of engaged and attentive adults — motivated parents, concerned teachers, supportive family. So many students in our schools all over this country disengage or drop out along the way because they are not connected, they are not supported by those concerned and engaged adults. The American Dream Accounts Act takes advantage of modern technology to create Facebook-inspired individualized accounts — an opportunity to deliver personalized hubs of information that would connect these kids and sustain and support them throughout the entire journey of education by continuing to remind them of the promise of higher education and its affordability.
Second, these Dream Accounts would connect kids with college savings opportunities. Studies show that students who know there is a dedicated college savings account in their name are seven times more likely to go to college than peers without one. Think about that for a moment. States such as Delaware and our nation invest billions of dollars in programs to make higher education affordable. Yet so few of the kids I have worked with all over this country in the “I Have a Dream” program have any idea. They have never heard of Senator Pell. They don’t know Pell Grants exist. They don’t live in states that have the HOPE scholars, the ASPIRE scholars, or the Dream scholarships that a number of states have, and they don’t know they will be there for them when they are of age to go to college. Why don’t we tell them early? Why don’t we change their expectations? That is one of the things this program would do. And it is not a new idea; it is a demonstrated one that we know works.
The third piece of this American Dream Accounts Act is early intervention. As I said, states and federal programs that provide billions in support to make college affordable don’t connect with kids early enough. By letting them know early, we can change their ultimate orientation and outcomes.
The last important piece is portability. One of the things I saw in my own experience with my Dreamers — the students in the “I Have A Dream” program that I helped to run in Delaware — was just how often they moved. Children growing up in poverty — in families facing unexpected challenges — relocate over and over and bounce from school to school, district to district, often facing overstretched teachers with full classrooms who, when they move midyear into a new school, don’t get any background information or insight on the student who has moved into their classroom. So instead of being welcomed and engaged in a positive way, sometimes they feel and are disconnected and develop into discipline problems or students who are difficult to teach. The mobility that comes with poverty sometimes also leads to disconnection from education.
This robust, online, secure, individualized account would empower teachers to connect with parents, to connect with mentors, and to know the entire education history of the student newly before them. So no matter what disruptions or challenges a student might face as they travel through the long journey of education, their own individual American Dream Account — their own portfolio of their dreams and their activities and their progress — would be there with them.
Our nation’s long-term economic competitiveness requires a highly trained and highly educated workforce, and our nation’s commitment to a democracy and to a country of equal opportunity demands that we do everything we can to make real the hope of higher education for kids no matter the ZIP code into which they are born, no matter their background. While we spend billions on making higher education affordable, we aren’t delivering it effectively enough to change that future. What I saw in my years with the “I Have A Dream” program was bright faces, raised arms, hope, and opportunity that sadly was not realized as often as it could be. This program — this connectivity — this new type of account is a way to make real on that promise.
We can meet this challenge by connecting students with a broad array of higher education options, informing them about them early, whether it is vocational school or job training, community college or four-year universities. Not everyone is made for a four-year higher education degree. This would connect kids with all the different opportunities for skill training and higher education that are out there. It also would support students as they identify the type of education best for them, the career they most want, and give them the tools to get there.
As I visit schools across my own state of Delaware, one thing is clear: All of these different resources currently exist in different ways and at different stages of education, but they are not connected in a way that weaves together students, parents, mentors, and the resources of our highly motivated, highly engaged state.
So this vision — one that has stayed with me from my time at “I Have A Dream” to my service here as a senator — is that when we ask a roomful of elementary school kids in the future, “What do you dream of? What is your hope?” when their hands shoot up in the air and they list all of the different dreams they have, regardless of background or income or community, we can make that possible. We can make our investments real, and we can make the dream of equal opportunity a reality.
This year, with the support of lots of groups, including the Corporation for Enterprise Development, a wonderful group called Opportunity Nation, the First Focus Campaign for Children, we are hopeful that bipartisan support for this American Dream Accounts idea will simply continue to grow. Let’s work together to empower students and parents of all backgrounds to achieve their dreams from the earliest age.
Thank you. Madam President, I yield the floor.
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