WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) applauded the introduction of a companion to his bipartisan American Dream Accounts Act of 2012 (S. 2194) in the House today by U.S. Representative Chaka Fattah (D-PA-2). The legislation, which Senator Coons introduced in the Senate on Thursday, is designed to help increase the number of low-income students able to access and complete a college education.

“I’m thrilled that the American Dream Accounts Act has found a great champion in the House in Representative Fattah,” Senator Coons said. “Congressman Fattah has spent his career helping low-income and at-risk youth get the education they need to compete, so his support really means a lot to me. In the new global economy, Americans who do not earn some higher education will, on average, earn a million dollars less in their lifetimes. The journey from elementary school to a high school diploma and higher education is a long one, and students who drop out along the way often do so because those educational experiences are not connected. The American Dream Accounts help remedy this problem by strengthening the ability of teachers, parents, mentors, and students to work together to make sure that young people, throughout their entire education experience, prepare for, save for, and train for education after high school. I look forward to working with Representative Fattah and my colleagues in the Senate to help this legislation become law.”

The American Dream Accounts Act would authorize the Department of Education to award three-year competitive grants to support innovative and comprehensive partnerships that support low-income students in preparation for a college education. It encourages partnerships among schools, colleges, non-profits and businesses to develop secure, Web-based student accounts that contain information about academic preparedness, financial literacy and high-impact mentoring and would be tied to a college savings account.  Instead of approaching these threads independently, this bill connects students, parents and teachers across silos, and takes a small but significant step toward helping more at-risk students of all income levels access, afford and complete a college education. 

The American Dream Accounts Act authorizes the Department of Education to award three-year competitive grants to local partnerships that:

  • Create American Dream Accounts (ADAs), personal online accounts for low-income students that monitor higher education readiness and include a college savings account.  ADAs would follow students from school to school and through college. Parents would grant vested stakeholders (including counselors, teachers, coaches, mentors, and others) access to the account to update student information, monitor progress, and provide college preparatory support. 
  • Open college savings accounts for students. Every ADA would include a college savings account for each student. Grantees that can provide these accounts with seed money would be prioritized.  Funds from the grant could not be used to seed the college savings accounts.
  • Support college readiness by securely monitoring students’ progress online. Academic and behavioral information, including grades and course selections, progress reports, and attendance and disciplinary records would be available for review in an ADA, which would also provide opportunities to learn about financial literacy, prepare for college enrollment, and identify skills and career interests.
  • Collect data about effective ways to assist high-risk students in planning for college through a comprehensive monitoring and reporting system.

The Senate version of the American Dream Accounts Act is cosponsored by Senators Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.).

The Senate legislation can be downloaded here as a PDF:

http://coons.senate.gov/media/2012-03-15-dream-accounts-legislation.pdf

A four-page backgrounder on the American Dream Accounts Act can be downloaded as a PDF here:

http://coons.senate.gov/media/2012-03-15-dream-accounts-backgrounder.pdf

###