Last night in his State of the Union Speech, President Bush said, “I propose larger Pell grants for students who prepare for college with demanding courses in high school.” [01/20/04]

A little more than three years ago, the same Bush said, “I am going to ask Congress to bolster the first year aid from thirty-three hundred dollars to five thousand one hundred dollars per recipient of the Pell Grant.” [08/30/00]

Two promises. Three years apart. Each about increasing Pell Grants. If the first promise had been kept, why would we need a second promise? Because the first promise was, in fact, not kept. What’s worse is that the first promise was not only not kept, it was buried under the basement floor and covered with concrete like some awful family secret. Let’s review. Bush’s budget for 2001 included a proposal to increase the maximum Pell Grant award to only $3,850, not the $5,100 he promised. And he opposed the ultimately successful Congressional effort to increase maximum Pell Grant awards to its current $4,000 level.

Yet here he is three years later again proposing larger Pell grants, as if he’s finally remembering the promise he failed to keep. And what makes it worse is that he apparently isn’t proposing across-the-board Pell grant increases, which is what he did in 2000. This time, possibly to make it easier to keep a promise, he is limiting his proposal to increasing Pell grants “for students who prepare for college with demanding courses in high school.”

So, unless they take “demanding courses in high school,” certain students will become yet another portion of those being left behind. They’ll be left behind because if they get only an average Pell grant, they will have only enough to cover 40 percent of average fixed costs (tuition and fees, room and board) at four-year public colleges and 15 percent at four-year private colleges.

They’ll be left behind because many inner city and rural high schools don’t have the funding to offer the college preparatory classes that would put their students in line for higher Pell grants. They’ll be left behind because the President himself proposed a 2002 budget that cut initiatives in The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act by a net total of $90 million.

They’ll be left behind because President Bush’s 2003 budget proposed eliminating the Leveraging Education Assistance Partnerships program, which provided $171 million to low-income students in 2002. They’ll be left behind because NCLB gives schools who don’t meet the requirements to receive federal funds a reason to lower their testing standards, push out students who bring down the school’s average score, or opt out of receiving federal funds all together.

And they’ll be left behind because a good idea not completed and/or badly implemented is like a Lamborghini without an engine. Sure it looks good on the outside, but it ain’t gonna get you far.