Tucked into a U.S. House of Representatives higher education bill this week is a plan to scuttle a controversial evaluation of the Upward Bound program that would require grantees to enroll twice as many students as necessary and then provide no services to some of the youth as part of a research experiment.
The plan already faces opposition from members of the college access community, who say that recruiting students and then denying them services is unethical. Supporters of the U.S. Department of Education’s plan say the goal is to assign students randomly to Upward Bound or an unserved control group to better assess the program’s long-term effects.
As it took up a higher education and student aid bill this week, the House Education and Labor Committee passed an amendment that would prohibit the study’s implementation. The amendment still would need approval from the full House and Senate as well as the White House, so final action is uncertain.
“I hope we just would tell the Department of Education not to do this,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., a Congressional Black Caucus member who proposed the amendment.
The move follows several weeks of activity on the issue on Capitol Hill. In late May, most members of the Black Caucus signed a letter to House leaders opposing the evaluation plan for Upward Bound, one of the government’s TRIO college access programs.
Caucus members said random assignment “will have negative consequences for students, families and TRIO educators.” Individual colleges also would face a “loss of credibility and goodwill” in their communities, since grantees in essence would falsely recruit many students with no intention to serve them.
Scott’s amendment states that the Education Department “shall not implement or enforce, and shall rescind” the evaluation strategy, first outlined in fall 2006.
