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ExpectMore.govExpectMore.gov home pageEXPECT FEDERAL PROGRAMS TO PERFORM WELL, AND BETTER EVERY YEAR.
 
Program Assessment

Program

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Federal Pell Grants

The Federal Pell Grant program helps ensure access to postsecondary education for undergraduate students by providing need-based grants that, in combination with other sources of student aid, help meet education costs. The program also promotes lifelong learning by encouraging low-income adults to return to school.

Rating

What This Rating Means

PERFORMING
Adequate

This rating describes a program that needs to set more ambitious goals, achieve better results, improve accountability or strengthen its management practices.
  • The program helps to ensure that low- and middle-income students can afford the costs of postsecondary education. The program provides over $12 billion in grants to over 5 million students each year, forming the foundation of need-based student aid.
  • The program has meaningful performance measures and outcome data on these measures such as the degree to which Pell Grants are targeted to low-income students. New measures such as enrollment and graduation rates among low-income and minority students have also been added. The program has met its current long-term performance goals and new measures will help track other key program goals.

Improvement Plan

About Improvement Plans

We are taking the following actions to improve the performance of the program:

  • Developing legislative and administrative strategies to improve performance on the annual and long-term measures such as performance on inreasing enrollment rates.
  • Working with Congress on proposals to better target Pell funding to the neediest students.
  • Reproposing an amendment to the Internal Revenue Code to allow the IRS to match student aid data and tax data to prevent overawards (and underawards) in Pell and other student aid programs.

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