Pell Grant restored to Prisoners seeking education

Other exciting news that you may have heard is that
Julie Weiss told me that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island will
introduce legislation to repeal the Pell Grant ban on prisoners.
Finally, Jon Marc Taylor who wrote his doctoral thesis on Pell Grants
and prisoners told me in a phone conversation that two staffers from
Julie's group will visit him in prison to receive as much info as
possible about the issue. Charlie and Pauline

Back to School: A Guide to Continuing Your Education after Prison

Some inmates are able to pursue educational goals during a period of
incarceration, but few leave prison feeling that they have fully met
their educational needs. In the recent national Serious and Violent
Offender Program evaluation, 94% of adult male inmates interviewed as
they approached release identified education as a personal reentry
need. Inmates facing release from prison want to know how they can
either continue or begin to access adult education, post secondary
education, and/or occupationally specific education and training
programs. But there are some challenges in moving from knowing you
need it to knowing how to get it!

In 2008 the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Prisoner Reentry
Institute, with funding from the U.S. Department of Education,
developed a planning and information guide for inmates nearing
release. In 2010, the Department of Education updated the guide to
reflect the most recent information on federal student financial aid.
Back to School includes topics ranging from setting personal
educational goals and committing to a long term plan of educational
development, to knowing exactly where to go and what to ask for to
find, access, and pay for an educational program.

This 64 page document is in the public domain and can be downloaded
and reproduced from the web site of John Jay College at
(http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/BacktoSchoolSummer2010Revision.pdf ). Free
copies are available in limited quantities from the Department of
Education’s materials distribution center, EDPubs. (Visit EDPubs at
www.EDPubs.gov, call 1-877-4EDPUBS, or write to ED Pubs; P.O. Box
22207; Alexandria, VA 22304 and request item number ED005088P.)