With the cost of college spiraling further out of reach for low-income students, a panel appointed by the College Board said the federal government should use the upcoming reauthorization of the nation’s major higher education law to invest more heavily in grants and other financial aid for needy students.

The College Board’s year-long National Dialogue on Student Financial Aid concluded that Congress should substantially increase the limits on Pell Grants, the federal government’s major grant program for low-income college students. The panel also recommended that states take steps to ensure that merit-based financial aid programs do not displace aid for low-income students.

“If we do not turn the national conversation back to investment in education access and away from tax reduction, ‘No Child Left Behind’ will become just an empty phrase, representing broken promises, broken aspirations, and broken dreams,” College Board President Gaston Caperton said Wednesday.

Although colleges and universities have more than doubled their aid to students over the past decade, an increasing amount of that money is now linked to test scores and other measures of academic merit. Other increasingly popular financial aid devices include educational tax credits and tax-free educational savings accounts that primarily benefit middle-class students.

“Many millions of families have no wealth, no savings,” said Gary Orfield, a Harvard University professor and member of the College Board panel. “Many of these policies are shifting aid from those who need it desperately to those who don’t.”

Meanwhile, college costs are increasingly out of reach for poor students. In 1975, the maximum Pell grant covered 84 percent of the annual cost of attending a public, four-year college. But now, the Pell covers just 42 percent of the average $9,700 cost of attending a state university.

Overall, nearly 65 percent of the nation’s high school graduates go on to college. But high-achieving students from middle-class households are far more likely to make that leap than their low-income counterparts.

With states facing deep budget problems, the gap is only likely to grow, members of the College Board panel concluded. As Congress begins work this year on reauthorizing the Higher Education Act, the College Board panel recommended that lawmakers look closely at increasing Pell Grants and liberalizing student loan payback provisions, particularly for students from low-income families.