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Hey Mitt, Leave Our Teachers Alone by Terrance Heath, OurFuture.org | June 13, 2012
Yesterday was the last day of school for public school students in Montgomery County, Maryland, where we live — including our nine-year-old son, who just completed the third grade. I began the morning by sending a one last email to his teacher. I asked her about the summer reading and math packets we were expecting our son to bring. I also thanked her for all the work she'd done to help our son this year. As I thought about how much our son has grown and improved over the past year, and how very much the dedicated teachers and staff at his school had to do with those changes, I couldn't help being mystified at Mitt Romney's assertion that our children need fewer teachers. Mystified, that is, but not surprised. read more »The Sununu Spin by Digby , OurFuture.org | June 12, 2012
I've always loathed this jerk, but he is always one of those guys who is wiling to come right out and defend the indefensible, so you have to give him a sort of credit: read more »The Secret of Joy: Six Lessons From Quebec's "Maple Spring" by Terrance Heath, OurFuture.org | June 6, 2012
As I read more about the student movement in Quebec, known as the "Maple Spring" or the "Casserole Revolution," it brings to mind the final scene from Possessing the Secret of Joy, by one of my favorite authors, Alice Walker. In that scene, the main character — Tashi, a minor character from The Color Purple — discovers a truth. From Wall Street to Wisconsin, and Cairo to Quebec, people the world over are realizing that same truth every day. Today, that truth is echoed in the chants, protests and placards of protesters in the streets of Montreal. It's the same truth Walker spelled out in huge block letters near the end of her novel: RESISTANCE IS THE SECRET OF JOY. That's one of six lessons of Quebec's "Maple Spring." read more »Learning by Making by Dale Dougherty, slate.com | June 4, 2012
On a morning visit to a Northern California middle school, I saw not a single student. The principal showed me around campus, but I didn’t see or hear students talking, playing, or moving about. The science lab was empty, as were the library and the playground. It was not a school holiday: It was a state-mandated STAR testing day. The school was in an academic lockdown. A volunteer manned a table filled with cupcakes, a small reward for students at day’s end. This is what the American public school looks like in 2012, driven by obsessive adherence to standardized testing. The fate of children, their schools, and their teachers are based on these school test scores. read more »Why Is Student Debt Different From Other Kinds Of Debt? by Suzy Khimm, The Washington Post | June 1, 2012
When it comes to consumer debt, Americans are slowly but surely starting to dig themselves out of the hole of the recent downturn. Severely delinquent mortgages, credit card bills, and car loans have all been in decline over the last two years, according to the New York Federal Reserve. But Americans have had significantly more trouble paying back one particular kind of loan. “Student loan debt continues to grow even as consumers reduce mortgage debt and credit card balances,” Donghoon Lee, senior economist at the New York Fed, said in a statement. “It remains the only form of consumer debt to substantially increase since the peak of household debt in late 2008.” Why are Americans having more trouble paying off student loans, as compared to other kinds of debt? read more »Conservatives Again Risk Higher Student Debt To Protect The Wealthy by Isaiah J. Poole, OurFuture.org | May 8, 2012
Senate Republicans today filibustered the effort to prevent federal student loan rates from doubling, once again obstructing the majority and putting the finances of millions of college students at risk for the sake of protecting the leather wallets of the 1 percent. read more »Tell The Senate To Act On Student Loan Debt by Isaiah J. Poole, OurFuture.org | May 7, 2012
As the Senate prepares to vote Tuesday on legislation that will stop a scheduled doubling of the rate on Stafford student loans on July 1, conservatives are engaged in a shameless (and shameful) effort to detail the effort. read more »Free College? We Can Afford It. by Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Washington Post | May 1, 2012
Student loans set off the latest Washington spitball fight. The House Republican budget called for letting interest rates double on government-subsidized student loans (and for deep cuts in Pell Grants and other student support). Students who borrow the maximum in subsidized loans would end up paying as much as $1,000 a year in added interest. Last week, President Obama sensibly called for extending the lower rate and starting stumping through colleges and talk shows to enlist students in the cause. The standoff allows for what has now become the routine exchange of insults, slurs and posturing before a deal is worked out at the last possible moment. Ignored in this is the stark reality that even with the lower rates, more and more students can’t afford the college education or advanced training that everyone except for Rick Santorum believes they need. read more »What Makes Health-care And Education Costs Similar To Each Other — And Unlike Anything Else by Ezra Klein, The Washington Post | May 1, 2012
Like the health-care sector, the higher education sector is heavily subsidized by the government. Some take that commonality as a causality: Health-care and college costs are out of control because the government subsidizes them. I think the truth is closer to the reverse: The government subsidizes them because their costs are out of control. Health-care and higher education are similar in another way, too: People don’t think they can responsibly say no to either expense. Families take on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to pay medical bills and tuition costs. This inability to say no removes the ultimate form of market discipline: the consumer’s ability to simply walk out of the store. There’s certainly more we could do to bring market pressures into play in both sectors, but the reason the government ends up involved in health care and education is that a real market would require us telling more people than we’re comfortable with that they can’t have the medical care or education that they need. read more »The Imperiled Promise of College by Frank Bruni, The New York Times | April 30, 2012
For a long time and for a lot of us, “college” was more or less a synonym for success. We had only to go. We had only to graduate. And if we did, according to parents and high-school guidance counselors and everything we heard and everything we read, we could pretty much count on a career, just about depend on a decent income and more or less expect security. A diploma wasn’t a piece of paper. It was an amulet. And it was broadly accessible, or at least it was spoken of that way. With the right mix of intelligence, moxie and various kinds of aid, a motivated person could supposedly get there. College was seen as a glittering centerpiece of the American dream, a reliable engine of social mobility. I’m not sure things were ever that simple, but they’re definitely more complicated now. Because of levitating costs, college these days is a luxury item. What’s more, it’s a luxury item with newly uncertain returns. read more »
The Latest
"No Child Left Behind" to be "Rebranded", iht.com | February 23, 2009
Two years ago, an effort to fix No Child Left Behind, the main U.S. law on public schools, provoked a grueling slugfest in Congress, leading Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, to say the law had become "the most negative brand in America." Education Secretary Arne Duncan agrees. "Let's rebrand it," he said in an interview. read more »
Schools Get $106 Billion in Stimulus, Los Angeles Times | February 13, 2009
The massive federal economic stimulus package hammered out by Congress this week contains about $106 billion earmarked for education, an unprecedented expansion of federal spending into the nation's schools. The money would pay for, among other things, special education, school repair and retaining teachers who might otherwise be laid off. read more »
Stimulus Could Aid Colleges, Students, Associated Press | February 9, 2009
The stimulus plan emerging in Washington could offer an unprecedented, multibillion-dollar boost in financial help for college students trying to pursue a degree while they ride out the recession. It could also hand out billions to the states to kick-start idled campus construction projects and help prevent tuition increases at a time when families can least afford them. read more »
School Funds Double in Stimulus, Christian Science Monitor | February 5, 2009
The economic stimulus bills before Congress contain a $140 billion boost for education — and most of it would be used to more than double federal spending on America's public schools over the next two years. read more »
Democrats Seek Stimulus for Schools, Associated Press | January 25, 2009
Democrats want to use the big spending package designed to jump-start the staggering economy to send billions to long-term programs to help poor and disabled school children. President Barack Obama's recovery plan amounts to the biggest increase ever in federal money for schools. Many Republicans say it is not a short-term boost but an immense expansion that will be impossible to roll back. read more »
Schools Get Small Slice of Stimulus, money.cnn.com | January 15, 2009
President-elect Barack Obama has proposed an ambitious plan to rebuild the nation's crumbling schools as a part of his economic stimulus package, aiming to help budget-constrained school districts make much needed repairs. read more »
Obama Pledges School Upgrades, USA Today | January 1, 2009
Barack Obama probably cannot fix every leaky roof and busted boiler in the nation's schools. But educators say his sweeping school modernization program — if he spends enough — could jump-start student achievement. More kids than ever are crammed into aging, run-down schools that need an estimated $255 billion in repairs, renovations or construction. read more »
More Math, Science Teachers Needed, | December 29, 2008
It's no easy task to recruit people with proclivities for science into schools — and to keep them long enough to nurture a talent for teaching. But over the next decade, schools will need 200,000 or more new teachers in science and math, according to estimates by such groups as the Business-Higher Education Forum in Washington. read more »
More Students Need Subsidized Lunches, CNN | December 12, 2008
The sagging economy is taking a bite out of federal school-meal subsidies as more students take advantage of free or low-price breakfasts and lunches, nutritionists say in a report. read more »
Schools Health Experts Warn of Hunger , mcclatchydc.com | December 9, 2008
School nurse Carolyn Duff told a Senate committee that she sees signs of the financial downturn every day in the kids she treats. "More and more of the working poor are entering the ranks of unemployed, impoverished and homeless families," Duff testified before the Senate Agriculture Committee. read more »
