George Will asks some good questions about the Obama Admnistration’s proposal to link $14.5 billion in federal funding to whether a state certifies their education standards as “college- and career-ready” in this New York Post op-ed. He writes:
But how does one fulfill — or know when one has fulfilled — Obama’s goal of “college and [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'President Obama'
Remembering the “Career” in “College- and Career-Readiness”
Title I College- and Career-Ready Standards
Last week President Obama announced plans to require all states to certify that their standards were “college- and career-ready” in order to obtain their portion of $14.5 billion in federal education funds. This is the single largest pot of education money in the federal budget–it’s previously been called Title I of the Elementary and Secondary [...]
What He Said
During President Obama’s State of the Union address Wednesday night, there was an odd moment where he seemed startled by the audience’s reaction to his proposal to enact a spending freeze starting in 2011. The assembled Republicans guffawed at this assertion, presumably mocking him for not enacting the freeze now. Obama appeared visibly taken aback, [...]
Why DC Vouchers Don’t Matter
President Obama wants to appropriate enough money to keep the DC voucher program going for the children currently enrolled. Good–this is the only ethical position to take. I know some Democrats in Congress wish the program had never been implemented, but that’s the price of losing elections. Dragging low-income and minority students out of their [...]
Real Conversations
Higher Ed Watch writes today about one of the arguments private lenders are using in support of the FFEL program, and against Obama’s proposal to provide all loans through the federal government’s Direct Loan program: that the profits the government will make on loans to primarily middle class students will be used to subsidize increased [...]
Goldilocks and Pell Grants
It’s hard to make everyone happy on federal financial aid. Postsecondary institutions and state legislators decry the declining value of the Pell Grant over time. They’re right; it does buy less than it used to. But, federal legislators argue the Pell, the primary vehicle for student aid for low-income students, has been regularly increased and [...]
Dispatch from Turkey
I spent the last couple of weeks on vacation in Turkey, before, during and after President Obama’s visit. They love him there and the fact that he came as part of a larger trip to Europe–as opposed to the Middle East–was seen as symbolically a very big deal. The visit included a Q&A session with [...]
Making Pell Mandatory
President Obama’s budget proposal included several major changes in student financial aid, including a proposal for the biggest change in the federal student loan system since its inception. People on either side of the student loan issue can debate the pro’s and con’s of the President’s proposal to end subsidies to private lenders – and [...]
President Obama Joins the Bubble-Bursting Bandwagon
“And I’m calling on our nation’s governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test…”
I couldn’t agree more, Mr. President. But, as always, the devil is in the details. The Education Sector report Beyond the Bubble details how technology, along [...]
Charity Cynic
The Obama budget has already received vociferous opposition on its proposal to raise billions of dollars in additional revenue by capping the tax deduction for charitable contributions at 28 percent. One tv pundit predicted horrible unintended consequences and that contributions would fall “off a cliff.” That analysis is actually dead wrong, and the policy is [...]
ContreDemps
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the Obama White House are facing an early test of their school reform street cred. Earlier this week the Senate Appropriations Committee, where Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa chairs the subcommittee with jurisdiction over education, stripped out of the stimulus package several provisions being pushed by school reform groups, [...]
Obama Tells Truth About Washington Weather Wimpiness
Today President Obama brought some much-needed leadership and tough-minded thinking to the crucial education policy issue of hair-trigger weather sensitivity and resulting needless school closures (at HuffPost via Russo):
“My children’s school was canceled today, because of what? Some ice,” Obama said, and all at the table started laughing. ”As my children pointed out, in Chicago school [...]
"Our Schools Fail Too Many"
That’s what President Obama (!) said yesterday during his inaugural address, which I watched on a Jumbotron while standing near the Washington Monument with roughly a billion jillion other cold and decidedly warm-hearted people. It was the first of two references to schools, the second being: “And we will transform our schools and colleges and [...]
Change, Exported
I’m in Panama (the country with the canal, not the city with the Spring Break parties) seeing some family. Driving down the Pan-American Highway, a road that links Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to the far south of South America, I see a sign for a Panamanian presidential candidate with the slogan, “El Cambio en que puedes [...]
The Myth Continues
Nicholas Kristof’s column today urges President-elect Obama to move education to the front of the policy line. We’re all for that here at The Quick and the Ed. But Kristof commits a major sin by repeating the line, that we’ve twice debunked, that the current generation is the first to have less education than their [...]
Our Comics-Loving President-Elect
As many others have noted, the Huffington Post reports that president-elect Obama “collects Spider-man and Conan the Barbarian comics.” This is, of course, welcome news for right-thinking people everywhere. But it also raises more important questions that it answers. Which Spider-man and Conan the Barbarian comics? Some are pretty easy to guess–all Conan comics begin [...]
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
03/19/10 | Linda Perlstein links to Education Sector's "College- and Career-Ready" event.
03/17/10 | Ben Miller's column on graduation rates and NCAA Tournament eligibility is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal's The Daily Fix.
03/17/10 | Kevin Carey's critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book is quoted in Doublethink's Conventional Folly blog.
03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.