Margaret Spellings, the United States Secretary of Education, is guest-blogging today at our fellow institutional blog, Eduwonk. (She must have missed the memo that bloggers are all a bunch of unshaven, pajama-wearing D&D players living in their parents’ basement.) Education Sector is, of course, very pleased to host her discussion of education and technology. On [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'Secretary Margaret Spellings'
Giving an Inch?
In a rare moment these days, Bush administration officials and Congress are being applauded for their quick and measured response to problems (or, more accurately, the threat of problems) with student loan availability. Spurring lawmakers along was a looming Sallie Mae conference call with college officials, in which some speculated that Sallie Mae–the nation’s largest [...]
Spellings Stands Firm
I went to the National Press Club today to listen to a speech from the Secretary of Education. I was at a similar event a while back–has to have been more than a year ago–and she seemed more confident this time around. Given enough questions and enough time, you can tell if someone’s just a [...]
NCLB Higher Ed? No, Not Really
Alex Kingsbury has an informative state-of-play piece in U.S. News & World Report about measuring student learning in higher education, and how that information might be used to hold colleges and universities accountable for doing a good job teaching their students.
There’s an extremely reductive way of talking about these issues, which goes something like this:
“The [...]
Spellings Calls Testing Execs on Carpet: Just a Photo Op or Start of Real Reform?
CNN reports that U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings called in executives from major testing companies–including ETS, maker of the error-plagued SAT–for a meeting to discuss the industry’s ability to meet the growing demand for standardized tests.
It’s great that the Secretary is addressing this issue, which Education Sector’s Thomas Toch analyzed in a recent paper [...]
Fat, Drunk, and Stupid is No Way to Go Through Life
On March 28th, the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution released the newest version of its Child Well-Being Index (CWI), “an evidence based measure of trends in the social conditions encountered by American children and youth since 1975.” Written by Duke Prof. Kenneth Land, the report shows evidence that youth smoking, drinking, [...]
Going Soft in Connecticut?
Many Educommentators, including some of my educolleagues, have been protesting Connecticut’s attempt to free itself of NCLB’s testing requirements via the courts. It’s hypocritical for a state such as Connecticut with significant achievement gaps between racial groups to try to circumvent the federal law’s main mechanism for addressing such problems, they say. And they make [...]
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
03/11/10 | Kevin Carey is quoted on the rising costs of education in The Economist.
03/10/10 | Chad Aldeman's False Fronts paper is quoted on Accuracy in Academia.
03/09/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on Federal Family Education Loan defaults on The Huffington Post.
03/09/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on loan origination on the Firedog Lake blog.
03/07/10 | Kevin Carey calls for a Race to the Top in higher education in a column in The Chronicle of Higher Education.