Quality Education
Top Stories
Don’t Let Them Kill Student Loan Reform
March 11th, 2010
Something so simple, so easy: end tens of billions of dollars in bank subsidies to the private lending industry and return much of the savings back into the hand of students, with the Department of Education providing loans to students directly. A no-brainer right? Well reform may be a no-go, if six Senate Democrats have their way. more » Featured Issues
Miller Harkin Act to Save Direct Lending
March 12th, 2010
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With word that Six Senators were expressing opposition to putting direct lending in the budget bill reconciliation -- which only requires sixty votes to pass the Senate -- Rep George Miller, Chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, and Tom Harkin, Chair of the Senate Education Committe, got to work. more »
The Last Obscenity: Will the Bank Lobby Succeed in Screwing Poor Kids?
March 11th, 2010
It is, as President Obama stated, a "no-brainer." Cut the $90 billion in subsides that go to banks to make risk-free student loans that are GUARANTEED BY THE GOVERNMENT, go to direct lending, and use the money saved to increase Pell grants and tuition tax credits for working families so more poor kids can afford college. $90 billion over 10 years isn't bubkas. more »
Pay Teachers More
From the debates in Wisconsin and elsewhere about public sector unions, you might get the impression that we’re going bust because teachers are overpaid. That’s a pernicious fallacy. A basic educational challenge is not that teachers are raking it in, but that they are underpaid. If we want to compete with other countries, and chip away at poverty across America, then we need to pay teachers more so as to attract better people into the profession.... more »
The Case
Conservatives Letting Head Start Fall Behind
President Bush signed bipartisan legislation in December reauthorizing the Head Start program. But even as they praised the program, Congress funded the program at $480 million below its authorized level. Then President Bush in early February proposed a budget that would reduce funding even further below what the Congress authorized. more »
Progressive Values for Education
Americans want schools that teach values as well as math and reading. more »
The Facts
College: Soaring Out of Reach for Families
The dream of a college education is being priced out of reach for more and more American students and their families. Tuition is rising while wages are flat or sinking. Conservatives in Congress have responded by cutting $12 billion from federal student loan programs and raising loan interest rates for student and their parents. Conservatives in state governments have cut back funding for colleges, passing more costs to families in the form of increased tuitions and fees. See below to find out how your representative voted.more »
The News
The Case
Sam Brownback's Anti-Poor Agenda
The GOP presidential primary has offered some odd debates on who cares about the "very poor" and whether there should be a "safety net" or a "trampoline" to help people get out of poverty. Meanwhile, in Kansas, it seems Governor Sam Brownback is hoping to dig a bigger hole for the poor fall into. Between his tax plans and his approaches to school funding, Brownback's agenda overtly boosts the wealthy and makes things harder for the poor. While many liberals speculate this to be a secret goal, Brownback is hardly making a secret of his agenda.more »
Can Education Be a Driver of Equality?
Education was rightly big on Obama’s agenda in his State of the Union address last week. As he noted, “[T]o prepare for the jobs of tomorrow, our commitment to skills and education has to start earl[y].” He proposed solutions to getting better outcomes from kindergarten to higher ed. But his eyes were mostly on containing the system we have. Yet on a more general level, we’re still having a conversation as a country about what we mean when we say that we owe every child a decent education. We’re currently trying to fix an issue fundamentally about social justice by focusing on accountability, competition, and choice. A conversation about values — the purpose of education and what it should bring each child — is lacking. Why do we educate children? Is the end goal a higher salary? High test scores? Or something else?more »
Latest from our Bloggers
feb
2
2012
10:30 pm
10:30 pm
Although it's a bit early to know for sure, let's hope that 2012 is the year that the economic policies known as "austerity" finally crashed and burned. more »
jan
25
2012
3:44 pm
3:44 pm
Reflecting on last night's State of the Union address to the nation, most opinion outlets are declaring that President Obama is now more overtly resorting to a "populist message" to rally Democrats and appeal to independents who are frustrated with st more »
jan
20
2012
10:58 am
10:58 am
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, notorious for his flip-flops on a broad array of issues, seems to maintain this tendency when he's addressing policies governing education and public schools. more »
jan
12
2012
3:01 pm
3:01 pm
There's a reason why accountants traditionally wore green eyeshades. In their "vision-intensive, detail-oriented" work, they were prone to "eyestrain" caused by scrupulous attention to columns and rows of numbers on a ledger. Now, of course, the strain is lessened by the softer glow of a computer screen. more »
jan
5
2012
11:19 am
11:19 am
I remember the day that the poor kids showed up at our school. It was in 1964.
Classes had already started, and I was in second grade, surrounded by my familiar friends from my mostly white, mostly well-to-do, suburban neighborhood in North Dallas. more »
jan
5
2012
9:25 am
9:25 am
On the menu this morning:
dec
26
2011
12:20 am
12:20 am
For a ten-year stretch in my life I was fortunate to spend every Christmas in Jamaica. In Jamaica, Christmas is a far more modest affair than it is here in the US. For sure, during the days leading up to “the Christmas,” the markets are packed with shoppers and the transports whizzing up and down the coastal road are stuffed to over-flowing with passengers. more »
dec
21
2011
6:41 pm
6:41 pm
One good thing you can say about 2011 is that it is a year in which lots of wrong-headed undertakings finally came to their ignominious conclusions -- including, among others, the Iraq War, the Gadhafi regime, the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, and "The Oprah Winfrey Show".
Also among the train-wrecks is undoubtedly our failed national education policy, No Child Left Behind. more »
