News & Comment
Blogs and Opinion
The Cost of College: Relief is in Sight by Eric Lotke, OurFuture.org | September 6, 2007
At last we get a little good news. The new Congress is presenting to the President a package of legislation designed to help working families afford the skyrocketing cost of college. He’s threatened to veto it but we’ll get to that later. Start with the good news. Help is needed read more »Where's The Outrage? by Patricia J. Williams, <i>The Nation</i>, feeds.feedburner.com | July 18, 2007
There has been surprisingly little outcry over the Supreme Court's limits on school integration. read more »Lost Opportunity by Alan Jenkins, | July 17, 2007
The U.S. lags behind other countries in assuring opportunity for everyone; we should demand bold changes. read more »Leaving Education Reform Behind by Dana Goldstein<br><i>The American Prospect</i>, prospect.org | July 17, 2007
Conservatives are torn between making No Child Left Behind better and just letting it hobble along. read more »Skimming The Student Loan Cream by Luke Swarthout, | June 4, 2007
Chopping the criminally generous subsidies to school lending institutions could save billions. read more »Struggling To Get From Many To One by Alan Jenkins, | May 22, 2007
Immigration and school integration battles test the nation's core principles. read more »Campus Tainted Meal Plan by Rick Perlstein, | May 1, 2007
How E. coli conservatism infects "liberal" universities with an anti-regulatory bias. read more »Help The Poor, Help The Middle Class by Bill Scher, OurFuture.org | April 25, 2007
Isaiah just hit upon something important when, in discussing the new anti-poverty program from Center for American Progress, he wrote: read more »Privatizing And Profiteering by Robert Kuttner, prospect.org | April 24, 2007
The student loan scandal illustrates the failure inherent in privatization schemes. read more »Sallie Mae's Menage À Trois by Isaiah J. Poole, | April 18, 2007
Sallie, big banks and the GOP have had a good romp. We should stop paying for it. read more »
The Latest
California: Protect Our Schools from Devastating Layoffs, action.aclu.org | August 8, 2010
The story itself is bad enough but it is also set against the backdrop of Californian civilisation being beaten back into some form of rootless serfdom as the institutions of good governance unravel and fail. more »
Will The GOP Senators Whose States Face Thousands Of Teacher Layoffs Vote Against Teacher Funding? , wonkroom.thinkprogress.org | August 3, 2010
Today, the Senate will be taking a procedural vote on a bill providing $26 billion in aid to state and local governments, $10 billion of which is dedicated to preventing teacher layoffs. This particular batch of funding has been included in, and then cut from, multiple bills, as each time conservatives have objected. more »
Senate Vote on Medicaid, Education Funds Delayed, thehill.com | August 3, 2010
The Senate tabled a jobs measure Monday because Democrats underestimated the package’s cost. Democrats had scheduled a vote to end debate on their proposal to send $10 billion in funding to states and local governments to prevent public teacher layoffs. The package contains another $16.1 billion to help states with Medicaid obligations.
Education Funds Out of Senate War Bill, Politico | July 23, 2010
The Senate sent back to the House Thursday night a stripped-down $59 billion war funding bill, after striking all of the added education assistance which Democrats had wanted to avert threatened teacher layoffs in the fall. more »
Krugman: we're paying the price of dumbing down America., The New York Times | October 11, 2009
American Graduates Finding Jobs in China, The New York Times | August 11, 2009
Shanghai and Beijing are becoming new lands of opportunity for recent American college graduates who face unemployment nearing double digits at home. Even those with limited or no knowledge of Chinese are heeding the call. They are lured by China’s surging economy, the lower cost of living and a chance to bypass some of the dues-paying that is common to first jobs in the United States. more »
Teachers Could Earn More Under Obama Plan, USA Today | July 24, 2009
States that want a piece of the Obama administration's $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund for schools must hew to internationally benchmarked academic standards and let schools pay teachers and principals more if they work in hard-to-staff schools — or if student scores improve on basic skills tests. more »
Student Loan Measure Clears House Panel, The Washington Post | July 22, 2009
A bill that cleared a House committee would largely remove private lenders from the federal student loan industry, generating an estimated $87 billion savings over 10 years to fund more government grants and loans. more »
Black-White Student Achievement Gap Persists, MSNBC News | July 15, 2009
Despite unprecedented efforts to improve minority achievement in the past decade, the gap between black and white students remains frustratingly wide, according to an Education Department report. There is good news in the report: Reading and math scores are improving for black students across the country. more »
Obama Plans $12 Billion Boost To Community Colleges, USA Today | July 14, 2009
President Obama is expected to announce a $12 billion proposal today that will put the nation's community colleges front and center in his economic recovery plan. Among his goals: to modernize community college facilities, to increase the quality of online courses and to ensure that more students complete their programs. more »
