Over 7 million college students will see their subsidized student-loan rates double on July 1 if Congress can’t reach a compromise to avert the hike. In the meantime, House Republicans — having acted first this time — are …
Education
Obama Kicks Off Campaign to Stop Student Loan Spike
As another student-loan showdown gets underway, Republicans may be in better position to win the political skirmish.
Reactionaries in New York
The Democratic candidates for mayor in New York threaten to return the city to the horrors of the David Dinkins era.
Romney’s Big School Voucher Idea Is Less Provocative Than it Seems
School vouchers are back in the news except that proponents of the idea, including Mitt Romney, are not using the word vouchers any more. For some reason voters don’t like that term, but they do like the idea of giving parents more choices, so vouchers — I mean “scholarships” and “choice” are a big part of Mr. Romney’s …
On Education, Romney Seeks Distance from Obama — and Bush
In a speech at the Latino Coalition’s annual economic summit in Washington on Wednesday, May 23, Mitt Romney called the U.S. education system a failure. Every child deserves a quality education, he said, particularly minority …
Student Loans: Is There Really a Crisis?
Student debt is completely out of control, right? The more than $1 trillion in outstanding college loans is front-page news and is pretty much the only educational issue the presidential candidates are talking about. Yes, ballooning student debt is causing real hardship for some Americans. But as with many educational flare-ups, the …
Why Romney and Obama Aren’t Talking About Education
According to a recent poll, 67 percent of registered voters in swing states said education was “extremely important” to them in this year’s election. Parents of high schoolers and college students are particularly worried, or they should be, that the interest rate on federally backed student loans is set to double in July, from 3.4 …
Rick Santorum’s Misconceptions on Public Education
For much of the past two weeks, as Rick Santorum’s candidacy star power has increased, so too have his critiques of public education. At recent campaign events and in last Thursday’s debate, he called American public schools “big factories” left over from the Industrial Revolution and argued for decreasing federal and state roles in …
The Beginning of the End for No Child Left Behind
President Obama granted 10 states relief from the strictest requirements of No Child Left Behind on Thursday, in a move he said combines “greater freedom with greater responsibility.” That freedom is provided in the form of a …
Obama Wants to Force Colleges to Reduce Tuition, but at What Cost?
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, President Obama “put colleges and universities on notice.” Find a way to stop tuition from going up, he told them, or risk losing federal aid money. Following up on that charge, …
Perspectives on No Child Left Behind, 10 Years After Its Signing
For all its admirable intentions and the measurable gains it has produced, a decade after George W. Bush’s signature education overhaul became law, the consensus among policymakers and educators is grim: The good that’s come …
Why Obama’s Plan to Fix Head Start Is Not Enough
Just four years after the federally funded preschool program Head Start began in 1965, it was slapped by a report, commissioned by the Johnson Administration, that questioned its effectiveness. Forty years later, not much has …
Obama’s Head Start Reform
A few months ago, I wrote a controversial column about the Head Start pre-school program, in which I cited the Department of Health and Human Services’ own study that showed Head Start wasn’t making much of a difference. I quoted an Obama Administration official acknowledging the problem, especially in the Head Start programs run by …