Education: All Articles and Books

A College Fund for Every Student

Articles — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 08:35:00 -0400

Barack Obama wants to give families a refundable $4,000 tax credit for college, if their children complete a required amount of community service. It's a fine, conventional Democratic idea. It could be a lot more powerful, though, if Obama coupled it with an old Republican favorite - depositing his $4,000 credit into private accounts like the so-called 529 plans that so many upper-income families use to save for college.

There are already 12 higher education-related tax credits and deductions on the books, including the Clinton administration's HOPE and Lifetime Learning tax credits. To varying degrees they make college more affordable for those with taxable income who get over the hump… more

Battle For the 'Burbs

Ron Tang — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:34:00 -0400

* This article is adapted from Reihan Salam's and Ross Douthat's Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.

It was only four years ago that conservatives -- and a great many liberals -- were convinced that the Democratic party was doomed to become a purely regional institution: "a national party no more," to borrow the title of Georgia Democrat-turned-Bush supporter Zell Miller's 2003 memoir. Pundits brandished county-by-county maps showing blue enclaves drowning in a sea of red; they talked up the growth of GOP-leaning regions and constituencies and the daunting demographic… more

X+3(Y)politics = Prop. 98

Articles — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 06:15:00 -0400

Twenty years ago, with just under 51% of the vote, California voters approved Proposition 98, a constitutional amendment establishing a minimum funding guarantee for education. For years afterward, officials at the California Teachers Assn. (the initiative's main backer) and other proponents made a habit of describing Proposition 98 as having receiving "overwhelming support" from voters.

Today, the education funding guarantee is as popular as the teachers union has long wished -- a true third rail of California government that zaps politicians who dare to suggest altering it. So they rarely dare. Although Proposition 98 has much to do with the state's current $15-billion-plus shortfall, it is not talked about much… more

Paying City Students Is a Wise Investment

Ron Tang — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:59:00 -0400

Summer has arrived in Baltimore, and so has summer school -- bringing with it a chance for students who improve on their High School Assessment exams to pocket something more than academic success. A few months ago, Baltimore schools CEO Andres Alonso unveiled a controversial proposal to improve city schools: Pay students to perform. It's a simple idea that has generated quite a bit of controversy from purists who cringe at the thought of paying students to learn and from realists who believe there simply must be a more effective way to spend $1 million in a failing school system.

Yet… more

Betting On the Lottery

Ron Tang — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:43:00 -0400

Californians could be forgiven for worrying that an important state asset -- the state lottery -- is in grave danger. In recent weeks, a rhetorical barrage, bordering on the hysterical, has been directed at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to borrow against future lottery receipts to help close a $15.2-billion budget gap.

The Contra Costa Times darkly suggested that the governor's idea would mortgage the lottery's future and "saddle future generations with irresponsible debt." The top Democrat in the state Senate, Don Perata of Oakland, called it "the worst kind of market speculation." Some Republicans have claimed that the proposal is a… more

The War Over the War (cont.)

Ron Tang — Mon, 19 May 2008 08:05:00 -0400

There's the war in Iraq and then there is the war over the war in Iraq. The first is about gaining ground against the sectarian militias and terrorists who plague that country. The second is about storytelling.

Advocates of staying and fighting in Iraq are at a distinct disadvantage in the second war. The burden of the Iraq fighting falls on such a small number of military families that it is easy to portray the troops in the field as victims. This has proved an effective strategy for Virginia's junior senator, Jim Webb, a staunch opponent of the surge. Once seen… more

Arnold vs. Arnold

Ron Tang — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:00:00 -0400

Education cuts and reform campaigns can be the drinking and driving of California politics. Each carries certain risks when pursued separately. Combined, they can be deadly.

This is a truth that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has found hard to accept. Three years ago, just as he launched his breakneck drive to win voter approval of budget and political reforms, he decided to withhold part of a mandated increase in education funding from his 2005-06 budget proposal. The delay in Proposition 98 funding soon consumed the public attention that Schwarzenegger wanted directed toward his reform proposals. His favorability rating dropped more than 20… more

Academic March Madness

Ron Tang — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 06:36:00 -0400

If you've watched any of the televised men's college basketball tournament this year, you've been bombarded by NCAA commercials that declare: "There are 380,000 NCAA student athletes... and just about every one of them will go pro in something other than sports."

It's an uplifting tagline, but there's a catch. In order to "go pro in something other than sports," that athlete needs a college degree. And far too many male athletes in top-tier Division I basketball programs never graduate.

The teams that played in the Sweet 16 this year have some of the worst academic records in the country, particularly the… more

Taming the Tuition Beast

Ron Tang — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:47:00 -0400

It's not news that the cost of a college degree has risen significantly over the last couple of decades.

Since 1990, tuition and fees have risen by nearly 225 percent at four-year public colleges and by 154 percent at private four-year colleges. The real story is that tuition growth rates often fluctuate wildly from year to year -- which makes it hard for families to plan ahead and budget enough to cover the costs.

Last year, students at Villanova faced an unexpected tuition and fee increase that was double the previous year's.

Students entering Penn State in 2002 had no way of knowing… more

Put Teachers To the Test

Ron Tang — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 20:00:00 -0400

In recent years, reformers have sought to improve our failing public education system by tightening and standardizing the measures we use to judge performance. From the numerical requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act to California's increased focus on assessment and accountability, there's been a conscious attempt to use hard data to measure success at every level of the education system.

But one group does not have its performance measured this way: teachers. Determining the effectiveness of individual teachers -- are they helping our kids learn or not? -- remains a mostly subjective judgment. Yet there's no reason why teachers… more

Don't Link School Spending To Oil Companies' Profits

Ron Tang — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:33:00 -0400

Last week, a bill was proposed by a majority of Assemly Democrats to impose extra taxes on oil companies to help prevent pink slips for teachers. A March 12 vote, mostly along party lines, failed to garner the required two-thirds majority for passage of a tax increase.

But Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez has said he does not plan to give up on the idea.

Despite the importance of not laying off teachers, failure to pass was a good result. The bill, ABX3 9, is not the solution for keeping teachers employed or solving California's budget problems.

Budget problems cannot be solved with taxes… more

Dropout Factories

Ron Tang — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

California has a massive dropout problem: An estimated 25 percent of students fail to complete high school, ultimately costing the state billions in lost income tax revenue, crime costs and public assistance.

Last month, a study from UC Santa Barbara suggested that the dropout problem might be more concentrated than previously thought: It found that just 20 percent of schools account for 80 percent of dropouts, and that many of them are "alternative" schools that are meant to help students who have not succeeded in regular schools.

This finding has drawn fire from leaders of these schools, who argue that it's only… more

A Matter of Degrees

adminn — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 15:53:00 -0500

As the college football season nears its final showdown between Ohio State and LSU, the media-stoked frenzy over which teams were selected for the Bowl Championship Series has reached a fever pitch.

Penn State is in the Alamo Bowl, with less money and media attention. But if team academic performance were considered by the BCS, Penn State would have fared much better.

Over all, the academic performance of big-time college football is dismal. Only 56 percent of Division I-A football players graduate within six years of enrollment. Many who do receive a diploma are tracked into jock majors or… more

Life Chances

adminn — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:35:00 -0500

The blue-ribbon commission has an inauspicious history in American public policy. Most often, assembling a dozen or two bipartisan grandees to deliberate soberly about a problem for several years is merely a way of evading the problem.

But there are exceptions. Though it will probably pass unnoticed, Dec. 22 of this year will mark the 20th anniversary of the creation of one of the most successful policy commissions in modern U.S. history: The National Commission on Children. Chaired by Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, the esteemed group four years later issued a report, Beyond Rhetoric, which was… more

Flexing Their Word Power

adminn — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 07:46:00 -0500

Watching a bunch of gangly middle-schoolers hopping around in their gym clothes at 9 in the morning brought back all sorts of bad memories from my own junior high school days. Still, just by watching Wilmington Middle School students in phys ed class one day last week, I learned a valuable lesson about generosity, voluntarism and just plain common sense.

I went to Wilmington to check out what I thought was a simple yet brilliant idea to help working-class students compete in the high-stakes world of educational testing.

We hear a lot about educational inequality, but we sometimes forget that inequality comes… more

Continuing the Investment

adminn — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 13:58:00 -0500

Deep Creek Elementary School is an education success story. In 2001, Deep Creek, where more than three-quarters of students come from low-income families and 80 percent are black or Hispanic, was one of the worst elementary schools in Baltimore County, Maryland. Its third-graders were reading at a first-grade level. But the new principal, Anissa Brown Dennis, expanded collaboration and professional development for teachers, implemented an aligned reading and math curriculum from pre-K through third grade, and offered summer learning and after-school programs for struggling students. Today, nearly three-quarters of Deep Creek students read on grade level, teacher and student morale… more

If Gingrich Won't Run, Let His Ideas Rule Instead

Articles — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:10:00 -0400

Maybe America just isn’t ready for a president named "Newt."

But by any name, we still need reform, and so there’ll be a valuable place for Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who announced Saturday that he’s not running for president next year, concentrating instead on his "American Solutions" program of education and activism. And though many have criticized Gingrich the politician, nobody disputes that he is smart, even visionary.

For a quarter-century, in and out of office, Gingrich has been animated by one fundamental observation: That bureaucratic government has fallen behind the private sector -- "the difference," he says, "between FedEx… more

An Incomplete Report Card

Articles — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:07:00 -0400

Last Tuesday’s release of what is known as the "Nation’s Report Card" for math and reading is likely to reignite talk of the so-called racial achievement gap. Despite some good news, the report, published by the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, shows that Latinos, like blacks, haven’t made progress in catching up to the test scores of whites.

But the dour assessment of Latino educational achievement has nothing to do with a racial gap. We can’t use the same lens to interpret Latino data as we do to explain the differences between white and black achievement.

When it comes to… more

We're Still Failing Our Students

Articles — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 10:59:00 -0400

On Monday, the ACLU of Southern California and Public Advocates Inc. released an upbeat progress report on the results of the settlement of Williams vs. California, a class-action suit brought on behalf of the state’s most-neglected students. In the lowest-performing schools, there are more textbooks, adequate facilities and teachers with proper credentials. However, the report, like the settlement, failed to address the bigger issue: achieving "teacher equity" across the state.

More so than textbooks or school facilities, research has shown that teachers have the greatest effect on student learning and, by extension, educational opportunity. Yet in addressing access to good teachers,… more

Expelling Academia's Crackpots

Articles — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:05:00 -0400

You don’t have to be a crusading right-winger to recognize that University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, who compared the victims of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack to Nazis, is an extremist, an ideologue whose scholarship is less than objective.

Nor do you have to be a flame-throwing left-winger to agree that the university where he was once director of the ethnic studies department shouldn’t have ditched him the way it did. It needed to do much, much more.

Two short years ago, Churchill’s labeling of WTC victims as "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi in charge of… more