Students may be looking forward to slightly smaller classes than previously feared this fall. In a special session that interrupted the summer recess, the House of Representatives passed a $26 billion bill this afternoon. The bill will save an estimated 160,000 public jobs, particularly teachers and emergency-response workers. The bill will be signed into the law this evening by President Obama.

Although the bill should not add to the national deficit, Republican leaders declared it fiscally irresponsible. It has also been criticized as pandering to teachers unions. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fl, called the bill a “transparent handout to the teachers union” financed by “sham accounting gimmicks.” Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama was in Texas yesterday, fund-raising for his party at the University of Texas at Austin. He again addressed the point that education is a prerequisite for economic growth, a subject he also addressed in a speech at the National Urban League two weeks ago. “The single most important thing we can do is to make sure we’ve got a world class education system for everybody,” the president said.

He also cited the statistic that the U.S. fell from first place in college graduates to 12th place in the world over a single generation. Obama wants the nation to reclaim is position as the nation with the most college graduates, requiring an increase of the college completion rate from 40 percent to 60 percent. “I want us to produce 8 million more college graduates by 2020, because America has to have the highest share of graduates compared to every other nation.” Read the rest of this entry »

Image via The Daily Gotham

About 700,000 students in the U.S. look forward to deportation after high school graduation. But President Obama has provisionally allowed some of these students, who lack proper immigration papers, to stay. They would all qualify for the Dream Act, a bill that has been in congress since March of 2009.

If the Dream Act passes, students who arrived in the U.S. as illegal immigrants before the age of 16 will be offered conditional permanent residency and an opportunity at earning citizenship. Although the Department of Homeland Security has not changed its policy in light of the pending bill, they do feel that their resources are used on more pressing deportations. “Our time is better spent on someone who is here unlawfully and is committing crimes in the neighborhood,” said John Morton, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in the New York Times. Read the rest of this entry »

In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the National Urban League, President Obama gave a speech this morning addressing education reform. He opened his remarks by acknowledging the advances that the National Urban League has forged in its 100-year existence.

He then spoke about the criticisms he has faced for not focusing his energies solely on economic issues. “Education is an economic issue, if not the economic issue of our time,” said Obama, although “we won’t see results overnight.” He said that the current status quo is leading to a decline of the country’s educational standards, and that educational reforms are needed to catch up to other countries. He cited that the US has dropped from the number one country with the most college graduates to number 12.

He discussed the changes needed to make higher education more accessible. He said that the education gap between minority and white students is leading to a widening income gap. Some the reforms have already been made, like making more financial aid available to students in the form of Pell Grants and federal loans. Obama also said that more effort needed to be invested in strengthening community colleges, which he described as “great undervalued assets.”
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It’s not a slow news week, so we’re not sure why Fox has chosen to dig up comments that Barack Obama made back in 2007. But they’ve been circulating the headline “Obama Supports Kindergarten Sex Ed,” in connection to a new sex education bill that’s being considered in Helena, Montana.

The idea stems from a smear campaign that started during Obama’s 2004 senatorial race against Alan Keyes. ABC reports that Obama’s opponent propagated the idea the he is for teaching sex ed to kindergartners after supporting a bill that provided age-appropriate and scientifically-based sex education for students of all grade levels. Read the rest of this entry »

House Democrats are threatening to cut $500 million from Obama’s education program Race to the Top, reports The Washington Post. Although the White House says it will veto, Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said the cut is necessary to free up money for a new $10 billion fund to help save more than 100,000 state and municipal education jobs. The House approved the war-funding bill late Thursday,  including another $5 billion for Pell grants for college students in need. The administration supports the $15 billion total in education spending but opposes the provision to cut spending on Race to the Top. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite what the political pundits, disgruntled Democrats and enraged Republicans may say about President Barack Obama, according to 238 of the nation’s foremost scholars, he is one of the country’s best presidents – ever.

The analysis was conducted by Siena College Research Institute Poll. The scholars ranked the presidents on personal attributes such as integrity, intelligence, leadership and willingness to take risks as well as things they have little control over, like luck.

The aggregate data once again rated Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the best president ever and Obama ranked 15th. Obama earned high marks for intelligence, ability to communicate and imagination, but his score was hindered by his lack of experience and family background.

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Charter schools provide inner-city kids in Harlem, New York the opportunity to escape the cycle of generational poverty by giving students a better education. The main charter school in Harlem that does this is Harlem Children’s Zone, an organization that has been helping students since the 1970s.

The president of Harlem Children’s Zone, Geoffrey Canada, said the program is “about saving young lives. For parents in devastated neighborhoods such as Harlem, the decision to send their child to the local failure factory or a successful charter school is no choice.”

President Obama recently praised Harlem Children’s Zone, and declared that he wanted to create many more charter schools for kids across the nation through the Promise Neighborhoods program. The main goal of this program would be to help students who come from neighborhoods with high poverty levels and low academic achievement levels.

This sounds like a pretty good idea right? Some educators and education scholars disagree.

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With President Obama’s new health care reform bill, many students across the country are wondering what to do about their health insurance. Should they remain on their parent’s plans? Should they buy their own? Or should they take advantage of the health insurance most of their colleges offer?

Many students wouldn’t guess that it was actually their college endorsed health insurance plans that were taking advantage of them.

While most colleges offer student health insurance packages, some colleges go as so far as to require it. Either included in student tuition or as a required separate entity, colleges and universities are capitalizing on the forced insurance coverage policies.

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In his weekly address on March 13, 2010, President Obama said he plans on overhauling the education system and the No Child Left Behind program. President Obama said he intends to send a new blueprint for national education to Congress this week that will “improve schools, support teachers and set standards that will give high school graduates ‘the best chance to succeed in a changing world.’”

President Obama said this redraft was necessary to combat the trend of lowering education standards in America. He pointed to the past few decades as an example of how American students are not as competitive as foreign students.

“Unless we step up, unless we take action, there are countless children who will never realize their full talent and potential,” President Obama said during his weekly address. Read the rest of this entry »