Education Reform
Higher education costs.
One in a Hundred
Hot tip: invest in the barbwire industry.
More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year, in addition to more than $5 billion spent by the federal government, according to a report released today.
With more than 2.3 million people behind bars at the start of 2008, the United States leads the world in both the number and the percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving even far more populous China a distant second, noted the report by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.
The ballooning prison population is largely the result of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been hit particularly hard: One in nine black men age 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women age 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 white women in the same age group.
American't
There’s an op-ed in the Washington Post today that plainly articulates a few thoughts that have been bouncing around my head for awhile, so I thought I’d post an excerpt and see if anyone around here agrees. The author’s argument is that the U.S. is a shadow of what it once was, no longer able to confront big problems with big ideas, and is basically in a state of decay. The article was prompted by the bridge collapse in Minnesota the other day.
'Student Loan Overhaul Advances'
To make an understatement, this is good to see.
Democrats in Congress are pushing to overhaul the nation's student loan system with legislation that would cut federal subsidies to lending companies by as much as $19 billion, channel most of those savings to student aid and ease repayment rules for borrowers.
The Senate education committee overwhelmingly approved its version of the legislation yesterday, one week after the House education panel took similar action. Senior Democrats predicted that the bills would come to a vote by the end of next month and would be reconciled without significant difficulty.
If the rich get dumber, will they get poorer too?
I was browsing Craigslist and came across a post with the headline: Go surf! Give us your paper! You'll have it in time!
If you click through, you get a trashy banner ad. One of the paragraphs reads:
All work is original and is produced from research that is completed by our writers. Every paper or poem is fresh and has not been posted anywhere on the internet. Beware of those ready made term paper sites. Their papers can be caught in the anti-plagiarism software that schools and universities are now using. Meeting deadlines and maintaining excellence are priorities for the team at WriteItRightNow. Let us help you get the grades that you want.
And it just goes on like that. Kinda gross, yeah?
student loans
there's been some discussion about the topic at NPR lately. check the links at the bottom of the page for others.
bottom line: corporations don't give a shit about you, the federal government is in the pockets of corporations. this is why we get bad laws.
like the "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005".
I don't see much Consumer Protection here and "bankruptcy abuse prevention" apparently just means "let's increase our profits by making life harder for young people".
These things will continue to happen until our representatives have a reason to respect our generation.
they're banning books in... (guess the region)
Kansas? Nope. Utah? Good guess, but...no. 'Bama? Naaaaaaaah.
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Citing his concern for "the morals of our society," Burlingame schools Superintendent Sonny Da Marto has stopped four eighth-grade classes from reading "Kaffir Boy," an award-winning memoir of growing up in a South African ghetto during apartheid.
No Child Left Behind
"Teaching to the test" is more often looked down upon than embraced by teachers; on the other hand, without quantifiable measures of how far students have come, it is unclear what must be done to improve the system. The No Child Left Behind law is up for renewal, and I doubt that it will get through again unchanged. The question is, what changes should be made to the law - or should it be discarded altogether?
Thoughts on Education
Education.
Our education system is a mess. Standards vary from city to city, and state to state. We teach to the lowest common denominator. How do we simultaneously raise the bar while making sure that children with special needs don't fall behind? How do we ensure our children are making the grade, but not teach to the test? How do we attract new professionals into teaching without pushing the cost of attendance beyond the reach of everyone?
lawsuit against US Dept. of Educ. for overcharging on student loans
From the Washington Post today:
The U.S. Department of Education has overcharged millions of Americans with student loans during the past decade despite repeated warnings that it was breaking the law, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday.
A computer glitch apparently caused more than 3 million student loan borrowers to be billed hundreds of millions of dollars more than they owed, said lawyers who brought the class-action suit. It's unclear how much individuals were overcharged.
snip
On Iraq, protests, and those who support the war
What's interesting about this article isn't that it gives a fair summary of the antiwar events on Sunday, but the fact that it is from military.com, a source with a famously conservative bias.
A rally involving as many as 15,000 people Sunday in Portland, Oregon, ended in with scuffles and police using pepper spray. No such trouble was reported at the much smaller demonstrations around the country Monday, although San Francisco police arrested 57 people who blocked a streetcar line in the heart of the financial district by lying in the street, draped in white sheets, to symbolize Iraq's war dead.