The U.S. Department of Education this morning posted final regulations and the state application for the Race to the Top program. Have at it.
More analysis later hopefully ... but a generally positive set of changes to the proposed criteria originally released by the Department over the summer.
Welcome to another new miniseries of the Education Optimists. Once in awhile we get a chance to sit and read-- it's rare, but when it happens it's crazy fun. Here's a taste of what we've liked lately. For those pondering the reform of financial aid programs, I want to draw your attention to two papers--one very new, and one a year old. In Postmortem for the Current Era: Change in American Higher Education, 1980-2010 , Penn State historian Roger Geiger cogently tackles the many dismal trends of the last several decades. Among my most favorite of his observations is the following: "The four vectors of the current era—-the financial aid revolution, selectivity sweepstakes, vocationalism, and research intensification—all bear an underlying signature by invoking private, as opposed to public or social, interests. They do not necessarily contradict public interests. On the contrary, to significant degrees, financial aid has allowed students with limited means to pursu...
EPILOGUE (8/24/2010) : Well, my predictions below didn't quite pan out. FL and RI came in strong, but IL and SC flopped (but by mere points , of course). I was almost right that with two large states funded -- Florida and New York -- it would limit the number of winners. But the predicted nine became ten with the surprise inclusion of Hawaii (75 mil) among the winners, along with DC (also only 75 mil). For more on the winners, see here . --- Education Week (and its Politics K-12 blog), the Hechinger Report, the New America Foundation's Ed Money Watch , and the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education have provided some excellent Race to the Top Phase 2 analysis. Based on Phase 1 scores, reviews of Phase 2 applications, and other considerations, I believe Florida , Illinois , Rhode Island and South Carolina are locks for Phase 2 funding. [ UPDATE (8/4/2010) : One thing that should be concerning to Georgia is an extremely low level of district buy-in ( 14% ) to its app...
During the past semester, a time where I constantly felt split between my academic life and my civic life, I became acutely aware of an attitude among undergraduates that perplexed me. I tried writing about it , describing what readers pointed out (in a far more articulate manner than I'd managed) was a notable lack of empathy among some students. Since I've spent the last 10 years trying to make convince higher education institutions to prioritize their students' needs and desires, these realizations about who some of the students seemed to be and especially what they seemed to believe, made me pretty depressed. Don't get me wrong: it's not that I expect students to speak and act in one voice--far from it, given how much I value the democratic process. I don't want them to share my opinions or perspectives, but rather simply want them to formulate opinions and perspectives after asking good questions and gathering and evaluating information. But what I hope ...
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