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My email inbox is full of stories sent by friends and colleagues who share my interests in higher education and public policy. I open dozens of links each day, and once in awhile I'll pause, laugh, or stop and think. Rarely, however, do I find myself suddenly overcome with nausea. Of course, there's a first time for everything. Business Week reports : "The boom in for-profit education, driven by a political consensus that all Americans need more than a high school diploma, has intensified efforts to recruit the homeless." No, I'm not kidding. The article goes on: "Chancellor University in Cleveland....explicitly focused recruiting efforts on local shelters after it realized that Phoenix, owned by Apollo Group was doing so." What world are we living in? So-called educators are hitting the homeless shelters in search of financial aid-eligible students to enroll in college? And they feel good about it? Says one recruiter: "I feel the homeless are a re...

California is adept at building firebreaks to stop advancing wildfires throughout the state. The inferno that is the student-teacher firewall issue was apparently doused yesterday when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that eliminates a statutory ban on using student achievement data to evaluate teachers. The existence of such a restriction would have deemed California ineligible for a federal Race to the Top competitive grant award. Here is the Governor's press release. Here , here and here are background posts on the student-teacher data firewall issue in California.