A hat tip to Wall Street Journal writers Corey Boles and Robert Tomsho for their news coverage on my favorite topic: education in the United States. As you know, my website http://www.roccobasile.net/ covers education and charity.
So just out of Washington today, the House of Representatives approved legislation that would end private-lender involvement in the student-loan market. This establishes the federal government as the sole provider of college loans, and means there will be much change within the federal government's higher-education policies.
What this basically means is that all lenders would be cut out of the market for originating loans, although there would still be a role for private banks and lenders to bid for a limited number of contracts to service the loans after they are made by the government.
What is known as the Federal Family Education Loan Program - this is when the government guarantees loans made by private lenders - remains the single largest source of college loans. Loan volume totalled $74 billion, up 13% from a year earlier.
Obama's administration has said they will use the anticipated savings from this measure to increase grants for low-income students, and also boost funding for minority student groups. This would mean they culd also provide money for school construction. All in all this could save taxpayers $87 billion over the next ten years.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
How Educated are Americans?
This may come as shocking news ... but when I recently did some research on this topic, I discovered that the answer changes depending upon how you look at it. High school graduation rates have soared since the 1870s, yet although rates have fallen off in the last 30 years of the 20th Century, by 2000, the percentage of graduates was the highest it had been since 1960. I find this information fascinating, and often record the stats in my website www.RoccoBasile.net.
What's more, the number of college students has also been on the rise since the 1870s. There was a dramatic increase from 1950-2000. The good news is that for all racial groups, education has been rising steadily since the 1960s, and literacy rates for adults has been going up ever since the 1870s. It reached a rate of 99.3% in 1979.
Now here's an interesting concept: How do our children compare to other children in the world when it comes to education? The United States ranks in the top 10 for reading, and in math, we still rank in the top 10 for 4th graders. However, our scores drop in the rankings for 8th and 12th graders.
So you may wonder, why aren't the students in the U.S. keeping up with students from other countries? Standardized testing became a tool for measuring school performance in the 1970s, just as Federal spending on education increased.
If you would like to read more go to: http://social.jrank.org/pages/951/How-Educated-Are-We.html#ixzz0RPL72vNz
--Rocco Basile
What's more, the number of college students has also been on the rise since the 1870s. There was a dramatic increase from 1950-2000. The good news is that for all racial groups, education has been rising steadily since the 1960s, and literacy rates for adults has been going up ever since the 1870s. It reached a rate of 99.3% in 1979.
Now here's an interesting concept: How do our children compare to other children in the world when it comes to education? The United States ranks in the top 10 for reading, and in math, we still rank in the top 10 for 4th graders. However, our scores drop in the rankings for 8th and 12th graders.
So you may wonder, why aren't the students in the U.S. keeping up with students from other countries? Standardized testing became a tool for measuring school performance in the 1970s, just as Federal spending on education increased.
If you would like to read more go to: http://social.jrank.org/pages/951/How-Educated-Are-We.html#ixzz0RPL72vNz
--Rocco Basile
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