Ed in the Election: Biden at the AFT and Romney’s VP options
Vice President Joe Biden attacked Mitt Romney and other Republicans’ views on education Sunday in a speech to the country’s second largest teachers union. Addressing about 2,500 delegates from the American Federation of Teachers at the group’s national conference in Detroit, Biden spoke of Romney as someone who would make cuts to education in favor […]
Ed in the Election: Romney’s student loan plan and Obama’s improv
Mitt Romney, if elected president, would once again shake up the student-loan market, according to The Washington Times. Since March 2010, under legislation pushed by the Obama administration, private-sector banks haven’t had a role in federal loans, which now come directly from the U.S. government. While the Obama administration says the move saves students money, […]
Ed in the Election: Obama’s master teachers and Romney’s higher-ed legacy
The Obama administration on Wednesday announced plans to create a corps of “master teachers” in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). This teacher corps would start with 50 teachers across the nation and expand to reach 10,000 within four years, with members earning an extra $20,000 each annually in return for making a multi-year commitment. […]
Ed in the election: Romney at the NAACP and Michelle Obama in Miami
Mitt Romney spoke at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People annual convention this week, where he tried to make the case that he was the best presidential candidate for African Americans. He promised, among other things, to close the country’s achievement gap and touted his education record as governor of Massachusetts, where […]
Teachers want the role of unions to change, survey says
Critics have portrayed teachers unions as impediments to reform efforts around the country because they have fought against changes such as pay-for-performance and the abolition of tenure. But stories of unions working with school district officials to craft new teacher quality initiatives are slowly becoming more common. And, according to a new study that surveyed […]
Ed in the Election: Romney advisor talks unions
Presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s top education adviser, Rod Paige, gave an interview to The Root this week. A former Secretary of Education under George W. Bush, Paige talked about the role of the federal government in education, school choice and teachers unions, but made it clear that he was not speaking for the campaign. “I think […]
Ed in the Election: Agreement on vouchers and stalemate over student loans
College Board, the group best known for administering the SAT, this week launched “Don’t Forget Ed,” an effort to make presidential candidates pay more attention to education, by setting up 857 empty school desks on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The desks represent the number of students who drop out of high school each […]
Ed in the Election: Obama’s pseudo Dream Act and Romney’s voucher proposal
Each week leading up to the 2012 Election, HechingerEd will feature a post rounding up the latest on what the candidates are saying and doing about education – and what others think of their plans. President Obama today bypassed a stalled Congress to make a significant change in immigration policy, announcing he would stop the […]
Fact-checking Romney’s claims in his education speech this week
Likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney focused on education this week, releasing a 35-page plan outlining his education platform and giving a speech on education to the Latino Coalition of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. Below, we scrutinize some of Romney’s claims. Statement: “Among developed countries, the United States comes in 14th of […]
New report suggests School Improvement Grants are paying off in California
In 2009, the federal government made an unprecedented investment in the country’s lowest-performing schools when it sent them $3.5 billion with an order: turn things around. Sufficient time has now passed for researchers and policymakers to begin examining how well the School Improvement Grant program (SIG) is working. So far, the evidence has been largely […]
