Tag Archives: USA

For-profit colleges are issued new rules by Education Department – OR government is privileging traditional universities

The U.S. Department of Education on Thursday issued long-awaited regulations to increase federal oversight of for-profit colleges, despite an intense, year-long lobbying effort by the colleges to fight the new rules and opposition from Republicans and some Democrats on Capitol Hill.

The regulations aim to rein in for-profit education programs that saddle students with more loan debt than they can reasonably repay. They also try to reform “some of the career college programs [that] do not succeed” and “bad actors” that have misled students, Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters on a conference call late Wednesday.

When it comes to the entertainment industry, I am critical of the government stepping in to support their failing models through legislation that will harm the Internet and innovation. I think I would be a hypocrite if I supported the government doing the same for traditional universities.

I’m no fan of for-profit universities in general. I find many of their classes to be low-quality, low-interaction, lowest common denominator. However, that’s not really the point. The point is, this is a marketplace. If their customers find that they are fill a need, then they should be able to compete, with the same benefits that non-profit universities get. Non-profit universities should change to address the needs of “non-traditional” students (though they are far from non-traditional these days).

I know the complains about recruitment into these schools. The recruitment is downright criminal, but no more so than credit cards or even military recruiters in some instances. I once know someone who did that type of recruiting. It was essentially a call center job with great bonuses for getting someone signed up. He made a ton of money, until he couldn’t stand doing it any longer. He felt like a predator, and he was. But all of this still doesn’t justify these controls on for-profit universities.

And, really, cutting funding for programs that don’t pay well after graduation? Try doing that for traditional universities. There are plenty of programs that don’t pay well. Liberal Arts is an umbrella term for those programs.

Universities want protections from the government to protect their failing models, which is completely unacceptable. I hoped that this sort of competition would prod them to change their own programs, but instead, they are trying to hobble the competition.

What does this mean? This means that universities will probably still feel the pressure to change, but they will have much more time to do so. Is that a bad thing? No. Certain not. But it is a bad precedent to set. What it means for for-profit universities is that they will likely be cutting many of the programs that don’t lead directly to jobs that pay well. Maybe this is a good also, but what about the people who really want to study in those areas. The for-profit universities are likely the only places that offer those programs in a manner that is accessible (online, flexible scheduling). It’s sad that some of the diversity will fade based on these policies.

The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries – how can I disagree with this?

When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.

Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.

We have a rare chance now, with many teachers near retirement, to prove we’re serious about education. The first step is to make the teaching profession more attractive to college graduates.

I really can’t disagree. I think they are right on. Of course, this is not a plan, it’s a dream. For dreams to come true, one needs a plan and some luck.

I’ve always cringed at hearing that teachers don’t make enough. They do make more than many other college graduates and in some areas they do quite well when considering benefits. The real problem is not that teachers don’t make enough across the board, it’s that they don’t make enough in certain areas. This is a funding issue that is largely cause by the ways that schools are funded across the country. Schools in wealthy areas pay quite well, maybe not enough for the teachers to live in the town, but still quite well.

I am excited about the idea of making teaching more competitive. The recent teacher crunch has done this to the small degree. There are more teachers than there are jobs, which is good for recruiting (not so good for recent graduates). Next step is to increase pay at least 50% and, at the same time, devise assessments that are difficult enough to filter (yes, many good teachers may be filtered out this way, but it is still far better than hoping the best show up). Set conditions in which becoming a teacher is competitive.

I do find it kind of interesting that the author starts out with a call not to blame teachers and then essentially states that we need better teachers. Huh?

Principal to parents: Get your middle school kids off Facebook – good conversation to have (HT @etalbert)

via mlive.com
I happen to disagree with Orsini’s position, but I think that it is an excellent discussion for us to have.

Cyberbullying is worse than face-to-face bullying. It is 24/7. It goes on when you are paying attention and when you are not paying attention. It is yet another element of modern society that parents have to develop new tools to address.

With that being said, banning children from using social networking sites is short-sighted. It is the easy way out and, like most solutions of the sort, it is unlikely to help. The bullying will go on with or without your child’s participation. That same bullying will continue to occur amongst those online (and face-to-face) and will hit your child in much the same manner when they return to school and are filled in on the happenings of the previous day/weekend. The reality is that we need to prepare our children to operate in the world as it is, not as we wish it was.

An educator should be more pragmatic than Orsini is being. It is a nice sound bite, but it is an incomplete solution to a complex issue and involves the education of both the abusers and the abused. Removal of a child from a situation should be one tool in a parent’s tool chest, but it is not, nor should it be, the only tool used. Taking incidents of bullying and using them as teachable moments can be valuable. After (but ideally prior to) incidents, parents should teach children how to best deal with bullying: engage, ignore, and report.

I fear that Orsini probably understands this as well, but he has given up on parental responsibility. It is relatively easy to say, “take them off social networks,” but it is much more difficult to address underlying causes of and solutions to bullying. His approach, though, is akin to sweeping the problem under the rug. This is an approach that we can ill-afford to resort to any longer. It has been the default for years, never with satisfactory results.

U.S. Urged to Raise Teachers’ Status – No easy task

To improve its public schools, the United States should raise the status of the teaching profession by recruiting more qualified candidates, training them better and paying them more, according to a new report on comparative educational systems.

Andreas Schleicher, who oversees the international achievement test known by its acronym Pisa, says in his report that top-scoring countries like Korea, Singapore and Finland recruit only high-performing college graduates for teaching positions, support them with mentoring and other help in the classroom, and take steps to raise respect for the profession.

“Teaching in the U.S. is unfortunately no longer a high-status occupation,” Mr. Schleicher says in the report, prepared in advance of an educational conference that opens in New York on Wednesday. “Despite the characterization of some that teaching is an easy job, with short hours and summers off, the fact is that successful, dedicated teachers in the U.S. work long hours for little pay and, in many cases, insufficient support from their leadership.”

I don’t see that ever happening. Just like a junky, the US is going to have to hit rock bottom before steps are taken to improve. Not just with education, but a whole host of issues.

I guess I’m just feeling a little pessimistic today.

Race maps of America – plus I added some Chicago-specific links in the post

Revealed: The maps that show the racial breakdown of America’s biggest cities

By
David Gardner
Last updated at 5:49 PM on 25th September 2010

These are the maps that show the racial breakdown of America’s biggest  cities.

Using information from the latest U.S. census results, the maps show the extent to which America has blended together the races in the nation’s 40 largest cities.

With one dot equalling 25 people, digital cartographer Eric Fischer then colour-coded them based on race, with whites represented by pink, blacks by blue, Hispanic by orange and Asians by green.

The resulting maps may not represent what many might expect Barack Obama’s integrated rainbow nation to look like, as many cities have clear racial dividing lines.

These are pretty cool. Really, they are just what I would expect to see. No big surprises.

I was more interested in a city that I could identify with, so I found Fischer’s maps for Chicago.

http://chicagoist.com/2010/09/20/mapping_chicagos_racial_and_ethnic.php?galle…

But, I think that these maps are even cooler.

http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?chicagodots

Interracial marriages at an all-time high (in the US) – I’m only surprised that the % is so low

Interracial marriages at an all-time high, study says

By Stephanie Chen, CNN
June 4, 2010 3:29 p.m. EDT
Priya Merrill, 27, and husband Andrew Merrill, 30, married in  August. They are part of a growing trend of interracial marriages.
Priya Merrill, 27, and husband Andrew Merrill, 30, married in August. They are part of a growing trend of interracial marriages.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • About one in seven marriages are interracial or interethnic, according to a new Pew study
  • Pew Center: Asians and Hispanics are most likely to marry outside of their race
  • In 2008, African-Americans 3 times more likely to marry outside race, compared with 1980
  • Americans, particularly Millennials, are more accepting of interracial relationships

Apparently, race is mattering less these days, say researchers at the Pew Research Center, who report that nearly one out of seven new marriages in the U.S. is interracial or interethnic. The report released Friday, which interviewed couples married for less than a year, found racial lines are blurring as more people choose to marry outside their race.

“From what we can tell, this is the highest [percentage of interracial marriage] it has ever been,” said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer for the Pew Research Center.

He said interracial marriages have soared since the 1980s. About 6.8 percent of newly married couples reported marrying outside their race or ethnicity in 1980. That figure jumped to about 14.6 percent in the Pew report released this week, which surveyed newlyweds in 2008.

I’m only surprised that the numbers are so low.

To say that race matters less is a little disingenuous. Race always matters. We see distinctions. Are brains are discrimination machines. That is how we evolved (and survived). Two things are changing more: (1) schools and workplaces are more diverse and (2) related to number 1, distinctions are decreasing. With #2, I mean that there is more cultural blended (assimilation is not really the right term). People share background experiences in education, news, TV, movies, music, and so forth. This shared background creates commonalities that didn’t exist in years past. This blending of the cultures means that family decision-makers are less inclined to object.

Teacher Average Salary Income – International Comparison

Check out this website I found at worldsalaries.org

http://www.worldsalaries.org/teacher.shtml# – Check out this site. Fun to look around and make comparisons.

This data really surprised me. I’m surprised that the average salary for American teachers is so high, particularly compared with the rest of the world. I would really like to see the range of salaries and regional disaggregation. If the average teacher is making $60,000/yr gross, I have a lot less sympathy for complaints about pay and workload.

The same database lists averages for many professions. Teachers rank up near the top. Professors average about $9,000 more per year. I don’t know if that makes me hopeful or not :-/

Tom Brokaw Explains Canada To Americans

This is a good video that briefly shows our close relationship. It is nice to see it, as brief as it is, on national TV. However, I can’t imagine that anything there was particularly surprising to Americans (yes, US Americans).

The comments section drives me nuts, though. I’m not sure why I read the comments section ever. It’s like that inner need to watch a tragedy. The best comments are people expressing pride for Canada and both groups expression appreciation for one another. At worst is it a mixture of outright trolls and left-handed complements (directed at both nations), ugh!

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