Step-Up and Make Your Voices Heard: Urge your legislator to vote yes on SAFRA
Posted on 29. Jul, 2009 by Lindsey.
This fall, I’ll be entering my senior year of college at a private school in North Carolina. Fortunately, my parents started saving for my college tuition before I was born and I have not had to worry about paying for school (thanks Mom and Dad!). However, for most college-age students this is not the case-they will graduate with thousands of dollars in student loans. Perhaps the best example of this is my best friend Jessica.
Jessica is four years older than me and a graduate of Western Washington University. She double majored in special education and general education and is currently teaching special education in the Seattle area. However, for most of her senior year of high-school she did not think she was going to go to college.
Jessica came from very modest means, neither one of her parents attended college, and they did not have any money to pay for her college education. She excelled in high school, earning top academic honors and competing on the varsity gymnastics team. However, Jessica never really knew if college was an option for her. She knew that her parents did not have the money to pay for an education and she’d looked at the FASFA website but it was confusing and time-consuming. Despite the challenges, Jessica persevered and filled out the FASFA form. She was awarded half of her total education cost through financial aid however she had to pay for the other half through federal student loans.
Congress is about to take a vote to pass The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA). This act will make it easier for students to obtain financial aid. SAFRA will raise Pell Grant scholarships from $5,350 to $6,900 by 2019. A Pell Grant differs from other types of financial aid because it does not have to be repaid. Further SAFRA will lower interest rates on need-based student loans. The Perkins loan program will expand to every university in the nation. This program gives out loans to many college students and depending upon their career paths will deduct the amount that is to be paid back. SAFRA also will revamp FASFA and make it more user-friendly so that everyone takes advantage of the opportunities that exist for funding a college education.
Everyone has a responsibility to let their legislatures know how important this bill is and to urge them to vote for it. An investment in our nation’s students is an investment in our nation’s future and individual futures, like my friend Jessica’s. I know that I have already written my congressmen and I hope that others will follow.
Sources:
www.collegeboard.com/student/pay/ scholarships-and-aid/ 36318.html
http://edlabor.house.gov/blog/2009/07/safra-whats-in-it-for-you.shtml
Continue Reading
Guest Blogger: Getting rid of the WASL may not be such a good idea after all.
Posted on 29. Jul, 2009 by jstokes.
Surprise, surprise!!! Getting rid of the WASL may not be such a good idea after all. John Stokes
In today’s news conference the Center on Education Policy (CEP) announced that its recent study of fifteen classrooms in six high schools in Washington State supports the notion that Washington State educators prefer improving the high school Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) rather than jettisoning it as some critics and politicians have demanded, or at least suggested. The main conclusion from the study is that teachers believe that the WASL actually helps boost student reasoning and writing skills, but also want to have more relevant testing that can be used for quick response to student needs.
They want to be able to track a student’s progress over the school year and have data that is more useable to teachers in the classroom as they deliver the curriculum, along with more professional development on how to use the data to guide their instructional work.
What the teachers especially liked about the use of the WASL as part of their overall teaching strategy is that it helps guide them to cover lessons that emphasize the types of writing and reasoning skills students need to be successful in college and other post secondary work. What was counter to some claims made against the WASL was the general feeling that teachers did not see the WASL as a constricting force. Despite the trend to more scripted daily lessons and the requirement of a directed focus because of the WASL, teachers were observed in the classroom using a Socratic style of discussion to draw out students and used technology in a positive way to motivate student learning. The clearly were cognizant of the demands of the WASL to have students prepared with the skills tested, they did not teach to the test as is commonly charged.This is good news.
While the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Randy Dorn, is widely quoted and credited with saying that he wants to scrap the WASL, I think that this report will actually reinforce the main changes he talks about when he address what he sees as WASL shortcomings. The WASL should not be a one shot high stakes test, but a part of a series of diagnostic tools that can be used to measure the overall achievement in student learning for a class, a school and a district, while also giving useful data and guidance for individual students.
End of course tests, as well as more frequent periodic testing as the class progresses can be in sync with a test like the WASL and give educators much more useful information than the one test alone will ever give. And that is what I hear Randy Dorn saying. Maybe changing the name of the test would signal a change in focus, but changing the essence of the test would apparently be a real step back.
Another part of this report addresses recommended changes in the No Child Left Behind law, and I’ll address those in another blog. But they are very interesting and compatible with the above.
You can access the press release and the full report at this link: www.cep-dc.org.
Go to “What’s New” for the Washington State story and to “News Releases” for that.
John
Continue Reading
Call to Action on HR 3221!
Posted on 29. Jul, 2009 by Maggie.
I will forever remember the day when I sat on the floor of my apartment, giant T-89 calculator and old tuition statements in hand, and calculated how much I had acquired in student loans over the past four years. Actually, that day happened not too long ago—around April of 2009!
Federal loans paid for a majority of my college tuition, and fortunately these loans typically have a lower interest rate than private companies. However—let me tell you from personal experience—it was overwhelmingly depressing to discover how much I had accumulated … more thousands of dollars than I was years old. I got no sympathy from my friends either; they were all in the same boat.
At a time when the job market is growing increasingly competitive for recent college grads, we MUST support legislation that lowers federal student aid interest rates and increases the amount of money given to qualifying students each year. I am urging activists everywhere to contact your representatives—call, email, tweet them, myspace them, facebook em’—to vote yes on HR3221 (the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act)!
Continue Reading
Attention all data hounds!
Posted on 29. Jul, 2009 by Bonnie.
If you are reading this blog, chances are you know quite a bit about education data. But, did you know that the high school dropout rate varies widely by counties? Or that close to half of the graduating high school class of 2006 immediately enrolled in public postsecondary education? Now you can pull these data charts for early education, K-12 and higher education very easily. The formats are easy to read as well - and even include an option to put the data in a map with color-coded counties.
Washington KIDS COUNT is pleased to announce that these and other indicators are available on the new KIDS COUNT Data Center. The KIDS COUNT Data Center is an on-line resource that contains hundreds of measures of child well-being covering national, state, and county information. The Data Center is updated throughout the year and is a powerful resource for policy makers, practitioners, and the media. With a few keystrokes or clicks of your mouse, you can do the following:
- Rank states, cities, and other geographic areas on key indicators of child well-being;
- Generate customized maps and trend lines that show how children are faring and use them in presentations and publications; and
- Feature automatically updated maps and graphs on your own website or blog.
The KIDS COUNT Data Center includes data in the areas of demographics, education, economic well-being, health, and safety and risk behaviors that are available at the county and state levels for Washington. When possible, we disaggregate data by race, ethnicity, or gender.
Available education data is summarized below:
