Nivac

THE Coalition has angered university leaders, principals and teacher unions by announcing plans to cut a further $1.5 billion from the federal education budget, including programs to help the poorest students succeed at school and enter university.

The planned savings - contained in a document released late on Wednesday - come on top of more than $3 billion of other cuts to education programs, including trades training centres and computers in schools, which the Coalition announced in May.

Among its latest proposed savings, the Coalition says it will cut $330 million from a program aimed at lifting education outcomes in the poorest schools, and $227 million from funding to help universities enrol more students from low socio-economic backgrounds.

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Education Stocks Fall as Government Supports Loan Payback Data
August 24, 2010, 6:12 PM EDT

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By Nikolaj Gammeltoft and John Lauerman

Aug. 24 (Bloomberg) — Higher-education stocks fell after the U.S. Department of Education said it stood by student loan repayment data released Aug. 13, which showed low payback rates at for-profit college providers.

Lincoln Educational Services Corp., based in West Orange, New Jersey, lost 5.8 percent to $10.31 at 4 p.m. in New York. Strayer Education Inc. shares retreated 0.9 percent to $161.61 after rallying as much as 8.5 percent earlier. Corinthian Colleges Inc. declined 1.9 percent to $4.36. An index of 12 education stocks fell 1.1 percent, reversing an earlier gain of as much as 3.7 percent.

The index sank 7 percent on Aug. 16 as data from the Education Department showed that colleges owned by for-profit education providers have campuses where fewer than 20 percent of federal student loans are being repaid. The government wants to use the data to determine whether programs can remain eligible for aid.

“We’ve got comments from Strayer and other people on the data we published and we’ve gone back and looked at it,” said James Kvaal, deputy undersecretary of education, in a telephone interview today. “We haven’t found anything yet that would make us doubt the repayment rates we’ve calculated.”

The data were released as Congress and the Obama administration are proposing tougher regulation and oversight of for-profit colleges, which can rely on federal financial-aid programs for as much as 90 percent of their revenue.

’Major Problem’

“There’s a major problem that we see with the methodology, at least in the draft numbers the department released,” said Robert Silberman, Strayer’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, in a telephone interview yesterday.

The Education Department didn’t count students who consolidated their loans among those who had begun repayment, Silberman said.

“These loan products allow students to pay interest only for some period of years after they graduate. The department’s own theory is that having a gradual amortization of the student loan that matches more closely their rise in earnings is in the student’s interest,” he added.

Strayer, based in Arlington, Virginia, was “surprised” when the department didn’t include consolidated loans in its metric of those that were being repaid, Silberman said.

The department’s proposed metric treats “consolidated loans the same way we treated any other loan,” Kvaal said. “Are students making payments to pay down the principal? That’s true for consolidated loans and regular loans.”

–Editors: Joanna Ossinger, Stephanie Borise

To contact the reporters on this story: Nikolaj Gammeltoft in New York at ngammeltoft@bloomberg.net; John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net;

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nick Baker at nbaker7@bloomberg.net

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The Obama administration announced 10 winners today in the second round of the “Race To The Top” stimulus grant competition for education reform: the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island.

The Obama administration announced today ten winners in the second round of the “Race To The Top”… The Obama administration announced today ten winners in the second round of the “Race To The Top” stimulus grant competition for education reform: the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island. (Jeffrey Coolidge/Getty Images)

The announcement comes after months of heated debate among educators across the country, internal strife in state legislatures, and local disputes with teachers’ unions.

“The creativity and innovation in each of these applications is breathtaking. These states show what is possible when adults come together to do the right thing for children,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said on a conference call this afternoon.

Thirty-five states and the District of Columbia applied for a portion of the $3.4 billion remaining in the competition. That list was then winnowed down to 19 finalists last month.

Related
Only 2 States Win Education Stimulus MoneyObama Unveils Race for School BillionsEd Sec on ‘No Child Left Behind’: ‘We Are Lying to Children and Parents’

States were judged on their proposals to adopt the department’s reform goals. Those goals include: embracing common academic standards, improving teacher quality, creating educational data systems, and turning around their lowest-performing schools.

Common threads among the 10 winners announced today include their bold approaches to turning around low-performing schools and their teacher evaluations systems. All of the winners also adopted common academic standards.

The 10 winners were decided based on the scores they received from peer-review panels. All the winners received a score of more than 440 out of a possible 500. In the first phase of the competition, only the two winners, Delaware and Tennessee scored above 440.

The decision to limit the winners to 10 states was based on the amount of funding available.

“We had many more competitive applications than money available to award,” Duncan said. “We’re very hopeful there will be a Phase 3 of Race to the Top and we have requested $1.35 billion dollars in next year’s budget. … In the meantime, we will partner with each and every state that applied to help them find ways to carry out the bold reforms they’ve proposed in their applications.”

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In a lead news article today headlined Watching a Watchdog, the industry publication Inside Higher Ed draws attention to what it terms rising concerns among higher education observers about the editorial independence of The Washington Post in covering for-profit higher education.

The concerns center on an editorial published in The Post on Sunday, as well as direct lobbying by a leader of the legendary Graham family on behalf of the for-profit Kaplan higher education unit of The Washington Post Co.

Before I go on, some disclaimers. . .

I cover for-profit higher education at the Post, along with colleague Nick Anderson, the national education reporter, and occasionally others in the newsroom. The Post has a separate editorial board, whose job is to form and publish opinions on issues of the day. The two operations are designed to operate independently. The Posts news coverage and editorial stance have been scrutinized for as long as the federal government has focused regulatory attention on for-profit higher education. Our newspapers independent ombudsman discussed that coverage over the weekend, reaching the conclusion that the paper has been appropriately transparent in disclosing its considerable stake in the outcome of proposed new federal regulations.

(To see some of our previous news coverage, click here or simply type in the words for-profit colleges in the search field on The Washington Post home page.)

According to the Inside Higher Ed account, some policymakers and higher education leaders were struck by the tone of The Post editorial Sunday, which, the article said, took a stance that couldve come straight out of Kaplans playbook. The editorial opposed the current regulatory stance. By contrast, editorial boards of The New York Times and Los Angeles Times have favored regulation in their editorials on the subject.

The Post editorial argued that regulation would constrict the for-profit sector, effectively narrowing the educational options of students. And, it contended, the more options available to parents and students, the better. The editorial disclosed the companys interest in Kaplan.

Lauren Asher, president of the Institute for College Access and Success, supports stronger government regulations. She told Inside Higher Ed she was surprised by the editorial, not just to see The Post editorializing on this issue, but to look at what the board is saying. She and many others in higher education agree with the government position that for-profit colleges are in need of more government oversight.

I asked Marcus W. Brauchli, executive editor of The Post, for comment on the criticism. Speaking for the news operation he runs, Brauchli wrote:

The Posts newsroom operates independently from the editorial page and from other businesses owned by our parent company. We cover the news as we see it, even when it affects other parts of the company, and we cover it without regard to the views of our editorial page.

Inside Higher Ed reports that Donald E. Graham, chairman and chief executive of The Post Co., has visited several members of Congress to lobby on Kaplans behalf, sourcing the statement to a staffer for Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). The article notes that a man of Grahams stature would get an open door in any congressional office.

I asked Graham about the lobbying efforts. He told me this afternoon in a telephone interview: I dont do it unless the issue is of central importance to our company, and this one is. He said he spoke to lawmakers in response to the rising pitch of criticism of the for-profit sector. Im very glad of what Kaplan Higher Education does, and very proud to speak out for it, he said. Im speaking up as I think any CEO of a corporation should.

The Inside Higher Ed article quotes Terry Hartle of the American Council on Education, who represents non-profit and for-profit colleges. Hartle has this to say about Grahams lobbying: For the first time in my memory a leading news organization is wading into a public policy debate unrelated to their primary business.

The Post Co., in fact, drew more than half of its revenue in the most recent fiscal year from Kaplan, whose higher education division has grown hand over fist in recent years, along with the rest of the burgeoning sector.

Does College Inc. come up garbled on your Blackberry? Try this address, and bookmark it for easy access.

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The following is an opinion from state Senate Candidate Michael Day, a Democratic candidate for the Middlesex and Essex District representing Malden and Wards 1-5 in Melrose.

The shortage of revenue-producing jobs in the Commonwealth is the
single most pressing problem facing our government today. 
Creating and maintaining good-paying and permanent jobs will be my
number one priority in the State Senate.

Yet, as we grapple with
the problems of today, we must continue to look forward.  If we
want Massachusetts to be an economic leader in the 21st century, we
need to equip our children with the tools necessary to compete for jobs
in a global economy.  My oldest son will start pre-school in a few
weeks.  When he graduates from high school, he will face an
entirely different workplace than I did when I graduated. It is our
responsibility to ensure that all of our children are prepared for
whatever challenges lay ahead of them, and providing them with a sound
education is the only way to accomplish that.  

The jobs
for which our children will be competing will be anything but standard,
which is why I will not support the use of a standardized test as the
sole requirement for high school graduation.  Instead, I will work
to make sure our public schools educate the whole child through arts,
music, shop and health classes.  When we integrate these types of
classes into our required curricula and make them part of our
graduation requirements, we take affirmative steps towards preparing
our children for success in their lives.  When our government
measures the adequacy of our educational system and student achievement
solely on the results of standardized test scores, we limit our
children’s education.  To enhance the prospects of a better
tomorrow for us all, we must allow and encourage our educators to bring
innovation into their classrooms instead of teaching to a test.  

I
will lead the fight in the State Senate to replace an outdated and
unfair funding formula that provides one town with more than $2,200 per
student while sending a neighboring, less affluent town only $1,300 per
student.  These inequities in funding mean certain towns must cut
initiatives like team teaching, which prevent our children from
slipping through the cracks and becoming lost in our growing
classrooms.  These inequities exist because too many members of
the Legislature lack the will to take on this tough issue, and our
communities suffer because of it.  

I will also sponsor and
champion legislation that will finally provide minimum education
funding to cities and towns that have waited for years to be treated
equally by the State House. If you ask legislators about their
positions on education, they will tell you how proud they are of their
voting records and they will point to endorsements and awards from
special interest groups as evidence that they “get things done.” Yet,
time and again Legislators refuse to provide the baseline education
funding levels required by law, and they turn their backs on more than
20 percent of our cities and towns who do not receive their fair share
of education funding.

School districts should not have to
delay necessary repairs and maintenance of infrastructure and
technology systems by years, waiting for promises to be kept while
sending graduating classes into the world.  When Beacon Hill
ignores the very laws it passes and refuses to provide even the minimum
target aid to certain cities and towns, our children lose.

In
1994, the Massachusetts Commission on the Common Core of Learning
wrote, “We believe it is essential that all students be held to high
standards of achievement in reading, writing, speaking standard
English, mathematics and science, history and the arts.  Failure
to do so denies students the opportunity to participate fully in our
society and economy.”  I would add that it is also essential that
our government provide our children with the means necessary to reach
those high standards.  We can and must do a better job of
educating our children, and we must start that work today.

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iTunes Texas education channel launched

08/24/2010

By SARAH PORTLOCK
/Associated Press

Texas students can now download podcasts, videos and other multimedia lessons directly from iTunes through a new online program aimed at providing free, supplementary coursework that can be accessed anywhere, state officials announced Tuesday.

The Texas Education iTunes U channel allows teachers to upload material from their classes to help students understand new concepts or do more research in a specific subject area. Students and parents can access the material through home or school computers, and those with iPods can download the information to the handheld devices.

The state first met with Apple Inc. about three years ago. The governors office and the Texas Education Agency began working on the project in November, finding and culling existing teacher training videos and programs for students, said agency spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe.

A lot of that content may already be out there, but its either overlooked or hard to access, Gov. Rick Perry told about 50 students at Sharpstown High School in southwest Houston. This will really consolidate that information.

Teachers across the state can also trade tips and advice about lesson plans by posting and viewing each others videos. Already, 146,000 teachers have signed up to participate and formed 5,000 subject groups, said Education Commissioner Robert Scott.

The only external costs associated with the program would be additional server space or production equipment, Ratcliffe said. Apple is currently hosting the files and videos that have already been created.

Once we get a huge volume of content, then we would have to buy a server, but thats pretty far down the road, she said.

Other state agencies and nonprofit groups will also participate and upload content to the site. The state has partnered with PBS, the Smithsonian Institution and the National Archives, Scott said.

Any user can download the public, free materials the same way music and videos are accessed from the popular online store. Forum-based discussions between teachers will be password-protected.

A Perry spokeswoman said all posted material will be vetted through the Texas Education Agency and work in conjunction with state-approved textbooks.

___

Online (iTunes required to view): http://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browsev2/tea.k12.texas.edu

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Which cities are most willing to tackle education reform?

A report released Tuesday ranks cities not in terms of best-performing schools but on their openness to outside ideas and education reform.

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The Campbell Union High School District is ushering in a new line of adult and community education programs, a shift that it hopes will better benefit the students and parents in its boundaries.

After years of offering classes through MetroEd, the district this year is embarking on its own adult education programming. The program will be known as Campbell Adult and Community Education and will serve residents in Campbell, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, San Jose, Santa Clara and Saratoga.

The districts board of trustees voted in December to make the change, which gives the district complete control of the program. For 40 years, the district was part of a joint powers authority with other school districts in the county that came together to offer adult education classes through MetroEd.

But over the years, districts left MetroEd to finance and offer adult education on their own, seeing a need to hold onto state funding and provide classes on a more local level. CUHSD joins Santa Clara Unified, Milpitas Unified and Eastside Union as school districts that have broken away from the joint powers authority. San Jose Unified is the only district still using MetroEd.

Bob Harper, the new director who will be heading CACE, said the district decided that local control meeting local needs is better.

We determined that were a high quality district and we have needs to meet, he said.

The focus of the program early on will be on getting

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CHARLESTON, SC (WCSC) - Republican nominee for South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, is making a stop in Charleston Thursday afternoon.

Haley will unveil her education plan for the state at 4:30 pm at Meeting Street Academy.

As a state representative, Haley has been a strong supporter of helping parents afford private tuition through tax cuts.

Governor Mark Sanford started pushing the idea in his first term, but lawmakers have repeatedly rejected it.

Haley has said she would veto any school choice bill that doesnt include private schools.

Her opponent, Democratic Senator, Vincent Sheheen, says the idea would further damage public schools.

He said they are already hurting from deep budget cuts and teacher layoffs and added that it is time to support public education.

Copyright 2010 WCSC. All rights reserved.

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BANGALORE (Reuters) - US for-profit education companies, market darlings not so long ago, have been hammered in recent weeks as the government threatens to withdraw student aid and tighten rules.

Firms such as Apollo Group (APOL.O) and Strayer Education (STRA.O) saw rapid growth during the recession as people went back to school to retool, but the sector has been plagued with regulatory concerns since the Securities and Exchange Commission began investigations last October into bellwether Apollos revenue recognition practices.

The governments gainful employment proposal — which calls for colleges to prove they prepare students for jobs before they can receive federal aid — and probes into enrollment and recruitment practices have battered the sector.

The Samp;P 1500 Education Services sub-index .15GSPEDUS has almost halved since mid-April to 28-month lows.

Some analysts recommend buying education stocks as they are cheap, but most remain cautious as the regulatory concerns swirl.

Investors, too, have been betting against the stocks, with short positions in Strayer as high as 22 percent. About 14 percent of Capella Education Cos (CPLA.O) outstanding shares are shorted. Sirius XM Radio (SIRI.O), one of the most shorted stocks on Nasdaq, has a short interest of 5 percent.

BE CHOOSY OR BUY FOR LONG RUN

Analysts recommend Strayer, Capella and American Public Education (APEI.O) as these companies have the least exposure to the proposed gainful employment rules.

Robert W. Baird analyst Amy Junker, who rates Strayer and Capella as outperform, said these firms were best placed to weather any additional regulation as they focus more on working adults, and they have a clean regulatory history.

We would not sell any of the stocks at current multiples, but think multiples could remain compressed until theres more clarity on gainful employment and the outcome of the mid-term elections in November, said Junker, who also has her top rating on American Public Education and Grand Canyon (LOPE.O).

Education stocks were beaten down on Monday after the education department released data on schools loan repayment rates, which showed many may not qualify for federal student aid.

Despite our lowered ratings, we believe considerable value exists for patient investors in many of the education stocks today, said Barclays analyst Gary Bisbee, who on Tuesday cut his rating on a bunch of education stocks.

He expects the gainful employment rule to have an earnings impact of 5-30 percent, compared with the more than 50 percent hit priced into many of the stocks.

Oppenheimer said some stocks valuations make for intriguing entry points for longer-term investors. He rates Capella, DeVry (DV.N) and Lincoln Educational Services (LINC.O) as outperform.

CAUTIOUS IN NEAR TERM

Some analysts said there was no upside potential for these stocks in the near term as the regulatory overhang could drag on for months.

I dont think investors need to be in this space right now, said RBC Capital Markets analyst Robert Wetenhall, citing the regulatory issues, slowing enrollment growth and lack of institutional sponsorship. He has sell ratings on Corinthian Colleges (COCO.O) and Bridgepoint Education (BPI.N).

We dont believe the sector is going to make up lost ground anytime soon, said Wetenhall, adding that a falling market value would mean closet index funds are no longer required to own these names, and shares could likely drift sideways or lower.

Sterne, Agee amp; Leach analyst Arvind Bhatia is advising investors to stay on the sidelines even though the stocks are trading at low multiples, and these could drop further in 2011.

Apollo and DeVry, for example, trade around 7-8 times forecast earnings, compared with a sector average of nearer 19.

There are changes coming which will impact these companies significantly, said Bhatia, who only likes American Public Education. Bhatia said he will wait for more clarity on regulations before becoming positive on the sector.

Were playing the game without fully understanding the rules of the game.

(Reporting by Megha Mandavia and A.Ananthalakshmi in Bangalore)

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