Links for 7/21/10

Neal McCluskey

let’s stop focusing on whether the Common Core standards right now are good, bad, or indifferent, and talk about their future prospects, which is what really matters. Oh, wait: Most national standardizers avoid that discussion like the plague because they know that the overwhelming odds are the standards will end up either dismal, or at best just unenforced. Why? Because the same political forces that have smushed centralized standards and accountability in almost every state — the teacher unions, administrator associations, self-serving politicians, etc. — will just do their dirty work at the federal rather than state level. Indeed, those groups will still be the most motivated and effectively organized to control education politics, but they will have the added benefit of one-stop shopping!

Paul Basken

The ban is lawmakers' latest bid to staunch the growth of earmarks…

That new policy, somewhat predictably, has led some companies to either create nonprofit entities or find nonprofit partners to maintain earmarked budget allocations that they've received in past years. And universities have emerged as a popular choice among companies whose work involves scientific research…

Ben Miller

The maximum Pell award increased by $619, or 13 percent this year; the program’s cost went up $11.1 billion, or 61 percent. Hoping to use the Pell Grant to curb the effects of annual 5 percent tuition growth will become prohibitively expensive very quickly. At some point the onus must be on keeping tuition down, not finding ways to pay for it.

Patti K. See

My conversation with his dad has made me think I’m one of those awful helicopter mothers raising a co-dependent imp who will never live on his own…

my nearly 20 years of experience in higher education, not to mention my decade of expertise in the first year experience, have just been superseded by a super senior…