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Obama Signs Spending Bill to Protect Teachers’ Jobs

September 1st, 2010 at 02:43am Under Education report

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

President Obama signed legislation Tuesday to provide twenty-six billion dollars to the states for education and healthcare.

The measure includes ten billion dollars for education and sixteen billion for Medicaid, the joint state-federal government medical program for the poor.

The legislation will help one hundred sixty thousand teachers and one hundred fifty thousand police and public service workers keep their jobs.

The House of Representatives approved the bill Tuesday. House members had already begun a six-week holiday when the Senate approved the measure last week.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi took the rare step of calling House lawmakers back to Washington to vote on the bill and send it to President Obama without delay.

President Obama has stressed the importance of education for all Americans. He said this is necessary for the country to compete among some of the world’s fastest growing economies.

The president spoke Monday at the University of Texas. He talked about the decrease in college graduation rates in the United States.

BARACK OBAMA: “In a single generation, we’ve fallen from first place to twelfth place in college graduation rates for young adults. That is unacceptable, but it is not irreversible. We can retake the lead.”

President Obama said educational success and economic well-being are linked, especially in a world economy driven by information and technology. His goal is to increase the percentage of college graduates from forty percent to sixty percent by the year twenty-twenty.

The president said the federal government has already reformed the student loan system and increased tax credits for families struggling to pay college education costs.

Democrats in Congress say spending for the new bill will not add to the federal budget deficit.

But some Republican lawmakers criticized the measure. House Republican leader John Boehner dismissed the emergency jobs measure as more wasteful spending aimed at pleasing the Democrats’ traditional union allies.

JOHN BOEHNER: “The American people are screaming at the top of their lungs, ‘Stop!’ And Washington continues to spend, spend, spend.”

Hours before the vote Tuesday, President Obama told reporters at the White House that education and the safety of communities should not be a political party issue.

BARACK OBAMA: “Those interests are widely shared throughout this country. A challenge that affects parents, children and citizens in almost every community in America should not be a Democratic problem or a Republican problem. It is an American problem.”

And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Lawan Davis. You can read and download scripts at voaspecialenglish.com  I’m Steve Ember.

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For-Profit Colleges in US May Face Tests on Federal Student Aid

August 17th, 2010 at 07:56am Under Education report

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

President Obama wants the United States to have the world’s highest rate of college graduates. But his administration also wants stronger rules for colleges that operate for profit.

Career colleges receive billions of dollars from taxpayers through student loans. The Education Department says some of that goes to waste and leaves students in debt for educations of little or no value.

To receive federal aid, career colleges must prepare students for what the law calls “gainful employment” in a recognized occupation. Two tests are proposed to see if they do.

One would measure the relationship between debt loads and how much students earn after they complete a program. The other would measure the rate at which all students repay their loans, whether they complete the program or not.

Programs that fail these tests could be restricted or blocked from federal student aid.

The Education Department says for-profit colleges and training programs are important. In two thousand eight they had close to two million students — nearly three times more than in two thousand.

Last year, the five largest received more than three-fourths of their money from federal student aid. And that amount did not include other forms of government aid.

Yet officials say for-profit colleges may be less supervised than other schools. They also point to reports of highly aggressive marketing.

For every one hundred graduates of for-profit colleges, eighteen fail to repay their federal student loans. That compares to five graduates of public colleges and universities.

The department is now collecting public comments on a number of negotiated rules. Some would require career colleges to release their graduation and job placement rates. The goal is to publish a final rule by November.

The Career College Association called the debt-to-earnings proposal unwise, unnecessary, unproven — and unlawful. The group says it has found that students in higher priced programs are more likely, not less likely, to repay their students loans.

It says the move could eliminate programs serving three hundred thousand students. Female and minority students would face the most harm, it says, as they are more likely to attend career colleges.

The association also points to shrinking budgets for community colleges. Its president, Harris Miller, says “Students need more information, not fewer choices.”

And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Avi Arditti. I’m Steve Ember.

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