K-12 Policy Reform August News
August news items and notes for the K-12 education reform topic. • “The newest advantage of being rich in America? Higher grades Escalating grade inflation at wealthy high schools is another blow to poor...
Economic Thinking Posts on Debate Topics
National service: sharing the dirty work by Martin Anderson
[Article by Martin Anderson for the Sept./Oct. NSDA LD topic: “Resolved: In the United States, national service ought to be compulsory.”] Today an understanding of what national service is all about is obscured by...
Informal K-12 and Higher Education: U.S. and Developing World
James Tooley, a professor of education policy at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, traveled the world researching The Beautiful Tree and describes the popularity of informal schools for low-income families in India and Africa. In India, Nigeria,...
The Strange Case of Special Education Funding
“Trump Budget Would Slash Education Dept. Spending, Boost School Choice,” (Education Week, May 23, 2017), looks at changes proposed in federal education spending, but notes the largest: Grants for special education, which also go...
What the Federal Government Can Do To Improve U.S. Education
Sometimes looking at the past can help us see the present more clearly. And that applies to the 2017-2018 NSDA topic: Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its funding and/or regulation of elementary...
Nationalism, Globalism, Bananas, Sports, and Cheese
Neither nationalism nor globalism are values. They are instead words that cast international relations and policies in different lights. A speech by the U.S. President can call U.S. based car companies Ford and General Motors national...
Climate Optimism, Energy Realism for the Next Generation
Notes below from Robert Bradley Jr., President of the Institute for Energy Research and editor of the MasterResource blog, from a presentation to Texas high school students. Bradley’s remarks are relevant for NSDA and...
Don’t Hector the Farmers and Don’t Wrap the Veggies
Contrast a Forbes article about a global corporation bringing to developing countries knowhow for producing and the trust for buying quality goods, with a New York Times article. In “Kenyan Village Serves as Test Case...
Federal Higher Ed. Debt: Almost $1.5 Trillion
“A Look at the Shocking Student Loan Debt Statistics for 2017,” (Student Loan Hero, Updated: July 11, 2017) reports: Americans owe over $1.4 trillion in student loan debt, spread out among about 44 million...
Federal Piper May Call for New College Tunes
Upper-income American pay the largest percentage of federal income taxes, so perhaps feel justified when they children benefit from federally-subsidized universities. Federal funding has taken the major role in funding higher education, and also that funding has also...