Latest From Our Bloggers

Newly released data by the Department of Education illuminates the educational landscape of America. more »

If "making the grade" is no longer a path to "moving on up," then it looks like the decoupling of education from employment, upward mobility, and the American Dream is at least underway. Or maybe it's already happened. more »

The College Board this week released its new Trends in Higher Education report, and it shows how our lack of public investment is putting a college education out of reach of working families.

The report examines college costs, financial aid, and the importance of a college education. It notes that while for the 2007-2008 school year tuition increases at four-year colleges are not as high as they have been for the past five years, total federal grant funding for undergraduates has still not caught up, when inflation is taken into account. In fact, the report says, "total federal grant funding to undergraduates was still lower in 2006-07 than it was three years earlier, after adjusting for inflation."

This is happening at the same time legislatures in many states are not appropriating enough funds to cover legitimate increased education costs.

The College Board report makes clear why the College Cost Reduction and Access Act is needed: more »

The irony of President Bush's demand on Monday for $46 billion in additional emergency spending for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan—an irony missed by most of the news media—is that it occurred as the Senate debated an appropriations bill for domestic education, labor and human services programs that President Bush has threatened to veto—over a comparatively minor $9.6 billion.

more »

On Thursday, President Bush took credit for signing the College Cost Reduction and Access Act. His claims stand history on its head. Bush said the bill:

"[E]xpands one of America's most important and successful education initiatives—the Federal Pell Grant Program. For the last six years, I've worked to make sure that we expand Pell Grants."

He seems to have forgotten that he was president during the last six years. President Bush and the Republicans, when they were in the majority in Congress, repeatedly defeated Democratic attempts to increase Pell grants. Since 2001, Pell Grant maximum awards to individuals have fallen by $99. In the past three years, total Federal Pell Grant expenditures declined by $1 billion.

Bush even threatened to veto the bill he is now taking credit for. But a majority of Republicans recognized the change in the political winds and signed onto the Democratic legislation, giving it a veto- proof majority. Only then did he decide to sign it.

How dare President Bush take credit for this piece of progressive legislation? The real heroes are leaders Rep. George Miller and Sen. Edward Kennedy, and thhe grassroots coalition, the Campaign for College Affordability.

What a difference a year makes. The Republican-controlled 109th Congress doubled student interest rates and cut $12 billion out of student aid.

The new Democratic 110th Congress has cut the student interest rates and put $20 billion into aid programs. The money comes directly out of the banks' pockets and into the pockets of students and working families.

Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats get credit, to be sure. College affordability was one of the "Six in '06" campaign promises, and Pelosi hit it out of the ballpark. Representative George Miller, D-Calif., was a hero, and Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy worked hard in the other chamber.

But real credit goes to the progressive community. more »

This June I wrote about Chief Justice John Robert's nutjob ruling in the Parents Involved school desegregation case that "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." In other words, his damned fool argument was that it was racist to try to figure out if a school districting plan was racist by counting how many people of ever race attended the schools in the district.

I lectured the Chief Justice that what he was doing meant that if racist school administrators decided to funnel black students into crappy schools in order to keep the good school lily white—rather a pattern in American educational history, that—the government would now be helpless to fight it.

Mr. Chief Justice said: not to fear. It was only "before Brown" that "schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on their color of their skin."

Read a newspaper, Mr. Chief Justice. Specifically, yesterday's New York Times. And consider what you've just wrought.

At last we get a little good news. The new Congress is presenting to the President a package of legislation designed to help working families afford the skyrocketing cost of college. He’s threatened to veto it but we’ll get to that later. Start with the good news. more »

Isaiah just hit upon something important when, in discussing the new anti-poverty program from Center for American Progress, he wrote:

Conservatives succeeded in taking the nation’s eye off the ball on the issue of poverty by couching it as an issue of “us vs. them,” ... But that offers progressives an opportunity to reframe the poverty debate as a “we’re-in-this-together” move toward a more equitable and prosperous society.

How can we pull off such a frame? By making common cause between the impoverished and the middle-class.

Where's the common ground? Start with today's column from New York Times' David Leonhardt, "What's Really Squeezing The Middle Class."

Leonhardt argues that we don't know enough about volatility in the economy to say for sure that's contributing to the squeezing. But widening inequality is indisputable. He concludes:

In an economy where volatility was the main problem, you might want to protect jobs by making it harder for companies to cut them. In an economy where inequality was the problem, you would want to protect people. You would help them pay for health insurance, retirement, their children’s education and other basic needs when the market, left to its own devices, was not doing so.

And if your resources were limited, wouldn’t you start with the problem you were sure that you had?

Then, look at the CAP anti-poverty plan, which calls upon our government to help us with education and retirement: the promotion of early education, more financial assistance for college tuition, and expanded tax incentives that encourage saving for education and retirement.

Finally, bring in Jacob Hacker's Health Care For America plan, which would provide universal coverage with good quality and affordable cost.

Together, we have the elements of a package that can simultaneously lift up the poor and strengthen the middle-class -- helping everyone with education, health care and retirement, and reversing our widening inequality.

Instead pitting us against each other, we'd be making common cause.

Because it's not just about poverty, and about "them." It's about an economy that works for all of us.

Last night's State of the Union address revealed that the state of this president is still delusional. He can't level with the American people because he can't or won't recognize the reality that we face.

The best part of the speech wasn't anything the president said. It was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sitting over his shoulder, signaling the change that Americans voted for. The president also got a lift from the "ordinary heroes" that he recognized at the end of the speech. But when it got to substance, the president seemed bored with his own words as he trotted out his pledge for more of the same.

For this president, the economy is great and we need to stay the course. The Democratic response by Senator Jim Webb offered a glimpse of the reality that the president doesn't get - that this economy isn't working for most Americans. No wonder less than a third of Americans think the president has any clue about the problems they face.

For this president, we have a strategy for moving forward in Iraq, and we're garnering global support for our foreign policies. Maybe he's back on the sauce - he certainly isn't reading his briefing papers or listening to his own generals. The president called for bipartisanship, apparently not aware that Senators from both parties are already coming together - in bipartisan opposition to the president's escalation of the war in Iraq. Again, Webb offered a dose of reality in his response, stating flatly that it was time to bring the president's war to an end, and that if he couldn't understand that, "we will be showing him the way."

Even where it has dawned on the president that there is a problem to be addressed, his proposals are gestures, if not mockeries. The health care system is broken. The president's reforms, by his own exaggerated numbers, might provide health insurance for maybe 3 million of the 47 million that now go without, while taking a whack at workers who have decent plans (read unions) and public hospitals (read Hillary Clinton's New York which takes 40% of the hit).

Catastrophic climate change and our dependence on foreign oil are a clear and present threat to our security. The president recycles his ethanol enthusiasms (substituting "woodchips" for last year's "switch grass" as a potential source). But his plans won't even cover the projected increase in US oil demand for oil over the next decades. He still defaults on the imperative for a dramatic national drive for energy independence - like that called for by the Apollo Alliance, which can generate jobs even as it helps address global warming.

Our education system is not providing the basics - children with the nutrition and health care to be ready to learn, universal pre-school, smaller classes in the early grades, skilled teachers, affordable college and advanced training. The president offers only to continue the No Child Left Behind reforms that he has failed to fund.

Immigration reform is a vital necessity. The president calls for comprehensive reform, in the face of growing right-wing opposition. But he insists on a guest worker program, simply a subsidy for exploitative employers, insuring them a pool of second class workers.

The president's speech was more striking for what it omitted than for what it contained. No mention of our unsustainable trade deficits, the loss of 17% of our manufacturing jobs, the growing indebtedness to foreign creditors, particularly the Chinese and Japanese central bankers. No talk of the worst corporate crime wave in modern history, with executives cooking the books and plundering their own companies. Not a word about the worst inequality since the Gilded Age, the rise of families in poverty. Obscenely, the president said not a word about the beleaguered survivors of Katrina, who having weathered Katrina's winds, now must struggle to survive the administration's broken promises.

Speaker Pelosi's presence and Senator Webb's response offered the only solace for Americans watching last night. This president remains in his bubble, divorced from a reality he can't see, committed to a course at home and abroad that won't work. But it matters less and less. Americans have already tuned him out, and the Congress no longer dances to his fancies. From now on, it is the new leadership in Congress that "will be showing him the way."