How to Avoid Expensive Financial Aid Mistakes
Kim Clark

Procrastination and tricky financial aid rules have been costing millions of college students big bucks. But new efforts to make the Free Application for Federal Student Aid easier may enable more students to qualify for more money. Here's how

Alternative Spring Breaks Combine Service & Learning
Rebecca Kern

Instead of relaxing on white, sandy beaches this spring break, thousands of college students will travel around the globe to volunteer for a variety of social justice causes. Known as 'alternative spring breaks,' these are public-service-oriented trips, planned and led by students, that focus on volunteerism and education about social justice issues in the United States or overseas.

How to Relax and Ace Your College Midterms
Zach Miners

You might think that studying for a midterm is just like studying for anything else -- you might even opt to skip studying and just wing it. But, midterms can be just as challenging and important as finals. We asked students, alumni, and staff from a variety of schools across the country what advice they would give to those who are about to sit for midterms

Free Online Course Offerings Grow in Abundance and Popularity
Rebecca Kern

More and more universities across the country and throughout the world are contributing their full courses and materials, including video lectures, to their school websites as well as sites such as iTunes U and YouTube EDU. And the cost of these courses that are normally worth thousands of dollars in tuition? Zero.

Bigger Tuition Bills and Student Loans Coming in 2011
Kim Clark

Some of the nation's wealthiest and most generous colleges are asking their students to earn and borrow more to pay for college. And several of those are now saying that they can't increase their aid budget fast enough to keep up with the growing number of students who don't have enough savings to pay for college. As a result, many colleges will ask some freshmen to shoulder a larger share.

Will You Get Enough Financial Aid?
Kim Clark

Students and parents looking to choose a college likely to award them sufficient grants can ask the college's financial aid office about 10 major factors that help determine just how big their financial aid offer will probably be

New Rules Protect Students from Credit Card Issuers
Brian Burnsed

Credit Card issuers have long bombarded college students with solicitations via mail and enticed them to sign up for credit cards on campus by promising free food or other items in return for their signatures. The ease with which students could acquire cards has astounded some. That's no longer the case. The CARD Act of 2009 will offer protections for college-age consumers

MIT Professor's Online Lectures Gain International Audience
Rebecca Kern

MIT mathematics professor Gilbert Strang knows how to reach a mass audience. His video lecture -- downloaded over 1.8 million times since 2003 -- is part of MIT's 'OpenCourseWare' website, which offers nearly 2,000 MIT courses free. Strang shares his views on online education and the impact it can have on students and education around the world in this recent interview.

Student Loan Industry Lobbyists March on Washington
Ulrich Boser

In an effort to prevent the Senate from passing a reform bill that would make college affordable for all, the student loan industry has mounted a massive lobbying campaign to keep its vast government subsidies. Loan giant Sallie Mae alone currently has more than 20 lobbyists blanketing the Hill, trying to sink an effort to reduce college costs and take the middle man out of student lending.

Colleges Take Action to Boost Minority Grad Rates
Zach Miners

Only about 40 percent of underrepresented minority students graduate from college within six years; the same statistic for nonminorities is 60 percent. Experts say that much of the disparity in graduation rates can be attributed to the different economic backgrounds students bring when they enter college, a criterion in which minorities tend to be disadvantaged.

Online Education Scholarships Help Parents Return to School
Rebecca Kern

Online learning site eLearners.com has helped parents overcome the three main barriers to returning to school: time, money, and lack of confidence. eLearners.com launched Project Working Mom 2010, a program created to award up to 285 full-tuition scholarships from eight accredited online institutions worth about $5 million in total to working mothers and fathers.

How to Solve School Reform
Reader Comments

The most important factor in academic success for the majority of students is having support and encouragement outside of the classroom. At the high school level, each teacher only has contact with individual students for a few hours per week. The influences from outside the classroom will easily counteract the efforts of the most dynamic and effective teachers.

Online Education Continues Its Meteoric Growth
Jeff Greer

Online college education is expanding -- rapidly. More than 4.6 million college students were taking at least one online course at the start of the 2008-2009 school year. That's more than 1 in 4 college students, and it's a 17 percent increase from 2007. Two major factors for the soaring numbers in the 2008-2009 school year are the sour economy and H1N1.

Online Learning Gets High Praise From Bill Gates
Zach Miners

In his 2010 annual letter, recently posted to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website, Bill Gates makes a pretty strong case for incorporating different elements of the Internet -- specifically, online video and interactive lessons -- into both K-12 and higher education.

10 Steps to Raise $15K or More for College Now
Kim Clark

As the economy has declined and college costs have risen, families have buckled down and become more resourceful to pay for college. Here's how more students are affording tuition when many colleges' prices are at record highs and many scholarship programs, private lenders, and family savings accounts have been wiped out

Unique Ways to Go Green if You're Living in a Dorm
Zach Miners

College is often termed the best years of your life. Now, recent trends suggest that it is also becoming pretty green. A growing number of colleges and universities are seeking ways to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, many with energy-efficient facilities and construction projects. And there are many things individuals can do to reduce their impact on the environment.

Rich Students Will Get More College Acceptance Letters in 2010
Kim Clark

Admissions officers and counselors say that hundreds of colleges are so desperate for cash this year that they will be reserving more spots for students who can afford to pay full tuition and don't need financial aid.

No Child Left Behind Was Doomed By Its Flaws
Randi Weingarten

What have we learned from the No Child Left Behind Act? Unfortunately, most of what we have learned shows that while the law's mission of creating high standards for all children was critical, its faulty emphasis on tests and punishing schools in need of help hasn't strengthened public education.

Lessons From No Child Left Behind
Margaret Spellings

What lessons have we learned from No Child Left Behind? Plenty. Because schools are now required to find out how each student is doing every year in reading and math. Now that we have annual assessment data that is disaggregated by student group, we can diagnose and correct weaknesses in instruction and learning.

Making No Child Left Behind Work
Andrew J. Rotherham

It is hard to find a national issue with a worse noise-to-signal ratio than the No Child Left Behind law. The contentiousness, obfuscation, and sometimes blatant misrepresentations leave parents, teachers, and policymakers baffled about what it requires or what its effects are ...

States Must Take Lead on Improving No Child Left Behind
Michael Cohen

No Child Left Behind represents a continuation of a 45-year federal commitment to improving the education of poor children. The law's greatest achievement was insisting that data on student achievement be broken down and reported by subgroups, focusing the attention of educators and policymakers right where it belongs

Trends in Financial Aid in 2010
Kim Clark

College will cost more in 2010. That, unfortunately, will very likely be the reality for most college students this year. But the news isn't all bad. Financial aid experts asked to predict what 2010 would bring to their campuses and students also highlighted eight happy trends that should encourage those worried about paying for college

How to Get into College After You Apply
Zach Miners

No one knows better the inside tricks for maximizing your chances of getting into college -- even after you've submitted your applications -- than admissions officers themselves. Here is some advice from a handful of admissions experts on how to navigate the less clear-cut aspects of the application process.

You've Submitted Your College Application. Now What?
Zach Miners

For most students applying on regular deadlines, the college application season has ended. But just because your applications are sent out, that doesn't necessarily mean your work trying to get accepted at your favorite school is over. Counselors and admissions officers at schools across the country say there are still some things you can do to get an edge

Applying for Financial Aid Will Be Easier in 2010
Kim Clark

Parents and students stressed about getting financial aid for college can celebrate at least a little good news at the start of 2010. While the total amount of grants and scholarships likely to be handed out this year won't be anywhere near enough to meet most students' needs, at least it will be easier to apply for aid. Here's how ...

D.C. Schools Chief Michelle Rhee Fights Union Over Teacher Pay
Lauren Smith

In her quest to revive Washington's public school system, Chancellor Michelle Rhee is pushing innovative but contentious ideas, one of which has garnered her national attention: whether teacher pay can be tied directly to student performance.

Rewarding Talented Teachers
Reader Comments

The whole situation of teacher tenure is actually tied to the economy. For many years, school districts were so desperate for teachers that they hired almost anyone 'with a pulse' and then did anything to retain them. The word 'evaluation' was rarely mentioned. Tenure was offered in part to compensate for inadequate salaries.

Charter Schools Rise in New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina
Alexandra Fenwick

For parents in the new New Orleans, selecting a school is a dizzying process. More than four years after Hurricane Katrina swept away much of the city, parents who return find an almost unrecognizable school system where charters have replaced traditional schools in unprecedented numbers. Many traditional schools also have changed to meet the needs of returning families.

How to Get In-State Tuition: Going to school out of state can be cheaper than staying near home
Kim Clark

The hype about colleges' heightened admissions standards and skyrocketing tuition in crowded and financially troubled states such as California may be drowning out the surprising reality that many affordable public colleges in less populated areas are eager for students and are willing to cut good deals.

Lawmakers must enhance education for all even those behind bars
Andrew J. Rotherham

Today more than 100,000 juveniles are incarcerated around the country. Schools for prisoners are obviously the extreme of the alternative school spectrum. In New York City incarcerated youth make up just a fraction of the 70,000 students in alternative setting. Nonetheless, these schools illustrate the many ways that traditional public schools cannot possibly meet the diverse needs of all American students.

Congress Considers Cutting D.C. School Voucher Program
Zach Miners

Thousands of D.C. families have found themselves in limbo as Congress debates whether to continue the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, the first and only federally funded education voucher plan in the country

Many Schools Find Ways to Close the Achievement Gap
Karin Chenoweth

From New York to Arkansas to California, many schools have found ways to help disadvantaged students learn better

States Lead Way on Shared Education Approaches
Michael Cohen

In many schools, this spotlight and the growing pressures of the No Child law's accountability provisions were sufficient to spark improved teaching and learning. But there has been too little improvement in the lowest-performing schools, where the challenges are the most severe.

Tips for Student Success
Reader Comments

Plans to recruit, retain, and reward high-performing teachers are a great way to supply schools with passionate and devoted teachers who push their students to achieve more. But teachers alone cannot make students successful.

Good Objectives Weighed Down by Fatal Flaws
Randi Weingarten

What have we learned from the No Child Left Behind Act? In a word: lots. Unfortunately, most of what we have learned shows that while the law's mission of creating high standards for all children was critical, its focus on stakes and sticks hasn't strengthened public education.

Measuring the Value of Accountability
Margaret Spellings

What lessons have we learned from the historic legislation known as No Child Left Behind? The most gratifying is that more kids are learning their lessons. How do we know? Because our schools are now required to find out how each student is doing every year in the key building-block subjects.

Moving From 'What' to 'How' in Education Policy
Andrew J. Rotherham

It is hard to find a national issue with a worse noise-to-signal ratio than the No Child Left Behind law. The contentiousness, obfuscation, and sometimes blatant misrepresentations leave parents, teachers, and policymakers baffled about what it requires or what its effects are. They likewise obscure issues the law has clearly highlighted and the steps policymakers can take to make the next version better.

The Challenge to Find a New Standard
Zach Miners

While the impact No Child Left Behind has had on the nation's classroom is still the subject of fervent debate, there's no doubt that the Obama administration intends to strike a new path for education reform.

Helping Schools Make the Grade
Jessica Calefati

Steve Barr founded Green Dot Public Schools in 1999 with the mission of transforming secondary education in Los Angeles. He comes from a long background of service. Barr has taught educators to think differently about student's potential.

Education chief tackles test scores and teacher pay
Kim Clark

With billions in stimulus funding, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has more power to create change than any of his predecessors. He spoke with Kim Clark about how he intends to do it.

Can School Reform Ever Really Work
Kim Clark

America has tried many strategies over the decades to reverse the slow, steady decline in its public schools. Few of these have delivered real results. Now President Obama has launched the Race to the Top campaign to improve schools by holding students to higher standards, paying bonuses to teachers whose students excel, and replacing the worst

Catching Students Before They Fall Behind
Jessica Calefati

College readiness is a top priority at each of the Aldine Independent School District's high schools, and academic success led Aldine to win this year's Broad Prize for Urban Education, an honor bestowed annually on the most improved urban school district

The Yearbook Faces Competition from Facebook
Zach Miners

Challenged by the amount of time and energy today's teenagers devote to staying up to date on their friends' Facebook or MySpace pages and Twitter feeds, the traditional school yearbook is facing an identity crisis. The extent to which today's students will prefer to share their high school reminiscences via online social networks a few years from now is unclear

Stuyvesant and Bronx Science New York City Schools Share a Drive to Be Tops
Diane Cole

Imagine a bustling, urban public high school whose alumni include Nobel Prize winners, government officials, world-class writers, musicians, actors, scholars. Now imagine two such schools: the Bronx High School of Science and Stuyvesant High School

Obama's Extreme School Makeover
Kim Clark

President Obama has launched an education initiative called Race to the Top. He has set aside at least $4.3 billion for controversial education reforms he argues are needed to raise American students' dismal scores on international tests and improve their chances of succeeding in the global economy.

Success Testament to Teachers and Students
Christopher J. Gearon

Dilapidated schools are not unique to Nashville. Districts nationwide are dealing with aging, deteriorating schools in the face of crumbling capital and maintenance budgets, made worse by the economy. One quarter of U.S. school districts report deferring maintenance this school year, nearly twice last year's number

Colleges Try to Take the Stress Out of Finals
Zach Miners

While taking finals may not be fun, at least the time spent between them can be enjoyable

Should Your Kids Pay for College Themselves
Kim Clark

It is tempting for parents whose savings and earnings have been wiped out by the economic downturn to tell their teens: "We love you. We want you to go to college, but we can't afford to pay tuition right now. You're on your own." The immediate cash savings are certainly tempting. But the long-term impact on the cut-off children could be devastating

Will Obama's School Reform Plan Work?
Kim Clark

President Obama's plan faces the same obstacles that have hindered previous attempts to fix schools. Now President Obama has launched the Race to the Top campaign to improve schools by holding students to higher standards, paying bonuses to teachers whose students excel, and replacing the worst schools with supposedly nimbler and more intimate charter schools.

States Compete for Obama School Reform Funds
Kim Clark

Racial desegregation. Mainstreaming of the handicapped. No Child Left Behind. At least three times in the past 60 years, the federal government has radically transformed public schools, with varied results. Here comes another attempt as President Obama has launched an education initiative called Race to the Top

Republicans and Democrats Can Embrace Obama's Race to the Top for Education
Mary Kate Cary

What's at stake is $4.3 billion in stimulus money, by far the largest pool of discretionary education funding in American history. It's all going into the Race to the Top fund, to be awarded to the states between now and June 2010. The idea is to do it without the usual expansion of the federal bureaucracy and to leverage federal dollars to get states to think outside the box.

No Child Left Behind Law Loses Support
Zach Miners

When President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind in 2002, the policy met with bipartisan praise and looked set to become the most influential federal reform of the nation's schools since desegregation in the 1950s. Today, efforts to reauthorize the law--something that was scheduled to happen in 2007 -- continue to languish in Congress

The School-to-Prison Pipeline
Robert Koehler

This is our school system in much of Poverty America: an ill-funded, desperate and deteriorating bureaucracy of bad ideas and entrenched disrespect for everyone -- especially those who care. One result of this situation is what is known as the school-to-prison pipeline.

Three Cheers for Community Colleges
Joyce Lain Kennedy

Some observers worry that we've hit the college-price ceiling, as costs appear to be trumping prestige at a time when jobs are scarce. Families look at the price tag of name-brand schools and, in a growing number of cases, decide they can't handle the freight

4 Things You Should Know About Community College
Zach Miners

The economic downturn has helped to spark a surge of interest in low-cost, two-year community colleges, which give students the option to transfer their credits to a four-year school. Here are four things to keep in mind when considering community college ...

Why Rebound in Economy Is Bad for Scholarship Applicants
Kim Clark

When the economy was in free fall early in 2009, officials at hundreds of private colleges felt a little panic: How would they find enough qualified students? So they dramatically increased the amount of grants and scholarships they offered to students.

Education: Something Worth Protesting About
Mary Sanchez

Students barricaded themselves in buildings, pumped out lists of demands to administrators and staged what they called study-ins. But the issue at the heart of the unrest was not war. It was something many would consider more mundane: tuition hikes.

Paying Off Student Loans Requires Smart Decisions
Kathy Kristof

Last June's college graduates face a tough choice this month. That's when the automatic six-month deferment on their student loans expires, forcing them to start repaying the money or beg for additional time. Never have students been so deep in debt and so unprepared to pay.

Where to Start if You Want to Be a Rhodes Scholar
Zach Miners

Rhodes Scholarships are seen as investments in individuals, rather than in, say, highbrow research proposals. But that doesn't mean getting a scholarship is easy. Each year, the 32 American Rhodes scholars are culled from an initial pool of roughly 1,500 undergraduates and recent college grads. Here's some information to get you started

Help Your Kids Learn Better
Lilian Presti

In a country where nearly three million students are receiving special education services for a learning disability, many parents are hungry for ways to support their children's learning. The problem many children face is they've lost their zest for learning. Here's a few key steps to reinforce learning

Education: The Cost of Dropping Out to All of Us
Mary Sanchez

It will take a significant change in policy for this nation to overcome its appalling school dropout problem, but maybe the place to start is coming up with a good slogan

U.S. Civil Rights Commission Investigates College Admission Bias
Zach Miners

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is investigating whether college admission offices are discriminating against female applicants to achieve gender balance in their student bodies.

10 Secrets to Raising More Than $15,000 for College
Kim Clark

How are more students affording tuition even though many colleges' prices are at record highs and many scholarship programs, private lenders, and family savings accounts have been wiped out? Here's 10 secrets to raising more than $15,000 for college

No Child Left Behind and the Brewing Fight Over Education
Andrew J. Rotherham

Although the landmark education law is overdue for its scheduled five-year overhaul, contentiousness left the last Congress unable to even get a bill out of committee. This year other issues made it easy for Congress to put off the tough work of revamping the law.

Military to Debut Virtual School
Zach Miners

When new assignments force members of the armed forces to move, it often means children need to switch schools. In some military families, children change schools multiple times during the course of their academic lives. The Department of Defense says that the disruptions can produce setbacks in students' schooling, but department officials are working to fix that: They're developing the military's first online virtual high school

Tapping the Power of the Local Library
David LaGesse

Doing research in our pajamas is a huge benefit of the Web and modern computers. But committed readers and researchers still want access to local libraries, with their vast troves of books, periodicals, and reference works. The best of both worlds? Tapping into your library over the Web, 24 hours a day

College President Salaries Continued to Climb
Kim Clark

News of the rising costs of administrators comes as colleges continue to raise their tuition faster than inflation. The College Board reported last month that the average private university has raised tuition by almost $4,000 since 2006 to $26,273, 10 percentage points faster than inflation. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa 'wonders if these colleges are giving away the store when they sign contracts with employees.' He said raises for administrators seem 'out of sync with the reality'

Taking the Kids To San Francisco's California Academy of Sciences
Eileen Ogintz

We're at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, which in the year since it has re-opened has emerged as the city's top cultural tourist attraction, drawing more visitors than Alcatraz

Which High School Students Are Most Likely to Graduate From College
Kim Clark

A study finds surprising evidence about which students are really on the path to a college degree. Some of the nation's best-respected educational researchers are likely to reconsider much conventional wisdom today with the release of surprising findings from an analysis of educational records of more than 200,000 freshmen who started at public four-year colleges in 1999.

Teacher Tenure Must Go
Jonah Goldberg

America's large school systems are a disaster. Yes, this disaster has many authors. Schools are expected to fix larger social problems that are best dealt with by parents. Good teachers aren't paid nearly enough, and bad teachers are kept around, draining budgets. Education bureaucracies siphon off vast resources better spent on classrooms

'Guaranteed' College Savings Plans May Soon Break Promises
Kim Clark

In a blow to parents already panicked about their ability to save enough for their children's college costs, some of the safest-sounding college savings plans are foundering.

Questions to Ask Before Investing in a Prepaid College Savings Plan
Kim Clark