Kent Conrad: It’s Not My Fault That I Decided To Do What I Did � The Quick and the Ed

Kent Conrad: It’s Not My Fault That I Decided To Do What I Did � The Quick and the Ed

Kent Conrad: It’s Not My Fault That I Decided To Do What I Did

by Kevin Carey

Earlier this week I wrote an article for The New Republic blaming Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota for killing the Obama administration’s college graduation initiative. The crux of the matter is this: In 2009 the House of Representatives passed a bill cutting out for-profit banks as the middleman in the federal student loan process. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that this would save taxpayers $87 billion over 10 years. Anticipating that the bill would pass, colleges across America began switching away from bank-based loans. In March 2010, the CBO issued a new estimate of how much money the bill would save from March 2010 forward. Accordingly, the colleges that switched before March 2010 weren’t included in the estimate. So the estimated future savings dropped to $67 billion. Conrad, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, insisted that Congress use the new estimate in determining how much savings

QUICK Hits

by Forrest Hinton

School Turnarounds: The “Mom Model?” (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Is the AFT’s current chief “diminutive and soft-spoken?” And what is making labor-management relations more collaborative in Rhode Island these days? (The Providence Journal)
Which works better for ELL kids—bilingual classes or immersion? New research says it doesn’t much matter.(H/t Education Week)
Who’s voting in teachers unions elections in 2010?  Greg Forster explains why this matters. (Jay P. Greene’s Blog)
How are professors like cats? (The Chronicle of Higher Education)