Education Department Launches New Website and Social Media Tools to Help Students Navigate Financial Aid Process | U.S. Department of Education

Education Department Launches New Website and Social Media Tools to Help Students Navigate Financial Aid Process | U.S. Department of Education:

Education Department Launches New Website and Social Media Tools to Help Students Navigate Financial Aid Process

Site part of response to Presidential directive, follows report highlighting issues with private student loans

JULY 20, 2012

Contact:  

 Press Office, (202) 401-1576, press@ed.gov 

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	StudentAid.gov

Today, the U.S. Department of Education announced a new streamlined website and several social media tools that will make it easier for students and families to navigate the financial aid process and make informed decisions about paying for college. The launch of the new website, StudentAid.gov, follows a report from the U.S. Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau about consumer protection issues with private student loans and recommendations to improve the student loan marketplace.

"We want to give students and parents the information they need to make smart and affordable education choices. A big part of that is educating people on the most affordable way to finance a college education: federal student aid," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. "This new, easy-to-understand website will help families better navigate the process of planning and paying for college. And it will help students manage their loan payments after they graduate so they avoid falling into default."

The new website, along with the Financial Awareness Counseling Tool that launched last week, serves as the Department's response to President Obama's June 7 directive to enhance online and mobile resources for loan repayment options and debt management. StudentAid.gov is the first step in a multi-phase project to provide consumers with a one-stop website where they can access federal student aid information, apply for federal aid, repay student loans and navigate the college decision-making process. The site combines content from several Department websites and presents the information in a straight-forward manner—and it is designed to be fully accessible on tablets and smartphones. In addition, the Department has revamped its Federal Student Aid social media sites, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, to provide more options for students to learn about student aid.

Also included on StudentAid.gov is the Student Loan Debt Collection Assistant, an interactive tool designed to help borrowers who have fallen behind on their federal or private student loan payments. The tool was developed in partnership with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and is also available through the CFPB's site. For borrowers who have missed payments but are not yet in default, this tool can help them avoid thousands of dollars in penalties and fees by helping them access an alternative payment plan. For borrowers already in default on their federal student loans, this tool offers an added benefit—clear information on how to access the full range of special repayment options available to federal student loan borrowers. The tool also provides tips to borrowers with private student loans on how to negotiate with debt collectors. Future releases of StudentAid.gov will incorporate additional websites and tools.

For more information about federal student aid, visit StudentAid.gov or the sites on Facebook (www.facebook.com/FederalStudentAid), Twitter (http://twitter.com/FAFSA), or YouTube (www.youtube.com/federalstudentaid).

LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 7-20 - Diane Ravitch's blog

Diane Ravitch's blog:

A Charter Takeover of Public School District?

by dianerav

There is a rapidly expanding charter chain in Pennsylvania called Propel.
It has charter schools in several districts in the state with a total enrollment of 2,000. They are “no excuses” schools, and they reportedly get high test scores.
The Propel charter chain wants to open a K-12 charter school in the small district of Sto-Rox, which has 1,400 students.
The charter school would enroll 800 students.
Last November, the school board unanimously rejected its request saying that it would have a “devastating”

More on the Study of Indiana State Tests

by dianerav

I’m hoping to get a link to the full study by Adam Maltese of Indiana University and Craig Hochbein of the University of Louisville, but in the meantime, here is the abstract. It provides interesting additional details:

Abstract

For more than half a century concerns about the ability of American students to compete in a global workplace focused policymakers’ attention on improving school performance generally, and student achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) specifically. In its most recent form—No Child Left Behind—there is evidence this focus led to a repurposing of instructional time to dedicate more attention to tested subjects. While this meant a narrowing of the curriculum to focus on English and mathematics at the elementary level, the effects on high school curricula have been less clear and generally absent from the 

The Great Muskegon Heights Puzzle

by dianerav

The state of Michigan despatched an emergency manager to take over the public schools of Muskegon Heights, Michigan, because the little district with three schools and 1,400 students had run up a deficit of $12 million.
Rather than help the district figure out how to pay off its deficit, the emergency manager decided that it was best to close down the public schools and hand over the students to a for-profit charter company. He selected Mosaica Education of Atlanta.
Now Mosaica has released its budget. Over the next five years, it projects,Mosaica will extract a profit from its 

Why a School Is Not Like a Business

by dianerav

A reader responds to an earlier post. This reader says that schools are like churches; some say they are like families. As the previous post said, they are built on relationships. When a school closes, a community dies. Those in big corporate cultures don’t understand this. They are used to closing down low-performing units, firing people who aren’t at the top of the stack ranking. This is everyday stuff for them. They don’t understand community. They understand data. They overlook the daily expose of corporate misuse of data (see Enron, WorldComm, LIBOR, or your local business page). If anyone steps forward to defend the community, they will be

Are the Rich Opposed to Public Education?

by dianerav

There was a time when almost everyone lauded the American idea of common schooling.
The ideal of equal educational opportunity was far from realized yet widely shared.
It was a goal, an ideal, a vision by which we measured our efforts.
It was a standard we strived to meet.
Urban districts had a small number of selective admission schools, but some urban districts had none at all.

Reality Matters

by dianerav

A smart comment by Dave Reid, a math teacher in California, about meeting the diverse needs of students in an overcrowded, under-resourced classroom:

Hi JJ. This is a reply to your July 20, 2012 at 12:41 am comment where you stated: “…any good teacher or administrator knows that placing these [sped] kids in inclusion or mainstream setting is meaningless unless you do provide them meaningful instruction. Accommodate. Differentiate, engage them. It’s not as easy as just Florida Congresswoman Blasts FCAT by dianerav Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson penned an article in the Miami Herald blasting the state’s testing regime. She blames it for destroying the lives of countless young people, who didn’t pass, were labeled failures, and did not get the education they needed to make their way in society. She is a former school principal, and she describes the current obsession with tests and school grading as “madness.” After years of complaining and pointing out missteps, and at times borderline criminal activity, I have reached  The Trouble with Online Education by dianerav I couldn’t have said it better myself. The New York Times has a terrific piece today with the title of this post, written by a professor at the University of Virginia. Sure, there are times when it is useful to take a course online. But there is a downside. The best learning is what happens when minds rub together, exchanging ideas; when a teacher can gauge what What is a Highly Qualified Teacher? by dianerav A reader gives her view of what it means to be a “highly qualified teacher,” if not by the elastic definition in NCLB, then by her own knowledge of teaching: As many have pointed out, no new teachers are “highly qualified.” While some new teachers may be more prepared than others, many years of teaching experience is necessary to become a truly effective (and therefore highly qualified) teacher. So not only are TFA teachers certainly not highly qualified, they are not even very well prepared. While some of them may have strong academic backgrounds and lots of motivation, why is that

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Proud to be a teacher

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Proud to be a teacher:

Proud to be a teacher

by noreply@blogger.com (Vicki Davis)

English: teacher and its importance (Photo credit:Wikipedia)

"In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have." :Lee Iacocca

See, Iacocca agreed that teaching is noble.

Let's look at people who know the importance of what we do and not the sensational media that makes its money by stirring up controversy, sharing gossip, and elevating the basest things as if they are truth so that they get the eyes, clicks, and traffic to pay their salaries with advertising. The media has no incentive to talk about great things because people don't stop and stare in wonder at those things. The problem with our society is that 

86 Productivity Tricks, Tips, and Apps

by coolcatteacher@gmail.com (Victoria A Davis, Cool Cat Teacher)

The wordle made from the tags and bookmarks shared in this post. Wordles are a phenomenal productivity tool and I'm starting to have students put them on the front of longer documents to help me scan and preread.

I collect productivity books, tips, and ideas. Going through my bookmarks on Diigo, I realized I had some great stuff in here that I still use and ponder. In this "best of" post, I'm sharing some of the best productivity tips, tricks, and apps for those of you who are trying to get the most out of every moment.

1. BlogSieve.com: Advanced Feed Processing for Atom, RDF and RSS. Create new feeds by filtering, merging and sorting existing feeds.
This website lets you mashup and create new feeds from existing ones. Take some time to manipulate feeds into smaller ones and you'll be glad you did.
tags: educaiton rss socialmedia productivity app
2. Feed Sifter: Get only the good stuff
   A service that filters feeds for certain keywords. This is a fascinating way to drill down into feeds that have a lot of content but you just want some of it.
   tags: rss news eduapp app socialmedia productivity
   
3. Filter RSS feeds with Feed Rinse
   This Feed flitering service will pull out spam and profanity - great to try for those who are behind firewalls 

Redefining the F-Bomb: Who Needs Feminism? - Technology - GOOD

Redefining the F-Bomb: Who Needs Feminism? - Technology - GOOD:

Redefining the F-Bomb: Who Needs Feminism?

by Julie Ma

For the 16 women behind Who Needs Feminism?, the GOOD Goes Viral challenge winner on GOOD Maker, the topic alone was taboo enough to toss Duke University and the internet into a frenzy. The organizers (and classmates) dropped what they jokingly refer to as “the F-bomb” on campus in the name of a social media campaign. Armed with a camera, whiteboard, and dry-erase marker, these women were determined to bring awareness to a matter they believe is central to everyone.
Sparked by a Women’s Studies class called "Women in the Public Sphere," Who Needs Feminism? was a 

News from The Associated Press

News from The Associated Press:

Study: Private student loans parallel subprime

By DANIEL WAGNER 
AP Business Writer

 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Risky lending caused private student loan debt to balloon in the past decade, leaving many Americans struggling to pay off loans that they can't afford, a government study says.

Private lenders gave out money without considering whether borrowers would repay, then bundled and resold the loans to investors to avoid losing money when students defaulted, according to the study, which is being released Friday.

Those practices are closely associated with subprime mortgage lending, which inflated the housing bubble and helped bring about the 2008 financial crisis.

"Subprime-style lending went to college, and now students are paying the price," said Education Secretary Arne Duncan, whose department produced the report with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Duncan said the government must do more to ensure that 

The Depth of a Simple Solution (Guest Post by Bryant Muldrew) « Cooperative Catalyst

The Depth of a Simple Solution (Guest Post by Bryant Muldrew) « Cooperative Catalyst:

The Depth of a Simple Solution (Guest Post by Bryant Muldrew)

by dloitz

In my work with the Baltimore Algebra Project (BAP), I and my peers waged a dramatic struggle against the State of Maryland, Baltimore City, and the Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS). The state of Maryland was (and still is) systematically underfunding the BCPSS. I discuss this in detail in the Case for the National Student Bill of Rights . Baltimore City and BCPSS believed that the solution to the school funding issue was consolidating small schools into one large campus. Additionally, the BCPSS was cutting extracurricular programming, art, and physical activities.  Because of these policies we saw a wave of new violence and increase dropout rates because of overcrowded schools.
In response to this policy, the students of the BAP develop the ABC Plan. The ABC Plan was designed in direct opposition with the school system’s policy. It was our hope that the implementation of the ABC Plan would be a 

A mind is still a terrible thing to waste | EdSource Today

A mind is still a terrible thing to waste | EdSource Today:

A mind is still a terrible thing to waste

July 20th, 2012 | Add a Comment | 
By Michele Siqueiros and Arun Ramanathan

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Michele Siquieros

What if we told you that no matter how hard you tried, you only had a 5 percent chance of succeeding? What if it was your first day of kindergarten and we told youthose were your odds of getting a college degree at a California university?

We don’t tell our kindergarteners that. In fact, we tell them the opposite. “You can be anything you want in life if you work hard enough.” But in California that’s just not the case for the nearly 4 million students who are Latino or African American. They have a 1 in 20 chance of graduating from a California public university. California’s prosperity is dependent on us changing these odds.

According to a recent report from the California Competes Council, California will need 5½ million new college degrees and technical certificates by the year 2025. We simply cannot meet these needs without improving results for our Latino and African 

Another reason for summer school: national security? - The Education Report - Katy Murphy's blog on Oakland schools

Another reason for summer school: national security? - The Education Report - Katy Murphy's blog on Oakland schools:

Another reason for summer school: national security?

Thursday, July 19th, 2012 at 5:51 pm in 1 Comment

Retired military officers think so.
The nonprofit Mission: Readiness (affiliated with the public safety-related group Fight Crime: Invest in Kids) put out a report this week arguing that summer inactivity was contributing to the obesity crisis and high dropout rate — which, in turn, poses a threat to the economy and the military’s ability to recruit.
What do you make of that link? I wrote about it in today’s Oakland Tribune.
While we’re on the subject: In case you missed it, summer programs at Global Family Elementary School, Roosevelt Middle School and Madison Middle School were featured in Sunday’s paper.
Along with the story, you’ll find a video of the new summer science classes at Global Family (free STEM courses are in place at 17 Oakland elementary and middle schools this year) and a very practical feature on how 

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Here's What the Charter Initiative Should Be

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Here's What the Charter Initiative Should Be:

Here's What the Charter Initiative Should Be

by Melissa Westbrook

So there was a bit of a kerfuffle between Diane Ravitch, the noted educator and Chris Cerf, New Jersey's Education Commissioner, over what he said about Albert Shanker, who is thought to be the father of the charter school movement.

Now, I outlined Mr. Shanker's role in charter schools in my multi-part series on charters, saying that he approved of lab classrooms within schools where teachers could try different methods and then to push out the ideas that worked to the larger school group.

Unfortunately, as time went by, Mr. Shanker saw the writing on the wall and denounced charters.

But Mr. Cerf just took the early history of what Mr. Shanker said.

Mr. Cerf said in an editorial:

Navin Johnson Gets Excited About PS 154x Test Scores.southbronxschool.com

http://www.southbronxschool.com:

Navin Johnson Gets Excited About PS 154x Test Scores

by noreply@blogger.com (Bronx Teacher)

Remember when Navin Johnson was so excited that the new phone books arrived? We here at SBSB are just as excited as he that the test scores have arrived.

Yes, with PS 154 sliding down its slippery slope, due to upper echelon (NOT AT ALL THE FAULT OF THE TEACHERS!!!!) incompetence, the test scores are out and like Navin Johnson PS 154 is going places. Down to be exact. (click below to enlarge)

If it wasn't for PS 154, there would be no need for summer school in District 7. But how did we get to this point, 

WHAT "BUSINESS" OTHER THAN LAUSD WOULD FORCE OUT ITS MOST EXPERIENCED? - Perdaily.com

WHAT "BUSINESS" OTHER THAN LAUSD WOULD FORCE OUT ITS MOST EXPERIENCED? - Perdaily.com:

WHAT "BUSINESS" OTHER THAN LAUSD WOULD FORCE OUT ITS MOST EXPERIENCED?

by Leonard Isenberg

(Mensaje se repite en Español)

 (For a national view of public education reform see the end of this blog post)

Given a choice between having a first year intern operate on you or having a skilled surgeon with 20 years of experience perform the operation, which would you choose? So why is it different when it comes to teachers and the art of teaching? Because what goes unchallenged in this society in a supposed move to fix purposefully failed public education is the fallacious belief - constantly repeated in the media, until the public is brainwashed - that anybody can teach or that those who cannot do anything else teach and it is their incompetence that has put us 

NYC Educator: Are You Afraid of Tech?

NYC Educator: Are You Afraid of Tech?:

Are You Afraid of Tech?

by NYC Educator

I can't say as I blame you. Principals can't wait to install another Smartboard, put out another iPad, hook up WiFi to the boiler room, and incorporate computers into everything and everyone.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love computers. I love the internet. It's like the public library right here on my laptop. Why deprive anyone of that?

On the other hand, there are some things we still need to do ourselves--like writing. How many times have you received a paper with the internet address still on top of it? How many times have you googled a sentence from a student composition to find it's copied word-for-word 

School Tech Connect: Popping Out The Rivets In Chicago

School Tech Connect: Popping Out The Rivets In Chicago:

Popping Out The Rivets In Chicago

by noreply@blogger.com (Tim Furman)

Rahm is destroying the schools. That's all there is to it. The new de facto ed policy in Chicago is set parents against teachers and against each other, and to fan the fire kindled by segregation. The whole message is get your kids away from those other kids who are so problematic.

They don't do these things in the suburbs or downstate. People have neighborhood schools. Everyone attends them. There's this quaint idea that we're all in this together. In the city, we pop out the rivets that hold