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After eight years of planning and a litany of pre-emptive criticisms from teacher groups, National Council on Teacher Quality and U.S. News & World Report released today their much-anticipated report that ranks the nation’s teacher colleges. 

[Click here for a background on the teacher pipeline controversy]

What the findings show

The Associated Press: “The nation's teacher-training programs do not adequately prepare would-be educators for the classroom, even as they produce almost triple the number of graduates needed, according to a survey of more than 1,000 programs released Tuesday.”

The Huffington Post: “NCTQ's uses a four-star rating system based on training programs' curricula, syllabi and admissions standards. Less than 10 percent of the programs rated earn three stars or more. Only four programs, Lipscomb, Vanderbilt, Furman University and Ohio State University, earned four stars.”

NPR: “The National Council on Teacher Quality zeroed in on two major areas: how education schools prepared students for the classroom and whether that preparation had anything to do with the growing demand on teachers to show they're actually raising students' performance. Walsh says consumers — namely school districts and people going into teaching — need to know.”

Read the rest here.

Among those who see value in obtaining a college degree,  tension still exists over what role higher education should play nationally. Should state and federal policies break down hurdles to college entry and completion to achieve a more specialized and skilled workforce? Or is the pursuit of education in itself a moral good government should support?

Read the rest here.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke on day one of EWA's 66th National Seminar, taking questions from reporters on topics ranging from Dept. of Ed transparency to common core waivers.

Yesterday a Senate committee approved a bill to overhaul No Child Left behind, the nation’s chief federal education law of the land, on a vote of 12-10.

This marks the second time since 2011 that the legislative body approved an overhaul to the contentious legislation.

The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee spent two days going over the roughly 1,100 pages to the bill, with numerous amendments shot down on mostly party lines.

A Republican amendment to strip the Secretary of Education’s ability to grant waivers was blocked by Democrats. The move would have put the Obama Administration’s NCLB waivers in jeopardy. Democrats also blocked Republican amendments to include some Title I funding for school vouchers, rollback the president’s signature education program Race to the Top and language that would have permitted federal dollars to follow disadvantaged students to any public school.

The bill's size was also mocked by Republicans, with ranking senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee proposing an amendment to shorten the entire bill to 200 pages. It was blocked on party lines.

Several amendments supported by Democrats were also rejected, like one to create an office in the Education Department for rural education.

Below is a roundup of what news outlets have posted about the vote.

One year after the White House unveiled a website that helped users plan for the costs necessary to attend college, a new article from Inside Higher Ed gives the effort low marks.

According to the piece, the “shopping sheet”—and the accompanying college scorecard—have been met with little interest from students and pushback from higher education institutions that felt the government tool was a one-size-fits-all solution to explaining college finance.

The higher education community isn’t exactly enamored of the shopping sheet. Last year, Rachel Fishman of New America Foundation explained how the group that represents university financial aid offices took an antagonistic stance toward the federal guide. Her piece details how universities describe both grants and loans as “awards,” while the shopping sheet makes the distinction clear. The group, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), has argued that universities already have become more transparent about the costs associated with attending. Due to changes in the 2008 reauthorization of the main federal bill that legislates financial aid—the Higher Education Act—campuses were required in 2011 to provide net price calculators as a service to prospective students.

But even if more students and universities warmed up to the shopper sheet, information holes exist, argues Jeff Selingo at Education Sector. A large amount of the public information we have on student debt loads per institution are self-reported, he writes. And in many cases, government data released in recent years to add a transparent shine to college affordability use broad numbers that don’t help individual families. He takes aim at the use of average debt, rather than the more reliable median figure, and of debt data that lump in what students and their parents—through the PLUS loan—borrow.

In the past few months a handful of studies, many funded by the philanthropic The Gates Foundation, have proposed dramatic changes to the delivery of financial aid to students. One report supports holding institutions more accountable for the financial well-being of its students by limiting the schools’ continued access to federal funds if certain cohorts of vulnerable students fall behind on their loan repayments. While such a carrot and stick rule already exists, critics say the 30- to 40-percent default rate threshold is too generous and spares many bad actors from facing consequences.

Read on for more background content and story ideas

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