Some states like California are implementing large-scale education reforms to compete for federal education funds available from the Obama administration, The Washington Post reported Sunday. Obama's Race to the Top competition will award a total of $4 billion in grants to schools that are "leading the way" in education reform, according to the U.S. Department of Education web site. The Race to the Top competition encourages schools to make changes that include adopting standards and evaluations to prepare students for college, hiring and retaining effective teachers and installing data systems to measure students' academic progress, according to the web site. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-Calif., has spearheaded education restructuring efforts, recently signing bills that allow the analysis of student test data to assess teachers' effectiveness in struggling schools, The Post reported. Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, announced Wednesday that Texas would not compete for the grants because necessary changes would cost the state $3 billion, according to The Post.
Colorado politicians' consideration of a $1.8 million reduction in funding for Native American college students threatens the terms of a nearly century-old Native American treaty, The Huffington Post reported Friday. Due to financial pressures, lawmakers proposed a bill that would require Native American students attending Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., to begin paying tuition, according to The Post. Colorado currently offers tuition-free schooling for all Native Americans at Fort Lewis as a result of a 1911 agreement in which Colorado lawmakers acquired thousands of acres of land. Rep. Karen Middleton, D-Aurora, said the cost of Native American education has increased from $6.5 million to $10.7 million in the past five years, according to The Post.
Certain personal factors make college faculty members more likely to be politically liberal than conservative, according to a recent study by Neil Gross, a University of British Columbia sociology professor, and Ethan Fosse, a Harvard University graduate student in sociology. Gross and Fosse examined common characteristics of professors, including being highly educated, Jewish, non-religious or non-Protestant, and exhibiting high forbearance and acceptance regarding controversial issues. Analysis for their paper, "Why Are Professors Liberal?" was based on the General Social Survey's data collected from 1974-2008. "Politics do not bear directly on all work professors do, but higher education institutions as loci of knowledge production and dissemination may be influenced in important ways by their political views," Gross and Fosse wrote in the paper.
