State of the Union: Reducing College Costs

Posted on January 30, 2012 by C2 Education

: Can Obama lower the cost of college?

In his State of the Union speech last Tuesday, President Obama spent a great deal of time discussing education in America. Recognizing the importance of an affordable higher education, Obama highlighted his administration’s goal of reducing college costs in order to make college more accessible.

Anyone who doubts the need for such changes surely has not dealt with college financial aid recently. It is a widely accepted fact that a college education is necessary for higher earnings; in an age in which employability is determined by education, students from every walk of life must be able to access higher education. Unfortunately, the costs of tuition at the nation’s colleges and universities has increased four times faster than the rate of inflation, pricing out many middle- and lower-class families. As a result, student loan debt now outpaces credit card debt, leaving young adults to face years of indentured servitude in order to pay off their education debts.

College costs and rising student loan debt have become a rallying point in the Occupy movements, something that the Obama administration is very aware of. Many believe that this newfound attention to college costs is simply a political move to bring young voters back into the Obama fold. But regardless of Obama’s possible motivations, his proposals have great merit and ought to be seriously considered by legislators from both sides of the aisle. Continue reading →

Cross-Curricular Missteps

Posted on January 24, 2012 by C2 Education

: This homework worksheet was assigned to 3rd graders in Georgia.

Imagine this: Your third grade child heads back to school after winter break and comes home with a math worksheet. You, being the awesome parent that you are, help your child with his homework. You are shocked to read the following questions:

If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?

Frederick had 6 baskets filled with cotton. If each basket held 5 pounds, how many pounds did he have altogether?

Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves picked them equally, how many oranges did each slave pick?

This exact scenario has recently played out in a metro Atlanta elementary school. In the wake of the incident, the school system launched a full-scale investigation and activist groups took to the airwaves. The Georgia NAACP demanded that all staff involved in the incident be fired, that the teachers offer an apology to all parents, and that the affected students receive counseling to cope with the aftermath of the offending assignment. The Professional Association of Georgia Educators (PAGE), on the other hand, has said that the staff involved should not be fired but retrained and that this unfortunate incident ought to be a teachable moment. Continue reading →

Homework Without Wikipedia?

Posted on January 18, 2012 by C2 Education

This is what you will find today if you go to the English version of Wikipedia.com

Kids across the country may face a slight challenge in completing their homework assignments today – Wikipedia, the first-stop for many a novice researcher, is undergoing a 24-hour blackout in protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), two pieces of legislation being debated by Congress.

Anyone who hasn’t been following the SOPA/PIPA drama of recent weeks may be wondering what the big deal is – why are so many people up in arms about these bills?

SOPA and PIPA are intended to crack down on copyright infringement, primarily committed by foreign-based websites which are currently outside the legal reach of American companies. In other words, the bills are supposed to stop people in other countries from pirating American music, movies, etc. Based on this broad goal, both bills received bipartisan support – after all, who isn’t against piracy? Continue reading →

Help Wanted: Who Wants to Run a Country?

Posted on January 11, 2012 by C2 Education

North Korea is adjusting to new leadership – albeit new leadership which appears to be exactly like the old leadership. This is a country facing famine, huge economic inequality, and possibly all-out war against pretty much the entire western world. Because North Korea has a sort of dynastic leadership system, its citizens have not questioned who their new ruler will be. But let’s imagine for a moment that North Korea, in a very atypical move, attempted to give democracy a shot. Let’s imagine that North Korea held an election. With the myriad problems facing the country, would anyone even want to run?

We’re willing to bet plenty of people would. After all, while certainly not in North Korea-like straits, the United States isn’t exactly at the top of its game and plenty of people appear to want to run this country. In fact, although the presidential election is still nearly a year away, we’ve already got over half a dozen candidates vying for the Oval Office. Aside from incumbent President Obama, whose rocky first term has left the odds of his reelection at an even 50/50, we have several Republican frontrunners. This overabundance of presidential candidates seems to suggest a vibrant and diverse democracy…or does it? Continue reading →

Why Healthy Lunches Can Backfire

Posted on December 29, 2011 by C2 Education

This school year, the LA Unified School District was one of several districts to redesign their lunch program in an effort to create healthier meals for students. Just last week, several leading news outlets ran a story about the backlash that the district has received, most notably high levels of waste and secretive junk food black markets. The students hated the healthier meals.

Opponents to school lunch reform have long argued that the additional costs of redesigning lunch programs would be a waste of money because students would opt out of the lunch programs altogether. LA Unified’s apparent failure can easily be seen as evidence against school lunch reform, but if we compare LA Unified’s failure with the success stories of other districts we can clearly see that the failure was not caused by healthy food but by unfamiliar food. Continue reading →

C2 Education Founder & CEO to attend State Dinner at the White House.

Posted on October 12, 2011 by C2 Education

Get Wall Street Out of the Education Business

Posted on August 15, 2011 by c2educate

McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Pearson are the three largest K-12 textbook manufacturers in the country. The K-12 textbook industry rakes in upwards of $4.5 billion per year, and this rather large pie is split among just three players.

Early this month, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. debt, wreaking havoc on international markets. Unbeknownst to the average citizen, S&P’s reach has gone far beyond the financial markets and extended into the American classroom.

S&P, a name commonly associated with finances and markets, is in fact owned by a company called McGraw-Hill, a name you’ve probably seen printed on the spines of your child’s textbooks. McGraw-Hill is one of a small handful of large corporations and organizations which form an oligarchy controlling nearly every facet of your child’s education. Continue reading →

"Not in My Backyard": The Hypocrisy of Education Reform

Posted on August 8, 2011 by c2educate

In the realm of education reform, even the most vocal proponents exercise a “not in my backyard” mentality.

America has been shaped by reform: From the Suffrage Movement to the Labor Movement to the Civil Rights Movement, our daily lives have been impacted by constant change. Today, reform movements center on issues such as environmental reform, energy reform, and – most important of all – education reform. And yet, for a country built on the idea of change, our modern reform movements are amazingly hypocritical. Continue reading →

Obfuscation: Deciphering Your Child’s Report Card.

Posted on May 31, 2011 by c2educate

Is your child's report card a true academic assessment?

The media offers an expert opinion for everything, from how to balance the budget to how to reform our schools. But what, if anything, do these experts really offer? They speak on hollow talking points while failing to add any useful insight to our national debates. To make matters worse, these so-called experts offer so-called solutions which require that we experiment with the well-being of future generations.

In the field of education, the favorite expert solution seems to be standardized testing. At this point, our students can probably fill in multiple choice bubbles in their sleep, yet our education system has failed to improve significantly – even after years of standardized tests. Clearly, test scores are not the answer to education reform – nor are they a good way of measuring the quality of your child’s education. Continue reading →

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