College Aid Plan Widens U.S. Role in High Schools (link to standands)

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.....http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/education/22grants.html?th&emc=th

..... "The president said he would like to extend N.C.L.B. into the high schools, and this is just the precursor for a new federal invasion," said Gerald Keefe, chairman of the Colorado Rural Schools Caucus........

January 22, 2006
College Aid Plan Widens U.S. Role in High Schools
By SAM DILLON

When Republican senators quietly tucked a major new student aid program into the 774-page budget bill last month, they not only approved a five-year, $3.75 billion initiative. They also set up what could be an important shift in American education: for the first time the federal government will rate the academic rigor of the nation's 18,000 high schools.

The measure, backed by the Bush administration and expected to pass the House when it returns next month, would provide $750 to $1,300 grants to low-income college freshmen and sophomores who have completed "a rigorous secondary school program of study" and larger amounts to juniors and seniors majoring in math, science and other critical fields.

It leaves it to the secretary of education to define rigorous, giving her a new foothold in matters of high school curriculums......

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1. this was coming for a long time--Fed. role in HS curriuculum-making

..... It leaves it to the secretary of education to define rigorous, giving her a new foothold in matters of high school curriculums.

Mindful of the delicate politics at play when Washington expands its educational role into matters zealously guarded as local prerogatives, senior Department of Education officials said they would consult with governors and other groups in determining which high school programs would allow students to qualify for grants.

"I do not see this, at all, as an expansion of the federal role," Sally L. Stroup, an assistant secretary of education, said in an interview. Washington, she said, would not impose a curriculum, just judge programs of study outlined by states. "Our job is to make sure that those are valid standards and valid programs," she said. Furthermore, states and communities can decide on their own whether their students will compete for the grants. "We don't force people to do anything," Ms. Stroup said.

But Terry W. Hartle, a senior vice president at the American Council on Education, the nation's largest association of colleges and universities, said the new program "involves the federal government in curricular matters in a way that opens a new chapter in educational history."

[Moderator]

2. Duplicate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2057420