The college also hires fewer administrative and maintenance staff than others of its size so that students can do the work: the janitorial and maintenance staff, for example, consists of two full-time custodians and about 30 students. Gingrich has also proposed elevating another local idea to a national stage: scholarships for students who graduate early from high school, a program established this summer in Indiana.
So far, the program is tiny: about 10 students had expressed interest by August, and only about students graduate early in Indiana each year. Gingrich has not specified what he admires about the program, only that he considers it an exciting innovation for higher education. At the same time, he has proposed subsidizing loans for math and science majors. As speaker, Gingrich was involved although not a key figure in fights over the Federal Family Education Loan program, successfully constraining the direct loan program by limiting how many institutions could enter the program per year.
He just said banks were better at doing this than the federal government would be. Gingrich also fought increased regulation of higher education, including the State Postsecondary Review Entities -- stage agencies set up in the Higher Education Act to investigate institutions with high student loan default rates. Colleges, universities and accrediting agencies fought the SPREs, as they were known, and Gingrich joined forces with the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and other groups to block their implementation.
On other student aid programs, Gingrich was largely silent. The maximum Pell Grant increased during his tenure in Congress, but the program was not then the lightning rod for criticism it has become, Longanecker said.
Gingrich has said he would repeal direct lending if elected. But many observers question whether that would be possible, given the substantial savings on bank subsidies that are now being applied to both Pell Grants and deficit reduction. Candidates with some ties to academe are hardly rare in presidential politics.
President Obama, a former lecturer on constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, used that as a talking point in the primaries. Bill and Hillary Clinton both spent time on the faculty at the University of Arkansas School of Law early in their careers. Gingrich, on the other hand, has chosen to present himself as an intellectual, frequently mentioning his Ph. Still, he has hardly embraced academe. Gingrich began his political career while a professor at West Georgia College, but left without receiving tenure.
These aren't concerns you take lightly. It would be easy to chalk Gingrich's comments up simply to his well-known animus towards unions. But I don't think that quite explains it. Rational people can argue about how much someone should be paid to clean. It's not an extravagant amount, but it approaches a living wage for a single person living in some areas.
In some places, the unionized janitors may well be making too much. There are plenty of school districts that outsource their cleaning to private firms. But that decision starts from the respectful assumption that maintaining a school is something worthwhile for an adult to spend their lives on.
That's not the case in Gingrich's worldview. Forget that an adult might need that job to put food on the table for their own children. Forget that he's suggesting we flood an ailing job market with part time, minimum-wage-earning students.
This isn't about labor economics. It's about respect, and the fact that the leading Republican presidential candidate doesn't have a spit's worth of it for manual labor. In his eyes, a janitor's job just doesn't mean much. It's so easy, a child could do it. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Traditional public schools have also benefited from this model. Oakland Unified partnered with the Rogers Foundation to set up a similar program in a handful of inner-city schools in that district.
The results are far fewer discipline problems and much better scores. At one of the pilot schools, the number of students reading at grade level actually doubled.
Promising blended learning programs are underway in settings as wide-ranging as Washington, D. In addition to these achievement gains, blended learning is also proving to be more cost-effective for taxpayers than the traditional model.
The cost of educating each student declines in blended-learning environments, in part because schools require fewer teachers to manage the classrooms. With fewer discipline issues, students become more engaged in the material and as a result, learn better. Additionally, teachers have more free time to spend with each student. This makes classroom size rules obsolete, and since compensating teachers has been the main cost driver in education, it is a big breakthrough.
Contact your member of Congress today and voice support for Rep. Rodgers' bill to help more schools start blended learning pilot programs. It's time our education system enters the 21st century. Join us on Facebook.
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