It looks like the U.S. Senate will tack student loan reform onto their final health care bill after all, reports the New York Times' David Herzenhorn and Tamar Lewin. So if the bill passes, the federal Education Department would administer all federal student loans instead of subsidizing private banks ...

There's been talk that the Obama administration will use the final health care legislation bill as a vehicle to reform the awful, wretched, wasteful, unfair and embarrassing federal student loan system. But Lori Montgomery and Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post say it's probably not going to happen: Democratic leaders met for a second day Wednesday with administration officials, including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, in the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), but reached no decision on the student loan measure. One participant said a consensus appeared to be emerging that it would be unwise to risk the health-care bill by including the education measure. This makes sense in theory: student loan reform has very little to do with health care reform. But Obama and Congress better accomplish student loan reform in 2010.

The Washington Post's Nick Anderson reports that all 50 of the nation's governors have approved national standards for what students are expected to know in math and English. This is really good news. An argument against national standards is ...

The New York Times' Sam Dillon reports that, according to a statement by Education Sec. Arne Duncan, the Dept. of Education's civil rights office will "reinvigorate civil rights enforcement." The Education Dept. will do this through compliance reviews -- that is, looking at whether individual districts are giving equal ...

Elizabeth Green has a long piece in The New York Times Magazine about different methods of improving teacher quality. The article is premised on the familiar idea that the quality of individual teachers greatly shapes a student's education (regardless of that student's race, class, family background or peer group), but that no one is sure how to improve teacher quality: But what makes a good teacher? There have been many quests for the one essential trait, and they have all come up empty-handed. Among the factors that do not predict whether a teacher will succeed: a graduate-school degree, a high score on the SAT, an extroverted personality, politeness, confidence, warmth, enthusiasm and having passed the teacher-certification exam on the first try. When Bill Gates announced recently that his foundation was investing millions in a project to improve teaching quality in the United States, he added a rueful caveat. “Unfortunately, it seems the field doesn’t have a clear view of what characterizes good teaching,” Gates said. “I’m personally very curious.” It seems, then, that maybe macro-level education policy -- i.e. how Congress and the Obama administration decide to spend federal money -- shouldn't be advocating what Bill Gates is doing by investing millions in teacher quality projects. Yet, for some reason, the way policymakers think about teachers and education is totally different than how they view other social issues.

The Chicago Tribune's Lisa Black reports that school districts across Illinois are facing multi-million dollar deficits and will have to lay off hundreds of employees. Districts can get no relief from the state -- which Black notes has a $13 billion deficit in a budget that is $28 billion ...

The New York Times' Erick Eckholm reports that Education Sec. Arne Duncan is pushing to get rid of banks as the middlemen in federal student loans: Mr. Duncan disputed the assertion that jobs would decline, saying that private companies would receive larger, competitive contracts to service the loans. Taking up the administration’s increasingly populist tone, he described the banks opposing the plan in blistering terms. He called the loan subsidies “a sweet deal for banks,” said “working Americans pay while bankers get rich” and singled out Sallie Mae, the largest student lender, for paying executives “hundreds of millions of dollars in the last decade” while middle-class Americans faced crushing college debts. Duncan's attack might be "blistering" but a general attack on greedy banks doesn't suit the issue of federal student lending. The student lending program is not at all like bank bailouts or lax regulations on banks: it's much simpler and much more unequivocally unjust.

[caption id="attachment_6697" align="alignleft" width="192" caption="Arne Duncan"][/caption] Here is a story local to me that captures a national trend in education policy: The Chicago Sun-Times Rosalind Rossi reports on a bill introduced in the Illinois state legislature that would reduce the power of parent-led Local School Councils. Among other changes, local school councils or LSCs would no longer have the power to pick school principals. The trend here is that local representative bodies like school councils and school boards are increasingly being displaced by city mayors and mayor-appointed public school leaders.

The New York Times' Sam Dillon relays a study that state governments have spent almost all of the $100 billion in emergency education funding from last year's federal stimulus bill. So since there's still a recession and multiple state budget crises across the nation, states will cut programs and ...

The New York Times' Eric Lichtblau reports that the private lending industry could successfully derail the Obama administration and Congress's push to have the federal government eliminate private lenders from student lending. A bill to eliminate private lenders passed in the House but has stalled in the Senate. Most education ...