Last year, the state of New York passed a firewall law, and in a speech today at the Center for American Progress, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called out the state legislature for making a bone-headed move:

A state can’t enter Race to the Top if it prohibits schools from using student achievement data to evaluate teachers, and that’s why California just repealed its prohibition on doing so. In New York, the state legislature passed a law last year that actually tells principals ‘you can evaluate teachers on any criteria you want, just not on student achievement data.’ That’s like saying to hospitals ‘you can evaluate surgeons on any criteria you want, just not patient survival rates.’ You really can’t make this up.

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The firewall law is set to expire in June, and Bloomberg called on the state to not only throw firewalls into the dustbin of history, but also to “require all districts to create data-driven systems to comprehensively evaluate teachers and principals.”

Bloomberg appeared with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who earlier in the morning highlighted Louisiana’s data tracking system, which the state uses to track not only teachers and students, but the ways in which the teachers themselves were educated:

Louisiana tracks students’ progress, they track teachers back to students, and they track teachers back to their school of education, back to their different certification routes, so that after hundreds of thousands of students and tens of thousands of teachers, you see schools of education literally changing their curriculum based upon the results of the students of their alumni. Louisiana doesn’t have some technology the rest of the country can’t figure out…So I question why, when it’s not some miracle technology that Louisiana’s patented and won’t share with the rest of the world, why is it, today, we only have one state operating in this manner?

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As Robin Chait has explained, “the way we currently pay teachers in this country isn’t working. There’s a strong consensus that it’s not working and we need to try different things. Pay for performance is one of the most promising strategies that we have to experiment with in order to reinvigorate the teacher workforce, especially in high-poverty schools.”

Gov. Linda Lingle (R-HI)

The decision to impose furloughs drew the ire of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who said last week that Hawaii’s decision was “mind-boggling,” and added that the furloughs all but disqualified Hawaii from competing for the $4 billion in Race to the Top funds that were included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act:

“I don’t know anyone who can make a case that eliminating 10 percent of your school days is good for the children of Hawaii,” he said. Moreover, Hawaii faces “a heck of a challenge” to make a compelling case that it qualifies for between $20 million to $75 million in federal “Race to the Top” competitive grants next year, he said.

Yesterday, Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle (R) saw the light and decided to end Furlough Fridays:

Gov. Linda Lingle plans to eliminate 27 Furlough Fridays at Hawaii’s public schools by tapping the so-called rainy day fund and switching teacher training days to class time…Under Lingle’s plan, furlough days would be restored starting Jan. 1 by using $50 million from the fund, formally the Emergency and Budget Reserve Fund, and converting non-instructional hours to instructional hours, totaling 15 school days.

First, this episode highlights that more aid to states should be part of any job creation package that Congress might consider. Letting states slash their primary education systems to smithereens serves no one’s interest — not the teachers who see their purchasing power diminish, the parents who need to find alternative arrangements for their children during the day, or the students whose education has been compromised.

But even given the budget situation, Lingle’s furloughs were an extraordinarily bad idea. Lawmakers really need to rethink their knee-jerk impulse to reduce time in the classroom when faced with budget problems, as expanding time — particularly discarding the outdated 180 day model — and trying to integrate schools into the wider community is a necessary part of revitalizing America’s education system. As Duncan told The Wonk Room last month, schools that are following the traditional model of six hours per day, five days per week, for nine months “don’t serve anyone well.”

As CAP pointed out in a new report examining leaders and laggards in terms of innovation in education, “Hawaii does a below-average job managing its schools in a way that encourages thoughtful innovation. Ninety-four percent of teachers report that routine duties and paperwork interfere with their teaching, and only 22% of teachers like the way their school is run.” Let’s hope that this controversy over the furloughs causes Hawaii’s administration to take a deeper look at its education policies.

As Duncan explained in an interview with The Wonk Room, community schools can do a lot to alleviate poverty, but they also improve the education system across the income spectrum:

It’s a different mindset. It’s really thinking that schools open six hours a day, five days a week, nine months out of the year — the real fundamental question I’m asking people to think about is ‘who do those schools serve well?’ And I would argue that they don’t serve anyone well. All of our children, whether it’s two-parent middle class families, or single moms working one or two or even three jobs trying to make ends meet, or children going home to no-parent families, all of our children need schools open much longer hours. This has to become the norm.

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The first time that community school initiatives were specifically funded by the federal government was 2008’s Full Service Community Schools Program, which funded 10 programs for $5 million. However, the United Kingdom has been funding an widespread community schools effort since 2003. The UK allocated ₤840 million ($1.3 billion) in start-up funds for schools to provide extended hours between 2003 and 2008, and has pledged another ₤1 billion ($1.6 billion) through 2011. By 2010, the UK is on pace to have every school in the country offer extended hours. In an interview with The Wonk Room, Blair said that community schools should rightly be the “way of the future”:

Our experience is that community schools work, they become a resource for the whole community. And for a lot of the children, they don’t just have an education issue. It’s much broader than that. It could be health issues, there could be problems getting fed before schools, doing their homework after school. And also there are a lot of adults that can use the school resource. Community school is definitely the way of the future.

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Last month, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) introduced the Full Service Community Schools Act of 2009, which would establish a five-year grant program to encourage the growth of community schools.

Echoing the comments made by former President Bill Clinton, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis took to the Clinton Global Initiative stage today to talk about America’s need — and apparent inability — to make enough investments in human capital. She pointed towards the Obama administration’s commitment to community colleges, which she called the “rapid, ready-response institutions” of America, but said that the real problem is tuition at four-year colleges:

The fact of the matter is, there are a lot of young people, young adults, that don’t have the financial ability to enter into a four-year university or, say, a tailored program that could take them even out of poverty. The President just recently talked about making an investment, $12 billion, in community colleges. And community colleges are kind of the rapid, ready-response institutions that allow for a broader group of people to enter into, say, very specified business training that they need. [...]

That’s one step in the right direction, but we need to also continue that and allow for four-year universities to make their tuition more available so that more people can go…I think we miss the boat if we don’t really talk about trying to spread that wealth, that educational opportunity.

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The ever-increasing cost of tuition at higher education institutions is a serious problem, with a serious detriment of ideas for how to deal with it. In addition to the average debt load of $23,186 that today’s typical student borrower accrues, the National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey shows that 47 percent of full-time students are now working more than 20 hours a week (which is the recommended maximum), a number which goes above 50 percent for most underrepresented racial or ethnic groups.

The Lumina Foundation estimates that the American economy will face a shortage of 16 million college educated workers by 2025, and “the United States may not only be losing ground compared to other countries, but also in relation to its own population,” as the projected 13 percent increase in college enrollment over the next ten years would occur at a time when the U.S. population is increasing by 14 percent.

The government can increase student aid each and every year, but it won’t mean much unless the rate of increase in tuition can be reined in, as it makes little sense to have aid simply spiral out of control alongside tuition. And in the end, our future economic competitiveness depends on us finding solutions to these problems.

As I noted yesterday, one of the main thrusts of this year’s Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) conference is building up human capital. To that end, CGI brought together a rather eclectic group of individuals to discuss investing in women and girls as a way of bolstering human capital worldwide. The group included the CEO’s of both Goldman Sachs and Exxon Mobil, alongside Zainab Salbi, the CEO of Women for Women International, Robert Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, and Melanne Verveer, Ambassador-at-Large for Women’s Issues at the U.S. State Department.

Prior to the panel, former President Bill Clinton explained that, globally, women do two-thirds of the work, produce 50 percent of the food, but earn just ten percent of the income and own just one percent of the property. And when Exxon’s CEO Rex Tillerson asserted that “funding is not the issue” that keeps women and girls worldwide from gaining access to education and other opportunities that would boost their incomes, Salbi pointed out that less than one cent out of every dollar spent on development is being invested in girls:

But women still get very small, women and girls, get so very small, minuscule amount of funding…One cent of every development dollar, less than one cent goes to girls. So when you look at the larger scope of development money and how much is being invested in so many other things, women and girls get the least amount of funding. Money is not the problem in terms of if it’s available, but the political decision to say we need to invest much more in girls and women is not fully there yet.

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That’s an awfully low percentage, especially considering the multiplier effect that investment in education for women can have. Plan International Australia found that “investing in girls is one of the best ways to end poverty, because women who are educated are likely to reinvest up to 90 per cent of their income in their family.” Plus, according to research from the World Bank, “economic growth is boosted by the number of girls who complete their secondary education and go on to earn higher wages,” which can be 10 to 20 percent higher with each year of secondary schooling.

As former President Jimmy Carter said, “the evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family. It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population.” And if, as Salbi says, it is just a matter of political will to get dollars to the right place, then pressure in the right places could work to turn the tide.

Photo courtesty of the Clinton Global Initiative

One of the main thrusts of this year’s CGI conference is discussing ways to build up human capital through public and private investments. This is particularly important here in America, as our educational attainment has stagnated, and we have lost the competitive academic edge that we used to hold over the rest of the world. Clinton touched on this, lamenting our falling academic standing:

In the last eight years, we went from first to tenth in terms of the percentage of 25-34 year olds holding a bachelor’s degree. That’s the most important unknown statistic out there…We are headed into long-term economic decline if we don’t do something about it.

He added that prohibitive tuition at college is contributing toward this problem, as “higher education institutions are pricing themselves into America’s decline.” Indeed, this is a real problem. As Michael Mandel at Economics Unbound pointed out, “college costs are up by 23 percent since 2000. But real pay for young college grads is down 11% over the same period.” Meanwhile, two-thirds of today’s college students borrow to pay for tuition, and their average debt load is $23,186.

“We’re soon going to have to change the delivery system in higher education,” Clinton said, noting that 17 states have authorized community college to offer four-year college courses and credits. The Senate passing the student loan reform package that the House approved last week would also be helpful (although that doesn’t get at the root cause of the problem, which is the price increase in the colleges themselves, which consistently grows faster than the rate of inflation).

We currently have a higher education system that is delivering less and less, but costing more and more. And if that trend continues, America can only continue to lose ground on the rest of the world.

The bill was passed over the opposition of all but six Republicans, with the GOP claiming that eliminating the subsidies was proposed so that the government could “take over a successful portion of the private sector.” Of course, it’s hard to see how the government can be taking over a program that already has federal in its title, and as the New York Times pointed out, “the loans would be handled through colleges but serviced and collected by private companies and nonprofits that stand to make a tidy profit.”

With the bill out of the House, the focus for the private lenders lobbying against the change now moves to the Senate, where “their chances look distinctly better,” because “several Republican senators have already come out against the proposals, and not all Democrats can be counted on to back it.” The private lenders reportedly have their eyes on a handful of Senate Democrats, and are banking on a few more who have already expressed doubts about the bill. The financial analysis firm Height Analytics is advising student lenders to focus on these sets of senators:

Not surprisingly, the states represented above are the epicenters of the private student lending industry. Ben Nelson, in particular, is staunchly opposed to the bill due to Nebraska being the home of the loan company Nelnet (which as the New Nebraska Network pointed out, is “infamous for manipulating the federal government’s student loan subsidies to swindle American taxpayers out of $278 million”). Nelson has flatly stated that he’s willing to continue the $87 billion subsidy boondoggle because eliminating it may result in the loss of 1,000 Nelnet jobs.

Fortunately, once a bill does emerge in the Senate, it can be passed via reconciliation (which removes the threat of a filibuster). However, it will still need the support of some of the industry’s targets if it is to ultimately become law.

Rep. John Kline (R-MN)

The OMB reported that the increase “is driven almost entirely by technical revisions to reflect historic increases in the demand for Pell Grants as more individuals choose to go to college in a weakened labor market.” But that didn’t stop Rep. John Kline (R-MN), the ranking member on the House Education and Labor committee, from criticizing the administration for being fiscally irresponsible in its proposals for student loan reform:

The deficit is soaring, a substantial portion of the so-called savings in [the administration's loan reform] may never materialize, and now we learn it will spend billions more than expected…The more we learn about this bill, the more obvious it becomes that there is nothing ‘fiscally responsible’ about it. These new figures are yet another reason Democrats should slow down and consider the consequences of the plan they’re recklessly rushing through Congress.

Is Kline blaming the administration for more people wanting to go to college than it anticipated? That seems like something we’d want to encourage instead of criticize. But this response is in line with the rest of Kline’s awful record in terms of doing what’s best for students.

The administration has proposed changes to the Pell Grant program that would expand the grant pool and ensure that the grants automatically increase to keep up with inflation, as opposed to requiring Congress to constantly adjust when the grants decline in value. In order to pay for this, the administration wants to end the practice of subsidizing private loan companies to originate and service loans.

Meanwhile, Kline’s response to historic grant demand (and the undeniable need to increase America’s level of educational attainment) is to defend the federal government unnecessarily subsidizing ostensibly private companies to the tune of $87 billion over ten years.

Republicans have already conceded that the proposed student loan reforms save money, yet they keep defending the status quo, out of some sense that “a government program is somehow less socialistic when business is allowed to take a huge cut.” Given that demand is higher than ever, it’s time to stop pretending that private providers are anything but middlemen, taking money that would be better spent on students.

The industry is in the middle of a major push, with some prominent Democratic lobbyists on its side, to stall momentum for the Obama plan…Industry groups latched onto an estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) requested by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) that showed under high-risk scenarios the House bill would save $47 billion over 10 years.

Currently, the government subsidizes student loan companies to originate and service loans, while guaranteeing loan repayment up to 97 percent, which generates huge profits for the loan industry with very little risk.

The administration’s plan, which has been approved by the House Education and Labor Committee, would cut the middlemen out and have the government lend directly lend to all students, instead of just some. According to traditional CBO scoring, this plan would save taxpayers an estimated $87 billion over ten years (or $47 billion, using the CBO’s “market risk” score requested by Gregg).

As Higher Ed Watch pointed out, by embracing the CBO score that Gregg requested, both Republicans and the student loan industry seem to have inadvertently “conceded that Direct Loans are much cheaper than [subsidized private] loans, and that continuing the FFEL program, rather than transitioning to 100 percent direct lending, would cost taxpayers an extra $47 billion over ten years.” Either way, the scores prove that direct lending is a less expensive way of providing financial aid to students.

As the New York Times’ editorial board wrote, the lender subsidy program is “wasteful and all-too-corruptible“:

It was created at a time when the college loan business wasn’t big enough to attract enough lenders. The subsidies long ago became unnecessary. But lenders, who reaped enormous profits, and free-market enthusiasts have zealously defended the program…The goal of the student lending program is to make college more attainable. By embracing these changes — and eliminating an unnecessary federal subsidy — Congress can promote that goal and save taxpayers nearly $50 billion over the next decade.

Indeed, the lenders have a vested interest in protecting their taxpayer guaranteed profits, but in terms of doing what’s best for students — and what’s best for the federal budget — it makes no sense to preserve the current system.

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN)

We commend you for the emphasis you have placed on teacher quality…The research confirms what our intuition tells us: nothing has a greater impact on outcomes in the classroom than the quality of our teachers. We must do more to recruit, prepare, and reward outstanding teachers and part of that means overhauling the way we compensate them…We look forward to working collaboratively with teachers to develop these new compensation systems — a critical ingredient to their success.

There is an undeniable need for teacher compensation practices to be overhauled. But before that can happen, the system for evaluating teachers needs to get a lot better.

Currently, in school districts that use binary evaluation ratings (satisfactory or unsatisfactory), “more than 99 percent of teachers receive the satisfactory rating.” In districts that have a wider array of rating options, “94 percent of teachers receive one of the top two ratings and less than 1 percent are rated unsatisfactory.” If we’re telling almost every single teacher in the country that he or she is doing just fine, we’re never going to be able to link compensation to effectiveness.

CAP released a report yesterday by Morgaen Donaldson that lays out some ways in which teacher evaluation systems could be altered so that they actually provide some actionable information. There’s lots of good stuff in there about how to design fair and reliable evaluations, but I also like this bit, about giving principals incentives to use due diligence when evaluating teachers:

When principals dismiss teachers, the district should not undermine principals by failing to follow through on their decision or by forcing them to take a sub-par replacement. They should also provide administrators incentives for thorough evaluation by offering them rewards for detailed feedback. Lastly, they should pressure administrators to evaluate accurately by reviewing evaluation reports and by incorporating an analysis of principals’ evaluations of teachers into district-level evaluations of principals.

This makes sense, because better evaluations won’t be very useful if principals don’t actually put any effort into them. And any overhaul of teacher compensation has to start with a better system for deciding which teachers are the most effective and innovative.

Rep. John Kline (R-MN)

According to the Duluth News-Tribune, “issues in front of the [Ed and Labor] committee are not those Kline ran on when he got into politics…But he said that in his four two-year terms he has gained education and labor experience.” Well, here’s some of what that experience had led him to do:

– He voted against a minimum wage increase three different times in 2007.

– He voted against lowering interest rates for student borrowers enrolled in the Federal Family Education Loan and Direct Loan programs.

– He voted against the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act.

– He introduced the Secret Ballot Protection Act, which would “prohibit a union from being recognized” through a majority sign-up process.

– He supported “some system of personal accounts” as “a central component” of Social Security reform.

The National Education Association actually gave Kline an F grade for both 2007 and 2008.

According to the St. Paul-Minneapolis Star Tribune, “in his new role, Kline will be expected to be a leading GOP combatant” against the Employee Free Choice Act. But with his Secret Ballot Protection Act, Kline revealed that he has no idea how union drives even work. He advocated taking the majority sign-up option away from workers, even though, since 2003, half a million workers have organized in this fashion, including employees at AT&T, UPS and Pacific Gas and Electric.

Kline, as he laid out in this Washington Times op-ed, is very concerned with the “coercion, intimidation and bullying” of union organizers (even though there is no evidence that this occurs in states that allow majority sign-up), but he doesn’t spare a word for the coercive and punitive tactics that employers use to prevent employees from unionizing. Instead of leveling the playing field for workers, Kline would simply prefer preserving the anti-worker status quo.

Of course, this approach causes some problems, namely with the teachers that are dismissed when a school shuts down. One of the goals of a school closure is to provide an opportunity to rehire effective teachers while letting the ineffective ones go, but this is much easier said than done. For instance:

The Chicago contract gives tenured teachers in schools shut down for low performance 10 months to be rehired by their reconstituted school’s new leader or by another Chicago principal, after which they lose their job. About 8 in 10 find jobs at other Chicago schools…Contracts in many other cities give teachers who lose positions more extensive rights, which could make school makeovers harder, experts said.

And it’s not only difficult to get rid of ineffective teachers, but as new report from The New Teacher Project shows, its difficult to even come to a determination regarding which teachers are effective, because of shoddy evaluation systems in most schools:

In districts that use binary evaluation ratings (generally “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory”), more than 99 percent of teachers receive the satisfactory rating. Districts that use a broader range of rating options do little better; in these districts, 94 percent of teachers receive one of the top two ratings and less than 1 percent are rated unsatisfactory.

As Andrew Rotherham at Eduwonk put it, “despite all the rhetoric about how important teachers are and despite the importance of people in a labor-intensive field like education, the lack of systematic attention to teacher effectiveness in education is shocking.” Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence that, of all the factors in the education system, “teachers have the greatest impact on student achievement.” Yet, when it comes to evaluation, most school systems just say that everyone is fine, which means that great teachers aren’t identified and emulated, while bad teachers aren’t forced to change their ways.

In a report examining policies to ensure that all students have access to effective teachers, CAP’s Robin Chait pointed to the Teacher Advancement Program — under which trained evaluators visit a teacher’s classroom four to six times a year — as a good model to use, adding that “evaluation information should then be used to inform a variety of policies related to teachers, such as compensation, retention and tenure.” In any case, Duncan’s plans won’t do much good if schools are closed and reopened without any way of knowing that the teachers are better.

What’s been a little interesting to me is that states have been slow to apply for the money. We’ve had about 13 states come in to get their share of the recovery funds, put out almost $13 billion to date…So we have 30 states that haven’t even applied for resources yet, and we’re committed to turning these around as fast as we can. We think as we go into the summer and folks are planning for next school year, that states and districts and school systems need a sense of stability. We don’t want to be laying off tens of thousands of teachers and taking a step backwards. It’s really critical to me that states step up to the plate if they haven’t applied.

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The deadline for applying for the funding is July 1, and 28 states (and the District) have yet to get their applications in. The New Republic’s Seward Darby took a look at who is dragging their feet:

By my count, of the states that have applied, eleven have Republican governors, while nine have Democrats in charge. And, of those that haven’t applied, eleven have Republican executives, while 19 have Democratic ones. We all know about those Republican governors with confused feelings about the stimulus money–that’s you, Mark Sanford and Sarah Palin–but what’s stalling the other hold-outs, particularly the Democratic ones?

Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, said that “the likely explanation for a slow stream of applications to the Education Department is that state agencies must wait for clearance from their legislatures, which are charged with crafting state budgets.” If this is the case, these state legislatures need to sort through their bureaucracy and get their homework in, so that their states don’t become a drag on the economy.

As Justin Fox pointed out, “over the past two decades, student lending became a textbook case of a privately run, government-subsidized program that delivered a worse, more-expensive result.” Thus, the Obama administration wants to cut the subsidies and directly make loans, saving $94 billion over the next decade. But on the Senate floor yesterday, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) explained that he wants the government to keep on turning free money over to loan companies, because it ensures that students have a “choice”:

[Obama] wants another Washington takeover, this time of student loans. Instead of letting 12 million students decide they would prefer to borrow from 4400 institutions on campuses all across America — 4400 campuses, 2000 institutions, they’re saying, no, everybody lines up at the United States Department of Education to get your student loan…It makes no sense to turn the U.S. Department of Education into a national bank for student loans. It should not be done.

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Alexander is a perfect example of what Barron Young Smith calls “free-market ideologues, who hold that a government program is somehow less socialistic when business is allowed to take a huge cut.”

As the New York Times wrote, the lender subsidy program is “wasteful and all-too-corruptible.” Private students loans are more expensive and tend to have higher interest rates than direct government loans, but students were being steered towards them by financial aid offices. “[Private loans] are expensive, risky sources of credit, like a credit card or a sub-prime mortgage or a payday loan,” said Lauren Asher of the non-profit Project on Student Debt. “They may be helping you pay some bills but it comes at an extremely high cost, and a cost that you can’t predict.”

In recent years, financial aid has failed to keep up with the rising cost of education, leading to more and more borrowing by students. Defaults on student loans “are at their highest rate since 1998, and likely will go higher,” while America’s educational attainment continues to fall. In light of all this, preserving the subsidies is what actually “makes no sense.”

In a report released today, the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University confirmed this notion and attached a dollar amount. The Center found that a high school grad’s net fiscal benefit to the country is $250,000 greater than that of a high school dropout:

[A]dults with high school diplomas contribute major fiscal benefits to the country over their working lifetime. The Center estimates that “the combined net fiscal” benefits – including the payment of payroll, federal, and state income taxes, and local property taxes versus the receipt of cash and in-kind transfers and the considerable costs of incarceration and parole/probation – adds up to more than $250,000 per youth who finishes high school over their lifetime relative to the average high school dropout.

The Center also noted that in 2007 “16.0% of persons between 16 and 24 years of age (nearly 6.2 million people) were high school dropouts,” while “the cost of funding an effective two-year program to re-enroll students who have dropped out is about $20,000.”

The report reveals some pretty depressing information. For instance, while both 9 and 13 year-olds made modest gains in math and reading, high school students have been stuck in neutral since the 1970’s (which is when the first assessments were made):

Reading (1971-2008):

Math (1973-2008):

These results eerily mirror America’s college graduation and retention rates, which have also both been stagnant for two decades.

All of this ties back to America’s falling rate of educational attainment, which for young people has slipped to tenth in the world. America’s overall ranking in terms of education has been inflated for some time by the success of previous generations, but in recent decades we’ve been in a holding pattern, while other countries have surged ahead. As Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, pointed out, “we’re lifting the basic skills of young kids,” but “not lifting 21st-century skills for the new economy.”

One good step towards fixing all of this could be the Fast Track to College Act, which was introduced last month by Rep. Dale Kildee (D-MI) and Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI). The bill is aimed at streamlining the transition between high school and college, encouraging partnerships between high schools and college, and “exposing [students] to the rigors of college-level work” at an earlier age. The government should also make investments at all levels of the education system to encourage human capital growth and ensure that stagnation doesn’t turn into outright decline.

“At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed,” Duncan said last week. “And given the fact so few cities have mayoral control, that’s a huge impediment that hasn’t been talked about enough.”

One of the foremost proponents of mayoral control is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was given control over the city’s education policy seven years ago. Today, The Wonk Room sat down with Mayor Bloomberg, to discuss the effect that this move has had on New York City schools:

I can just tell you that before we had mayoral control it was disaster. [...] I know of no thing that we’ve done that would have been remotely possible under the old system and any mayor that has a school system that is getting better, I think, will tell you the exact same thing…The school systems should not be run as patronage mills and they should not be run for the benefit of the people who work in them…And when you have these school boards that are fundamentally controlled by special interests, the truth of the matter is the students come last, if at all.

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According to Kenneth Wong, a Brown University professor who studies the issue, mayoral control is worth considering in about 400 of the biggest school districts. “The way I look at it is, we are talking about real accountability,” Wong said. “A lot of urban school systems are playing this game of blaming one another — the superintendent blames the school board; the school board blames the union. With the mayor in charge, there ultimately is one single official held accountable every four years.”

Currently, just seven cities have adopted full mayoral control of education, but its a system worth experimenting with, instead of relying upon a patchwork of policymakers to institute reform. Hopefully, a mayor can cut through the bureaucracy to compel a change in direction, and if that effort is unsuccessful, voters will have the chance to designate a new point person.

While most of the administration’s focus in this area has been on college accessibility and retention, that shouldn’t be the only avenue for investment. According to a study from the Center on Children and Families, an investment in preschool education would provide a desperately needed boost to our human capital supply while also causing the economy to grow. As the study’s authors noted, “well-educated individuals are more likely to be employed at all points in their lives and live longer than those who are less educated which in turn increases labor supply and thus GDP“:

As GDP increases, federal, state and local tax revenues are assumed to increase in proportion to their ratio to GDP if tax rates were held constant. This is the primary source of net revenue gains, but there are also several costs that are avoided due to having had more children in pre-kindergarten programs. With more graduates, fewer children will need special education or be retained in grade. If fewer students are held back, fewer resources are used to produce the same number of students with any ultimate level of achievement.

Here are the long-term GDP and human capital effects of preschool investments:

The study’s authors also found that, if lawmakers are patient enough, the program will eventually pay for itself — though we are talking decades before that effect is seen. “This may sound like a long time,” the authors note, “but the vast majority of government expenditures are undertaken with no hope of ever recovering their costs. That preschool education holds out hope of doing so, while promising large social returns in the short and medium run, makes it an outstanding investment.” And in any case, America can hardly afford to prolong its tumble from the summit of educational attainment any longer.

Today, President Barack Obama outlined his education agenda in a speech to the U. S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. It’s a comprehensive agenda for reform that, if implemented, would have a profound impact upon the U.S. educational system and student achievement in this country. Obama clearly understands that America’s long-term prosperity depends upon a strong educational system.

He called for dramatic changes to improve the quality of education received by most students — we don’t have time for incremental reforms that lead to modest improvements. In particular, his focus on “recruiting, preparing, and rewarding outstanding teachers” is essential, because we know from research that teachers are the most important school related factor affecting student learning.

Obama’s strategies acknowledge that the ways we recruit, prepare, and compensate teachers are outmoded and put high poverty schools at a disadvantage. He talked about rewarding good teachers with more money for improved student achievement, while giving all teachers the support they need to be successful. He also insisted that teachers who are unable to improve after being given support be removed.

As the Center for American Progress has noted, these strategies are critical to attracting and retaining more talented teachers:

Retention incentives might include increases in pay, such as performance pay, and in responsibility, such as career ladders that provide teachers with additional responsibilities as they become more effective. And efforts to improve or replace ineffective teachers can take multiple forms—from teacher-led initiatives such as peer review, to rigorous evaluation systems that identify teachers who need additional support, to heightened standards for tenure or changes in tenure systems.

And while improving our educational system won’t likely help the immediate economic crisis, it is a critical investment in long term economic growth. As The Wonk Room has pointed out in the past, “since the 1970s, the U.S. educational system has rested on its laurels, and we are losing ground” to the rest of the world.

Obama’s education plan represents an important investment in both stronger schools and long term economic growth. And he understands that quality teaching is key to both.

Politico’s Glenn Thrush is reporting that the Senate may yield on including a $15,000 home-buyer’s credit in the stimulus:

The key here, House Dems say, was Obama’s Monday press conference in which he signaled his strong intention to back Pelosi on a handful of key spending initiatives, especially $21 billion in school construction and technology grants, $10.3 billion in COBRA insurance and $8.6 billion in new Medicaid coverage for the unemployed…House Democratic staffers see several areas of potential accommodation with the Senate, including alterations to the mixture of tax cuts and spending that could result in scaling back a $15,000 homebuyer tax credit, a favorite of the Senate GOP.

First Read reported that $15 billion in school construction could be added to the bill, in lieu of the credit. This would be a fantastic swap, and Congress should make sure it happens.

As the Wonk Room has explained, the home-buyer’s credit is poorly targeted, more useful to wealthier households, and won’t actually help the housing market. Kash Mansori at Econbrowser wrote that “all the house purchase tax credit will do is to modestly increase the number of houses sold each month… with no noticeable impact on house prices.” A panacea for our economic woes, it is decidedly not.

School construction, meanwhile, can provide significant stimulus, quickly. As the Center for American Progress’s Michael Ettlinger explained:

[T]he American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that spending $127 billion to $268 billion is needed to bring school facilities to a good condition. The projects these funds would pay for are among the infrastructure investments that can be brought up to speed very quickly. The construction sector, which would benefit most from this funding, has enormous idle capacity and more idle workers than any other industry.

The Senate’s “compromise” bill, as it stands now, would create about half a million fewer jobs than the House bill, despite costing $20 billion more. The rumored amendments would begin to address that disparity.

Cross-posted at ThinkProgress.