In his proposed budget, Governor Walker recommends setting aside a portion of education funding to distribute to schools based on their performance. While this proposal might sound attractive on the surface, it will result in significant funding increases for schools with few low-income students, disabled students, or English language learners. Schools with larger percentages of those students would be allocated a much smaller share of funding.

As a recent study indicates that college and universities are giving financial aid to rich students at the expense of poor ones Senator Elizabeth Warren is offering a bill to bring student debt relief. Warren says students should get the same rates as Wall Street.

A report by the New America Foundation details the systematic undermining of the financial aid system by colleges and universities who are using financial aid to attract wealthy students rather than open doors for poorer ones, forcing poorer students to either not attend or take on high debt burdens.

My daughter sees a math tutor, a bright young med school student from Pakistan. She told me last weekend my daughter still struggles, but she was shocked to hear that “every single kid” in her class has a math tutor. I was shocked to learn this too, but for another reason.

Over a decade ago, the federal government sought to “fix” low-performance in schools, but not by increasing learning, rather by increasing standardized testing and leveling threats against those whose scores don’t magically rise. In NY and NJ, newly implemented evaluations say teachers who show progress on student’s standardized test scores are more likely to retain their jobs, and in some cases might “win” cash bonuses.

After making deep cuts to schools, early childhood education, and health and human services, Pennsylvania lawmakers are now considering new tax breaks that will largely benefit a small number of higher-income earners.

In a stunning lack of sensitivity and self-awareness New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie referred to an African-American constituent as “boy” during a heated argument over the governor’s plan to privatize schools in New Jersey.

Advocates delivered half a pie to every Pennsylvania legislator Tuesday. Why half a pie?

To remind them that a decade of large tax cuts for businesses has left schools, health care services, and local communities with a smaller share of the state budget pie.

The Revolutionary Optimists takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Kolkata (Calcutta), India where lawyer-turned-activist Amlan Ganguly has created a multi-faceted program, Prayasam, which empowers children to improve their communities. With some families working in the brickfields carrying 1500 bricks a day to earn $1.45–and many of children facing the same (lack of) employment options–Amlan creates schools and afterschool clubs that empowers the children and give them the opportunity to dream and to make those dreams into a reality.

There are innumerable problems in America’s educational systems. One is that the gap between the higher performing students and the lower performing students in all areas (including humanities, arts, and sciences) is increasing. Another is that educational systems, spurred by taxpayers who don’t want higher taxes, have learned not how to effectively cut expenses but have sacrificed education by packing more students into a classroom; almost every study (including the PISA testing) shows a link between class size and educational achievement.

Of all the mildly liberal, media-genic proposals that peppered President Barack Obama’s state of the Union Address, one seemed especially designed to withstand curmudgeonly criticism from the Right: universal preschool. The image of millions of young tots learning their ABCs and fingerpainting is hard to demonize as evil Big Government.