College Preparedness, Law, and the Structure of Standards
posted by Craig Livermore
The Pathway of Preparedness
There is a current debate concerning whether the standard of college preparedness should be written into the structures of education law. The college preparedness argument has been rising to the fore due to the revisions to the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act-popularly known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA)-proposed in the Obama Administration’s “Blue Print for Reform.” President Obama’s suggested revisions would replace the current NCLBA math, English language arts, and science proficiency standards as a means of evaluating schools with various other measurements, including whether students at schools are being prepared to be “college and career ready.” The proposed change to the legal federal assessment standard is driven by the administration’s view that post-secondary education is essential to individual, communal, and national competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century. President Obama has announced the goal of regaining the global lead in the proportion of the citizenry obtaining post-secondary degrees by 2020. In the realm of education, law is increasingly being relied upon to create incentives, structures and values which have traditionally been thought to be in the realm of private production. The traditional conception of the public school is properly being recast from a provider of information and skill, to the central institution in communal renewal.
However, the federal focus on college preparedness, as with many educational initiatives of the Obama administration, has received criticism. Critics of this emphasis argue that college preparedness is a one size fits all category which will inevitably stigmatize students without the ability or proclivity to attend college, and thus contribute to greater levels of failure and higher school drop out rates due to psychological pressures. Such critics contend that there are many solid middle class trade careers of value which can be viable options for students without the skill level or desire for college. However, defenders of college preparedness are often concerned with a specific context-the inadequacy of our educational systems to address the needs of dis-empowered minority groups, especially in the urban context. College preparedness champions often believe that critics do not fully understand and/or acknowledge the causation of the extreme racial disparities in educational outcomes.
November 11, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Tags: College Preparedness, Education, Education Law, Education Policy, Higher Education, Minorities and Education, Obama administration, Policy, Race and Education
Posted in: Civil Rights, Culture, Current Events, Education, Law and Humanities, Law and Inequality, Race, Uncategorized
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Antitrust in Obamaland
posted by Spencer Waller
Antitrust enforcement was one area where most observers expected significant changes from the Bush years, particularly at the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. For the past eight years, the Antitrust Division had vigorously prosecuted cartels, but had not been active in monopolization or merger enforcement. In addition to bringing relatively few cases in these areas, the Division had filed a number of amicus briefs in support of defendants, opposed a petition for certiorari sought by its sister agency the Federal Trade Commission, and issued a number of reports and policy recommendations that restricted the reach of the antitrust laws or imposed significant burdens on private plaintiffs. During this same period, the FTC proved to be more active in the competition area, particularly in the health care and intellectual property fields which suggests that the FTC will have a greater continuity in the competition area despite key changes at the Commissioner and staff levels.
The key officials in the Obama administration came into the antitrust agencies promising change. Christine Varney, the new head of the Antitrust Division, gave a speech in her early days promising more vigorous enforcement and hearkening back to the days of Thurman Arnold during the latter half of the New Deal. At the same time, she repudiated a highly restrictive report on monopoly power issued during the waning days of the prior administration issued by the Justice Department alone because a majority of the FTC had refused to endorse. In addition, the Division has reversed policy and filed an amicus brief in support of plaintiffs in a key Supreme Court case involving the pharmaceutical industry. Most recently, the Justice Department and the FTC jointly announced a new initiative to revisit the Merger Guidelines of the 1990s used by both agencies to decide which mergers and acquisitions to challenge on competition grounds. Read the rest of this post »
October 1, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Tags: Antitrust, DOJ, FTC, Live Nation, Obama administration, Ticket Master
Posted in: Antitrust, Consumer Protection Law, Uncategorized
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