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First lady Michelle Obama set out Monday on a listening tour through the federal bureaucracy, stopping first at the Department of Education to thank employees for their service and rally them for the tough work ahead... While at the Education Department, Mrs. Obama committed this howler: In thanking the workers, she told them: "I am a product of your work." "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the public schools that nurtured me and helped me along," said Mrs. Obama, a Chicago native who attended its public schools as a child. Michelle Obama was born in January 1964. The...

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to Lead Delegation of U.S. University Presidents to Latin America Delegation to Promote U.S. Higher Education, Encourage International Students to Study in the U.S. FOR RELEASE: August 8, 2007 Contact: Rebecca Neale Casey Ruberg (202) 401-1576 Washington, D.C. — U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings today announced that she will lead a delegation of eight U.S. college and university presidents with the U.S. Department of State to Chile and Brazil from August 18-24, 2007, touting the importance of higher education partnerships and exchanges between the United States and other nations. While in Latin America, the delegation...

A talk with federal officials tentatively set for late August The League of United Latin American Citizens and others have requested to meet with U.S. Department of Education officials about the denial of $3.4 million in federal grants for educational assistance programs that would affect 12 area schools. Feliberto Valdez, director of the Corpus Christi LULAC National Education Service Center, said he will continue to seek alternative local sources of funds but plans to shut down the center's operations Aug. 31. "We're trying to get members of the community to send letters to the Department of Education," he said. "We're...

When Republican senators quietly tucked a major new student aid program into the 774-page budget bill last month, they not only approved a five-year, $3.75 billion initiative. They also set up what could be an important shift in American education: for the first time the federal government will rate the academic rigor of the nation's 18,000 high schools. The measure, backed by the Bush administration and expected to pass the House when it returns next month, would provide $750 to $1,300 grants to low-income college freshmen and sophomores who have completed "a rigorous secondary school program of study" and larger...

NASHVILLE - Funding for colleges is threatened by a "growing political one-sidedness" on many campuses, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander told higher education officials Friday. "How many conservative speakers are invited to deliver commencement addresses? How many colleges require courses in U.S. history? How many even teach Western civilization? ... Those are politically unacceptable topics," the Tennessee Republican testified before the Commission on the Future of Higher Education. The commission - created by U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings this fall - met in Nashville Thursday and Friday and will hold similar meetings across the country during the next several months. By...

Reaction to the Armstrong Williams-Department of Education scandal was swift and furious over the weekend, as I wasn't the only one to make a lot of noise on the issue (LaShawn Barber, Michelle Malkin, Rob Bernard, DC Thornton, Amy Ridenour, Sisu, Nate Livingston, Expertise, Booker Rising, Eduwonk, Wizbang, The American Prospect's Tapped column, Powerline & others too numerous to mention).In the wake of Friday's revelations, Tribune Media Services, who syndicated his column to newspapers nationally, abruptly dropped his column, and most likely, his television show, The Right Side with Armstrong Williams (syndicated on Sinclair stations and aired nationally on cable/satellite...

Betsy Newmark wrote us to point out that her daughter's blog had reported on an error committed on Friday by the Washington Post: an error that resulted in this anti-administration headline: "Change Means Fewer Students Will Be Eligible For Pell Grants". The article claimed that 80,000 to 90,000 low-income students would be knocked out of the Pell program on account of new regulations issued by the Department of Education. Yesterday, the Post issued a correction. Actually, the new regulations, which are based on updated government data, will expand the number eligible for grants, even though some will become ineligible at...

[snip] Spellings became the subject of conservative sniping soon after moving to Washington after she was asked on C-SPAN to react to census data showing a decline in the traditional family. "So what?" she replied, noting that there were "lots of different types of family" and that she herself was "a single mom." [/snip]

Pro-Gay Group Cries Foul by Steve Jordahl, correspondent Legal association upset that the Bush administration is taking steps to protect the rights of the Boy Scouts. A pro-gay legal group is upset with the U.S. Department of Education for establishing rules to protect the Boy Scouts from being denied access to public schools for their meetings. What Lambda Legal wants is special protection for homosexual student clubs, as well. But Ken Marcus, a spokesman for the Education Department, said there's good reason to protect the Scouts—especially with the nation at war. "What Congress said is that they were concerned that...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Four government regulations completed on Monday and a half-dozen more in the works will provide federal money for religion-oriented programs run by people President Bush has dubbed America's "neighborhood healers." Cabinet members met with the president at the White House to discuss ways agencies are eliminating barriers that have kept "faith-based" groups from obtaining federal grants to help people in need. "These six new regulations and the four finalized ones represent a continued march by the president in the faith-based initiative's effort to spread compassion in our country and make sure that the most effective programs are...

NEA Seeks Release of Education Department Documents 7/31/03 11:29:00 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: National Desk and Political Reporter Contact: Daniel Kaufman, 202-822-7268, dkaufman@nea.org; Kathleen Lyons, 202-822-7213, klyons@nea.org; both of the National Education Association WASHINGTON, July 31 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Faced with stonewalling by the U.S. Department of Education to its request for government documents that deal with certain provisions of the federal education law, the National Education Association (NEA) went to court today to force the department to comply with federal law. The complaint notes that NEA filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request April 10 with the Department...