Tag Archive: student


College costs outpace inflation: College Board (Reuters)

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October 26, 2011

(Reuters) – The cost of college in the United States rose sharply for the 2011-2012 school year, continuing a multiyear pattern in which public school increases outpaced private school hikes and both eclipsed the average rate of inflation by significant amounts, the College Board reported on Wednesday.

At public 4-year schools, average tuition and fees rose 8.3 percent to $8,244 for in-state students and 5.7 percent to $20,770 for out-of-state students, not including room, board, or extra expenses like travel, laptops and midnight pizzas.

Private nonprofit four-year schools raised their tuition and fees by 4.5 percent, to an average of $28,500, according to the study, Trends in College Pricing 2011, released by the College Board Advocacy & Policy Center. The Consumer Price Index increased 3.6 percent between July 2010 and July 2011, the study noted.

In-state tuition and fees for public two-year colleges averaged $2,963, an 8.7 percent increase from the previous year.

So-called net prices — the amount that families pay after receiving grant aid and taking advantage of tax credits — have increased by an average of about 1.4 percent a year for the last 5 years at public four-year schools, the College Board said. Those increases made college less affordable, as average family inflation-adjusted incomes have fallen in the decade between 2000 and 2010, the College Board said.

“While the importance of a college degree has never been greater, its rapidly rising price is an overwhelming obstacle to many students and families,” said College Board President Gaston Caperton.

Financial aid rose as well, the College Board said in a companion report, but not enough to cover increases in tuition and fees at four-year public schools. In the 2010-2011 year, undergraduate students received an average of $12,455 per full-time equivalent student in financial aid, including $6,539 in grant aid, $4,907 in federal loans, and $1,009 in a combination of tax credits and deductions and federal work-study jobs.

Many students supplement that with private loans, a figure that the College Board estimated at about $6 billion in total volume. In a separate development, President Obama unveiled a program on Tuesday that he said would help some 1.6 million student borrowers lower their student loan payments.

“College costs are still outpacing family incomes and available aid,” said Lauren Asher, president of the Institute for College Access & Success, an advocacy group.

“The maximum Pell Grant covers barely a third of the full cost of four years of college and we have more people with student loans than ever before, and they are borrowing more than ever.”

Asher has emphasized the bottom line cost of college, including all of those extra expenses such as travel and supplies, and noted that they make college even less affordable than the tuition, room, board and fees figures upon which the College Board focuses.

Beginning on October 29, U.S. colleges are required to post net price calculators on their web sites. These calculators are supposed to go beyond sticker prices to include estimates of total cost of attendance, including the extras, as well as estimates of typical aid paid to students at the school.

Advocates do advise applicants to look for those calculators and use them in weighing how much it would cost to attend individual schools.

But Asher says there are already some problems with them. Some colleges have buried the calculators so they are difficult to find, she said. Others have made the calculators extremely complex and may ask dozens of questions of students. She suggests that students using the calculators focus on net prices and not other figures, such as after-loan out of pocket costs, that some schools are posting.

Caperton suggested that the board's efforts to analyze college affordability and price changes were complicated by the variability of prices from one state to another.

The large and well publicized increases in the California state system had a big impact on the averages; that state enrolls about 10 percent of the nation's full-time public four year college students and raised in-state fees 21 percent and 37 percent for full-time public two-year college students. Without the California figures included in its data, that 8.3 percent public four-year in-state school increase would have been 7 percent, and the 8.7 percent increase logged for two-year public schools would have been 7.4 percent.

College costs outpace inflation: College Board
(Reuters)

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Texas schools sue state, saying funding is unfair (AP)

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October 11, 2011

AUSTIN, Texas – A coalition of more than 150 Texas school districts said Tuesday it has filed a lawsuit against the state over a school funding system it says is unfair, inefficient and unconstitutional.

The coalition represents more than one in 10 Texas districts. It accuses lawmakers of turning a blind eye to the state’s troubled school financing system for years and exacerbating the flaws this summer when they slashed public school spending by more than $4 billion to close a massive budget gap.

“Some districts really wanted us to file last year, but we thought, `We’ll give the Legislature one more chance to do the right thing, to fix this broken system we have and fund schools properly,’” said Lauren Cook, a spokeswoman for the Austin-based Equity Center, which organized the lawsuit. “But they didn’t. They cut $4 billion in core funding. As a result of that action they took, there’s really just no other option for schools at this point.”

The Texas Education Agency and the Texas comptroller are among the defendants named in the lawsuit filed Monday. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who is running for president and signed the state budget that included the education cuts, is not.

Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency, said the agency was still reviewing the lawsuit.

“We will work with the (attorney general’s) office to prepare an official response,” she said. “Obviously, this is an issue that the courts and the Legislature will ultimately have to resolve.”

The lawsuit was filed by the Texas Taxpayer and Student Fairness Coalition, which represents more than 150 of Texas’ more than 1,100 school districts. Its members include a wide range of school districts in rural areas, middle-class suburbs and poorer cities such as San Antonio. Along with the coalition, seven school districts, two taxpayers and a parent are named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The schools claim the state has taken an “arbitrary hodge-podge” approach to public funding for schools that has resulted in significant inequities among districts.

The complaint is based on a 2006 school finance overhaul, which included a provision that froze state aid to some districts without allowing for the costs of changing demographics or inflation. It was intended to keep wealthier school districts from taking a hit in the amount of state aid they receive under revised funding formulas.

But the overhaul “gave property-wealthy districts unconstitutionally greater access to educational dollars,” the lawsuit says.

One example is Nacogdoches ISD, which is among the plaintiffs. Homeowners in the East Texas school district are taxed at the rate of $1.17 per $100 of property value, the maximum rate allowed under state law. Schools there got about $5,487 per student last year, according to the lawsuit.

The Eanes district in Austin, meanwhile, taxes property owners at $1.04 per $100 of property value, but schools got about $6,881 per student because of the provision freezing state aid, the lawsuit said.

Cook said plaintiffs hope a trial court rules before lawmakers meet for the next regular legislative session in 2013.

“Succeeding in this lawsuit and attaining an equitable school finance system would enhance our ability to close the achievement gap and offer more educational opportunities for our students,” said Robert Duron, superintendent of San Antonio’s school district. “There is still debate about how to measure the adequacy of the system, but I have no doubt that our current funding system is inequitable.”

Along with Nacogdoches and San Antonio, the districts that brought the suit were Hillsboro, Hutto, Pflugerville, Taylor and Van.

Texas schools sue state, saying funding is unfair
(AP)

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California governor rejects race, gender college admissions (Reuters)

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October 9, 2011

SACRAMENTO (Reuters) – California Governor Jerry Brown on Saturday vetoed legislation that would have allowed California universities to consider race and gender in student admissions, even though Brown said he agreed with its goal.

The measure was the latest attempt to scale back, or repeal, so-called Proposition 209 approved by voters in 1996. It bars public agencies from considering race or ethnicity in everything from awarding contracts to accepting undergraduates.

“I wholeheartedly agree with the goal of this legislation,” Brown wrote in his veto message.

But the Democratic governor said the courts should determine what should happen to Proposition 209.

For more than 15 years, Proposition 209 has prompted fierce debate. Opponents said it narrowed opportunities for women and minorities to succeed in California. Supporters countered that it simply created a system where individual ability was rewarded.

The California Supreme Court last August ruled that it was constitutional.

Republican students at the University of California, Berkeley recently took a satirical swipe at the proposed law vetoed by Brown by holding an affirmative action bake sale. They charged whites more for baked goods than other ethnicities.

Hundreds of student protesters rallied in opposition to the event.

The two main school systems that would have been affected by the law were the University of California and California State University.

According to University of California statistics for the fall of 2009, 32 percent of undergraduates were white, 3.5 African American, 16 percent Latino or Chicano and 30 percent Asian.

California State University statistics for 2009 showed 38 percent of its undergraduates were white, six percent African American, 13 percent Asian and 25 percent Latino or Chicano.

The figures may not add to 100 percent because of students who declined to give an ethnicity or those not counted such as international students.

Women outnumbered men in both systems with 53 percent of undergraduates at the University of California and 58 percent of the student body at California State University.

(Editing by Greg McCune)

California governor rejects race, gender college admissions
(Reuters)

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Lockdown lifted at Houston school after no gun found (Reuters)

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October 7, 2011

(Reuters) – A lockdown was lifted at North Forest High School in Houston on Friday after it was determined that a student did not have a gun after all, a district spokeswoman told Reuters just after noon local time.

A student told administrators about a rumor that another student had a gun, said the spokeswoman, Sue Davis. The student who made the report never saw a gun, she said. The school was on lockdown for about an hour, she said.

“It was all a big to-do for nothing,” Davis said. “When you have a report like that, you have to take it seriously.”

Classes have resumed, she said.

The police were notified just before 11 a.m. local time of a disturbance with a weapon, said Kese Smith, a spokesman with the Houston Police Department.

(Reporting by Corrie MacLaggan in Austin; Editing by Greg McCune)

Lockdown lifted at Houston school after no gun found
(Reuters)

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APNewsBreak: Obama seeks debt collector proposal (AP)

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October 4, 2011

WASHINGTON – To the dismay of consumer groups and the discomfort of Democrats, President Barack Obama wants Congress to make it easier for private debt collectors to call the cellphones of consumers delinquent on student loans and other billions owed the federal government.

The change “is expected to provide substantial increases in collections, particularly as an increasing share of households no longer have landlines and rely instead on cellphones,” the administration wrote recently. The little-noticed recommendation would apply only to cases in which money is owed the government, and is tucked into the mammoth $3 trillion deficit-reduction plan the president submitted to Congress.

Despite the claim, the administration has not yet developed an estimate of how much the government would collect, and critics reject the logic behind the recommendation.

“Enabling robo-calls (to cellphones) is just going to lead to more harassment and abuse, and it’s not going to help the government collect more money,” said Lauren Saunders of the Boston-based National Consumer Law Center. “People aren’t paying their student loans because they can’t find a job.”

Whatever the impact on the budget deficit, the proposal has aligned the White House with the private debt collection industry — frequently the subject of consumer complaints — at a time when the economy is weak, unemployment is high and Obama is embarking on his campaign for re-election.

Democrats in Congress who frequently support the president, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California, declined through aides to say whether they favor or oppose the plan.

Nor was there any reaction from two other members of the party’s leadership in the Senate, Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Chuck Schumer of New York. Both men frequently take the side of consumers in legislative struggles.

Several aides, speaking on condition of anonymity so they could talk freely, said Democrats do not want to oppose the president but are unable to support the request.

Mark Schiffman, a spokesman for ACA International, an industry trade association, said the administration “basically has come to the same solution we have” at a time when an increasing number of Americans have no landline phone to receive calls.

The change “is something we have been advocating for,” he said, although he added his organization did not have direct discussions with administration officials in advance.

Schiffman noted that debt collectors have long been allowed to make robo-calls to landline phones. He said automatic dialing is a more efficient way to contact consumers who are overdue in their payments, and the industry wants it allowed in all cases, not solely those involving debts owed to the government, as Obama has proposed. Legislation along those lines was introduced in the House last week.

Federal law currently permits private debt collectors to use automatic dialing in trying to contact consumers on their landline phones. They also are permitted to make individually-dialed calls to some cellphones.

The request comes at a time when the government is looking for ways to collect tens of billions of dollars.

According to a report by the Treasury Department’s Financial Management Service, the Education and the Health and Human Services departments as well as FMS itself referred debts totaling $35.9 billion to private debt collectors in the 2010 fiscal year.

The Education Department accounted for the largest share by far — $28.8 billion referred to 22 private debt collection companies. The firms collected $685 million outright, and another $1.7 billion was recast into agreements that are designed to be paid monthly, according to the report.

Education Department officials did not respond to several requests to speak on the record about the proposal.

According to written responses the department provided to questions, it hires private collection agencies in part so the government can gain “the benefits of greater collections” through the use of new technology that is developed by private industry.

Collection agencies can receive a fee of as much as 17.5 percent of the amount they recover.

A different federal agency, the Federal Trade Commission, collects extensive records about the private debt collection industry in general.

“The FTC receives more complaints about the debt collection industry than any other specific industry,” according to an annual report to Congress, more than 100,000 in 2010.

The complaints fall into several categories, citing alleged harassment, demands for impermissibly large payments, failure to provide required consumer notice and threatening dire consequences such as jail time.

APNewsBreak: Obama seeks debt collector proposal
(AP)

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Alabama immigration law leaves schools gripped by uncertainty (The Christian Science Monitor)

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September 30, 2011

Thursday Alabama became the first state in the nation to require public schools to check the immigration status of children when they enroll.

A judge’s ruling Wednesday upheld several portions of Alabama’s tough new immigration law, including the section on public-school enrollment.

Advocates of the law say it doesn’t block enrollment in schools, but simply enables the state to track the number of illegal-immigrant students and calculate the costs associated with educating them.

Could you pass a US citizenship quiz?

Opponents argue that in the broader context of the immigration-enforcement law, the school provision will serve as a barrier for many families and end up denying innocent children their constitutional right to a public education.

Civil rights and immigrant advocacy groups are already planning their appeals, but in the meantime, parents and educators are trying to sort out exactly how the law will play out in schools.

“This will have an incredibly chilling effect on children and on parents,” says Mary Bauer, legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the groups challenging the law in court. Coupled with other parts of the law, “it turns school officials and other government officials into, kind of, immigration agents, and that’s a terrible message for kids and families.”

For example, parts of the law require government officials to report illegal immigrants, says Ms. Bauer, so “there’s a real risk that the law will be read to require schools to make reports of undocumented individuals,” she says.

But state officials have decried what they call “fear-mongering” among critics.

What the law doesEffective Thursday, schools are to check birth certificates only when a child is enrolling in an Alabama school for the first time. If officials determine the child isn’t in the US lawfully or if a birth certificate is not presented, they then must ask the parent or guardian to provide other documentation or sign an affidavit about the citizenship or immigration status of the student. If that document doesn't arrive within 30 days, the school records that child as “enrolled without birth certificate” in the state data system.

The law doesn’t require schools to report students’ names when counting up the number who don’t have legal documentation.

“We want to put a stop to the fear-mongering,” said Larry Craven, Alabama's interim superintendent of Education, at a press conference Thursday afternoon. “No student should be denied enrollment for not providing a birth certificate.”

That message does not seem to be getting through to many immigrant families, though.

Some illegal-immigrant parents whose children are citizens have already said they plan to leave, making comments like, “we don’t want them to take away our children,” says Dawn DuPree Kelley, longtime principal of Greenwood Elementary Schools in the Jefferson County School System.

Could you pass a US citizenship quiz?

“We’ve been having to troubleshoot today to offer encouragement … and let them know that the best place is to have their child in school – that’s their federal right [and] they are safe in school,” says Ms. Kelley, who suggests 10 percent of her students are immigrants, most of them Hispanic.

One grounds for challenging Section 28 will be the 1982 Supreme Court case, Plyler v. Doe. After Texas schools tried to block enrollment of illegal immigrants, or charge them tuition, the high court ruled that children residing in the US, whether legally or not, have a right to a free public elementary and secondary education.

“There is a very a strong argument that [the schools] provision in the Alabama law is just unconstitutional because, even though they’re permitting the children to come to school, they’re creating this situation where they’re not likely to go to school,” says Rosemary Salamone, a law professor at St. John’s University in Jamaica, N.Y.

Schools caught in the middle?For this reason, Alabama school officials may find themselves caught between state law and federal civil rights law.

The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in May sent a guidance letter sent to schools. It advised them to ensure that their process for requiring student documentation does “not have a chilling effect on a student’s enrollment in school.”

The letter cited both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Plyler decision. It’s not only against the law to directly block a child’s enrollment, the letter essentially says, but also to do things that could reasonably result in them not receiving a public education.

Advocates of the Alabama law say it is not in conflict with federal mandates.

State education officials did a good job of issuing “guidelines that will limit the bookkeeping on the part of the school and not put the school in a position having to … make any kind of judgment on students. We’re about what’s doing best for kids,” says Earl Franks, executive director of the Council for Leaders in Alabama Schools, an administrators' organization.

In her decision Wednesday, US District Judge Sharon Blackburn did not rule on the merits of Section 28 of the Alabama law, but ruled that the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to challenge it now because they couldn’t show it posed a “concrete threat of injury” to them.

Principal Kelley says she’s uncomfortable having to make any report on student immigration status, partly because it breaks down trust she has built up with immigrant parents. She has heard recently of families in a less-welcoming school district in Alabama being told, essentially, “Don’t bother enrolling, you won’t be here long.”

Immigration enforcement has long been a federal role, but increasingly states have been crafting their own enforcement provisions.

“If the federal government had done its job by enforcing its own immigration laws, there would be no need for Alabama – or other states – to pass a law such as this,” said Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley in a statement yesterday. “I will continue to fight at every turn to defend this law against any and all challenges.”

A controversial immigration-enforcement law in Arizona has already been appealed to the Supreme Court, and the various appeals being made against the Alabama law make it even more likely that the high court will eventually take up the issue.

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Alabama immigration law leaves schools gripped by uncertainty
(The Christian Science Monitor)

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Arguments due in CA Muslim students’ speech case (AP)

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September 19, 2011

SANTA ANA, Calif. – Attorneys’ summations are expected in the trial of 10 Muslim students charged with shouting down a talk by an Israeli diplomat at the University of California, Irvine.

Closing arguments set to begin Monday involve misdemeanor charges filed after Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren’s speech was interrupted in February 2010.

Orange County prosecutors say the students broke the law by plotting to deprive Oren of speaking and others of hearing him. Defense attorneys say the student protest fell within the boundaries of the law.

The students are accused of conspiring to disrupt a meeting and disrupting a meeting. If convicted, they could face a sentence of up to a year in jail.

The case has sparked debate about freedom of speech and raised questions about prosecutorial discretion.

Arguments due in CA Muslim students’ speech case
(AP)

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Discover buying $2.5B in student loans from Citi (AP)

Filed Under: News by Thomas Botelho — 1 Comment
September 1, 2011

NEW YORK – Discover Financial Services on Thursday said it is buying another $2.5 billion in private student loans from Citigroup.

The deal, disclosed in a regulatory filing, comes nine months after Discover bought Citi’s private student loan business, The Student Loan Corp., and a portfolio of loans and other assets totaling $4.2 billion.

The price for the latest deal is roughly 99 percent of the face value of the loans, which translates to about $2.48 billion. The purchase is expected to close by Sept. 30.

Discover held $52.51 billion in total loans, including credit card balances, as of May 31, the end of its fiscal second quarter. Of that, $4.57 billion was student loans, up from $820 million the year earlier. Most of the increase reflected the Student Loan Corp. buyout.

Income from loan fees is a growing part of Discover’s earnings base, rising 16 percent increase from last year in the second quarter, to $81 million.

Student loans tend to be among the most reliable types of lending in terms of payback. Discover wrote off just 0.51 percent of loans on an annualized basis in the second quarter, excluding problem loans that came with the purchase of Student Loan Corp. That compares with a 2.88 percent charge-off rate for personal loans, and a 5.01 percent charge-off rate for its credit cards in the period.

In May, speaking at a conference in London, Harit Talwar, the company’s president for U.S. Cards, said the student loan business now exceeds $5 billion a year for Discover, which is based in Riverwoods, Ill.

“We really like this business,” he said. “In the U.S., as you know, education costs are increasing much faster than income. And therefore, students need funding for tuition fees.”

He noted the business “caters to a student community which is upwardly mobile,” and more than 90 percent of student loans are co-signed, which increases the chance that they’ll be repaid. Discover expects to be the third-largest originator of private student loans in the country this year.

Discover shares rose 13 cents to $25.29 in midday trading. New York’s Citigroup Inc. shares fell 32 cents to $30.73.

Discover buying $2.5B in student loans from Citi
(AP)

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University graduates, grieves six lost students (Reuters)

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August 6, 2011

TUSCALOOSA, Ala (Reuters) – Two days after a tornado took her sister’s life in April, Michelle Downs Whatley crossed the stage at her own college graduation wearing her lost sister’s shoes, salvaged from the wreckage.

Saturday, she strode again in her sister’s shoes, figuratively this time, as the University of Alabama granted Danielle Downs a posthumous degree.

Five of the six families of students who perished in the storm gathered to receive posthumous degrees. Two siblings and three sets of parents, most teary-eyed, accepted the plaques and hugs offered by University President Robert Witt.

“You picture seeing your daughter doing this, not doing it for her,” Allan Sigler told Reuters after the ceremony. He is the father of Morgan Sigler, 23, who died along with two friends when the tornado swept her home from its foundation.

The University of Alabama students were killed when an EF-4 tornado tore through Tuscaloosa at 5:17 p.m. on April 27. A cell of 63 devastating tornadoes ripped through Alabama that day, killing 243 people throughout the state and 43 in Tuscaloosa, according to the National Weather Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Danielle Downs was sheltering with friends not far from where Morgan Sigler huddled in the center of her home. A tree fell from the sky, according to her mother.

“At 5:13 she texted to tell her sister that she loved her; that was the last we heard,” said Terri Downs, 54, mother of Danielle and Michelle.

Four other students died in the storm: Scott Atterton, Ashley Harrison, Melanie Nicole Mixon and Marcus Smith.

Two of the students killed were seniors who would have graduated days after the tornado. The university postponed the graduation because the crippled city could not support an influx of family members, or even the student population after the storms damaged water and power systems.

“It was so very hard. It happened and everybody had to leave. We hope these awards will bring the families closer to closure,” Witt said.

The university combined Spring and Summer graduations, bringing hundreds of students and families to Coleman Auditorium on Saturday. After an honor guard presentation of first responders, who were critical to saving hundreds of lives, the families received the degrees.

“We appreciate the university for recognizing her accomplishments, but it is bittersweet because she isn’t here,” said Vega Sigler, 53, mother of Morgan Sigler.

At a memorial service and vigil Friday night attended by five of the families and 300 students, student government president Grant Cochran dabbed tears as he remembered the students who died.

Cochran said Sigler was a “bright, sparkling personality” and self-described Daddy’s girl. She had been taking golf lessons to spend more time with her father.

“She did it just for me, Allan Sigler said. “Only God’s goodness is getting me through this.”

The two had planned to open a wedding stationery business with Morgan’s graphic arts degree.

A special reading on Friday celebrated the life of social work major Danielle Downs, 24. She had planned to move to Eglin Air Force Base and work with the children of deployed military parents. Cochran called her an advocate of the underdog.

“I feel like someone cracked half my heart out,” Terri Downs said.

Both families expressed appreciation for the support of the University, for their children and others.

“We met the worst of Mother Nature with the best of humanity,” Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox said at the memorial service.

(Editing by David Bailey)

University graduates, grieves six lost students (Reuters)

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Obama to Speak at Fla. Graduation; How Do Schools Get Presidents to Speak? (ContributorNetwork)

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August 3, 2011

Miami Dade College in Florida will host President Obama as one of their 2011 graduation speakers. Miami Dade's press release about snagging the nation's top official doesn't tell how they did it, but states it is the largest higher education facility in the U.S., with more than 180 countries represented in their student body.

How does a college or university get a U.S. president or former president to speak at graduation? Here is some compiled information and ideas on ways schools can do so:

* For the current Executive-in-Chief during any president's term, call or write the White House Director of Scheduling a year in advance. The University of Michigan was successful with this in spring of 2010. The U of M was also persistent, following up the initial contact with a formal invitation and letters from student groups within a short period of time.

The White House switchboard phone number is 202-456-1414. Ask for Director of Scheduling, or the White House Press Office may be helpful.

The White House, the most famous address in the country, is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20500. Send e-mail to http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact.

* Although not stated in their announcement, Miami Dade College may have obtained President Obama due to their notable reputation. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton have spoken at commencement ceremonies there. The press release does say that the college generally graduates more minorities than any other, has eight campuses in South Florida, and hosts the annual Miami Film Festival and a renowned gallery of art.

* Therefore, when contacting the White House, mention any significant characteristics that make your school stand out. Also, note how your school supports or works toward items in the president's platform — or challenge him to explain his philosophies in a graduation speech.

* Know any Who's Who? For a current or past president, see if any students or school personnel worked on the president's campaign, or interacted with the White House some time during his term in office, and developed “inside contacts” they may be able to use. Include a request to relatives of school students and staff.

This worked for West Virginia University with former President Clinton in 2010, as explained by a WVU student in a Washington Examiner article.

* High schools can also apply. This is not a well-known fact, so the Obama administration has campaigned to have high schools apply through a “Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge” in 2010 and 2011.

For 2011, young celebrities like Nick Jonas and John Legend were enlisted to support the Challenge through video presentations. The original deadline was Feb. 28, but the White House didn't feel there were enough applications and extended the deadline to March 11. Applications are now closed.

Only one high school will be chosen. A committee will go through the applications and pick six finalist high schools. These schools will be listed on a White House website, and ordinary citizens will be able to vote for their top three. President Obama himself will pick the 2011 winner.

* If you are a student who would like the president or a past president to speak in 2012, approach your dean or principal as soon as possible. Gathering petition signatures and getting an announcement in your school paper may be helpful. The White House can be solicited for past presidents' current contact information.

Sheryl Young has been freelance writing for newspapers, magazines, organizations and websites since 1997. Her specialties are American politics, education, society and religion. Credits include Community Columnist for the Tampa Tribune Newspaper, Interview Columnist with Light & Life Magazine, and a National First Place “Roaring Lambs” Writing Award from the Amy Foundation.

Obama to Speak at Fla. Graduation; How Do Schools Get Presidents to Speak?
(ContributorNetwork)

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