The ED blog.

Education is a 7 day a week activity. And no education blog would be complete without some comments on the activities of the Department of Education. The ED as it is referred to, to distinguish it from  the Department of Energy,  has its own blog, which you can follow if you have the time and the inclination. I do.

Here is one problem the ED has identified. e.g. "Many teachers across the country deal with new students who show up at their classrooms with virtually no paper trail." Sound familiar? (We do not have a paper trail in the medical community either.) The ED has announced a novel initiative to allow students to access their own educational data, their grades for example, [...in open machine readable, human readable formats on any system.] Now there is a beauty. 

The ED wants to allow students to have access to their grades and test scores. Can you believe it? I would be embarrassed at characterizing this notion has a novel idea. This idea certainly does not count as a revolutionary or even novel educational thought. Of course we need to let the students have access to their own information. 

In California for example, parents have, real-time access to their child's grades and test scores almost before the student does. It is a program called eScholar. I am in favor of this access without reservation. But for me this type of data access is not about education, it is about control. The ED is focusing on tactics rather than strategy. As a side note, eScholar claims that 18 million students use their evaluation  software.

The ED is patterning its educational initiatives after the Blue Button concept by the the Federal Health IT department, which allows consumers access to their own health records. HMMM? Next time you are at the hospital and they ask for your history, tell them to go to the Blue Button. But I digress.

ED administers an annual budget of $68 Billion. And ED, or its designees, charge interest rates on student loans 400% higher than the interest rate I recently paid to buy a Toyota. 

More on this later.