U.S. House Majority Leader Boehner (R-Ohio) praised the House bill to reauthorize the higher education act as opening the door of opportunity for low-income college bound students. Opponents said the bill failed the opportunity to restore cuts in student aid that will make it harder for low-income students to afford a college education.

Advocates for homeless youth pointed to one bright light--the Biggert amendment to allow unaccompanied homeless youth to be considered independent students was accepted by a voice vote. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) requires most students to provide financial information from their parents or guardians in order to determine student eligibility for aid; the application also requires a parental/guardian signature. While these requirements are logical for most applicants, they create insurmountable barriers for unaccompanied homeless youth, who do not receive financial support from their parents and do not have access to parental information.

A House-Senate conference committee will meet to work out the differences between the House and Senate bills. It is unknown at this time when the conference committee will begin to meet.

The amount of crud that clogs up my e-mail inbox is discouraging, daunting, and disheartening. All those bogus alerts from banks I don't use; the sales pitches for things I'd rather not know about, let alone buy; the once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to enrich myself with ill-gotten billions from Nigeria; the endless hectoring warnings from PayPal.

The good news is, it's almost April. And April, as we all know, is National Poetry Month. And with National Poetry Month comes the wonderful "A Poem A Day" program from Writers in the Schools of Houston. If you sign up, you'll get a student-written poem delivered to your inbox every weekday in April. Absolutely free! No obligation! And, no deliberate misspellings, overwrought sales pitches, or off-color suggestions about how to make your man or woman happy.

To sign up, e-mail WITS at mail@writersintheschools.org. Your in-box will thank you.

There used to be an aging wooden sign outside my kids' elementary school. It identified the school as an "Early Primary School, Pre-K through Grade 3". Since the school actually goes through Grade 5, and had done so for years before my eldest enrolled, I saw the sign as one of the more benign examples of a school district not quite up to its task. Since then, the sign has rotted away and been removed.

So when I heard Gene Maeroff of Columbia University Teachers College making a fairly impassioned plea for what he was presenting as a powerful new model for effective school reform..."What many of us are calling Pre-K/Three," as Maeroff put it...I thought of that old sign.

Maeroff, who has just written a book on the subject, believes that these first years of semi-formal and formal schooling are where school reformers can get the most bang for the buck, as it were: "Unprecedented attention to the primary grades ought to occur," Maeroff said at a Brookings Institution panel discussion. He called for universal access to voluntary preschool starting at age 3, and for full-day kindergarten for all five-year-olds. Then, to solidify early gains, an effort is needed to put in place rigorous standards, curricula, and assessment tools in grades 1 to 3. Teachers need special training in working collaboratively to address the needs of these youngest students.

While I'm not enough of an expert to take exception to Maeroff's assumptions regarding the importance of the early years, and in fact I don't really want to, I do feel a certain fatigue at yet another effort to identify THE critical window for learning. My kids' school has been reincarnated a number of times -- at one time, it went up to fourth grade, then fifth, and even sixth. The changes have reflected changing neighborhood demographics, fluctuations in city finances, changing political forces. What they have not reflected, as far as I can tell, is changing ideas about childhood development and education. Those show up, if at all, in individual classrooms.

Another thing they haven't reflected is a community willingness to support some levels of elementary education over others. (There seems to be quite a high level of willingness to shortchange middle and high school students, but that's a different story.) I can't even begin to imagine how a board of education might make a realistic case for any effort to funnel additional resources towards the early primary grades at the expense of fourth and fifth graders. (And additional resources are always perceived as coming at someone else's expense.)

So, while a laser-like focus on early primary education might get the most bang for the actual buck, it would be pretty costly in political capital, and school reformers can't really afford to throw that currency around.

The plan for deep budget cuts appears to be breaking down party discipline in the House. Two weeks ago the Senate approved the Specter-Harkin amendment, restoring funds to current levels instead of steep cuts for health, education and other vital services.

This week Republican moderate leader Mike Castle (R-DE) declared "While I have always advocated for reducing the deficit and using fiscal discipline, it is the taxpayers at the local level in our districts who are bearing the burden of cuts to social programs like education, health care and housing. It is each of our constituents that will be asked to make up the difference, paying more of the federal government's share of the education, housing, and services that our cities and towns provide."

Leading a rally of moderates on March 28 to demand more funding for discretionary programs in the House budget resolution, Castle said he would not vote for a House Budget Resolution that would result in real cuts to critical federal investments in education, health care, housing, veterans’ services, social and community block grants.

The House Budget Committee is expected to mark up the resolution March 29 and floor action is considered likely next week.

Last month Congress cut $12 billion out of student aid programs, and interest rates on parent and student loans are set to jump up this July, due to recent Congressional actions. Yet when the House begins its floor debate on the Higher Education Act (H.R. 609) on March 29, it will do little to make college more affordable.

According to an ad in Roll Call sponsored by the SEIU, AFSCME, Campaign For America's Future, the US Students Association, PIRG, Rock The Vote, and AACRAO, Congress should be making a college education more affordable by lowering interest rates on loans and increasing grants.

The DREAM Act would provide a pathway to legality for college-ready high school graduates who are undocumented or illegal. This bipartisan idea was approved as an amendment during the Judiciary Committee's hearing on its immigration reform bill on March 27.

Since coming to Washington there's a lot I've learned about passing legislation that I didn't learn in high school civics class. But one thing still stands--the same bill must pass the House of Representatives and the Senate before the President can sign it into law.

This year, because of a clerk's error, the House of Representatives approved a "final" version of the budget bill that differs from the Senate's final version. Public Citizen, the watchdog group launched by Ralph Nader, has filed a lawsuit, contending that the bill President Bush signed into law is unconstitutional because the same bill was not passed by both the House and Senate.

The New York Times headline says the marches for positive immigration reform over the weekend surpassed expectations, a dramatic backdrop for this week's negotiations in the Senate.

Update: On March 27 the Senate Judiciary Committee adopted the Brownback amendment that would allow refugee aid groups to submit specific groups for refugee status under the widows and orphans provision. It also adopted an amendment that would protect groups and individuals that provide humanitarian assistance to illegal immigrants already in the US.

Sen. Lindsay Graham speaking for his amendment: We have to recognize that for several generations people have made America their home and we have accepted their labor and their taxes. We need a solution that reflects American values... If we break up families after 40 years, that's not justice.

Children of immigrants make up 22 percent of the 23.4 million children under 6 in the United States, and 20 percent of those age 6 to 17. Immigration is a family affair.

Re the boot camps in Florida--Mitch Needelman writes:
"Done! As of 9am today, March 24, 2006, Military Style Juvenile Boot Camps have been abolished in the Florida House of Representatives. $10.5 million has ben transferred to other programs such as educational services, counseling, family therapy and rehabilitation services for children."

The Florida Children's Campaign says thank yous to Needelman are in order, but the work of one committee doesn't make it a "done deal" yet!

"...isn't it ironic that undocumented immigrants are able to obtain a tax ID # and pay taxes (as most do), yet they dont see the benefits of these? We are not taking away anything from legal citizens, we just want fair treatment and immigration reform so that we can continue to contribute to this country, my homeland."
--Alexa

As Alexa reminds us, we can't fix a broken immigration system just by building a wall to keep people out, but that's what the House of Representatives tried to do in December by passing a very narrow immigration bill focused on border security and enforcement, and making it a crime for anyone to assist an undocumented immigrant.

In a March 22 op ed in the New York Times, Roger Mahony, the cardinal archbishop of Los Angeles, says "Every day in our parishes, social service programs, hospitals and schools, we witness the baleful consequences of illegal immigration. Families are separated, workers are exploited and migrants are left by smugglers to die in the desert. Illegal immigration serves neither the migrant nor the common good."

Mahony says the solution is not the kind of one-sided, immoral and "harmful" legislation passed by the House.

"What the church supports is an overhaul of the immigration system so that legal status and legal channels for migration replace illegal status and illegal immigration. Creating legal structures for migration protects not only those who migrate but also our nation, by giving the government the ability to better identify who is in the country as well as to control who enters it.

"Only comprehensive reform of the immigration system, embodied in the principles of another proposal in Congress, the Secure America and Orderly Immigration bill, will help solve our current immigration crisis."

The Senate is expected to choose between two very different immigration reform bills next week.