Archive for September, 2011

White House asks Supreme Court to rule on healthcare law

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

The White House has asked the Supreme Court to uphold its healthcare law, inviting a possible high-stakes legal showdown just before the 2012 election.

The administration’s move came after a challenge to the reform from 26 states and small businesses.

The justice department asked the Supreme Court to declare the law’s key provision, requiring everyone to buy health insurance, constitutional.

The legislation extended health coverage to an extra 32 million people.

Passed in 2010, the Affordable Care Act was a long-held dream of Democrats.

Challenge ‘will fail’

The White House’s move on Wednesday followed an August decision by the 11th Circuit appeals court, in Atlanta, that the individual insurance mandate exceeded Congress’ powers.

While the court said the remainder of the law was constitutional, it struck down its core requirement that Americans who can afford it must buy health insurance or pay a penalty from 2014.

The case was brought by 26 Republican attorneys general and governors, and small business owners, who oppose a provision forcing them to cover their employees’ healthcare at a level set by the government.

The justice department said in a statement on Wednesday: “Throughout history, there have been similar challenges to other landmark legislation such as the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, and all of those challenges failed.

“We believe the challenges to the Affordable Care Act – like the one in the 11th Circuit – will also ultimately fail and that the Supreme Court will uphold the law.” (more…)

New education rules a good first step

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

In a speech on Sept. 23, President Obama gave a speech linking economic recovery with improved educational standards by proposing additional measures to reform the public school system. “We have to pick up our game,” he said, noting that America has fallen to 16th in the world in terms of percentage of college diplomas earned by its citizens. Some of the reforms include using a waiver system to give more power to the states to control curriculum and make improvements.

Specifically, the plan is to move away from the No Child Left Behind Act, including provisions to circumvent the act’s 2014 deadline for nationwide academic proficiency. Other requirements, such as preparing students for post-high school plans and creating evaluative benchmarks for teachers, are required for the waiver to be accepted.

We at Student Life support this plan. The American education system needs a serious overhaul. As students and soon-to-be graduates, we understand the value of a good education. We would, however, like to propose a few changes that we hope to see.

We realize that testing will never be the best indicator of academic performance. The ability to fill in bubbles on a Scantron does not necessarily indicate critical thinking skills or academic potential. However, as an indicator of performance overall, the tests do have merit and standardized testing is the only way to track student performance on a large scale. But, we believe standardized testing can be improved significantly. One of those improvements can be requiring testing on more subjects.

At Wash. U., pre-meds and English majors alike understand the importance of a solid science-based education. Tests should evaluate basic knowledge of the sciences because with science education comes innovation and global influence. The American Jobs Act will create new science labs in schools across the country, hopefully improving science curriculum and fostering future advances. No Child Left Behind should put the same emphasis on science.

The president consistently says that the U.S. needs to be better at math and science, but No Child Left Behind requires testing only on math and reading. The country would be better served if education funding for school districts was linked to the sciences as well. (more…)