Blake: Work Priorities

PRE RELEASE: CONTACT:
Thursday January 11, 2007 Robert Brandon 202-331-1550

Students, Parents Lobby Congress to Make College Affordable

Unique Events Attract Thousands to National Day of Action

College students and parents today fanned out across the country as part of a national day of action to demand that Congress pass legislation to cut interest rates on student loans, a key plank in the House leadership’s agenda for the first 100 hours of the new Congress. At a Capital Hill news conference two college students, a medical student, a parent and a high school college counselor offered their personal stories and support of the bill as the first step to reduce the rising cost of higher education and the impact of rising student debt.

NEA has partnered with the GEM Exchange, Gateway to Educational Materials, and JES & Co to support Gateway to 21st Century Skills, a website that combines state-of the art search technologies and a complete database of state academic standards for core subjects. The Gateway is your link to the resources you need to make learning meaningful and fun for your students.

Statistical tracking that began July 1st of 2006 shows that 163,348 unique visitors made 231,191 visits, viewed 1,055,055 pages and created 10,113,662 hits on the Gateway through the 13th of December 2006. Informal observation of Gateway membership registration shows that of the domestic registrants 35% to 40% have declared themselves to be NEA members. NEA ranks third in top referring sites to the Gateway, exceeded only by eduref.org (ERIC) and ed.gov.

Read the full report

Judy Woodruff and the Generation Next crew finished its tour of the United States to gauge the views of 16-to-25 year olds in August. They listened to the politically active in the Northeast, the hardworking in the Midwest, the entrepreneurial in the West, the benevolent in the South, the traditional in the Great Plains -- and others in between, such as a gang member in L.A. and a farmer in Kansas.

The hour-long documentary is set to air this Friday, January 12 at 9:30 pm.

I'm working with BS to record this piece and plan to use portions of it in my upcoming "Generational Issues" workshop at the 2007 UniServ Manager's meeting in Portland, Oregon the end of February.