These investments, coupled with the funding provided in the Recovery Act and the President’s first two budgets, will more than double the total amount of funding available for Pell Grants since President Obama took office.

The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act covers the expected funding shortfall and much of the recent growth in Pell costs, putting the program on more secure footing for years to come.

As the largest part of the nation’s higher education system, community colleges enroll more than 6 million students and are growing rapidly.

Child-study Jean-Jacques Rousseau has been called the father of the child-study movement. It has been said that Rousseau "discovered" the child (as an object of study). Rousseau's principal work on education is Emile: Or, On Education, in which he lays out an educational program for a hypothetical newborn's education to adulthood. Rousseau provided a dual critique of both the vision of education set forth in Plato's Republic and also of the society of his contemporary Europe and the educational methods he regarded as contributing to it; he held that a person can either be a man or a citizen, and that while Plato's plan could have brought the latter at the expense of the former, contemporary education failed at both tasks. He advocated a radical withdrawal of the child from society and an educational process that utilized the natural potential of the child and its curiosity, teaching it by confronting it with simulated real-life obstacles and conditioning it by experience rather than teaching it intellectually. His ideas were rarely implemented directly, but were influential on later thinkers, particularly Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel, the inventor of the kindergarten. [edit] Transcendentalist education H. D. Thoreau's Walden and reform essays in the mid-19th century were influential also (see the anthology Uncommon Learning: Henry David Thoreau on Education, Boston, 1999). For a look at transcendentalist life, read Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Her father, A. Bronson Alcott, a close friend of Thoreau's, pioneered progressive education for young people as early as the 1830s. The transcendental education movement failed, because only the most gifted students ever equaled the skills of their classically educated teachers. These students would, of course, succeed in any educational regime. Accounts seem to indicate that the students were happy, but often pursued classical education later in life. [edit] National identity

Contemporary issues In the first decade of the 21st century, several issues are salient in debates over further education reform:[5] Longer school day or school year After-school tutoring Charter schools, school choice, or school vouchers Smaller class sizes[6] Improved teacher quality Improved training Higher credential standards Generally higher pay to attract more qualified applicants Performance bonuses ("merit pay") Firing low-performing teachers Internet and computer access in schools Track and reduce drop-out rate Track and reduce absenteeism English-only vs. bilingual education Mainstreaming special education students Content of curriculum standards and textbooks Funding, neglected infrastructure, and adequacy of educational supplies

Between 1960 and 1995, U.S. public school spending per student, adjusted for inflation, increased by 212%. In 1994, less than half of all U.S. public school employees were teachers. Out of 21 industrialized countries, U.S. 12th graders ranked 19th in math, 16th in science, and last in advanced physics.

"A world-class education is the single most important factor in determining not just whether our kids can compete for the best jobs but whether America can out-compete countries around the world. America's business leaders understand that when it comes to education, we need to up our game. That's why we’re working together to put an outstanding education within reach for every child"

-President Barack Obama, July 18, 2011

To restore a sense of self-government, empower families, and yield educational excellence, it is imperative that educational authority be returned to states and local leaders and parents.

national standards and tests, which threatens the long-established right of parents to direct their children’s education and muzzles the states’ traditional role in designing school curricula.

Today, combined federal, state, and local education spending exceeds $580 billion annually, or about 4.2 percent of GDP.

The U.S. Constitution leaves the responsibility for public K-12 education with the states.

The primary source of federal K-12 support began in 1965 with the enactment of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) is a reauthorization of ESEA