Spellings touts NCLB for higher ed?

Nothing on the Google News site about the U.S. Education Department's hearings on using the Department's rule-making authority to force changes in higher education. Figures. The commercial media have shied away from the issue almost a year now. But an article in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on a speech and school visit by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings hints at a higher ed version of No Child Left Behind.

Here's the lede of a story by the Post-Gazette's Eleanor Chute:

Federal officials are taking the No Child Left Behind Act to the next frontier -- higher education.

In Pittsburgh yesterday, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said she will be making a policy speech about higher education at the end of this month.

She noted the federal government pays about one-third of the bill, in the form of grants, and basically puts "the money out and hopes for the best."

She said, "That was fine and dandy when higher education was kind of nice to have as opposed to must have. But that's changing more and more.

"We need to be more strategic, smarter, and make sure higher education is more accessible to more people if we're going to continue to be the world's innovator and the world's leader."

Ms. Spellings made the remarks before the National Conference of Editorial Writers at the Sheraton Station Square Hotel.

So it's back again. The idea was bandied about earlier by Charles Miller, chair of Spellings' blue-ribbon Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Then it was backburnered, toned down from a mandate to a suggestion in the final draft of the commission's report. Spellings is expected to release the final report Sept. 26.

While Spellings' prepared remarks to the editorial writers don't detail the commission's higher ed recommendations, she mentioned the subject on a visit she made with a Republican congressman to an elementary school in Findlay, Pa. The Post-Gazette reported:

On higher education, Ms. Spellings acknowledged that the $100 increase in federal Pell grants isn't enough and noted that costs have been rising about 7 percent a year.

"The next part of the debate on higher education is for us to ask why does it cost 7 percent more this year than last year. Is it a better deal to get out of Ohio State in six years or some private college in four?

"All sorts of things that parents want to know and deserve to know and can know and find out about buying a car or going to a restaurant or ordering a book online, you can't find out about on one of the most expensive decisions and one of the most important decisions that you and your child are going to make. ...

"I think we have to start challenging that."

Last month, the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education recommended standardized tests, federal monitoring of quality and changes in the financial aid system.

Chute, the Post-Gazette's reporter, also paraphrased Spellings as saying "that No Child Left Behind is close to perfect, likening it to Ivory soap."

Well, that's one comparison.