The White House proposals called the American Graduation Initiative (AGI) were dropped from the package of education spending that was folded into the health reconciliation bill that has now been passed by Congress and signed by the President. The education legislation, which moved the student loan program into federal control, was not debated in Congress. The AGI was dropped from the legislation during cost-cutting closed-door sessions where Democrats and Obama picked and chose where federal taxpayer education dollars would go.
I am convinced that the stoppage here of federal management of online courses is a lucky break for long term open learning. Not having the feds doling out dollars to set up infrastructures they approve will let network laws and unrestricted innovation emerge the global knowledge commons. — instead of messing it up big time as bureaucrats tend to do.
I realize there is disappointment in the open educational resources (OER) community over losing $500M for OER. Yet the excerpt below from the proposed AGI scares me about the future openness of online learning with the federal government doing what it describes. Won’t content be overseen in Washington? Who decides which community colleges distribute or use the courses? These are taxpayer dollars; would the courses be openly online? Why the departments of Labor and Defense?
Did the liberty of learning dodge a big “O”- shaped bullet here? What do you think?
Create New Online Skills Laboratory
. . . New open online courses will create new routes for students to gain knowledge, skills and credentials. They will be developed by teams of experts in content knowledge, pedagogy, and technology and made available for modification, adaptation and sharing. The Departments of Defense, Education, and Labor will work together to make the courses freely available through one or more community colleges and the Defense Department’s distributed learning network, explore ways to award academic credit based upon achievement rather than class hours, and rigorously evaluate the results.
bob bradley says:
like this post. am looking at similar issue with the guided system we’re building with the governors challenge 2010. would love to collaborate. please register and subscribe to the Ol Thought Coach blog.
best and thanks for this research. i dig your tweets from rbradley.
bb
31st March 2010 at 8:43 am
Judy Breck says:
Bob, thanks. I would love to collaborate. Rather than registering for the Governor’s Challenge, I hereby give you permission to use anything I have written at Handschooling.com with or without attribution as content and for ideas for the project.
Let’s keep in touch. Judy
31st March 2010 at 3:45 pm