Obama threatens veto of House GOP ‘No Child Left Behind’ update

President Obama is threatening to veto a House bill to update the No Child Left Behind education law, The Hill reports. The bill, called the Student Success Act, would “represent a significant step backwards in the effort to help our Nation’s children and their families prepare for their futures,” the White House said in a statement on Wednesday. The administration worries that the bill, authored by Reps. John Kline (R-Minn.) and Todd Rokita (R-Ind.), is too lax on state education standards, neglects students in historically underserved areas and fails to address poorly performing schools…

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Bill Gates: Technology can lower college tuition to $2,000

During a presentation at the Technonomy conference in San Francisco last week, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said online learning can shrink the cost of higher education by eroding the need for place-based instruction, The Hill reports. “College, except for the parties, needs to be less place-based,” he said, adding that moving more learning activities online can bring down the soaring cost of a college degree. “Only technology can bring [college tuition] down, not just to $20,000, but to $2,000,” he said, citing price tags as high as $50,000 for a year of college.  Gates predicted that technology soon could make place-based learning five times less important for college and university students. But for students in elementary and high school, Gates said he did not foresee online education shaking up the traditional framework anytime soon. “I do not predict some radical change in that,” he said. “K-12 is partly about babysitting the kids so the parents can do other things.” Still, he said, technology would allow half the students in a class to be occupied with one activity while others are learning something entirely different. He also hailed charter schools for looking for ways to use technology to enhance their offerings. “Thank God for charters,” he said. “There’s no room for innovation in the standard system.”

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‘Congress on Facebook’ goes live

Facebook on Thursday debuted its “Congress on Facebook” hub to showcase members’ online profiles and communicate news about the social network and the lawmakers who use it, The Hill reports. The page builds off the early success of the site’s “Government on Facebook” page, introduced in 2009. That hub has helped federal agencies create more than 400 pages with fans into the millions, according to Facebook.

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