The effort could help India in its economic competition with China and the United States. While the United States may have enough colleges, President Obama has warned that its higher education system is falling behind. Poor graduation rates plague lower-tier schools with the vast majority of U.S. students, even as budget cuts and rising tuition make it more difficult to enter college and to graduate.

Published in the Washington Post. Read a slightly longer version at The Hechinger Report. (This is a part of our ongoing series on higher education around the world.)

Head Start is the half-century-old federal preschool program for low-income children. ACS, among the oldest and largest Head Start agencies in the country, did not meet the “quality thresholds” set by the federal Office of Head Start, according to a list made public Tuesday by the Administration for Children & Families, which oversees the program.

ACS is not the only large Head Start agency, known as a super-grantee, whose funding is threatened. The Los Angeles County Office of Education, which bills itself as the largest Head Start agency in the nation, was also included on the list, along with nonprofits and school districts in 38 states. Virginia has the greatest number of agencies that must reapply for their federal contracts, with 11; Ohio has 10, and New York isn’t far behind, with nine.

Read the rest of the story at The Hechinger Report. A version was also printed by Gotham Schools.

Children read at a preschool in Carpinteria, Calif. (Photo by Sarah Garland)

The winners are California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington state. To win, they promised to increase accountability, raise the quality of preschool teachers and improve coordination between the various private and public agencies that provide early education.

The Hechinger Report

Only 12 percent of Hispanic fourth-graders in California–which has the largest number of Hispanic students in the country–were proficient in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2009, which places them behind every state in the nation except for Utah and Minnesota. On this test, the proficiency gap between Hispanic and white students actually grew slightly over the past decade.

The series looks at what’s being done and what isn’t in the small town of Soledad, a microcosm for the problems the state is facing, how English learners in particular have fared and what we know about the best ways of teaching them, and how early education might help.

Today at 5pm Eastern/2pm Pacific, we’ll be having a discussion about the series on Twitter. Follow and join in with #learninggap.

It’s a rare setup. Although colleges often have close relationships with high schools, very few cede control over admissions decisions. The partners believe their model — which focuses on unconventional measures of success, such as grit and academic improvement instead of just overall grades and scores — will give a chance at college to minority students who might otherwise be overlooked. Read the rest of the story in USA Today.

Or see a longer version here at Hechinger, along with a sidebar about the importance of fitting into college.

Read more at the American Prospect, or check out the Hechinger Report.

Check out the article on the PreK-3 movement here.

A for-profit approach to Head Start in Philadelphia. May 23, 2011. An investigation into a new company trying to improve Head Start quality and make money at the same time. A version of this story was also printed on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Charter preschools explode tenfold in DC. April 4, 2011. Charter schools see a benefit in preschool, both academic and monetary. A version of this story also appeared in the Washington Post.

For-profit universities: By the numbers. June 2, 2011. The U.S. Department of Education will be monitoring for-profit universities more closely starting this summer. Where do they stand now?