Titus, Hinojosa discuss the nation’s education

August 23, 2010 by Pashtana Usufzy 

Nevada representative talks of hope for Millennium Scholarship

Two congressional representatives traveled to UNLV to provide the educational community with a progress report on the state of education and labor across the country.

Nevada Congresswoman Dina Titus and Texas Congressman Ruben Hinojosa met at the UNLV Student Union on Aug. 3 to field questions on education, politics and the economy.

Titus and Hinojosa held a meeting with representatives of local educational institutions to discuss changes in congressional policy concerning education and labor.

Afterward, the two representatives stayed behind to discuss everything from Titus’s opponent, Joe Heck, to the origins of the economic meltdown of 2008.

“I’m talking about what I’ve done,” Titus said after the event, sitting beside Hinojosa in a Student Union conference room.

Both representatives are members of the House Committee on Education and Labor.

Hinojosa, a Democrat and the chairman of the Subcommittee on Higher Education, Lifelong Learning and Competitiveness, discussed steps the House and schools will be taking to assess the progress of primary and secondary school students.

“They’re going to increase the investment in the training of certified teachers,” he said.

He explained his belief that new measures to improve the No Child Left Behind Act will go a long way in tracking student progress before they begin college.

He said that this will ensure that students entering the workforce or higher education are more prepared and not at a disadvantage due to their socioeconomic status.

“[With No Child Left Behind] we didn’t have the tools to assess the level at which those students are progressing,” he said.

Lack of funding and sufficiently qualified instructors are just some of the things Hinojosa said he hopes reforms will tackle.

His call echoes those of Titus, who said that the loss of Race to the Top funding for the state of Nevada was a harsh blow demonstrating just how far the state must go to improve education.

“It’s hard to race to the top when you’re crawling along the bottom,” she said.

Titus said that she believes increased and better education is the key to diversifying Nevada’s suffering economy.

Those who have lost their jobs must be put back to work. “These people need to be re-trained,” she said.

Sending unemployed workers and a new generation of students to college, however, requires them to be able to afford tuition.

Something that she said has been made difficult by the increased cost of the credit hour.

Titus, who was in the state legislature when Nevada received money as part of 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, said that the decision to establish the Millennium Scholarship helped many to pay off those tuition costs.

“[Later legislators] robbed some of that money, thinking that it was going to be replaced,” she said.

She continued on to say that she supports stricter requirements to ensure the funds reach “those students who deserve it.”

Hinojosa and Titus pointed to the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 as two congressional triumphs in strengthening education.

The pieces of legislation will increase the maximum annual Pell Grant scholarship and will invest money in community colleges and minority-serving institutions.

Titus, who was elected to Congress in 2008, was swept into office alongside many Democratic candidates and President Barack Obama.
Heck, the Republican candidate, is a physician and a former senator in the Nevada Legislature.

The two have so far been locked in a dead heat in local polls, with the latest Las Vegas Review-Journal/Channel 8 News Now poll placing Titus just one point ahead of Heck with likely voters.

The poll has a five percent margin of error.

Titus charged that Heck “wants to privatize student loans” and that Republicans propose educational reforms that are not thought through.

“They also talk out of both sides of their mouths,” she said. “On one side, they’re saying more accountability. On the other hand, they’re saying [to cut funding].”

In a response e-mail, Heck denied Titus’s statement that he wants to privatize student loans.

He said that he believes increases in Pell Grant funding provide a “positive outcome for needy students,” but he disagrees with the government “functioning as a banker” when it comes to student loans.

“The previously existing system of student loans provided choice to the consumer… the student. He/she could chose to receive the loan from the federal government or from a private lender. That choice is now taken away.”

He also said that he disagrees with placing education items in a bill having to do primarily with healthcare.

“They were placed in a bill that has nothing to do with education and there was no debate on the issue – this from an administration that ran on increased government transparency!”

Hinojosa said that reform will depend on holding conversations around the table to find solutions.

“Our discussion here,” he said, “was ‘What do we do about it?’”