Making Money Fast

In Monday’s Washington Post, Education Secretary Arne Duncan was confident that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, now known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), will be reauthorized this year, arguing that “few areas are more suited for bipartisan action than education reform.”

But Duncan should take a step back and note that there are wildly differing views on exactly how to approach the country’s largest federal education law.

It’s true that voices across the political spectrum and much of the public are dissatisfied with the NCLB status quo. But Duncan shouldn’t count on consensus about the solution just yet, especially not with a new Congress in town. A reauthorization process would provoke a major clash between two very different philosophies about the federal role in education.

As rumors of an NCLB reauthorization float around, the most important question is: What is the proper role of the federal government in education?

One view, held by Duncan and the Obama Administration, is that the federal government can and should play an increasingly large role in American schools. They may have concluded that NCLB is broken, but that doesn’t mean they think the federal role in education is fundamentally flawed.

While the Administration will likely use the language of transparency and flexibility to rally for their reauthorization plan, their current course sets a trajectory for more government involvement in local education.

From Duncan’s point of view, special interest groups such as the education unions should have a place at the bargaining table, despite the fact that they have shown little interest in or willingness to compromise on what’s best for children. Duncan also sees a role for the federal government in what children across the country learn in school and has put federal money behind national standards and tests that would shape curriculum in schools across the land. But such a move would do more to empower bureaucrats in Washington than those closest to children.

The Administration’s philosophical approach to education reform also includes more spending from Washington. This was evidenced by the nearly $100 billion the Department of Education received through the stimulus and the $10 billion public education “edujobs” bailout last year.

The second philosophy believes that in order to help American students realize their education potential, Washington needs to get out of the way and stop trying to act as the nation’s school board. And because educational authority is constitutionally reserved to the states, there is very little the federal government can do to improve local education. The federal government not only lacks the authority to manage local schools but also provides less than 10 percent of school funding, meaning Washington is ill-equipped to serve the diverse needs of 50 million school children across the country.

Restoring federalism in education means moving dollars and decision making out of Washington and putting it back in the hands of state and local leaders. Conservative leaders in Congress have suggested that this will be their approach.

In any debate over NCLB, policymakers should keep two guiding principles in mind:

1. Washington-centric education reform has been tried for more than four decades and has failed. More money and more federal programs are not the answer to improving education. The United States spends more than $10,000 per pupil per year, and per-pupil expenditures have nearly tripled since 1970. Yet reading ability has stagnated, achievement gaps persist, and graduation rates have idled. Federal intervention has not improved America’s schools.


2. It’s time for a fundamentally different approach to education reform, one that empowers those closest to students. Distant, unelected bureaucrats in Washington are the farthest from students, yet they create much of the red tape local schools have to deal with. Education reform should begin to restore federalism in education by allowing states to bypass federal bureaucracy and use their share of federal education funding to meet their students’ needs and to act as laboratories of reform and innovation.

There is an alternative to NCLB that would go a long way in achieving these conservative principles: the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success (A-PLUS) plan, introduced in various iterations in recent years. Such a proposal would promote greater state and local control in education by allowing states to consolidate funding from dozens of federal education programs, bypass all the red tape, and direct resources to the most pressing education needs among their students. The A-PLUS plan also requires accountability through state-level testing and transparency about results for parents and taxpayers.

If this Administration is truly interested in using the reauthorization of NCLB to improve American education, it should back up its talk about flexibility and transparency by allowing states to opt out of burdensome federal mandates and direct money to the education priorities that make the most sense for their students. Coupled with requirements for transparency about results, such flexibility would ensure that the needs of students—not the demands of education unions, special interest groups, Washington bean-counters, and bureaucrats—will be met. Such an agenda is likely to garner broad support.

Mollie Vandor is the product manager for Ranker.com where she likes to make lists about reading, eating and bad-TV-watching. She’s also the media director for Girls in Tech LA. You can find her on Twitter @Mollierosev and on her blog.

Whether you’re looking to make a big change, or just tweak a few little things, the new year gives you the perfect opportunity to reflect on your behavior and resolve to do better going forward.

Of course, it’s one thing to say you want to tackle a typical resolution like get in better physical shape, get in better financial shape or — like many of us who work on the web — get your social media presence in order. It’s another thing to actually accomplish those big, broad goals.

So this year, instead of making your goals big and broad, why not take a page from the web world and use analytics to pinpoint the specific stuff you want to change? And, by that same token, why not use data tracking to hold yourself accountable for keeping all those resolutions too?

Read on for some tips on how to use social media to corral your New Year’s resolutions. Let us know in the comments below what tips worked for you, or share your own resolution advice.

Let’s Get Physical/>

There’s the freshman 15 everyone gains from collegiate pizza and beer, and then there’s the startup 15 many of us tech geeks gain from sodas and office snacks. Between the time spent sitting in front of a computer screen and the time spent networking over drinks and dinners, it’s easy to put on pounds when you work on the web. Of course, you can always try the startup diet, but that’s not necessarily going to work for everyone.

Keeping a food and exercise log might sound like a daunting task, but it turns out you may already be tracking some of that data without even knowing it. Foursquareclass="blippr-nobr">foursquare actually lets you see your entire checkin history and, if you do a quick search, you can find it so you can easily see whether you’ve really been going to the gym or frequenting your fast food runs.

Similarly, the Foursquare stats page lets you see your own checkin trends in handy graphs and lists. There’s even a site called weeplaces that lets you turn your Foursquare, Facebook Places and class='blippr-nobr'>Gowallaclass="blippr-nobr">Gowalla checkins into graphic visualizations. And, weeplaces will let you filter those visualizations by food-related checkins and parks and recreation checkins, so you can really get a handle on your history.

class='blippr-nobr'>Google Mapsclass="blippr-nobr">Google Maps also lets you search your own history, so can get a visual reminder of the places you’ve been searching for, and start picking up on trends in your own behavior. You just have to enable it. And, of course, there’s the age-old pedometer, made a lot easier and more fashionable via a host of iPhoneclass="blippr-nobr">iPhone and Androidclass="blippr-nobr">Android apps that let you easily track how much you’re walking without having to do anything more than a quick download.

Of course, once you establish the things you want to change about your eating and exercising habits, you still have to make those changes stick. class='blippr-nobr'>Appsclass="blippr-nobr">Apps like LoseIt, Weight Watchers and LiveStrong let you log calories you eat and calories you burn via your smartphone. Fitango prescribes personalized plans to help you get in shape, and gives you a forum for sharing milestones you meet with your friends. Similarly, Phitter is like a fitness-focused class='blippr-nobr'>Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter stream where people share weight loss trials, tribulations and tips to help keep each other going.

Or, you can try something like the Social Workout Challenge, which gives you fitness goals to meet and a community of people to keep you accountable for meeting them. If you really want to take your weight tracking to the next level, there’s even a scale that automatically tweets your weight to the world. While you’re at it, FixNixer and QuitMeter also give you similar tools for tracking your way out of a smoking habit, another great way to get yourself in better physical shape in the new year.

Money, Money, Money/>

For many people, the New Year is also a great time to get a fresh financial start. But again, it’s a lot easier to make changes going forward when you know how you’ve been behaving in the past. That’s where a site like Mint.com can be very handy. class='blippr-nobr'>Mintclass="blippr-nobr">Mint aggregates all of your various accounts, including credit cards, bank accounts and assets, and then turns your spending habits into easy-to-read charts and graphs that show you where you’re spending and where you could be saving. It even lets you compare your shopping and spending habits with other people in your area, so you can see how you stack up. Many credit cards, like American Express Blue and Visa Signature, also give you year-end spending summaries that show you how much you’ve spent, how much you’ve saved, how much interest you’ve accumulated and more.

Once you’ve nailed down how your money is going out the door, you can start figuring out ways to keep more of it in your wallet. Again, this is where tracking will be key to actually keeping those resolutions. First, you can establish your financial goals via an online calculator, which lets you figure out exactly how much to start saving. Once you’ve figured out your goals, there are more than 50 great, free mobile apps to help you track your spending. On Facebook, the BillMonk app will help you keep better track of those tricky situations where you’re sharing a bill with friends, and you need to make sure everyone knows what they owe. XPenser lets you record your expenses from any device, including via tweet and e-mail, and TweetWhatYouSpend gives you a forum for sharing your expenditures with everyone on Twitter, so your friends can help hold you accountable when you blow your budget shopping those post-holiday sales.

Get Your Social Media in Shape/>

Whether or not you work on the web, if you’re reading class='blippr-nobr'>Mashableclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable, chances are you have a social media presence. And, just like your physical and financial identities, your social media self might be due for a little makeover in 2011 too. The good news is that the data is even easier to find when you’re talking about your personal tech habits. For example, you can use the Top Words app to figure out the topics you talk about most on class='blippr-nobr'>Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook. Klout tells you which topics you talk about the most on Twitter, and all sorts of other stats that will help you pinpoint what it is about your social media presence that you may want to change.

Similarly, BackType analyzes your Twitter profile and tells you what percentage of your tweets are replies, retweets, links, etc. Like Klout, it also tells you who you’re influencing and who your influencers are. And, it shows you your most shared sites. All of these are great data points for determining things you’d like to change about your social media presence. Finally, ViralHeat gives you in-depth analysis of the sentiment around your various social network profiles, which really lets you hone in on how your social media behavior is being received by your followers on Facebook, Twitter and across the web.

Once you’ve established what you want to change, you can set up ViralHeat to send alerts and updates directly to your inbox so you can track the impact of those changes on the fly. Similarly, since Klout and BackType both update regularly now, you can see your statistics change as your behavior does, which is a great way to keep yourself motivated. And, of course, make sure you set up Google Alerts to track all the activity around your various accounts.

If your resolution involves blogging more often, there are plenty of apps to help you do that on the go, right from your phone. Another way to remind yourself of things you want to blog, tweet or post about is by using a service like TwittRemind, which lets you tweet yourself reminders to do things throughout the day.

To make the most of your many profiles, consider setting up a hub page via a service like about.meclass="blippr-nobr">about.me, which lets you showcase all your profiles in one place. Or, sign up for a social network aggregation service to make it easier to make changes on all your profiles at once. You also might want to consider setting up a targeted Twitter list of friends and followers who can help you hold yourself accountable and focus your social media efforts so you can minimize the number of relationships you’re managing and maximize the return you’re getting from all these changes.

New Year, New You/>

Whether your New Year’s resolutions involve getting yourself in better physical, financial or social media shape, the web can help you figure out exactly what you want to change and how you’re going to keep yourself accountable for changing it. 2011 is a brand new year and a completely fresh start, and, breaking your New Year’s resolutions is so 2010.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- 10 More Creative Uses of the New Facebook Profile [PICS]/> - 10 Cool Facebook Status Tips and Tricks/> - 6 Reasons Why Social Games Are the Next Advertising Frontier/> - 3 Things Brands Must Do to Reach Millennials Online/> - How Social Media Can Help With Your Long Distance Job Search

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, DNY59

For more Social Media coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Mediaclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Media channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for Android, iPhone and iPad

free rental agreements forms

<b>News</b> Corp. Online Gaming Head Sean Ryan to Head Facebook&#39;s Social <b>...</b>

Sean Ryan, who arrived at News Corp. mid-year to set up a new online gaming unit, is moving to Facebook to head partnerships at its key gaming platform, according to sources. Currently, Facebook does not create social games, ...

Unemployment <b>news</b> roundup | Michigan Messenger

Though Congress finally managed to pass an extension of federal unemployment benefits during the lame duck session before Christmas, there are still many other.

<b>News</b> - Racing Post

MONET'S GARDEN the popular chasing veteran who took his third Old Roan Chase this season has been retired and is battling for his life due to an infection in his hoof.