DETROIT — Many college students are carrying more than a heavy class load this fall. Total student loan debt exceeds total credit card debt in this country, with $850 billion outstanding , according to Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org and FastWeb.com, websites that provide information about student aid and scholarships. Consumers owe about $828 billion in revolving credit, including credit card debt, according to seasonally adjusted numbers in a report on July credit from the Federal Reserve . DEBT: Credit card use keeps falling amid economic uncertainty YOUR MONEY: Student loan program changes affect rates, repayment Finaid.org says it first happened in June. Oddly, some students don’t even know how much they owe — or to whom. “I’m scared to know,” said Carla George, 20, of Detroit, a junior majoring in biology at Wayne State University . She knows that her mother, at one point borrowed about $10,000 through a federal Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students. The PLUS loan lets parents borrow for costs not covered by a financial aid package. George estimates that she has taken out at least $10,000 in other loans. “I think it’s a whole bunch more,” she said. A college diploma and a good job are supposed to be the payoff for years of hard work in school. But for thousands of today’s students, there’s going to be a payback, too — as those loans come due after graduation. Some college students are failing financially long before they get a diploma — or a grown-up paycheck. “Students are far worse off today with student loan debt,” said Alan Collinge, who runs a website called StudentLoanJustice.org, where students discuss their troubles with college loans. With tuition far outpacing inflation for the past 20 years, student borrowing has continued to grow — a whopping 25% last year. Some students who are borrowing never expected to, but their parents have lost jobs or suffered other financial setbacks in the recession. Dramatic drops in home values also have made it far tougher for some parents to cover college costs by simply taking out a home equity loan. For many college grads, that monthly student loan payment is turning into quite a scary number. Kate Baker, 30, pays $600 a month — and has watched less-encumbered friends her age buy houses, travel and generally enjoy more disposable income. Baker doesn’t regret borrowing huge sums to major in government and urban studies at Smith College , a private liberal arts school for women in New England. She’s convinced that her Smith degree has given her an edge and could be the main reason she has been employed for the past 10 years — even if, she jokes, she’s also going to be in poverty until she’s 50. “As you look longer term, it’s scary that my retirement account is basically non-existent,” said Baker, who makes about $50,000 a year as a development director for Wayne State University Press, and another $5,000 as mayor pro tem for Ferndale, Mich. What can you do to hold down your debt so you’re not digging out of it for years after graduation? Get a handle now on “the number” — what you will need each month for loan payments. If, for example, you have $30,000 in student loans, your could be paying about $350 a month for 10 years — if they’re Stafford Loans at a current unsubsidized rate of 6.8% and have 1% in fees. Including interest, you’d be paying off nearly $42,000. To swing this without hitting the lottery, you’re going to need a job that pays far more than the minimum wage. One estimate, according to a calculator at www.Finaid.org, is an annual salary of $42,000, assuming you use 10% of your monthly gross for loan payments. If you start out making $25,000 a year or less, get ready to move back into Mom and Dad’s basement to make those loan payments. Candy Wright, group manager credit counseling for GreenPath in Farmington Hills, Mich., said many young grads are having a hard time lately finding a job that can pay enough to cover their loans. She warns them to be realistic about borrowing. A visit to your college career office can provide a look at estimated salaries in your chosen field and region of the country. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

LOS ANGELES — When state budget cuts imperiled city schools, a group of parents fought back by enlisting Hollywood stars to spread a message targeting one of their own, Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggar . The satirical video featuring actors Megan Fox and fiancee Brian Austin Green highlights how funding shortfalls have killed jobs for librarians, nurses, translators, janitors and teachers. While the video was filmed in the affluent hills above Hollywood where Green’s son attends Wonderland Avenue Elementary School, the cuts are more deeply felt at an inner-city school like Markham Middle School. Both schools have been highlighted as the Los Angeles Unified School District has grappled with $1.5 billion in budget cuts and nearly 3,000 teacher layoffs during the past two years. But comparing the two schools shows a remarkably uneven impact, and just how much depends on factors ranging from income and parent involvement to teacher tenure. The state’s education funding crisis, now entering its third school year, only promises to widen the breech between the haves and have-nots in the nation’s second-largest school district. Nestled in leafy, secluded Laurel Canyon, Wonderland is more than just a top school in the city — it’s one of the best in the state. In addition to the video that has been viewed more than one million times, Wonderland second graders were featured on CNN writing to Schwarzenegger to protest budget cuts. Serving gang-plagued Watts and two of the city’s largest housing projects, Markham is one of the city’s lowest performers with test scores 34% below the acceptable mark. The ACLU sued the school system this spring charging that Markham students weren’t learning from substitutes who replaced laid-off teachers. Schwarzenegger himself held up Markham as an example of how the teacher tenure system backfires because layoffs disproportionately strike younger teachers eager to work in the inner-city. The two schools have been long divided by more than freeways. The year before Tim Sullivan became Markham principal two years ago, 142 students were arrested around the 1,500-pupil campus. The assistant principal went to prison for sexually abusing female students. To keep kids safe on their way to school and maintain Markham free of gang graffiti, Sullivan decided to meet regularly with local gang leaders. “This isn’t the place for the weak and fainthearted,” said the 43-year-old principal. A more basic problem was finding teachers. Sullivan didn’t get a single inquiry at district job fairs so he recruited recent graduates keen for the challenge at annual salaries averaging $45,000. When budget cuts rolled around last year, Markham lost half its teaching staff — 35 teachers — because they hadn’t reached tenure. They were replaced by substitutes at a daily salary of $173 — more than a fulltime probationary teacher earns, but without benefits. In some cases, the subs served as little more than babysitters. Several gave all students a C grade because they didn’t have enough schoolwork to grade adequately, according to the ACLU lawsuit. Another 34 teachers, including 10 long-term subs, got pink slips this year, spurring the ACLU’s successful injunction to halt the layoffs. “A high moral calling can only last so long before you feel like the butt of a joke,” said English teacher Nicholas Melvoin, who was laid off last year but returned as a long-term substitute. The layoffs have stripped the curriculum to basics, without electives. Markham’s plight drew the attention of Schwarzenegger, who used the school as backdrop to announce his support of tenure reform that would allow schools flexibility in layoffs. Across town, Wonderland Principal Don Wilson’s problems are far different. A pile of resumes sits on his desk for a job opening next year. Electives are not subject to district funding whims. The school has full-time art, music and gym teachers, plus teaching assistants for each teacher, paid for by parents through the PTA’s fundraising nonprofit, which raises $350,000 a year. Boosters have paid for elaborate playgrounds, cutting-edge equipment in classrooms, field trips and professional development for teachers. But Wilson must work to keep that revenue flowing. He spent a recent Saturday night in a tent on the playground to help raise $500 per child in a sleepover fundraiser. “You become a developer,” Wilson said. “That’s a huge part of what I do here.” Parents are asked to contribute $700 a year per child and many donate more in cash and other initiatives such as buying mugs embossed with children’s art work. “Parents really value the public school opportunity because they’re not paying the big tuition bill,” said PTA President Terri Levy as she organized an appreciation event to provide breakfast, lunch and a car wash for each teacher. Wilson knows he’s fortunate, although he, too, has lost personnel and is down to having a nurse only one day per week at his 550-pupil school. The principal, who spent much of his career in the sprawling city’s more urban schools, said suburban and inner-city parents want the same for the children. But Wonderland parents possess not only a huge amount of resources, including those to make the slickly produced video opposing cuts, they also have high expectations. That’s the key difference, Wilson said. “They bring expectations as to what an education should be,” he said. “At other schools, parents and teachers come with a limited vision of high expectations.” Markham’s Sullivan doesn’t begrudge more affluent schools in the district. He does wish the system was more equitable. “Just give us an even playing field to show what we can really do,” he said. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

PHILADELPHIA — When the Microsoft-designed School of the Future opened, the facility was a paragon of contemporary architecture, with a green roof, light-filled corridors and the latest classroom technology, all housed in a dazzling white modern building. It might as well have been a fishbowl: Educators and media from around the world watched to see whether Microsoft could reform public education through innovation and technology. Although the school’s creative ambitions have been frustrated by high principal turnover, curriculum tensions and a student body unfamiliar with laptop computer culture, the school graduates its first senior class Tuesday with each student having been accepted to an institution of higher learning. “The first three years were definitely a challenge,” said Mary Cullinane, Microsoft’s liaison to the school. “They’re hitting they’re groove now. I’m excited to see what’s in store.” From the beginning, everything about the $63 million School of the Future was designed to be different. Built in the city’s rough Parkside section with district money, the school partnered with Microsoft on new approaches to curriculum, instruction and hiring. It attracted reform-minded teachers and students bent on avoiding traditional high schools. INFLUENCE: Bill Gates pushes education reform The vision was for a paperless, textbook-less school that embodied the motto “Continuous, Relevant, Adaptive.” Each student would get a take-home laptop on which to keep notes, do homework and take tests. But learners are chosen by a lottery of public school students. Most are low-income and without home computers, yet they are expected to manage their high school careers on a laptop. “I felt kind of awkward,” said senior Kenneth Bolds, 17. “I was used to using books and pencils for eight years.” Educators also assumed learners would enter the school performing at grade level, but half the students in the academically troubled district are not proficient at reading or math. The school’s first set of standardized test scores last year were dismal. Only 7.5% of 11th graders scored proficient or higher in math; 23.4% scored proficient or higher in reading. Cullinane notes that the school can’t control students’ education before ninth grade, but said test scores don’t tell the whole story. “It is a long-term journey and we have to get away from short-term yardsticks,” she said. The project-based curriculum also caused problems because it did not translate to district benchmarks. Its interdisciplinary nature made it hard to tell what material had been taught, said Nancy Hopkins-Evans, special assistant to the district’s chief academic officer. “Our issue was that you had content and standards that you absolutely needed to cover,” Hopkins-Evans said. Report cards, too, were incompatible with the district’s needs. The narrative assessments rated students from “Advanced” to “Not on the Radar” instead of giving letter grades. And the idea to replicate a professional work day by using a 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. schedule had to be altered; some students needed the traditional school day. All the while, there were tours, tours, tours. More than 3,000 people from 50 countries have visited the school, said Cullinane, worldwide director of innovation for Microsoft Education. Senior Mahcaiyah Wearing-Gooden, 18, said she led countless tours as a freshman, showing off computerized blackboards (“smart boards”) and digital lockers that popped open by waving an ID card. “It was a lot to process at the time,” she said. Principal Rosalind Chivis — the school’s fourth — described the building’s journey as “trying to build a plane while flying it.” Yet now, she said, a revamped curriculum, steady leadership and better use of resources and scheduling has yielded the “first full year of uninterrupted education.” Teacher Aruna Arjunan said part of the school’s strength lies in offering a combination of academic, technical and real-world skills. Students’ familiarity with Microsoft programs make them employable straight out of high school, she said. They are also evaluated on “competencies” that Seattle-based Microsoft uses with its own employees, such as dealing with ambiguity and thinking on the fly. “There are kids in this building who would have flunked out of other high schools,” Arjunan said. “I just think the culture here is unlike any other.” All 117 seniors were accepted to post-secondary programs, from community colleges to selective schools like Villanova University ; however, 11 of them must attend summer school to graduate. Some students, like Wearing-Gooden, weren’t even considering college as freshmen. But this fall, Wearing-Gooden will be studying climatology on a scholarship at Green Mountain College in Vermont. She said she realized her potential at the School of the Future, which offered individual attention, a supportive atmosphere and a familial dynamic. The hectic first years also taught Wearing-Gooden a valuable life lesson. “It showed me that the world is not as stable as we want it to be,” she said. “Now I’m ready for anything.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.