very high needs, high poverty. we have migrant farmers. it s an old, you know, industrial town that s seen its better days. however, we have some amazing kids. some of the partnerships that i ve tried to reach out and help build in our school, a local organization, robert h. jackson center, where we work on social justice. also, a national one in washington, d.c., the robert f. kennedy kennedy center. what we ve seen is that students sometimes will, with proper instruction and resources, they can take a project and run with it. i had a student a year ago that finished third in a statewide contest. that s the kennedy contest, speak truth to power. that s gone national this year. so we search for resources in a time of diminishing opportunities. thank you, both. i hope we can get to these young women. they also want to hit on kids
all over again. peter barnes has what the president wants to do differently. good evening, peter. reporter: good evening, bret. the president and the government agrees the government should give kids in college discounts on student loans but they disagree on how much. the bush administration started all of this to encourage more kids to go to college. right now undergrads who can demonstrate financial need can borrow at 3.4%, but without action by congress next month, students will start paying at the old rate, 6.8%, double. the president has proposed a new formula based on market interest rates if it were in effect today, millions of students could borrow at about 3% for new loans. the rate would be fixed for the life of the loan, and the president would let all students with federal student loans cap their monthly payments at 10% of their income when they got a job. republicans ha similar plan. their formula would give a student a 4.5% rate today.
bret: now fresh pickings from the split can grapevine. high school english teacher in texas gave a student a zero on an assignment to write about anything he was interested in. anything at all. because the boy wrote about a gun show. the boy s mother confronted the teacher and then put it on youtube. the school district says the teacher accepted the paper and apologized to the student but the mom says she does not feel it was adequate and considers the way things were handled play tanblatant censorship. former staffer david axelrod and robert gibbs who now work for msnbc push back against the notion they are in the tanks for the obama administration. both saying they will be independent analysts.
reporter: about 100 other schools nationwide use this program. but there are others that have chosen not to use it. some schools feel it violates copyright laws because a student s legitimate work is their own intellectual property and should not be stor in the database. but a federal judge struck that down, saying that storing papers falls under fair use. other critics say it operates with a guilty until proven innocent principle. sometimes people are concerned that it s a punitive tool that assumes guilt. we respond to that by saying, it s a technology, it s a tool like any other, that can be used for good or ill. we look at it to inform instructors to engage the students in the writing process. reporter: others worry that it could expose a student a valuable personal information. but the developers of the computer program insist that they take every procaution to make sure that personal
called the student a future welfare recipient. all the comments were caught on camera. you airline passengers, you are used to shelling out money for a lot of things to that airline, but you ll hear a story this morning of passengers actually paying for the fuel pore their flight. thank you very much for being here on this cnn saturday morning. i m t.j. holmes. reynolds wolf is about to join me, because we have a weather situation that is causing fits for firefighters fighting a fire this is going on in northwestern nevada. this is a fast-moving fire fueled by strong winds and dry terrain it is threatening hundreds of home. thousands are without electr electricity around the reno area, but most of those folks do have their power back on now. this fire is a day old and has grown to three square miles. tragically, at least one person has been killed as a result of this fire. also one firefighter had to be taken to the hospital with injuries. schools were closed yesterday.