Speaking from experience, former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise (D) said a governor’s profile is far higher than that of someone in the private sector or even in Congress. “Once you become governor you literally are in the public eye, 24-7,” Wise said....The learning curve is even steeper for those who come from the private sector, . . . “Something that is not an issue in the private sector can be a big issue in the public sector,” said Wise, who now heads the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington, D.C.,-based advocacy group.

According to the Alliance for Excellent Education, the country’s adult population ages 25 to 64 will be 63 percent Anglo, 17 percent Hispanic, 13 percent African American, six percent Asian and close to one percent Native American. Translate that to the school classroom. Since 1973, the number of minority students in public schools increased from 22 to 43 percent and will continue to escalate. Schools throughout our country are now more diverse in some cases than the general population.

The drop-off in older students' reading skills reflects a lack of attention put on literacy toward the end of elementary school and after, experts say. But there's still work to be done after third grade, they say, considering that students need to move beyond mere word recognition to comprehension. "We're not talking about sounding the word out on the page, we're talking about thinking about what you're reading," said Jeremy Ayers, a policy and advocacy associate at the Alliance for Excellent Education. Even students who are reading on grade level by third grade may need help to advance their literacy as they continue on in school, he said. "Reading's like a muscle -- you have to exercise it, or you lose it."f

In a sign that education is moving to the forefront of the 110th Congress's agenda, Senate Finance Committee members spent Tuesday morning talking about student achievement, high school dropouts, teacher turnover and early childhood education. . . . "This is about the convergence of education and the economy, and clearly they are one in the same now," said former Gov. Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education.

Public high schools in all three Southern Maryland counties are in a better position than the average for school districts across the nation, data from the Maryland State Card show. Graduation rates, per-student spending and starting teacher pay are all higher in Calvert, Charles and St. Mary's counties than in Maryland as a whole, according to state averages provided on the State Card, released by the Alliance for Excellent Education. Beating the Maryland averages is a major success, said the group's president, Robert E. Wise Jr., because the state performs better than national averages in all three categories.

A new study estimates that Florida's high-school dropouts cost the state $24.7 billion in lost wages over their lifetimes. The Alliance for Excellent Education arrived at this figure by noting that the average annual income for a high-school dropout is $9,000 less than for a high-school grad. The alliance calls its calculation "conservative" because the wage gap is ultimately multiplied many times in terms of purchasing power and tax receipts. And there's an impact beyond the dollars.

It has long been known that high school graduates get better paying jobs than do dropouts. But now, an education advocacy group has put a price tag on it for the Maryland economy: $4.7 billion over the working lives of just one year's worth of Maryland dropouts. That is what the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington-based organization that promotes education, says the 2006 class of Maryland high school dropouts will forgo in lost wages over the course of the estimated 30 to 35 years of their working lifetimes.

A single page of data released by a D.C. think tank last month could be a crucial tool in Maryland legislators' discussions about educational funding priorities, its authors say. The Maryland State Card, a product of the nonpartisan Alliance for Excellent Education, aims to provide a snapshot of the state of public high schools through an analysis of data collection systems, graduation rates, per-student spending, reading test scores and teacher pay. Each state and the District received a report, which then was sent to the governor or mayor, members of state legislatures and federal officials.

...students who quit school in 2004, for instance, will likely cost Kentucky more than $4.8 billion over the course of their lives in lost wages, uncollected taxes and productivity. The estimates were made by the Alliance for Excellent Education.

According to the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington-based policy, research and advocacy organization, if high school dropouts from Arizona’s Class of 2006 had earned diplomas with their classmates, the state economy could have benefited from an additional $5.4 billion in wages over these students’ lifetimes.