It was a muggy, 86-degree June day in Suwanee, Georgia. Patchy clouds threatened rain in the afternoon, and the guests filing into Peachtree Ridge High School were grateful for the air conditioning ... The governors and chiefs had been working on college and career-ready standards in their individual states and across states, while the Alliance for Excellent Education, the Hunt Institute, the Fordham Institute, and others had been advocating for national standards.

Perhaps there is no bigger civil rights issue of our time than education reform ... The Alliance for Excellent Education states Wisconsin is home to 13 (eight more teeter on the edge) of the nation’s almost 1,600 drop out factories, schools which the graduating class is comprised of less than 60 percent of the students who entered freshman year.

Technology has changed lives in a number of meaningful ways ... That’s why the Alliance for Excellent Education has announced Project 24, a national effort to connect school districts to the latest technology and tech support to help students learn.

Collaborations with industries and professionals are a core component of career technical education. Done well, they can be a winning experience for everyone ... Thanks to the Alliance for Excellent Education, the California Department of Education, Cesar Armendariz at USC, Joseph Cocozza at Bravo Medical Magnet High School, and Jeff Merker at Sheldon High School for their help in compiling the following tips.

Last week, Dropout Nation took aim at Pennsylvania and Wyoming state officials for their failure to immediately disclose their initial requests to participate in the Obama Administration's effort to eviscerate the No Child Left Behind Act and its accountability provisions ... Outfits such as the Alliance for Excellent Education that are focused on stemming dropouts and making sure that high schools provide comprehensive college preparatory curricula to all students won’t likely be too happy that graduation rates (along with school attendance and student participation in Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate course) will account for just another ten percent of a school’s overall rating.

One dropped out of high school to take care of his ailing mother. Another said he left to work so he could support his new baby ... An Alliance for Excellent Education report from November 2011 that relied on 2009 data noted that the average annual income for a high school graduate is $27,380, while a high school dropout earned $19,540 — a difference of $7,840.

Three months into our school district’s inaugural venture in online course delivery, the board of education used a live, remote connection on an oversized projection screen at its evening meeting to see and hear one of our first high school cyber students describe her virtual learning experiences ... In addition, Quakertown was one of three featured school districts on Digital Learning Day in 2013, sponsored by the Alliance for Excellent Education.

Chicago, Denver, Seoul, Shanghai, and the EdVisions charter network are very different from each other in many ways—size, diversity, poverty levels, institutional structures and political processes ... A webinar on April 3 sponsored by the Alliance for Excellent Education featuring Ben Levin and Linda Darling-Hammond, will delve even deeper into these questions of equity in school systems.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every child has the right to an education that develops their “personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential" ... ccording to the Alliance for Excellent Education (AEE) (2011), an estimated 1.3 million American high school students drop out every year; a disproportionate number of whom are youth of color.

AASA is pleased to support, be involved with, and to offer access to a unique Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) on Digital Learning Transition, designed to help educators navigate the shift to digital learning by turning them into Digital Learners ... Last week, the Alliance for Excellent Education and Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University opened enrollment for a first-of-its-kind Massive Online Open Course for Educators (MOOC-Ed).