Each year, more than a million kids will leave school without earning a high school diploma -- that's approximately 7,000 students every day of the academic year ... And nationally, the economic impact is clear: A 2011 analysis by the Alliance for Excellent Education estimates that by halving the 2010 national dropout rate, for example (an estimated 1.3 million students that year), "new" graduates would likely earn a collective $7.6 billion more in an average year than they would without a high school diploma.

Every teacher can probably describe a boring or downright ineffective professional-development experience they’ve had ... Great leaders focus on developing people’s capacities rather than their limitations (Leithwood, Seashore Louis, Anderson, and Wahlstrom, 2004; Alliance for Excellent Education, 2011).

A new, free online course is aimed at giving thousands of district administrators around the country help in using technology to meet their schools' needs ... The project,w hich is being dubbed a "MOOC-Ed," or a massively open online course for educators, is the work of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington-based advocacy organization that has been heavily involved in promoting digital education, and the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, at North Carolina State University's College of Education.

Gov. Steve Beshear has signed Senate Bill 97, legislation that will allow individual school districts in Kentucky to voluntarily raise the dropout age to 18. Under the bill, once 55 percent of the districts have raised the age limit the law becomes mandatory statewide with four years ... Dropouts from the class of 2008, for example, will cost Kentucky almost $4.2 billion in lost wages over their lifetimes, according to the estimations of the Alliance for Excellent Education.

The first results of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s effort to redesign the federal financial aid system are in: 15 white papers totaling 587 pages, nearly all calling for an overhaul of at least part of the nation’s system for helping students pay for college in order to improve graduation rates ... The Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy group, calls for limiting eligibility for the Pell Grant to students enrolled at least half-time.

In a potential replay of last year’s stand-off, more than 7 million college students could again be threatened with a doubling of the interest rate on their school loans July 1 if Congress fails to act ... “The nation needs a comprehensive plan that involves access, completion and affordability for these and other students,” Charmaine Mercer, vice president of policy for the Alliance for Excellent Education, told the committee that the entire system of federal student loans should be examined.

One year ago, the Montgomery County Council welcomed local high-tech leaders for a discussion about how the county could attract more “new economy” businesses ... This was driven home recently in a study by the Alliance for Excellent Education, which showed that the annual average salary for a college graduate ($52,000) is more than 2½ times higher than it is for a high school dropout ($19,000).

According to a study from the Alliance for Excellent Education, close to 7000 students are dropping out of school each day, with a predicted 12 million more students dropping out in the next decade.

Growing enrollments and declining state budgets have been putting the squeeze on colleges and universities for the past 25 years, but the problem got a lot worse last year, says a new report from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association ... Narrowing the gap in educational performance between privileged and disadvantaged students is another area in which smart use of technology can help, said Bob Wise, former governor of Virginia and president of the Alliance for Excellent Education.

The future of America's children is at stake because politicians in Washington seem more concerned with staking out political positions and refusing to compromise ... "This is an ambitious and reachable goal ... and changing demographics have changed the game," said Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education.