Teachers of low-income students are twice as likely as teachers of upper-income students to say that their schools are "behind the curve" in utilizing digital tools in the classroom, indicating a concern among educators about the "digital divide" and its effects on students' academic development, according to a survey released last week ... Bob Wise, the president of the Washington-based Alliance for Excellent Education and a former governor of West Virginia, said teachers can develop effective methods of utilizing digital tools in education by combining technological expertise with traditional pedagogy.

In today's globalized workforce, finding a good job and realizing the American Dream requires some form of education after high school ... Repairing a Broken System: Fixing Federal Student Aid, a new report released by my organization, the Alliance for Excellent Education, offers four solutions for making the federal student aid system more coherent and effective at graduating students.

In building his tiny "Hole in the Wall," Sugata Mitra tears down major structures of traditional educational thinking while using his prize-winning TEDTalkto lay the foundation for major advancements in student-centered learning ... The most important conclusion from Mitra's work is not about the technology -- more about that shortly -- but in firmly establishing that poor children can learn and develop deeper learning competencies of creative thinking, problem solving, and self-reflection and learning -- just like their more affluent peers.

Proponents of better aligning high school improvement, postsecondary education, and the workforce have high hopes for President Barack Obama's recent proposal to create a Race to the Top-style competitive-grant program specifically for secondary education ... The new program could take the Obama administration—which has largely focused so far on distinctly K-12 improvement efforts, such as revamping teacher evaluation—into a relatively untouched corner of federal policy, said Phillip Lovell, the vice president for advocacy at the Alliance for Excellent Education.

With a national graduation rate of 78.2 percent, the United States is on track to meet a goal of achieving a 90 percent four-year high school graduation rate by 2020, according to the latest annual report from the Building a Grad Nation campaign ... Since 2001, that rate has risen by 6.5 percentage points, according to the report released this week by a coalition of national education groups, including Civic Enterprises, the Everyone Graduates Center, the America's Promise Alliance, and the Alliance for Excellent Education.

High schools across much of the nation have made significant improvements in graduation rates in the last decade, but progress remains uneven ... The findings are outlined in "Building a Grad Nation," compiled by Civic Enterprises, America's Promise Alliance, the Alliance for Excellent Education and the Everyone Graduates Center at John Hopkins University.

A 90 percent high school graduation rate by 2020 was a lofty goal set by the Grad Nation campaign in 2010 ... Since 2001, the national high school graduation rate has risen by 6.5 percentage points from 71.7 percent, growing an average of 1.25 percentage points between 2006 and 2010, according to the 2013 Building a Grad Nation report released today by Civic Enterprises, the Everyone Graduates Center, America's Promise Alliance, and the Alliance for Excellent Education.

The pace of Oklahoma high school graduates will have to improve significantly to meet the national goal of 90 percent rate by 2020, accouding to a new report out Monday ... To reach that goal, Oklahoma's graduation rate will need to increase 1.2 points per year starting in 2010, according to the report by Civic Enterprises, the Everyone Graduates Center, America's Promise Alliance, and the Alliance for Excellent Education.

The U.S. high school graduation rate of 78.2 percent climbed 6.5 percentage points between 2006 and 2010, according to the fourth annual Grad Nation report distributed at a Washington conference of more than 1,000 education activists that included Colin Powell, Laura Bush and CEOs of several major corporations ... Four groups backed the research: Civic Enterprises, Everyone Graduates Center, America's Promise Alliance, and the Alliance for Excellent Education.