Afternoon Announcements: June 19, 2012

Good afternoon and welcome to your Tuesday edition of the announcements. There’s a lot of news from a variety of sources today, so buckle in and get ready!

Education Week kicks us off today, as they so often do, with the news that the Senate appropriations committee recently passed a bill that would allow states and schools to use federal funds intended for after-school and summer learning programs to be used to lengthen the school day. The House of Representatives has not taken up the proposal yet. Up to $1.15 billion from the 21^st Century Community Learning Centers program would be available for schools to use toward school day lengthening.

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Afternoon Announcements: June 6, 2012

 

Today is the busiest news day of the week so far. Lots of talk about college costs and high school grads with various successes and failures. Without further ado, here we go!

The Huffington Post reports on high school graduates who didn’t attend college not having full-time jobs. A study out of Rutgers found that 75% of students like Elizabeth Pedigo of Toledo, Ohio who haven’t completed a postsecondary program but do have a high school degree aren’t employed full-time.

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Afternoon Announcements: May 30, 2012

Welcome to your Wednesday addition of Afternoon Announcements! We hope you’ve recovered by now from this weekend’s festivities because there’s a lot to share today.

The big news in national education is that eight more states have received No Child Left Behind waivers. According to the Associated Press and New York Times, Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island have had their waiver requests granted. 19 states have now been granted waivers, and 26 other states and the District of Columbia still have waiver requests pending.

United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stopped into the Brennan/Rogers School in West Rock (New Haven), Connecticut to solicit some advice from the school’s teachers. The New Haven Independent covers (with pictures!) Duncan’s visit, where the topic of the conversation was how to motivate teachers to teach in low-performing schools.

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Claire Jellinek: Digital Technology Powers Learning

In a guest post for Homeroom, the U.S. Department of Education's official blog, Claire Jellinek, captures the excitement of Digital Learning Day which took place on February 1, 2012. Ms. Jellinek is a 9th-12th grade social studies teacher at South Valley Academy in Albuquerque, New Mexico and a 2011-2012 Washington Teaching Ambassador Fellow.

At the Digital Learning Day National Town Hall, pictured at left, Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, joined a distinguished list of guests including Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski to discuss the benefit and obstacles of integrating digital technology into the classroom and utilizing tech devices to expand learning opportunities. Two million students, 18,000 teachers, 36 states along with the District of Columbia, 26 national organizations, 24 companies, and 16 state governors came together to celebrate the first ever National Digital Learning Day.

 

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Afternoon Announcements: January 19, 2012

Thursdays are such a tease. You're so close to the weekend yet feel so unbearably far. As you count down the ticks on the clock, enjoy the latest in education news.

California Governor Jerry Brown wants to reduce the number of standardized tests students take. The Washington Post reports that the Governor aims to give more authority to local school boards by designing a system to measure education performance that is less test-centric than the one now in use.

The Washington Post continues its focus on standardized testing as it breaks news that the federal government has become more attentive to stories of repeated cheating scandals on standardized tests in school districts across the country. Their growing concern is what is prompting the Department of Education to gather information on how to prevent, detect and respond to irregularities on completed tests.

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Afternoon Annoucements: December 2, 2011

Happy Friday!  If you haven’t headed to happy hour already, kick back and enjoy as we ease you into the weekend with today’s education news.

The editorial board at the Washington Post applauds Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s call to tackle the spiraling cost of college education by actually addressing the cost side of the equation as opposed to government solely focusing efforts on increasing federal aid and reducing interest costs on loans. Although acknowledging Secretary Duncan’s initiatives will not be a complete resolution to the enormous problem, the Washington Post calls it a “welcome dose of straight talk.”

 

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"Storm" Looming Over Washington, DC Could Impact Nation's Schoolchildren

In the video to the left, Alliance President Bob Wise explains how competing "storms" around education reform in Washington, DC, could impact the educational futures of the nation's schoolchildren.

In this "weather report," Gov. Wise discusses two looming "storm" systems. The first, led by President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, is focused on providing waivers and greater flexibility to states from key requirements in the No Child Left Behind Act. The other, underway in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, is about rewriting No Child Left Behind, but will require Democrats and Republicans working together on a compromise.

In the coming weeks, Gov. Wise will report on whether the Senate and House of Representatives can come together on a bill that could be sent to the White House and outflank the waiver option. "If no agreement is made, then the waiver option could overwhelm the Congress, pushing them out of the picture completely and controlling the education atmosphere in Washington, DC until after the next presidential election," Wise says.

Learn more in the Alliance's federal policy news section.

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Afternoon Announcements--November 30, 2011

Here are today's top education headlines, brought to you by Alliance Policy Intern Bill DeBaun.

Good afternoon and welcome to your Wednesday edition of afternoon announcements! While you're more than halfway to the weekend, you're 100% of the way to arriving at today's education news!

A town hall featuring U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and other local and state education leaders agreed that education is the key to fixing the nation's economy, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Secretary Duncan noted, "Jobs are going to go to where the knowledge workers are." Nevada, which faces a poor economy and an education system held in low esteem by many surveys, can improve quickly despite these hurdles, according to the Secretary. For a more national angle on this story, check out the Associated Press's take, via the Las Vegas Sun.

US News and World Report tackles dropout factories, an issue that the Alliance has been raising awareness of for years. The article's discussion notes that while the number of dropout factories nationally has decreased in the last decade, tens of thousands of students are still failing to graduate from these schools. The article identifies a number of areas where many dropout factories struggle, including having "a hamstrung principal," "high suspension rates," "overwhelmed students," and a "lack of technical training." For more information on the dropout crisis, check out some of the Alliance's reports and publications on the topic.

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Afternoon Announcements: November 21, 2011

Starting in 2014, the General Education Development (GED) test will make changes with the goal of encouraging adults to continue studying for an associate's or bachelor's degree, reports U.S. News & World Report, which states that the test's five subject areas—writing, social studies, science, reading, and math—will be revised to more closely reflect the set of English and math common core state standards and topics that students are expected to learn. According to the article, New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman is quoted in the article saying, "If you do not have a high school degree that allows you to get through college without significant remediation, there is literally nothing for you." The article also cites this finding from an Alliance report: If half of the Class of 2010's 1.3 million high school dropouts had graduated, America would have gained nearly $7.3 billion in annual potential earnings.

While more students from all backgrounds are finishing college, the difference in graduation rates between the top and bottom income groups has widened by nearly 50 percent over two decades, reports CNN.

The Washington Post writes that failure of the congressional supercommittee tasked with reducing the federal deficit by at least $1.2 trillion could lead to across-the-board budget cuts, which would have a serious impact on already-distressed public education funding.

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Afternoon Announcements--October 28, 2011

Happy Friday, everyone. Here are today's top education headlines.

Writing for the Rio Grande Guardian, U.S. Representative Rubén Hinojosa acknowledges that Congress and the president must work to reduce the nation's deficit, but argues that the federal budget cannot be balanced "on the backs of our nation's most vulnerable populations: the poor, the sick, the elderly, and our nation's children and youth." Hinojosa, who is the top Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training, discusses the Graduation Promise Act, which he cosponsored, and says it would "lay a solid foundation for the nation's economic future" by reforming the nation's low-performing high schools. He cites research from the Alliance for Excellent Education finding that the dropouts from the Class of 2010 alone will cost the economy $337 billion in lost wages over their lifetimes.

The Huffington Post attempts to guess the fate of the bill that the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee passed last week to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as No Child Left Behind. It notes that critics of the bill, such as "data-driven education reform groups and civil rights groups," have said that Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) "watered down the bill so much in the name of bipartisanship that it would be better to go back to the drawing board and forgo the small window of opportunity this rewrite has of reaching the president's desk." It add that the bill would likely change "enormously" if it reaches the Senate floor. "In order to bring the bill through committee, Harkin cut a deal with Republican senators and teachers' unions that removed a provision mandating teacher evaluations in every school," the article reads. "The move lost the bill support from education-reform groups and earned the measure criticism from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan."

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