Report Round-Up

Happy Friday, everyone. Here's this week's Report Round-Up. If there's a report we missed, feel free to add it in the comments section.

This week's reports are below...

Report Round-Up: October 1, 2010

Here is this week's report round-up. Don't forget to let us know if we are forgetting anything!

College Graduation Rates: Behind the Numbers from the American Council on Education. This report provides a layperson’s guide to the most common databases used to calculate college graduation rates, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of each. In addition, the report suggests several factors for policymakers to consider before using graduation rates from existing databases to assess institutional success.

The Rural Solution: How Community Schools Can Reinvigorate Rural Education from the Center for American Progress. This report calls for Congress to provide incentives for school districts educating 10 million children in rural areas to use full-service community schools as a turnaround strategy.

No Time to Waste: Policy Recommendations for Improving College Completion by the Southern Regional Education Board. This report urges states to place a major focus on increasing the numbers of students who complete college degrees and career certificates — toward the goal of having 60 percent of working-age adults earning some type of high-quality credential by the year 2025.

Stats That Stick

In the first year of DC public school’s IMPACT system, an effectiveness assessment system for school-based personnel, 662 teachers, or 16 percent of the District's teaching force, were rated highly effective. –The Washington Post 

Ninety seven percent of American schools and nearly all public libraries have Internet access, but nearly 80 percent of E-Rate recipients have reported they need faster connections, because several still have dial-up. -Federal Communications Commission

The Rural Trust studied graduation rates in 616 of the nation’s poorest rural districts and found that the graduation rate of just over 60 percent in those districts was nearly 10 percentage points lower than the rate for other rural districts (70 percent), and nearly seven points below the rate for nonrural districts (67 percent). These 616 high-poverty spend $7,731 per pupil compared to $8,134 for all other rural districts and $9,611 for nonrural districts nationally. -Center for American Progress

More students with disabilities have pursued postsecondary education. Forty-six percent of students with disabilities in 2005 were reported ever to have enrolled in a postsecondary school, compared with 26 percent in
1990. -Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences

Friday Report Round-Up

Here is this week's report round-up:

• School Districts’ Perspectives on the Economic Stimulus Package: School Improvement Grants Present Uncertainty and Opportunity by the Center on Education Policy. This report highlights the extent to which school districts have experience with implementing the four federally-mandated school reform models intended to improve the nation’s lowest performing 5% of schools.
• Problems with the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers by the Economic Policy Institute. This briefing paper finds that although standardized test scores of students are one piece of information for school leaders to use to make judgments about teacher effectiveness, such scores should be only a part of an overall comprehensive evaluation.
• America’s Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform: Attracting Entrepreneurs and Change Agents from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. This study finds that New Orleans, Washington, D.C. and New York are among the top cities that have cultivated a healthy environment for school reform to flourish.
• Stuck in the Middle by Education Next. According to this study of New York City students, kids who move from elementary school to middle school experience a bigger dip in math and language arts achievement than their K-8 counterparts do, and they tend to be absent more often.
• Next Generation Charter Schools: Meeting the Needs of Latino and English Language Learners from the Center for American Progress and the National Council of La Raza. According to this report, successful charter school practices for serving Latino and ELL students can serve as object lessons for school districts to improve academic achievement.
• Back to School Statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics. This fact sheet provides a quick snapshot of 2010 back to school statistics such as public school enrollment numbers, expenditures, employment figures, etc.
• State Tax Revenues Are Slowly Rebounding from The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the University at Albany. According to this report, state tax revenues across the country are starting to rebound, with April-June of this year bringing a second consecutive quarter of growth.
• College Admission Tests as Measures of High School Accountability from the Indiana University Center for Evaluation and Education Policy. This study cautions that the growing trend of using college admission and placement exams in measuring high school student achievement may in some cases produce misleading and inappropriate results.
  
  
  

Morning Announcements: July 30, 2010

Iowa and Tennessee vote to adopt common standards and North Dakota moves forward in making their decision.

In a speech to the National Urban League, President Obama defended the $4.35 billion Race to the Top program, Education Week reports.

According to a new report from the Center for American Progress, too many teachers are failing at their jobs and teacher preparation programs are not being held accountable for adequate teacher training.