Afternoon Announcements: November 3, 2011

A story in today’s Press-Enterprise (CA) talks about the importance of graduating all kids from high school prepared for college and a career. According to the article, experts acknowledge that improving the educational accomplishments of the region’s students won’t be easy and that it will take at least several years to implement changes and a generation to realize their benefits. Alliance President Bob Wise was quoted saying, “money doesn’t necessarily have to be an issue. We need to think, ‘What’s the end product we want?’ look at dollars available and direct them that way, instead of, ‘This is the way we’ve been educating for the last 50 or 100 years.’” he said. “We need to look at students the way Congress looked at banks and investment houses and invested in TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program, the government’s 2008 effort to address the subprime mortgage crisis). This is a hard-nosed economic return on investment.”

According to an editorial in the Oregonian, the ferment in Oregon public education right now is not that our schools are crowded and underfunded; it's that they're going online in a big way.

The Hill reports that a Senate republican leader is pushing back against claims that he and Sen. Tom Harkin have a secret plan to pass the Iowa Democrat’s education reform bill.

D.C. educators rated ‘effective’ can still lose jobs, according to an article in the Washington Post. Read Entire Post

Afternoon Announcements: October 25, 2011

The Huffington Post recaps last Monday night’s Republican primary debate: “There were 15 questions (and answers) on tax reform, 2 on energy and jobs, one heated back-and-forth on health care, 12 questions and responses on immigration, 5 on the home-mortgage crisis, 3 on the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, 4 on religion and values, 4 on the budget deficit, one on terrorism, 4 on foreign policy and a final question on who is the best candidate in general to win the race. How many questions and responses were there on the public education crisis and education reform? Zero.”

The New York Times reports on new A-through-F high school report card that finds only one in four students who enter high school in New York City are ready for college after four years, and less than half enroll.

Education Week reports that in less than three weeks, states will begin turning in their applications for waivers under No Child Left Behind, and then it will be up to a cadre of peer reviewers to help Education Secretary Arne Duncan decide who gets a waiver, and who doesn’t.

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Afternoon Announcements: October 17, 2011

A recent Charlotte Observer article agrees with the Alliance that the best economic stimulus is making sure students graduate: “According to the Alliance for Excellent Education, an estimated 11,200 students dropped out of Charlotte, Gastonia, and Concord area schools last year. This group of students is eight times as likely to wind up incarcerated, three times as likely to raise a child as a single parent, twice as likely to be unemployed and 50 percent less likely to vote. If just half of the students who dropped out had graduated, they would have collectively earned as much as $63 million more in an average year. If those 5,600 students had graduated, they would have contributed $6.5 million per year in additional tax revenue. If they had crossed the graduation stage, they would have likely spent more than $150 million more on home and vehicle purchases than they would spend without a diploma.”

"These days everyone is for education reform. The question is which approach is best. I favor the Steve Jobs model. … Just as the iPod compelled the music industry to accommodate its customers, we can use technology to force the education system to meet the needs of the individual student." Read an adaptation of Wall Street Journal Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch’s remarks during an education summit in San Francisco last week.

As public schools in Chicago have shifted their focus to online learning, the benefits have been blunted by the fact that home access to the internet costs too much for some students, leading districts to look for different approaches to bring internet access to the city’s poorest families. (New York Times)

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Afternoon Announcements: October 14, 2011

Happy Friday! Here are today's top education headlines courtesy of the Alliance's Policy Intern, Bill DeBaun.

Education Week covers the Alliance's recent announcement about Digital Learning Day, which will be held on February 1, 2012. It highlights the appearance that Alliance President Bob Wise made with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush on Piers Morgan Tonight.

"We're encouraging teachers and educators across the nation to either showcase what they're already doing in digital learning, online learning, software application, whatever it is that's working," Wise said of the day, "as well as those schools and teachers and educators that aren't using digital learning, [asking] what can you do that day to promote it."

The article notes that Bush and Wise have been quite effective in gaining publicity for their message, with last night's appearance on CNN the latest in a string of television, print, and online media appearances. Watch video of the Digital Learning Day announcement courtesy of CNN. Learn more about Digital Learning Day at www.DigitalLearningDay.org.

The Associated Press reports that a majority of states will seek waivers that will get them out of some of No Child Left Behind's requirements. 37 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia have indicated that they will submit the plans necessary to obtain a waiver to the Department of Education. 17 of these states will submit their plans by November 14, which would expedite the Department of Education's review and make waivers for these states possible by early 2012. States that did not file by the October 12 deadline may still do so at a later date.

For the rest of today's afternoon announcements, click the link below.

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Stats That Stick: October 12, 2011

Numbers of pages in new No Child Left Behind Act bill: 865
Senior Senate Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa released a draft of a sprawling revision of the No Child Left Behind education law on Tuesday that would dismantle the provisions of the law that used standardized test scores in reading and math to label tens of thousands of public schools as failing. The 865-page bill, filed by Senator Harkin, who heads the Senate education committee, became the first comprehensive piece of legislation overhauling the law to reach either Congressional chamber since President George W. Bush signed it in 2002. Mr. Harkin made his draft bill public 18 days after President Obama announced that he would use executive authority to waive the most onerous provisions of the law, because he had all but given up hope that Congress could fix the law’s flaws any time soon. Read Entire Post

VIDEO: Deeper Learning at City Arts and Technology High School in San Francisco

The world has become a complicated place. We hear this refrain in almost every aspect of American life. For U.S. students, it is heard loud and clear in the hallways and classrooms of the American high school. Preparing students for college and career has never been more important or more challenging. But even if we can get the public to understand and accept why college and career readiness is so important, what is the answer to “how?” In this era of ever-tightening state budgets, how can schools and districts possibly educate all students to a higher level of rigor and readiness? Read Entire Post

Gov. Bob Wise Named to NonProfit Times’ Top 50 Most Influential Executives

On September 15, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, was named one of the NonProfit Times’ “Power & Influence Top 50,” which honors the fifty most influential executives in the sector for the previous twelve months. Other individuals honored include Bill Gates, cofounder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Helene D. Gayle, president and chief executive officer of CARE USA; and A. Barry Rand, chief executive officer of AARP.

“I’m extremely honored to be named to the NonProfit Times’ ‘Power & Influence Top 50,’ but credit for this award goes to the extremely dedicated and hard-working staff at the Alliance for Excellent Education, as well as to the teachers and educators who are on the front line educating our students,” Wise said.

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September 6 Issue of Straight A's Is Available

The September 6, 2011 issue of Straight A's, the Alliance's biweekly newsletter, is now available. This week's issue focuses on the Alliance's new Center For Secondary School Digital Learning and Policy, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's testimony before a senate appropriations subcommittee, two new Alliance reports on deeper learning and digital learning, and more.

Individual articles from this week's issue are listed below, or you can download a .pdf of the entire newsletter here.

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Morning Announcements: September 2, 2011

The Chicago Tribune reports on its analysis of data made available to the public for the first time which show graduates of Illinois’ public high schools are struggling in college. The data show these students struggle to get a B average as freshmen at the state’s universities and community colleges, even after leaving top-performing high schools with good grades. In fact, public school graduates at 10 of the state’s 11 four-year universities averaged less than a 3.0 GPA their freshman year.

According to the Huffington Post, New Jersey is set to launch new teacher evaluation today that will evaluate teachers at 10 schools by equally weighing a student's academic and classroom performance. In a guest column published in the Star-Ledger Thursday, New Jersey acting Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf writes that it is time to come up with a better evaluation system to replace the confusing one that exist now.

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Report Round-Up: August 26, 2011

Here is a round-up of this week’s education-related reports!

 

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