How Oregon is Using Technology and Digital Learning to Reach Its Education Goals

Oregon’s leaders have set ambitious goals for 2025: Ensure that 40 percent of Oregonians earn a bachelor’s degree or higher; 40 percent earn an associate’s degree or postsecondary credential; and the remaining 20 percent earn a high school diploma or its equivalent.

At a recent event at Portland’s Multnomah County Library, I saw firsthand how Oregon’s educators were adopting new approaches to student learning—including greater use of technology—to meet those goals. They aren’t simply trading textbooks for netbooks; instead, they’re thinking deeply about how to integrate technology into their instruction to ensure student learning is more engaged, rigorous, and relevant.

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Ending the School-To-Prison Pipeline

On Wednesday, December 12, 2012 at 2:00 p.m., the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights will hold a hearing on “Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” a critical issue that the nation must address if it is to end the cycle of poverty and disenfranchisement that the education system itself is intended to disrupt.

The hearing, which will feature testimony from educators as well as representatives from the criminal justice system, is an opportunity to learn more about the negative policies and practices that continue to disproportionately impact students of color and ways to most effectively respond.

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Why Early Warning Indicator and Intervention Systems?

On June 20, the Alliance for Excellent Education, National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Forum to Extend Middle Grade Reforms, and Association for Middle Level Education,  co-convened a briefing on how early warning indicator systems—which identify students at high risk of dropping out as early as sixth grade—can help keep students on track for graduation and accelerate student progress.

Speakers at the briefing included a researcher, Dr. Bob Balfanz of the Johns Hopkins Everyone Graduates Center; a practitioner, Catherine Miller, a teacher in Bronx, NY; and a policymaker, Regan Fitzgerald, legislative assistant on education issues for U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. Alliance President Bob Wise moderated the event.

Two ideas discussed by Bob Balfanz particularly stuck in my mind: (1) How data can be used to reduce the strain on the entire education system; and (2) Reducing waste.

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Afternoon Announcements: June 7, 2012

Today's announcements focus on (1) the economic impact of one high school class in Florida; (2) end-of-course exams in Houston; (3) a new summer online learning program in Florida that costs the same as the old program, but provides access to 50,000 more students than the old model; (4) the pros and cons of "flipping" a classroom; and (5) lessons that the U.S. could learn from the best-performing nations on preparing teachers to teach in the twenty-first century. Enjoy!

Citing data from the Alliance for Excellent Education's economic model, the Gulf Breeze News writes that the 360 graduates from the Gulf Breeze High School Class of 2012 are expected to earn as much as $4.3 million more in an average year compared to their likely earnings had they not earned a high school diploma. The spending and investments made by these graduates, combined, will likely be enough to support as many as 30 new jobs in the state and increase the gross regional product by as much as $4.5 million by the time they reach their career midpoints.

The Houston Chronicle examines Texas’s new end-of-course exams and discovers that high school students can pass most of these exams by answering fewer than half of the questions correctly. In the article, Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott said the decision was made to phase in the standards, starting low and increasing them through 2016 because students need time to adjust to the much more difficult questions. Houston Independent School District Superintendent Terry Grier, who is also a prominent business leader, disagreed with the approach and said the lower bar would give students, teachers and the public a skewed picture of schools’ performance.

 

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Painting Postsecondary with a Broad Brush

Graduation season brings forth, as it does every year, the debate about whether college is worth it. On May 20, 60 Minutes featured Peter Thiel insisting that plumbers out-earn doctors. Yet here at the Alliance, we continue to cite research from Anthony Carnevale showing that by 2018, over 60 percent of jobs will require some postsecondary training and point to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that high school graduates with no postsecondary are three times more likely to be unemployed than their more educated peers.

So who’s right? This spring, I’ve talked to a wide range of recent high school graduates and college students considering what paths they wish to pursue. And I hear something a little alarming. “I want to be a writer.” “I want to be a photographer.” A friend of mine started out at Columbia University intending to be a special education teacher or speech therapist. She ended up changing her major to creative writing and wanted somehow to get into fashion. Now she’s underemployed, and in a somewhat unstable field (she’s had three jobs in three years) as a nanny in New York City.

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Meeting the Promise of Brown Versus Board of Education

It has been fifty-eight years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown versus Board of Education that the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place in the field of public education. Still, the promise of an equal education remains unmet for too many of the nation’s students of color and Native students--no matter which education statistic you choose to examine. Consider:

• Nationwide, about 78.4 percent of white students graduate on time, compared to 57 percent of African American students, 57.6 percent of Hispanic students, and 53.9 percent of Native American students, based on data from the 2011 Diplomas Count report.

• Among eighth-graders, Only 14 percent of African American students, 17 percent of Hispanic students, and 20 percent of American Indian students read at a proficient level, compared to 37 percent of white students, according to data from the 2011 Nation’s Report Card in reading. 

During a time when 60 percent of current jobs require some form of additional education after high school, the nation has a moral imperative to ensure that all students, no matter their racial or ethnic background, graduate from high school with a diploma that prepares them to succeed in college or a career. But the nation also has an economic imperative to do so. In fact, according to a 2011 Alliance report, meeting the promise of Brown by graduating more students of color from high school would lead to dramatic economic growth nationwide.

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Afternoon Announcements: May 16, 2012

As the days get warmer and spring starts creeping toward summer, high schools around the country are starting to prepare for Graduation Day.

Today, we get two separate profiles on high school graduates who faced long odds, but who will be receiving their high school diplomas. The first, from the Journal News (Hamilton, OH), focuses on J’aime Murray, who had lost the ability to move when doctors removed a tumor from her brain in 2008. She missed months of school after her surgery and has spent her summers since eighth grade catching up. The second, from the Middletown Journal (OH), spotlights Jennifer Frongia, who spent time in two high schools and several home school programs before finding the right fit for her at Middletown’s Success Academy, which features smaller classrooms.

Reminding us how every high school graduate benefits the community in which they live is KUT, the public radio affiliate in Austin, Texas. Citing data from the Alliance for Excellent Education, the article points out that cutting the high school dropout rate in half in the Austin metro area would translate into $38 million more annually in earnings, an extra $59 million on home purchases, and $2.4 million annually on vehicles.

As the summer months begin to draw near, Soapbox Cincinnati focuses on the "summer slide." No, that's not the great ride at your local water park, it's a time when "many disadvantaged and/or low-income students experience a deterioration of concepts and skills they’ve learned throughout the year," the article notes. It spotlights Cincinnati Public Schools' "Fifth Quarter" program, which combines reading, writing, and arithmetic in the morning with fun outings in the afternoon to places like King's Island, the self-proclaimed "largest amusement and waterpark in the midwest." King's Island doesn't have a summer slide, but it does have a Aruba Tuba.

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On the Daily Show, Duncan Talks Teachers, NCLB, Race to the Top

Last night, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for a wide-ranging interview that focused on everything from No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, common standards and the next generation of assessments to elevating the teaching profession and New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin, who, like Duncan, played basketball at Harvard University.

Duncan also spent a significant portion of the interview discussing the importance of a quality education to the nation's economy.

I think our biggest challenge is that we've become too complacent. We're sixteen in the world in college graduates. A generation ago we were first. It isn't that we've dropped. We've flat-lined and fifteen other countries have passed us by.

We have to educate our way to a better economy. There are 2 million jobs out there today in our country that we can't fill because we don't have the educated workforce to fill those jobs. And so we have to be willing to change the status quo.

We have a million young people dropping out of school every single year. There are no jobs-none-they're guaranteed poverty and social failure. We have to challenge the status quo. We have to take some risks and we have to do some things in a different way, but we have to have a high bar, we have to have high expectations.

 

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Morning Announcements: February 15, 2012

Happy Wednesday! Hopefully you were able to get in a morning workout to balance the abundance of chocolates and sweets consumed for Valentine’s Day. Or you’ve distracted yourself with an abundance of work to strategically forget yesterday even existed. There, now your diet is intact. Here are the last stories from the world of education.

President Obama, for his 2013 fiscal budget, has announced a proposed program would seek to bring together officials, union leaders and educators to address issues such as tenure and salaries. According to the New York Times, the $5 billion grant aims to overhaul teaching.

Startling news last week regarding the achievement gap between rich and low income students highlighted the large disparity in opportunities for educational advancement. But as the New York Times notes, many affluent foreign-born parents in New York City are sending their children to public schools in much greater proportion than native-born parents with the same incomes.

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Top Five Most Read Blogs Posts For 2011

In honor of the New Year, I wanted to take a quick look back at the five most read blog posts in 2011. In reverse order of popularity, here they are:

Honorable Mention #1: "Fighting off School Bullying": Although it wasn't one of our top five most read blog posts from 2011, I wanted to highlight this post by Martens Roc, a policy and advocacy assistant at the Alliance for Excellent Education, for the very thoughtful conversation it spurred in the comments section.

Honorable Mention #2: "Unemployment Rate For High School Dropouts Soars in Latest Government Jobs Report": This blog post highlights the September 2010 jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor finding that the unemployment rate among high school dropouts increased by 10 percent while the rate for college graduates declined. I excluded this post from the official top five of 2011 because it's from 2010. That said, the popularity of this blog post tells me that I should do another post about the job situation. In a happy coincidence, the December 2011 jobs report comes out tomorrow. Look for an update then.

Honorable Mention #3: "Determining Where the U.S. Ranks in Education": Another blog post that was excluded because it was posted in late 2010. This one focuses on Newsweek's first attempt at ranking the United States' education system. Specifically, it sought to answer this question, ""If you were born today, which country would provide you the very best opportunity to live a healthy, safe, reasonably prosperous, and upwardly mobile life."

Without further adieu, here's the official top five for 2011:

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