Morning Announcements: March 28, 2012

Wednesday is here and as usual we provide you with a mid-week boost with some riveting educational news. Enjoy!

American University Radio sheds light on the impact dropping out of high school causes for many youth as they struggle economically. The Alliance has already offered data on the disparities between high school graduates and dropout in terms of lifetime income and salaries. American University introduces to you to students who are attempting to get the lives back on track through dropout recovery schools.

American University Radio also delves into the connection, and sometimes disconnect, between school and home. Reporters travel with a truancy counselor in the Washington D.C metropolitan area as he reaches out to parents and their children at the homes to instill the importance for attending school.

Read Entire Post

Morning Announcements: February 27, 2012

Greetings! We hope you enjoyed your weekend and are ready to get back into the trenches advocating for quality education for all. To help you get started, take a look at some of the latest headlines.

In New York City, the United Federation of Teachers is seeking to politically capitalize on a recent legal setback after the rankings of more than 18,000 teachers were made available to the public. As the New York Times reports, the hotly contested move is actually helping to galvanize members and mobilize allies on the left.

The Baltimore Sun is reporting that the state of Maryland is set to join the growing number of states seeking exemption from certain elements of the No Child Left Behind act through waivers. The application claims schools should cut achievement gaps in half in the next six years.

Read Entire Post

State of the Union Bingo 2012: Download Your Bingo Card and Watch the State of the Union Address on January 24

On Tuesday, January 24, at 9:00 p.m. EST, President Barack Obama will give the 2012 State of the Union address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

The State of the Union address allows the president to report on the condition of the nation, but also gives him a national stage on which to outline his legislative agenda for the coming year.

Will President Obama's legislative agenda in 2012 include education reform? The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), is ten years old and is long overdue for a revamp. Both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives are considering legislation to rewrite NCLB, but few people expect a final bill to reach the president's desk in 2012.

Will the president use the State of the Union address to urge Congress to speed up its work on revamping NCLB? Or will he stick to more general themes linking education to better outcomes for individuals and the nation? Will he even mention education at all? (We're betting that he will.)

To help you keep track of these and other issues, the Alliance for Excellent Education has brought back its popular State of the Union Bingo cards.

Click "Read entire post" below to access the Bingo cards.

Read Entire Post

Afternoon Announcements: January 11, 2012

It’s the middle of the week so you can wave goodbye to Monday and Tuesday  and finish up Wednesday strong and in the know with the latest in education news.

Teacher Beat reports that the U.S. Department of Education has selected the panelists who will write new regulations for the reporting requirements for teacher preparation programs. The is a step in the education reform process that will readdress teacher preparation and evaluations.

Earlier the Alliance mentioned the tension brewing between teacher unions and school districts that may put schools in jeopardy of losing federal funding. According to the New York Times, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a blistering statement, saying "the forces that protect this bureaucracy have stymied reform at every turn." The governor urged both sides to come to an agreement.

Read Entire Post

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:

Read Entire Post

"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.

Read Entire Post

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.

Read Entire Post

Afternoon Announcements: November 14, 2011

According to Education Week, U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers want performance targets for different subgroups of students in ESEA bill.

When it comes to education, reports the Washington Post, “the republican field of presidential candidates has a unified stance: Get the federal government out of schools.”

The Huffington Post writes that minority students will likely outnumber white students in the next decade or two, but the failure of the national teacher demographic to keep up with that trend is hurting minority students.

In a MetroWest Daily story, experts say social media isn't hurting today's teens.

The Wall Street Journal writes about those who are for cyberschooling and those who have other opinions on it.

The Bangor Daily News reports that businesses in Maine have jobs to offer, but job applicants don’t have the skills.

Teachers facing low salaries opt to moonlight, reports the Associated Press.

Read Entire Post

Morning Announcements: November 11, 2011

This morning's announcements come to you courtesy of Alliance Policy Intern Bill DeBaun:

Good morning and happy Veterans Day, everyone. Before I get into the announcements, we here at the Alliance for Excellent Education want to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of our veterans and men and women in uniform. We remember your personal sacrifices on behalf of the United States of America and her citizens and are grateful for the freedoms and opportunities those sacrifices have earned for all of us.

It’s a relatively light day in the world of education news, but let’s get down to it.

And Montana makes 47. The Billings Gazette reports that Montana has adopted the common core state standards. With Montana now on board, a total of 46 states and the District of Columbia have adopted a common set of educational standards for K–12 English language arts and mathematics that are designed to ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to succeed in college and a career.

Alabama’s State Board of Education has decided to keep the state involved in the Common Core Standards Initiative. The Montgomery Advertiser describes the 6–3 vote in support of the national set of math and English standards for students.

Read Entire Post

Will Congress Finish Its Work on NCLB Rewrite?

In the video to the right, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia examines whether Congress will be able to finish its work on a rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

Wise notes that the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee has passed the bill, but it still must go to the Senate floor and be conferenced with legislation from the House of Representatives before it can go to the president for his signature. He notes that some observers believe that the president's plan to grant states some flexibility from certain NCLB requirements may speed up congressional action.

"That's the real issue for this Congress. Does it want to delay further acting on ESEA but in so doing permit states to head off on their own and the executive branch to be the largely determining what education reform and education policy look like," Wise says.

The odds that Congress finishes its work might be long, but, as Wise points out, so were the odds that the East Coast would have its first major snowstorm before Halloween.

Read Entire Post