Afternoon announcements: Don't confuse the TNTP report with TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)

A new report from The New Teacher Project (TNTP) analyzes DC’s teacher retention. It finds the best teachers stay at nearly twice the rate of the District’s lowest performers. The report raises a few questions. Washington Post

Marion Brandy gives his take on education reform in an editorial. You might find his side a little different than many education reformers’ positions. Washington Post

20 schools are set to close in DC, Chancellor Kaya Henderson said on Tuesday. The goal is to move resources towards other schools to boost academic programs. Washington Post

Have you ever audited a free online course from a university? Many universities, including elite schools, now offer these types of courses. Up until now, students of those courses took them for personal enrichment. But that could change. The American Council on Education is reviewing multiple of these online courses and may recommend that colleges grant credit for them. The Chronicle of Higher Education

Despite charter schools being a hot-button topic among educators, policymakers, parents and students, enrollment in them continues to rise. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools reports that enrollment in charter schools has increased almost 13 percent between 2010-11 and 2011-2012. New York Times

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Stats That Stick: June 6, 2012

It’s Wednesday, which means that in addition to being halfway through this week, it’s also time for your weekly dose of Stats That Stick! These are some statistics from the past week that caught our eyes. This week’s sticky statistics are brought to you by Alliance Policy Intern Shlon Smith.

Number of recent students who graduated from high school and are not enrolled full-time or working: 3 out 4.

Some recent high school graduates are not able to keep up with the rigorous college coursework and as a result end up taking time off from school. According to a study conducted by Carl Van Horn, Cliff Zukin and Mark Szeltner of Rutgers University's John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, 3 out of 4 recent high school graduates are not enrolled full-time at a college and are not working.

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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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Report Round-Up

Education and the Economy: Boosting the Nation’s Economy by Improving High School Graduation Rates Among Students of Color and Native Students from the Alliance for Excellent Education. This report demonstrate the economic benefits that the nation as a whole would likely see by improving the high school graduation rates of students of color and Native students.

The rise of K-12 blended learning: Profiles of emerging models from the Innosight Institute. This white paper seeks to provide a working definition of blended learning, along with a framework for mapping and defining blended-learning models.

2010 Distance Education Survey Results – Trends in eLearning: Tracking the Impact of eLearning at Community Colleges from the Instructional Technology Council. This survey finds that community colleges reported a 9% increase in their distance education enrollments from 2009 to 2010. The increase was found to be higher than the 8% increase in overall student enrollment at two-year institutions.

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Report Round-Up

Principals' Approaches to Developing Teacher Quality: Constraints and Opportunities in Hiring, Assigning, Evaluating, and Developing Teachers by Center for American Progress. This report finds that principals play a key role in improving teacher quality, and policymakers need to address four critical areas in helping principals boost that quality.

Research Update 5: STEM Out-of-School Time Programs for Girls from the Harvard Family Research Project at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. According to this study, out-of-school time programs that focus on getting girls interested in science, technology, engineering and math may play an important role in bolstering the number of women in traditionally male-dominated fields.

Arts education in America: What the declines mean for arts participation from the National Endowment for the Arts. This report finds that fewer American children are getting access to arts education, whether at school or elsewhere, and the decline is particularly severe for minority students.

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Women are gaining ground educationally but men still make more money

The Wall Street Journal covers a report from the White House finding that while women are gaining ground educationally and economically, men still make more money on average and women are more likely to live in poverty. Read the full story here and check out these graphs illustrating the gender gap in the areas of lifestyle, education and employment.

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Morning Announcements: November 10, 2010

The New York Times reports on Joel Klein’s resignation as school chancellor of the New York City school system and the appointment of Cathleen Black to be his successor.

Education Week releases a special report examining teacher professional development.

The Wall Street Journal covers a new report from the Brookings Institute that finds workers with less than a high school diploma were more likely to keep their jobs during the recession if they lived in a handful of metro areas with the highest concentrations of employees with college degrees.

Inside Higher Ed examines data analytics, the method of warehousing, organizing and interpreting data accrued through student information systems in hopes of learning more about what makes students successful, then giving instructors the chance to nudge those students accordingly.

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