Afternoon Announcements: Obama Announces High School Competition in SOTU; Alliance Issues Report on ESEA Waivers

The big news this morning is the high school competition President Obama announced during last night’s State of the Union address. The president said the competition will “redesign America’s high schools so they better equip graduates for the demands of a high-tech economy.” Obama didn’t offer many details, but Alliance President Bob Wise thinks the competition has “great potential.”

In a statement, Wise said, “If the nation is serious about the high school dropout crisis, more must be done to engage students and make learning relevant. The president’s proposal appears to do both.” Read the complete statement.

Education Week’s Politics K-12 blog has more details on the president’s other education proposals, including expanded access to preschool and tying federal college financial aid in part to student outcomes—something the Alliance advocated for in these two recent reports: Repairing a Broken System: Fixing Federal Student Aid and A System in Need of Repair: An Examination of Federal Student Aid for Postsecondary Education.

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Afternoon Announcements: June 29, 2012

Go ahead and give yourself a high five. You made it to Friday. The weekend is ahead of you, and if you’re in the DC area, that means sitting in front of a fan and trying desperately to find relief from this heat wave. Actually, looking at the weather map, there’s a lot of places across the country at the moment where you could be reading this in front of a fan. In any event, we have a bunch of pieces of news for you today to close your week out properly.

Five more states are free from key requirements of the No Child Left Act today because the Department of Education has granted waivers to Arkansas, Missouri, South Dakota, Utah, and Virginia. This brings the count of states that have been granted waivers up to 24. The Associated Press via Education Week has more on the implications of this story.

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Afternoon Announcements: June 28, 2012

Welcome to Thursday’s announcements. It’s a bit of a slow news day in terms of education policy today because of all of the national news surrounding Supreme Court decisions, Contempt of Congress hearings, and University President reinstatements. Here’s just a few bits of news for you today.

First, from Education Week, comes the news that Iowa, in the wake of its waiver request being rejected by the U.S. Department of Education, is requesting that it receive a one year freeze in NCLB state targets. This is new territory in the process because  Iowa was the first state to have its waiver application rejected. As NCLB targets continue to increase toward 100% proficiency demanded in 2014, more states who haven’t received waivers may have to request target freezes.

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Afternoon Announcements--October 28, 2011

Happy Friday, everyone. Here are today's top education headlines.

Writing for the Rio Grande Guardian, U.S. Representative Rubén Hinojosa acknowledges that Congress and the president must work to reduce the nation's deficit, but argues that the federal budget cannot be balanced "on the backs of our nation's most vulnerable populations: the poor, the sick, the elderly, and our nation's children and youth." Hinojosa, who is the top Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training, discusses the Graduation Promise Act, which he cosponsored, and says it would "lay a solid foundation for the nation's economic future" by reforming the nation's low-performing high schools. He cites research from the Alliance for Excellent Education finding that the dropouts from the Class of 2010 alone will cost the economy $337 billion in lost wages over their lifetimes.

The Huffington Post attempts to guess the fate of the bill that the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee passed last week to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as No Child Left Behind. It notes that critics of the bill, such as "data-driven education reform groups and civil rights groups," have said that Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) "watered down the bill so much in the name of bipartisanship that it would be better to go back to the drawing board and forgo the small window of opportunity this rewrite has of reaching the president's desk." It add that the bill would likely change "enormously" if it reaches the Senate floor. "In order to bring the bill through committee, Harkin cut a deal with Republican senators and teachers' unions that removed a provision mandating teacher evaluations in every school," the article reads. "The move lost the bill support from education-reform groups and earned the measure criticism from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan."

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Stats That Stick: October 26, 2011

Here are this week's Stats That Stick courtesy of our policy intern, Bill DeBaun:

Percentage of children under 8 with access to a mobile device like a smartphone, a video iPod, or an iPad or other tablet: 50%
This according to a study by Common Sense Media reported on by the New York Times. The study examines “screen time” in children since birth. While this does show the increasing prevalence of technology in our lives, the American Academy of Pediatrics warns that “screen time offers no benefits for children under 2.”

Number of students who enter high school in New York City and are ready for college after four years: 1 in 4
This statistic, again from the New York Times, shows that graduation rates, which were more than double college readiness rates in 299 of 363 schools studied, can sometimes be misleading when deciding whether a student is college and career readiness. Here’s a bonus statistic: Of the 25% of students ready for college after four years, less than half actually enroll in college.

Estimated number of education sector jobs lost since 2008: 294,000
The Associated Press (via the Huffington Post) brings us this sobering reminder of the toll the economy has had on education. Many districts have already implemented cost-saving strategies like requiring students to pay to participate in extracurricular activities, including athletics, but these solutions may not be enough in the face of budget shortfalls and cuts.

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