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.

Is the concern over the crisis in American education overblown?

In the September 27, 2010 issue of The New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann, the dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism, suggests that the rhetoric surrounding school reform overstates the problem. Taking the long view, Lemann notes that American education is a remarkable success story. He writes:

One hundred years ago, eight and a half percent of American seventeen-year-olds had a high school degree, and two percent of twenty-three-year-olds had a college degree. Now, on any given weekday morning, you will find something like fifty million Americans, about a sixth of the population, sitting under the roof of a public school building, and twenty million more are students or on the faculty or the staff of an institution of higher learning. Education is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution; the creation of the world’s first system of universal public education—from kindergarten through high school—and of mass higher education is one of the great achievements of American democracy.

Lemann is certainly right that the American education system is a remarkable accomplishment and that educational attainment has advanced considerably in the last century. But he fails to note that this success story stalled about thirty years ago. Today, about 30 percent of high school students fail to graduate on time, and the college graduation rate, once the highest in the world, has been overtaken by many other nations. Currently, the U.S. is tenth in the industrialized world in the percentage of 25-to 34-year-olds with college degrees, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Morning Announcements: September 23, 2010

The New Times in Connecticut takes a look at the Latino Scholarship Fund which provides role models of successful Latinos and financial and emotional support to those who want to pursue an education beyond high school.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, school funds don't match teacher layoffs and districts that didn't take hits are looking for ways to spend federal job money.

California’s $34 million student database system is a year behind schedule, the Sacramento Bee reports. “Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has threatened to pull the plug if the new system can't reliably relay data by the end of the year. The failed California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System is cited as a key reason why the state has twice failed to qualify for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Race to the Top funds.”

The Black Voice News writes about the high school dropout crises and opens up their story with a 15-year old named Tevon who thinks “School ain’t for me. I’ve been failing since I was in the sixth grade.”

Will Congress Take on Another Ruptured Pipeline?

Two months in and still the issue dominating the Obama administration, the Congress, and the media is the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Every day brings new developments, including the potential impact hurricane season could have on the spill and BP creating an immediate $20 billion fund to handle damages. Everyone knows this is only the beginning.

Thousands out of work, a rising economic crisis, blackened beaches, and anguishing photos of oil-soaked pelicans drive the constant congressional attention that feeds round-the-clock media attention and vice versa. Suddenly, a previously apathetic American public is focused 24-7 on the environmental and energy disaster in one part of our nation. A vast volume of a vital resource hemorrhaging from a broken pipe is forcing attention and action in a matter unimaginable only a few months ago.

Now imagine the outcry of another major pipeline-related disaster. Different from the Gulf debacle, this one is spewing a vital resource at countless breaks across the country. This other pipeline disaster should be the worst fear of every American-that the pipeline crisscrossing our nation will burst in numerous locations and cause multiple spills. And unlike the BP site-which so far is limited to the southern coastal areas-this second pipeline disaster unleashes its devastation on almost every American community.