Afternoon Announcements: October 17, 2011

A recent Charlotte Observer article agrees with the Alliance that the best economic stimulus is making sure students graduate: “According to the Alliance for Excellent Education, an estimated 11,200 students dropped out of Charlotte, Gastonia, and Concord area schools last year. This group of students is eight times as likely to wind up incarcerated, three times as likely to raise a child as a single parent, twice as likely to be unemployed and 50 percent less likely to vote. If just half of the students who dropped out had graduated, they would have collectively earned as much as $63 million more in an average year. If those 5,600 students had graduated, they would have contributed $6.5 million per year in additional tax revenue. If they had crossed the graduation stage, they would have likely spent more than $150 million more on home and vehicle purchases than they would spend without a diploma.”

"These days everyone is for education reform. The question is which approach is best. I favor the Steve Jobs model. … Just as the iPod compelled the music industry to accommodate its customers, we can use technology to force the education system to meet the needs of the individual student." Read an adaptation of Wall Street Journal Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch’s remarks during an education summit in San Francisco last week.

As public schools in Chicago have shifted their focus to online learning, the benefits have been blunted by the fact that home access to the internet costs too much for some students, leading districts to look for different approaches to bring internet access to the city’s poorest families. (New York Times)

Read Entire Post

Morning Announcements: October 12, 2011

The New York Times and every other national news outlet reported on senior Senate Democrat Tom Harkin’s released draft of a sprawling revision of the No Child Left Behind education law on Tuesday that would dismantle the provisions of the law that used standardized test scores in reading and math to label tens of thousands of public schools as failing. The 865-page bill, filed by the Iowa Democrat who heads the Senate education committee, became the first comprehensive piece of legislation overhauling the law to reach either Congressional chamber since President George W. Bush signed it in 2002.

The Washington Post reported that Harkin’s plan to revamp the main federal education law immediately drew fire from civil rights groups that argued it would ease pressure on schools to provide quality education to all children, regardless of race or income. Further, Education Week   reported the accountability system at the heart of the No Child Left Behind Act would be completely reinvented under the draft reauthorization proposal.

Read Entire Post

Afternoon Announcements: August 15, 2011

Happy Monday! Here are today’s headlines in education news:

Montana officials seem to have reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education on student proficiency targets that will allow the state to avoid losing federal funding for its schools, according to the Huffington Post. The dispute had been ongoing for months and arose after Montana’s Superintendent for Public Instruction decided to go against No Child Left Behind, which requires states to regularly increase their testing targets in an effort to reach 100 percent student proficiency in 2014.

The New York Times also reported on Montana’s deal with federal education officials, takinga deeper look into what this incident – in addition to the slew of states requesting NCLB waivers, such as Georgia – means for the future of federal involvement and regulation of public education. Read Entire Post

Stats That Stick: August 3, 2011

Once nearly 100 percent, the teacher tenure rate in New York City dropped to 58 percent of under tougher evaluation guidelines that the city put into effect this year. A decision on tenure was deferred for 39 percent of eligible teachers, up from 8 percent a year ago. (New York Times)

Four out of 10 new public school teachers hired since 2005 came through alternative teacher-preparation programs, according to a survey just released by the National Center for Education Information,  up from 22 percent of new teachers hired between 2000 and 2004. (Education Week)

On Tuesday, the Kentucky Department of Education reported that for the 2009–10 school year, the state’s high school graduation rate was 76.6 percent. (Bowling Green Daily News)

The South Dakota Education Department reported Tuesday that 94 percent of the state’s public school districts made adequate yearly progress under the federal education improvement law, down 1 percentage point from a year ago; about 80 percent of the individual schools made adequate yearly progress. (Rapid City Journal)

Read Entire Post

Afternoon Announcements: July 28, 2011

News outlets all over the nation are talking about states bracing for plummeting high school graduation rates as districts nationwide dump flawed measurement formulas that often undercounted dropouts and produced inflated results. According to CBS News, “experts hope the changes will draw attention to the dropout issue and lead to resources being focused on the problem. … 'We’re going to take an honest look in the mirror and see how real our graduation rate is and where we need to cut the dropout rate,' said former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, which has extensively studied the nation’s hodgepodge system of graduation rates. 'You’ve got to know how deep the hole is in order to develop a strategy for getting out of it.'”

NPR finishes out its five-part series “School’s Out: America’s Dropout Crisis” with this story:

Part 5: A High School Dropout’s Midlife Hardships
Today, the people who seem to be hurting the most in our sputtering economy are dropouts in their 30s, 40s and 50s.

Read Entire Post

Morning Announcements: July 27, 2011

As states tally their standardized test scores and graduation rates this summer, they are feeling the squeeze of the 2001 No Child Left Behind law, which Congress has failed to revamp since it came up for reauthorization in 2007, reports the Huffington Post.

According to Maine's Bangor Daily News, Gov. Paul LePage issued an order yesterday that takes a first step toward giving the state’s students the option of a five-year high school education.

In another Bangor Daily News article, author and education expert Tony Wagner is quoted from his keynote address at a conference at the University of Maine, during which he talked about the education system built in the past century and how it is failing today’s students.

NPR continues its series “School’s Out: America’s Dropout Crisis” with this fourth story in the five-part series:

Part 4: Despite Interventions, No-Show Students Drop Out
In Baltimore, the vast majority of kids who never finish school drop out because of extreme poverty, homelessness, and a drug epidemic that has left some neighborhoods desolate and dangerous. In the toughest neighborhoods, kids miss lots of school days, and that puts them at risk of dropping out. Now, Baltimore’s efforts are driven toward reaching these children early.

Read Entire Post

Morning Announcements: June 22, 2011

After months of feuding and failed negotiations, lawmakers and governors in several states remain deadlocked on how to close budget shortfalls and pay for education and other services, according to Education Week.

According to the New York Times, of the 70 New York City high schools that earned an "A" under the education department's school assessment system and have at least one-third of graduates attending a City University of New York college, 46 posted remediation rates above 50%.

In his blog “School of Thought” Andy Rotherman asks, “Is it finally the beginning of the end for No Child Left Behind?”

Read Entire Post

How Has American Education Fared Since the Boston Bruins' Last Title in 1972?

Earlier this week, the Boston Bruins defeated the Vancouver Canucks for hockey's Stanley Cup. The championship was the Bruins' first since 1972. But how has the American education system fared during the Bruins' drought? As Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, explains in the video below, about as well as the Bruins did--not good.

Forty years ago, the United States led the world in high school graduation rates and college graduation rates. Since that time, the U.S. has steadily slipped further down those rankings. Watch Gov. Wise's video to learn why America could take some lessons from Canada when it comes to preparing students for college and careers.

Read Entire Post

Straight A's Covers NCLB, High School Graduation Rates, Common Standards, State Budgets and More

Here's a quick summary of the articles in the June 13 issue of Straight A's, the Alliance's biweekly newsletter.

Click on a title below to access the complete article or download a printer-friendly version of the entire newsletter at: http://www.all4ed.org/files/Volume11No12.pdf.

Read Entire Post

Good News On Graduation Rates…With a Caution Flag

It’s early June and that means that the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center has released its latest edition of Diplomas Count—an independent source for high school graduation rate estimates that the Alliance and many other organizations rely on for comparable calculations across states and districts.

The news this year is quite good: the national graduation rate has increased to nearly 72 percent compared to 69 percent last year and 66 percent ten years ago. Even better, the graduation rates for each student subgroup have also improved over last year.

Of course, the good news comes with some bad. The graduation rates of American Indian (54 percent), Hispanic (58 percent), and black (57 percent) students still remain under 60 percent and far below those of their white (78 percent) and Asian (83 percent) peers.

Nevertheless, the results are a shot in the arm for education reform advocates who are struggling to beat the drum for reform policies in a new era of fiscal austerity and often find themselves facing the tough question “why should we invest in education when several decades of reform have not moved the needle?”

Read Entire Post