Advanced Placement Testing Sees Moderate Increase; Obstacles Still Remain

For the eighth straight year, the number of high school graduates who took an Advanced Placement (AP) exam increased nationwide according to a new report by College Board. Data from the recently released AP Report to the Nation, indicates that the average percentage of graduates from the class of 2011 who took at least one AP exam reached 30.2 percent nationwide, a 2 percent increase from 2010.

In all but one state (Alaska), the percentage of high school graduates who took an Advanced Placement exam increased. Florida, with 47.4 percent, ranks highest in the percentage of 2011 graduates who took an AP exam, followed by Maryland (46.4 percent), New York (40.3 percent), Virginia (40.1 percent), and Arkansas (40.0 percent). Although Advanced Placement enrollment and testing have maintained a steady climb among high school graduates in schools across the country, there are still obstacles to analyzing the effect of Advanced Placement courses and expanding its reach among students.

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October 4 Issue of Straight A's Is Available

The October 4, 2011 issue of Straight A's, the Alliance's biweekly newsletter, is now available. This week's issue focuses on NCLB waivers, federal education funding, an Alliance report on teacher induction, and more.

Individual articles from this week's issue are listed below, or you can download a .pdf of the entire newsletter here.

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Going Digital in Alabama

This past week I spent a few days with district teams in Florence, Alabama to learn about the state’s ACCESS (Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and Students Statewide) Program and how it is changing high schools throughout Alabama. These dedicated state and local professionals are undertaking major transformation of middle and high schools in the face of declining fiscal revenues and concerns about improving student performance in the shadow of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Dr. Melinda Maddox, director of technology initiatives for the Alabama Department of Education, orchestrated a series of regional meetings with superintendents, principals, local board members, and information technology specialists to coordinate and support profound changes in the way secondary schools do business. It is becoming increasingly clear that effective classrooms in the twenty-first century will depend on engaging learners in acquiring, refining, and applying deep content knowledge to analyze and solve problems in a digital, connected world. By providing flexible time, pace, and place for instruction, educators can customize the educational environment so every student learns in his or her own style and at his or her own pace.

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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?”

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Deeper Learning in Colorado

In today's video blog, I talk about my recent trip to Denver, CO to visit Skinner Middle School and the Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts. I  explain how these schools are using elements of Deeper Learning, the delivery of rich core content in innovative ways, to improve student achievement.  On Thursday, March 26 2011, the Alliance for Excellent Education will hold an event and releasing a paper on Deeper Learning in Washington, DC. To find out more details or to RSVP, visit: http://media.all4ed.org/briefing-may-26. 

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Morning Announcements: December 14, 2010

Yesterday, President Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, a bill that provides more money to districts for school lunches and improves nutritional standards for food provided in schools. According to Education Week, the bill will provide the first noninflationary increase for school lunches in more than 30 years, adding 6 cents per meal to district food-service budgets. The legislation will make it easier for more students to qualify for free lunches. 

Education Week also reports on ‘data mining’, the emerging discipline, concerned with developing methods for exploring the unique types of data that come from educational settings, and using those methods to better understand students, and the settings in which they learn.

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Call for Presenters: Digital Learning

The Alliance for Excellent Education is pleased to announce that it will be holding an online forum highlighting successful practices in middle and high school education with online/blended learning and technology. This forum will offer an opportunity for policymakers, educators, researchers, advocates, the media, and others to learn about promising practices that prepare all students for college and work. The forum will feature schools, districts, and states that are effectively using online/blended learning and technology to raise student outcomes.

Speaker proposals for the 2010 Innovation and Excellence: Spotlight on High Schools, Online/Blended Learning, and Technology forum are now being accepted and reviewed according to relevance, effectiveness, and policy implications as described below.

* Relevance. Proposals that include the innovative use of online/blended learning and/or technology to drive or support middle and high school reform that ensures students are college and work ready are welcome, including those at the school, district, or state levels. However, of particular interest are success stories related to the innovative use of online/blended learning and/or technology that facilitates one or more of the following:

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Report Round-Up: September 24, 2010

The Federal Role in Confronting the Crisis in Adolescent Literacy from the Alliance for Excellent Education. This report calls for the federal government needs to substantially step up its role in promoting strong literacy skills at the middle and high school levels.

Segregation and Exposure to High-Poverty Schools in Large Metropolitan Areas: 2008-09 from study by faculty at the Institute on Urban Health Research at Northeastern University’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences. The report ranks racial/ethnic segregation and exposure to high-poverty schools for public, primary school students in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, revealing that black and Hispanic children attend very different schools than do white children and are disproportionately concentrated in high-poverty schools.

Closing the talent gap: Attracting and retaining top-third graduates to careers in teaching by Byron Auguste, Paul Kihn, and Matt Miller of McKinsey & Company. This report examines teaching programs and strategies in some of the world’s best-performing nations and seeks to outline how adapting those strategies for practice in the United States might reap enormous benefits for the U.S. economy.

 

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Morning Announcements: September 10, 2010

More than 40 percent of Chicago’s public high schools are failing, according to the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Public Schools’ internal documents.

In California, a civil liberties group is suing the state over charges incurred by public school students to use textbooks or take required tests or courses. The group is arguing that the state has failed to protect the right to a free public education. Read more in a story in today’s New York Times.

According to the latest results of a teaching licensing exam in Connecticut, colleges and universities that train new teachers are producing too many graduates who don't know how to teach children to read.

More than one-third of Massachusetts students evaluated during the 2008-2009 school year were overweight or obese, according to a report released yesterday.

Yesterday, the Department of Education recognized 304 schools as 2010 National Blue Ribbon Schools.

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What is public opinion on the state of education?

How concerned are Americans about the state of the nation’s high schools? How important is it for voters that their congressional representatives act this year to reform the nation’s high schools? To find out the answers to these questions and more, sign-up to watch the Alliance’s Webinar tomorrow. This live discussion will examine the results of a bipartisan poll on education reform commissioned by the Alliance for Excellent Education.

The poll was conducted for the purpose of gaining insight into Americans' views of the public education system, the concern over the growing problems with the nation’s high schools, and the urgency to enact meaningful education reform through reauthorization of the ESEA. The poll was jointly conducted  late last month in a bipartisan manner for the Alliance by Lake Research Partners and Bellwether Research and Consulting.

 

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