Stats That Stick: July 11, 2012

Here at High School Soup, we’re fans of the stickiest stats. Those pieces of data you just cannot get out of your brain. Here are three from the past week we’re still thinking about.

Percentage of new jobs created in the past year that workers over 55 have taken: 58%.
Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, offered this statistic to The Huffington Post to illustrate the fact that younger workers are having trouble finding gainful employment even as jobs are being added to the economy. Men are also picking up new jobs more frequently than women are.

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Afternoon Announcements: July 9, 2012

Monday! The most magical day of the week! We’re almost through Monday here in Washington, but we can’t let you go through your day without delivering these afternoon announcements. Here are your news tidbits for the day, and there are a bunch of them today.

“Young people are getting left behind,” says The Huffington Post in today’s report about how older workers are benefiting from the economic recovery more than their younger counterparts. According to Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, workers older than 55 have taken 58 percent of the new jobs in the past year. This makes things very difficult for younger workers who need to get started on the job market so that they can develop skills for future employment.

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Report Round-up: June 8, 2012

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for your weekly Report Round-up. Here are some reports that came out in the past week that we think should be on your radar!

“Diplomas Count 2012: Trailing Behind, Moving Forward – Latino Students in U.S. Schools” – Education Week

“A new national report from Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center finds that the nation’s graduation rate has posted a solid gain for the second straight year, following a period of declines and stagnation. Amid this continuing turnaround, the nation’s graduation rate has risen to 73 percent, the highest level of high school completion since the late 1970s. The report shows that the nation’s public schools will generate about 90,000 fewer dropouts than the previous year. Nationwide improvements were driven, in large part, by impressive gains among Latino students.”

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Painting Postsecondary with a Broad Brush

Graduation season brings forth, as it does every year, the debate about whether college is worth it. On May 20, 60 Minutes featured Peter Thiel insisting that plumbers out-earn doctors. Yet here at the Alliance, we continue to cite research from Anthony Carnevale showing that by 2018, over 60 percent of jobs will require some postsecondary training and point to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that high school graduates with no postsecondary are three times more likely to be unemployed than their more educated peers.

So who’s right? This spring, I’ve talked to a wide range of recent high school graduates and college students considering what paths they wish to pursue. And I hear something a little alarming. “I want to be a writer.” “I want to be a photographer.” A friend of mine started out at Columbia University intending to be a special education teacher or speech therapist. She ended up changing her major to creative writing and wanted somehow to get into fashion. Now she’s underemployed, and in a somewhat unstable field (she’s had three jobs in three years) as a nanny in New York City.

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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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In State of the Union Address, Obama Stresses Education, Calls for Mandatory School Attendance Until Age 18

During his State of the Union address on January 24, President Obama stressed the importance of education in driving the U.S. economy and called on states to require that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn eighteen.

"When students aren't allowed to walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma," Obama said. 

Although he did not directly mention a revamp of the No Child Left Behind Act, he did discuss more flexibility for states and changes to testing.

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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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Afternoon Announcements--October 21, 2011

Happy Friday! The big news today is the legislation passed last night by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee to overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

Several media outlets have articles on the legislation:

Education Week writes that HELP Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) hopes to move the bill to the floor of the Senate before Thanksgiving, and believes it's "possible" that Congress could approve a rewritten version of the nation's main education law before Christmas--in time to negate the need for the Obama administration's waiver plan. The article also has a list of amendments that were passed, rejected, and withdrawn.

The Washington Post notes that the government would stop supervising the performance of 95 percent of the nation's schools under the bill passed by the HELP Committee. It says only 5 percent of a state's worst-performing schools would be subject to federal oversight under the measure. Indeed, that feature of the bill has drawn criticism from organizations representing low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities, among others because these students often attend schools that are not in the lowest 5 percent of performers overall and slip through the cracks. For example, Alliance President Bob Wise has noted that nearly 200,000 students of color drop out of high schools with estimated graduation rates above 60 percent. Education Week has more details on the organizations' objections to this provision.

CQ.com writes that the bill would depart from current law by removing the much-criticized accountability system that requires all students to be proficient in math and reading by 2014. Instead, it would require states to adopt "college- and career-ready" standards and develop statewide accountability systems to receive federal funding. The article also delves into the committee's debate on options for struggling schools and highly qualified teacher language.

The Alliance's "High School Soup" blog also has reactions to the legislation from members of the HELP Committee in an earlier blog post.

Now that you've gotten your fill of ESEA/NCLB, here are the rest of today's top education headlines:

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Stats that Stick: September 14, 2011

Students from middle-class schools that earn a college degree by 26: 28 percent

A new report, "Incomplete: How Middle-Class Schools Aren't Making the Grade," released this week shows that middle-class public schools educate the majority of U.S. students but pay lower teacher salaries, have larger class sizes and spend less per pupil than low-income and wealthy schools. It also found middle-class schools are underachieving. It pointed to their national and international test scores and noted that 28 percent of their graduates earn a college degree by age 26, compared to 17 percent for lower-income students and 47 percent for upper-income students.

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Morning Announcements: September 14, 2011

Education Week reports that not even half of the school districts in states that have adopted the common standards are taking essential steps to implement them, and most cite inadequate state guidance as a major problem in moving forward. This information come from a new surevey released today by the Center on Education Policy. The report shows districts are also deeply divided about how rigorous the new standards are and how much they demand new curricula and instructional strategies.

According to the New York Times, President Obama visited a high school in the potentially politically crucial state of Ohio Tuesday in order to pitch his jobs bill. His $447 billion proposal, which includes tax cuts and stimulus projects to improve the economy, also calls for billions to be invested in renovating our nation’s schools. Obama said Tuesday the $25 billion for education construction and improvements in the plan would achieve two goals at once: modernizing American schools and putting construction workers back on the job.

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