New Issue of Straight A's Now Available

The October 17, 2011 issue of Straight A's, the Alliance's biweekly newsletter, is now available. Sign up to receive a free subscription to Straight A's.

This week's issue focuses on the Senate Health, Labor, and Pensions Committee's bill to overhaul the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB); federal funding for education programs; new federal legislation that would combine rigorous coursework with workplace experience; NCLB waivers; and a new report comparing how U.S. students fare when compared to their international counterparts.

Links to individual articles are available after the jump.

Stats That Stick: July 20, 2011

As many as four out of five community college students in the United States want to transfer to a four-year institution so they can obtain a bachelor’s degree, according to a College Board report. But many transfer students have taken classes that make the advising process complicated.

According to a new U.S. Department of Commerce study, growth in science, technology, engineering, and math fields (STEM) jobs over the past ten years was three times greater than other occupations and STEM workers earned 26 percent more than their non-STEM counterparts.

Countries in which schools frequently hold back or kick out students with low academic performance tend to have weaker, more expensive, and more socially inequitable education systems overall, according to a new analysis by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). While fewer than 3 percent of students in 13 countries—including Japan, Norway, and the United Kingdom—reported ever repeating a grade, more than 25 percent of students repeated at least once in France, Spain, Brazil, and a dozen others studied. The United States reported more than one in ten students repeating a grade, higher than the OECD average, while the top-performing countries, Finland and Korea, do not allow grade retention. (Education Week)

Stats That Stick: March 16, 2011

In Singapore, the attrition rate of teachers is less than 3 percent annually, which is less than half the annual attrition rate for teachers in the United States. –Alliance for Excellent Education and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE)  

In raw numbers, the United States produces many more low-achieving students than any other OECD nation, including even two developing economies, Mexico and Turkey. –Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Seventy percent of all high schools offered classes or seminars to students to help explain the college application process, although about one-third did not. -College Board Advocacy & Policy Center

Stats That Stick: December 8, 2010

On the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), 18 percent of U.S. students failed to reach proficiency level 2, a point considered to be where "students can complete low-level reading tasks. –Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

More than one-quarter of Shanghai’s 15-year-olds demonstrated advanced mathematical thinking skills to solve complex problems, compared to an OECD average of just 3%. "  –Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

“The wealth of nations only explains about 6% of PISA performance." -Andreas Schleicher, OECD

Seventy-one percent of charter school leaders say they plan to leave within five years. -Center on Reinventing Public Education

The 2009 PISA Results Are In - Learn More During Today's Webinar

Released this morning, the results of the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) show that American fifteen-year-olds rank 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in mathematics among the 34 countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Today, from 2:00–4:00 p.m., EST, the Alliance for Excellent Education, Asia Society, Committee for Economic Development, Council of Chief State School Officers, and National Governors Association Center for Best Practices are cohosting a live webcast featuring Andreas Schleicher, head of the indicators and analysis division for OECD's Directorate of Education. During the webcast, Mr. Schleicher will review the 2009 PISA results in reading, math, and science. Following Mr. Schleicher’s presentation, a panel of business, state, and national education leaders will examine the implications for state and federal education policy and what the U.S. can do to develop a world-class education system for all of its students. Register and submit questions for the December 7 webcast online.

The results were widely covered in the media with The New York Times focusing on Shanghai’s impressive results, writing “With China’s debut in international standardized testing, students in Shanghai have surprised experts by outscoring their counterparts in dozens of other countries, in reading as well as in math and science.” This graph, also from the Times illustrates just how well Shanghai students performed and how far students in other industrialized nations have to go. Education Week concentrated on US student performance and quoted U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as saying, “The PISA results, to be brutally honest, show that a host of developed nations are outeducating us. Americans need to wake up to this educational reality.” With regard to the gains in science, he said: “I don’t think that’s much to celebrate. ... Being average in science is a mantle of mediocrity.” And the Wall Street Journal provided some examples of the types of questions asked on the assessment. Take this one from the 2006 PISA science section: