Morning Announcements: October 7, 2011

According to the Chicago News Cooperative, the gap between the number of minority teachers in Chicago’s public schools and minority student enrollment has widened over the last decade, but one school is working to change that by preparing the next generation of teachers. Wells Community Academy High School, where the racial breakdown of students is almost evenly split between African-Americans and Hispanics, more than 60 students are participating in a teacher training program that gets them to the front of the classroom years before most aspiring teachers.

The Huffington Post and Education Week both wrote about how Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Inc. who died Wednesday after a battle with cancer at age 56, help revolutionized technology in the classroom. In a time of educational debate and shuffling nationwide, a college dropout, businessman and paragon of technological innovation emerged as an inadvertent, but forceful, momentum for an educational revolution around the world.

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Afternoon Announcements: September 15, 2011

The New York Times reports that average scores on the SAT fell across the nation this year, with the reading score for the high school class of 2011 falling three points to 497, the lowest on record. This information comes from a report by the College Board, which administers the exams. The report shows the average writing score dropped two points, to 489, and the math score was down one point, to 514. The College Board attributed the decline to the increasing diversity of the students taking the test. For example, about 27 percent of the nearly 1.65 million test-takers last year came from a home where English was not the only language, up from 19 percent a decade ago.

A group of key U.S. Senate Republicans—led by Sen. Lamar Alexander, of Tennessee, a former U.S. secretary of education—are going their own way on reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, according to Education Week. Back in January, the top lawmakers on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee pledged to work together on a bipartisan, comprehensive bill to fix NCLB, the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. But almost eight months later, those talks haven’t resulted in a bill.

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Afternoon Announcements: August 22, 2011

Here are today's and this past weekend’s headlines in education news!

The Washington Times reports further on the PDK International/Gallup poll on Americans’ views and attitudes toward public education. More specifically the newspaper noted American’s general support for digital learning. Bob Wise, president of the Alliance and former governor of West Virginia, calls for an increased focused on “blended learning” – pairing innovative technology and high-quality teachers. “The public understands and is willing to move forward on blended learning. It’s not either/or. High-tech requires high-teach,” Wise said. “You’ve got to have good teaching in order for the technology to be effective.”

Fifty-one percent of jobs in the American South require “middle-skills” – such as medical technicians or computers support workers – and the region has a shortage of people able to fill the positions. According to the Associated Press, the National Skills Coalition presented these figures during the Southern Governors Association meeting in Asheville. While over half of the jobs in the South require middle-skills, highly skilled jobs make up 29 percent of the market and low-skill jobs make up 20 percent. The South is finding it difficult to fill these positions even when four-year graduates face difficulty finding a job and paying off their student loans.

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Report Round-Up

Here is a round-up of this week’s education-related reports one day early!

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Afternoon Announcements: August 17, 2011

Phi Delta Kappa and Gallup Poll released findings today from their study investigating the public's attitude toward the public schools. Researchers asked about 1,000 people questions about education issues including quality of teachers, charter schools, voucher programs and more. The study found Americans have great appreciation for and trust in public school teachers, but less so for teacher unions at our nation’s schools in general. Some of the key findings include:

- Nearly three in four Americans have trust and confidence in public school teachers and believe theyshould have flexibility in how they teach curriculum.

- Two of three Americans would like a child of theirs to become a public school teacher.

- Nearly 70 percent of Americans said they generally hear negative, rather than positive, stories about schools in the media.

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Afternoon Announcements: May 25, 2011

Education Week reports, “Education Secretary Arne Duncan will divvy up the $700 million in additional Race to the Top money Congress gave him this year between a new contest focused on early education and the nine runners-up that lost in last year's high-profile state competition.”

Wondering how school districts used stabilization money? Check out this Education Week story and the graph to the left. 

Public schools across the country, struggling with cuts in state funding, rising personnel costs and lower tax revenues, are shifting costs to students and their parents by imposing or boosting fees for everything from enrolling in honors English to riding the bus, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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