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.

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Morning Announcements: July 14, 2011

Education Week reports that the list of delays states are encountering in implementing their Race to the Top plans keeps getting longer; every state but Georgia has now amended its Race to the Top plan in some way, usually to push back a timeline or scale back an initiative.

Yesterday, the House Education and the Workforce Committee approved the State and Local Funding Flexibility Act , which would provide states and school districts with maximum flexibility to shift federal dollars now aimed at particular populations—such as children in poverty—to other programs. Education Week reports that Republicans say the measure, part of a move to begin reauthorizing the ESEA piecemeal, would make it easier for districts and states to direct federal money to where it is needed most, while Democrats argue that the Republicans are proposing too much leeway, and that it would allow districts and states to ignore the students most at risk—poor and minority kids—and trample on students’ civil rights.

 

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Morning Announcements: July 1, 2011

It's Friday again (already!?) and if we could, we'd send you home early to get a jump on the holiday weekend. If you head home early, have a quick looky-loo at some education news before you go ...

Education Week reports that experts are saying educators need training to understand common standards.

According to a recent U.S. News & World Report blog post, students can forget as much as two months’ worth of math and reading instruction over the summer, according to some reports; but for students who are unable to attend summer learning programs to keep them on track, playing certain video games or practicing skills around the house can help.

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Report Round-Up

Here's a sampling of some education-related reports that were released this week. Did your organization release a report this week that we missed? Feel free to post information on it with a link to your website in the comments.

The College Board, The Educational Experience of Young Men of Color Capturing the Student Voice: The report finds that nearly half of young men of color age 15-24 who earn their high school diploma will end up unemployed, incarcerated or dead. The study also finds that minority men fall behind their peers in educational attainment and many fail to attend college or earn a degree.

RAND Corporation, Making Summer Count: The report notes that students' skills and knowledge often deteriorate during the summer months, with low-income students facing the largest losses. It finds that instruction during the summer has the potential to stop these losses and propel students toward higher achievement. The report provides a review of the literature on summer learning loss and summer learning programs, coupled with data from ongoing programs offered by districts and private providers across the United States, to demonstrate the potential of summer programs to improve achievement as well as the challenges in creating and maintaining such programs.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, Improving College Performance and Retention the Easy Way: Unpacking the ACT Exam: The report finds that two of the four subtests of the ACT, English and Mathematics, are highly predictive of positive college outcomes.

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