Morning Announcements: July 29, 2011

Education Week reports that during an interview on Wednesday with U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), he declined to be more specific about exactly when the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee would get around to marking up the very, very long-overdue Elementary and Secondary Education Act bill (renewal has been pending since 2007, back when President George W. Bush was in office).

While developing his positions on education policy, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), also a member of the Senate HELP Committee, told the Huffington Post that education reform is the “most important thing I’m working on.”

According to another article in the Huffington Post, Microsoft founder Bill Gates told the National Urban League on Thursday that education reformers must “end the myth” that poverty needs to be eradicated before reforming education.

Accurate dropout figures are very hard to find because most states do not adequately collect or analyze the data, and part of the problem is that every state has had a different definition for dropout, says NPR.

CNN writes about one good teacher’s decision to quit after a successful thirteen-year teaching career.

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Morning Announcements: December 9, 2010

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that more than a third of California's black public high school students dropped out before graduation day and that number is on the rise.

The New York Times reports on parent reaction to “A Race to Nowhere”, a new documentary that look at the downside of childhoods spent on résumé-building.

A new report by the Arizona Board of Regents finds that four out of five Arizona high-school graduates do not have a college degree six years after graduating from high school, and just over half haven't gone to college at all.

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Morning Announcements: November 9, 2010

The New York Times reports on a new study suggesting that the achievement gap separating black from white students is even bleaker than genrally known.

A Maryland legislative committee voted Monday to reject a new regulation requiring that half of teachers' evaluations be based on student progress, calling into question the future of a $250 million federal Race to the Top grant, the Washington Post reports. Also from the Post - Extended school days under consideration in District public system.

Education Week finds that collaborations are popping up across the country between charter and traditional public schools and showing promise that charter schools could fulfill their original purpose of becoming research-and-development hothouses for public education. Education Week also reports on a handful of school districts, some with the approval of their local teachers’ unions, that are experimenting with alternatives to the fundamental components that govern teachers’ base-pay raises.

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Morning Announcements: October 1, 2010

The Baltimore Sun reports, “An innovative new contract would enable Baltimore teachers who are effective and ambitious to move quickly through the ranks and earn up to $100,000 a year, as well as give teachers more input on working conditions in their schools.”

According to data released yesterday by the Virginia Department of Education, 85.5 percent of the 98,027 students who entered the ninth grade during the 2006-07 school year graduated within four years. That's an increase of 2.2 percentage points from last year.

The Oklahoman editorial board writes, “It will take time, perhaps many generations, but if Oklahoma is to narrow the historical divide between the "haves" and the "have nots" and begin seeing improvement in its woeful national standings in so many public health categories, the message must remain constant: Stay in school, the longer the better.”

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Morning Announcements: September 29, 2010

The St. Louis Dispatch writes about the inaugural class of the Ozarks Teacher Corps, a group of southwest Missouri teachers in training who receive $4,000 annual scholarships in exchange for a three-year commitment to work in rural school districts after graduation.

The director of the Public Education Research Institute at Queens University of Charlotte describes how reducing dropouts would provide an economic stimulus in an op-ed in the Charlotte Observer.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says he wants to use new methods to evaluate and pay the state's public school teachers, according to the Associated Press.

The Grand Rapids Press editorial board writes, “With apologies to the Realtors who invented the original joke, nearly everybody agrees the three keys to success for Michigan’s economic future are: Education, education, education.”

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Morning Announcements: September 13, 2010

Over the weekend, volunteers and VIPs participated in a dropout recovery program in Houston, Texas and convinced 75 students to return to school.

An extra reading class instead of a regular elective can boost reading comprehension, GPA, course credits and even state reading and math scores for students who enter freshman year reading several grade levels behind, according to a study conducted by MDRC. Read more in Education Week’s Inside School Research blog.

The Washington Post reports that on Friday, DC school officials unveiled a plan that would allow teachers to qualify for performance-based pay increases. The programs are voluntary and teachers who chose to participate would give up certain job protections.

Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (Center) and Nicole Smith, senior economist at the Center co-author a piece about job projections and the college degree shortfall in the New England states in The New England Journal of Higher Education.

The Dayton Business Journal explains how education is key to the future of the region. 

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