Education

After setting September 15 as the date for a Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote on the New START nuclear reductions agreement with Russia, Chairman John Kerry wrote in a letter to his colleagues.  “The coming six weeks,” Kerry said, “will provide members ample opportunity to review the materials related to New START.”

It’s not To Kill a Mockingbird, but here are the top five items that should be on each Senator’s reading list to prepare for a floor vote after August recess.

Nearly a third of all public high school students — and roughly half of all those who live in low-income communities — fail to graduate with their class. Those staggering statistics add up to more than a million American high school dropouts every year.

We know that young people who leave high school without a diploma, for whatever reason, are very likely to be unemployed and mired in poverty; but this long, hard recession is exacerbating their already bleak employment prospects. Today, many young people from low-income families are experiencing Depression-level joblessness with nearly 40 percent of African-American youth and 36 percent of Hispanic youth, ages 16 to 19, unemployed in June. Rural white and Native American youth face the same challenges.

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Hunger and obesity. It might seem odd to find these epidemics mentioned together, but they are two of the greatest threats to the health of America's children and the future of our nation.

And Congress is running out of time to do something about it. Read more...

What’s wrong with this picture? A congressional committee is holding a hearing about a sector that is preparing underemployed and unemployed workers to get jobs, the number one priority for America. And the star witness is a hedge fund manager who’s short selling the sector.

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Almost 12 years have gone by since I entered the world of education reform and with every passing day I am more and more amazed at how unreal that world has become. Despite the dysfunction of our educational system and the financial precipice it faces, those who have been working for two decades to bring about change are blithely congratulating themselves on their marginal victories while Rome burns.  Admittedly, they recognize that they have a long way to go, but they still persist in thinking that the road they have followed thus far will get them there.  Here are some of the paths they have pursued:

Rarely do education-related lawsuits hit so close to home for me personally and professionally.  But the lawsuit filed last week by over 60 students and several education organizations (Robles-Wong v CA) against the State of California and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is one that strikes a particularly resounding chord.
 
As a former California educator for nearly 30 years, it is inspiring to witness the newfound courage among students of my state in challenging California’s inequitable education system. Their goal is to compel California to study the actual costs of providing education services to “all children with all needs”.
 
On the need for this, I couldn’t agree more.  California is falling far short of providing each child with the education he/she deserves.  The lawsuit calls for the complete transformation of California’s finance system – a reform effort similar to the one I championed in this Congress when I created the Educational Opportunity and Equity Commission, now housed within the U.S. Department of Education and readying its rollout.
 
The Commission’s intent, by initiating a national dialogue on the topic of educational equity, is to ferret out a fix for the Californias of our country.  I fought hard to establish it because our education finance structure is outdated and relies on factors like average daily attendance, average costs for “regular” students, and concentrations of low-income, special-education and English-language-learner students.  Outdated systems like California’s are inexcusable in an economically recessed nation falling behind globally.

With immigration back in the news, proponents of the DREAM Act are again peddling arguments for a massive amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.
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As the House Education and Labor Committee launches its bipartisan efforts to reform the nation’s federal education laws, we must examine ways to replicate and expand successful innovation.  Our goal must be closing the achievement gap and ensuring that every child, regardless of economic or ethnic background, receives a quality education and the opportunity to succeed.  Several high-quality public charter schools have demonstrated outstanding results at providing a world-class education to all students.  As a former chairman of the Colorado State Board of Education and superintendent of charter schools serving disadvantaged youth, I know firsthand the life-changing and transformative effect that such schools can have on students, their families and communities.

At the Committee’s June hearing on charter schools, members heard about the success of top-performing charter schools emphasizing a rigorous curriculum, high standards and expectations, strong performance-based accountability, and autonomy at turning around student achievement very quickly and effectively.  Serving as laboratories of educational innovation, charter schools have pioneered some of the most promising and influential public school reform strategies, such as extended learning time, principal autonomy, data-driven research and instruction, and a laser focus on results.

“I go to school three nights a week. I work from 8 to 5. I don’t get home until 9:30, 10 at night…” This is how one young woman described her experience trying to get a college degree in a new report from Public Agenda completed for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For far too many students, it's this juggling act of school, work and family that drags them down and keeps them from getting a college diploma.

"With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them: Myths and Realities About Why So Many Students Fail to Finish College" is a national survey of young people aged 22 to 30 focused specifically on the issue of college completion.  The challenge is serious:  according to the Department of Education, only one in five students who starts out at a two-year institution of higher education graduates within three years. At four-year institutions, about 4 in 10 students receive a degree after six years. Public Agenda surveyed young adults who had started post-secondary education programs, but failed to complete them and compared their responses to those of young people who had successfully attained two-year or four-year degrees or certificates.

Enrollment for colleges and schools providing workforce education has surged as unemployed professionals look to refocus their career training or seek secondary training for future employment opportunities. These trends are reflected in new data gathered by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS), the largest accreditor of degree-granting career colleges in the country. The unemployment rate has reached its highest point since the Great Depression and will be the subject of much discussion this week during a White House jobs summit. Now more then ever is the time for enhanced collaboration between policymakers, employers and the education sector.

ACICS reached two important milestones in November: The Council now accredits 780 colleges and schools in 11 countries, with a combined enrollment of those institutions exceeding 700,000 students. Likewise, there has been a surge in the number of applicants seeking an initial grant of accreditation through ACICS. As many as 62 institutions are in the pipeline for an initial grant evaluation in the next year. Key highlights derived from most recent annual institutional reports include an average enrollment of nearly 1,000 students per institution, and average retention and placement rates that exceed ACICS standards. These are significant findings in light of the challenges created by the economic downturn.