COMMENTARY

Weathering Education...

DR. WATSON SCOTT SWAIL President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute

I have been burdened with a week in Southern California. Tough gig. First in Dana Point attending the College Board’s Annual Colloquium, followed by a Conference Sponsored by the University of Southern California. Just to put this in perspective, it was 22F when I left Virginia; 76 here. Tough gig.

My key take-aways from both events, not to “take away” from the events, is that no one has a clue, or at least won’t admit, our frailties in education. I have about had it with the presentations saying we need more and more and more higher education. We don’t. We just need better.

Jamie Merisotis, president of Lumina Foundation for Education, made a convincing case for their 60 percent challenge: to get 60 percent of our youth into and through college. I’ve traditionally had a problem with this philosophy. I think it is overkill, to an extent. But Jamie caressed the message enough to get me on board (I’m sure he is relieved). First, the 60 percent isn’t just university level, but also two year, and more importantly, other trades and avenues of post-high school. Truly postsecondary education. I think this is important because the United States has never regarded “trades” as an important part of our economy. In fact, READ MORE...

It took longer than some experts expected, but the recession and the resulting shortage of good jobs have spurred a jump in applications to law schools and a growing interest in graduate programs. The number of people taking the Law School Admissions Test, for example, rose 20 percent in October, compared with October 2008, reaching an all-time high of 60,746. And the number of Americans who took the Graduate Record Examination in 2009 rose 13 percent, to a record 670,000, compared with the year before, according to the Educational Testing Service, which administers the test. The increase is a sharp reversal from 2008, when the number fell 2 percent even though the recession was already under way.
Source: New York Times

As School Exit Tests Prove Tough, States Ease Standards
Ian Urbina, NY Times
A law adopting statewide high school exams for graduation took effect in Pennsylvania on Saturday, with the goal of ensuring that students leaving high school are prepared for college and the workplace. But critics say the requirement has been so watered down that it is unlikely to have major impact.

‘At Hope’ Children Better than ‘At Risk’?
MSNBC
Decades ago, poor children became known as "disadvantaged" to soften the stigma of poverty. Then they were "at-risk." Now, a Washington lawmaker wants to replace those euphemisms with a new one, "at hope." Democratic State Sen. Rosa Franklin says negative labels are hurting kids' chances for success and she's not a bit concerned that people will be confused by her proposed rewrite of the 54 places in state law where words like "at risk" and "disadvantaged" are used.

Texas Shuts Door on Millions in Education Grants
Sam Dillon, NY Times
Texas will not compete for up to $700 million in federal education money, Gov. Rick Perry said on Wednesday, calling the Obama administration’s main school improvement grant program an unacceptable intrusion on states’ control over education.

Union Leader's Speech Bodes Well for D.C. Education Reform
Washington Post
On Tuesday, President Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers acknowledged the “glacial process” of disciplining and removing ineffective teachers. She promised to lead the way in streamlining the system whereby complaints against teachers are adjudicated. Equally significant was her admission that student test scores should factor in as one measure of a teacher's performance, although she provided little detail on how this would work.

Beverly Hills School District to Boot Outside 'Permit Students' in K-8
USA Today
After more than four hours of emotional and sometimes contentious debate, the Beverly Hills Unified School District approved a controversial proposal Tuesday to boot out more than 400 out-of-district students. The board voted unanimously to notify all so-called "permit students" in kindergarten through 8th grade that they must enroll elsewhere because of the district's new financing formula.

Spending by Education Philanthropies Drops in 2009
Erik W. Robelen, Education Week
Amid the country's economic downturn, planned giving levels by many education grantmakers declined last year. A new analysis of trends in education philanthropy finds, however, that a sizable minority of those surveyed said they expected the grants paid out to hold steady or even increase compared with 2008.

L.A. Schools Paid $200 Million More in Salaries than Budgeted
Howard Blume, LA Times
The Los Angeles school district paid $200 million more in salaries than it budgeted last year even as it laid off 2,000 teachers and hundreds of other employees, according to an internal audit. Auditors so far have unearthed no wrongdoing, but officials are puzzled, concerned and perhaps even a little embarrassed.

American Colleges Scramble to Contact Students and Professors in Haiti
Karin Fischer and Andrea Fuller, Chronicle of Higher Education
American colleges were struggling to extract—and, in some cases, even reach—students, and faculty and staff members studying and traveling in Haiti in the wake of a deadly earthquake there Tuesday, a task made more difficult by the extent of the devastation and by already poor infrastructure in the Caribbean nation

IRS Audits Suffolk, Harvard Universities
Tracy Jan, Boston Globe
Suffolk University is one of several dozen colleges and universities that the Internal Revenue Service is auditing following results of a wider survey. The audits are part of a new effort by the government to better understand the tax-exempt community. Based on the survey, which asked how the schools invest and use their endowments and how they determine the compensation of highly paid individuals, the IRS selected about 40 schools for further examination.

IRS Audits Suffolk, Harvard Universities
Tracy Jan, Boston Globe
Suffolk University is one of several dozen colleges and universities that the Internal Revenue Service is auditing following results of a wider survey. The audits are part of a new effort by the government to better understand the tax-exempt community. Based on the survey, which asked how the schools invest and use their endowments and how they determine the compensation of highly paid individuals, the IRS selected about 40 schools for further examination.

University Applications 'Surging’
Sean Coughlan, BBC News
In the UK, universities are facing a huge surge in applications for places, says the head of one of them with increases of up to 38% reported. Last summer saw tens of thousands of applicants being turned away - and financial pressures on universities could make this year even tougher.

North Coast Targets Foreign Student Market
ABC News Australia
North coast educational institutions and tourist bodies plan to market the region as a safe place to study to attract overseas students. Northern Rivers Tourism's Russell Mills says education tourism is a lucrative market, but has been hurt by recent attacks on foreign students in big cities. He says the north coast's positive profile could work to attract foreign students.

A Decade in Education: What Are The Lessons?
 Paul W. Bennett, Halifax Chronicle Herald
Although concern over the state of education consistently ranks high in Atlantic Canadian opinion polls, especially among the young adult (19 to 34) age group, it still remains a blind-spot on the larger public agenda. In spite of this challenge, here are choices for the top 10 "tipping-point" events over the past 10 years that impacted education, viewed from an Atlantic Canadian perspective.

Schools Must Embrace Mobile Technology
BBC News
The need for schools to prepare for 21st century learning was top of the agenda at this year's British Educational Training and Technology (BETT) conference. They must embrace mobile technologies, games, podcasts and social networking, according to leading educationalist Professor Stephen Heppell. Schools should also break away from traditional classroom and curriculum models, he argued.

Govt 'Not Providing' for Skilled Labour Needs
ABC News- Australia
In Australia, the State Opposition has accused the Government of not providing extra training to meet the needs of Western Australia's resources industry. Labor says an estimated 40,000 construction jobs and more than 10,000 permanent jobs will be created over the next few years in WA resource projects.

Opportunity Adrift
Public flagship universities provide excellence to students who cannot afford high-quality private institutions. Yet many of these universities direct aid to wealthy students who will attend college without it. Meantime, many high-achieving minority and poor students wind up in lesser institutions or do not attend college at all. In fact, some low-income students who literally cannot afford to attend college without a grant must find a way to finance the equivalent of 70 percent of their family’s annual income. Some flagships are stepping up to the challenge and focusing on access and success. An account of their performance and progress appears at the end of this report.

Gauging the Gaps: A Deeper Look at Student Achievement
A new report from the Education Trust finds that a more complex and comprehensive system of measurement is needed to better judge whether current efforts to close achievement gaps are working. The report offers four different “perspectives” policymakers can use to gain a better understanding of inequities in student achievement. These approaches include examining whether gaps in performance between groups has decreased over time, determining whether all student groups have gained over time, measuring the current size of the gaps between groups, and comparing different jurisdictions. The report argues that use of these perspectives can reveal meaningful differences between states, districts, and even schools and form the basis of future policy efforts aimed at closing achievement gaps for everyone.

National Survey Finds Work, Family Responsibilities Fueling Low College Completion Rates
Most young adults who started college but didn’t finish left because they needed to work more to make ends meet, according to a recent survey of more than 600 individuals aged 22 to 30 by Public Agenda. Managing work, school, and family was their biggest challenge. “With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them” is based on a survey including a nationally-representative sample of 614 22- to 30-year-olds who have at least some postsecondary education, including 200 who did not finish their degree. Interviews were conducted via landline and cellular telephone from May 7 to June 24, 2009, and respondents had the choice of completing the interview in English or Spanish. The margin of error for the report is plus or minus 4.8 percentage points. The survey was preceded by five focus groups conducted in St. Louis, Seattle, Erie, Pa., New York and Phoenix.