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COMMENTARY
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Nights in Columbus
April 23, 2010
WATSON SCOTT SWAIL, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute
This was one of those weeks. Started in Miami on Sunday morning talking with the Council on State Governments on the new US Common Core Curriculum Standards that are going through in the US. Moved on to New Orleans, where I met at the AACRAO conference to discuss higher education ranking systems, and ended up in Columbus, Ohio, where I conducted a site visit of Ohio Dominican University and also keynoted at Columbus State Community College (CSCC) on student success. I’m tired.
But I’m also invigorated. On Friday morning, I had the pleasure to speak to 800 faculty and staff members at CSCC about student retention and persistence and what it takes to increase student success at their institution. As most know, improving graduation and/or transfer rates is not easy business. On paper, it doesn't seem to difficult. In practice, not so much. Given the issues of institutional politics, history of prior efforts, dated policies, and an emerging clientele with more demands and perhaps less preparation than before, you must acknowledge that many of these professionals are saints. READ MORE...
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| STATISTIC OF THE WEEK |
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According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women have nearly caught up to their male counterparts in achieving at least a bachelor's degree. About 29 percent of women 25 and older had attained at least a bachelor's degree in 2009, compared with 30 percent of men. A decade earlier, the proportions were 23 percent and 28 percent, respectively.
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
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THE NEWS
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ACADEMIC PREPARATION
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It’s now tougher to graduate from high school in Florida
By Leslie Postal, Orlando Sentinel
Gov. Charlie Crist on Tuesday signed a bill requiring students to take more difficult math and science courses and pass new end-of-course exams to earn high-school diplomas. Florida lawmakers who pushed the bill (SB 4) say the requirements are needed to help prepare more youngsters for careers in science or technology-based fields. The bill had the support of the Republican leadership in the Legislature, as well as the Florida Department of Education.
Districts warn deeper teacher cuts
By Tamar Lewin and Sam Dillon, The New York Times
School districts around the country, forced to resort to drastic money-saving measures, are warning hundreds of thousands of teachers that their jobs may be eliminated in June. The districts have no choice, they say, because their usual sources of revenue — state money and local property taxes — have been hit hard by the recession. In addition, federal stimulus money earmarked for education has been mostly used up this year
Segregation returns to Mississippi school system
By Stephanie McCrummen, Washington Post
During her elementary school years in this rural Mississippi town, Addreal Harness, a competitive teenager with plans to be a doctor, said her classes had about the same numbers of white and black students. It was a fact she took little note of until the white kids began leaving. Some left in seventh grade, even more in eighth, and by the time Harness, who is African American, reached Tylertown High School, she became aware of talk that has slowly seeped into her 16-year-old psyche -- that some white parents call Tylertown "the black school," while Salem Attendance Center, where many of her white classmates transferred, is known as "the white school."
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| POST SECONDARY ACCESS SUCCESS |
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Pushback on gainful employment
By Jennifer Epstein, InsideHigherEd
As the U.S. Department of Education prepares to finish revising regulations intended to weed out abuses of the federal financial aid system, for-profit higher education’s major advocacy group has chosen to push back. In a letter sent Wednesday to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the Career College Association calls on the department to scrap its proposed regulations on “gainful employment,” which would assess vocational programs based on the ratio of their graduates’ student loan debt to their incomes.
Melinda Gates pledges $110-million to help 2-year colleges improve remedial education
By Jennifer Gonzalez, The Chronicle of Higher Education
Community colleges should replace weak remedial programs with innovative practices as a way to increase completion rates, Melinda F. Gates, co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told two-year college leaders Tuesday as she delivered the closing speech here at the American Association of Community Colleges' annual meeting. To that end, Ms. Gates said that her foundation is spending up to $110-million to work with dozens of partners, including colleges and school districts, to develop groundbreaking models for remedial education and to replicate effective practices.
TN colleges phase in graduation reform
By Jennifer Brooks, The Tennessean
Students who enter Tennessee's public colleges and universities this fall will get the first taste of new policies designed to ensure they stay there until graduation. This past winter, the legislature ordered the higher education system to do something to improve graduation rates that are among the lowest in the nation. Only 45 percent of the students who start high school in Tennessee earn a college degree within six years of starting college. Legislation passed this year ties college funding in part to graduation rates.
Regents plan new route to Master’s in teaching
By Lisa Foderaro, The New York Times
The New York State Board of Regents voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve a pilot program that would allow educational groups like Teach for America to create their own master’s degree programs, a role long reserved for education schools. The board’s move reflects the difficulty of placing teachers in low-income communities, and a growing recognition of the effectiveness of alternative paths to teaching.
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| INTERNATIONAL NEWS |
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Latin America hopes to lift global profile
By Marion Lloyd, The Chronicle of Higher Education
In 2008, when much of the world was deep in recession, Chile was rolling in revenue from its copper mines. Rather than invest the windfall at home, however, the government did a surprising thing: It set aside $6-billion to pay for Chileans to earn graduate degrees abroad. The decision, which education experts say is by far the largest per capita investment in study-abroad scholarships by a Latin American government, was rooted in the belief that the country's future depends on its development of human capital. Chile, with a population of just 17 million people, is also spending tens of millions of dollars on improving its state universities and developing programs in the humanities, arts, and social sciences—in part in a bid to attract foreign students and professors.
Uni demands cloud power of watchdog
By Andrew Trouson, The Australian
Universities Australia is pushing for greater control of the development of the new national tertiary education agency following concerns the regulations will be too heavy-handed and undermine university autonomy. UA chairman Peter Coaldrake has written to Education Department secretary Lisa Paul calling for the functions of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency to be gradually phased in. UA argues the new body should initially focus on high-risk areas such as scrutinising non-university providers. It is also advocating the creation of an interim higher education advisory committee to oversee the design and early implementation of TEQSA. The committee would have strong university representation.
Minister unveils education budget
By BBC News
The Northern Ireland education minister has admitted her budget allocations for the coming year have involved "difficult decisions". The overall funding is up by 1.9% to just over £1.9bn but the minister must find savings of £74m against her original plans for the year ahead. Catriona Ruane said that in drawing up the revised budget, she had focused on "equality, reducing bureaucracy and ensuring funding for the classroom". Education chiefs criticised delays in producing the budget.
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| REPORTS WORTH READING |
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Digest of Education Statistics 2009
The National Center for Education Statistics report, in its 45th edition, provides a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field of American education from prekindergarten through graduate school. The report indicates that college enrollment in the U.S. increased from fall 2008 with fall 2009 projections of 19.6 million students. The publication also indicates that during the 2007–08 academic year, postsecondary degrees numbered 750,000 associate’s degrees; 1,563,000 bachelor’s degrees; 625,000 master’s degrees; 91,300 first professional degrees; and 63,700 doctor’s degrees.
Scaling Up Learning Communities: The Experience of Six Community Colleges
The report from MDRC and the National Center on Postsecondary Research is part of a long-term demonstration of learning communities at six community colleges. The report describes the strategies the colleges used to scale up their programs while working to improve their quality and the challenges that other community colleges looking to scale up effective learning communities—including scheduling, faculty engagement with and approach to teaching, and balancing developmental courses with traditional college-level courses.
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| UPCOMING EVENTS |
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RETENTION 2010, International Conference on Student Success, June 9-11, 2010, Chicago, IL
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