New report suggests School Improvement Grants are paying off in California
In 2009, the federal government made an unprecedented investment in the country’s lowest-performing schools when it sent them $3.5 billion with an order: turn things around. Sufficient time has now passed for researchers and policymakers to begin examining how well the School Improvement Grant program (SIG) is working. So far, the evidence has been largely [...]
U.S. to fall short of 2025 college grads goal—by 24 million degrees
Despite persistent appeals from policymakers and politicians to increase the number of college graduates in the United States, a new report projects a shortfall of nearly 24 million degree-holders by 2025. The cost to the U.S. economy in lost wages and income taxes? About $600 billion a year. They’re the most dramatic figures yet in [...]
Report: California sees large returns on higher-ed investments
Is it worth it for California to invest in higher education? That’s the central question posed by a new report examining the state’s spending on its university system and how much graduates end up contributing back to the state budget. The answer? “A resounding yes,” said Michele Siqueiros, executive director of The Campaign for College [...]
Report details principals’ impact on student achievement
Teacher effectiveness. The term has become a buzzword for policymakers, researchers and educators alike as they talk about the pressing need to improve our nation’s worst schools. But the rarely discussed factor of principal effectiveness is nearly as important, according to a new report by the Center for Public Education. “The principal perspective: at a [...]
Will cheating scandals change the focus on high-stakes testing?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has another explosive story out this week about possible cheating on standardized tests. This time, the newspaper looked at suspicious circumstances in nearly 70,000 schools across the country and found “red flags” in about 200 districts, an analysis that “suggests a broad betrayal of schoolchildren across the nation,” the newspaper said. The [...]
Little teacher support for some Obama school-reform strategies
Teachers are skeptical about several of the major reform ideas the Obama administration and education activists are pushing to turn around the nation’s struggling schools, a new survey commissioned by Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has found. (Disclosure: the Gates Foundation is among the many funders of The Hechinger Report.) Fewer than a [...]
Affirmative action on the docket again: Justice Kennedy’s past opinions hint at outcome
Affirmative action in college admissions is on the Supreme Court docket again this year after a white student named Abigail Fisher challenged a University of Texas program meant to promote diversity on UT campuses. Affirmative-action proponents, including many university leaders, are concerned that if the University of Texas loses, efforts to increase diversity in U.S. [...]
Is the era of teaching to the test nearing an end?
One more state received a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind Act requirements this week, and the debate about what the waivers will mean for education policy continues. New Mexico, which was left waiting for a verdict on its application after an announcement that 10 other states had been granted waivers last week, [...]
Obama’s new teacher plan: Not so new?
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan made his case yesterday for the $5 billion that he and President Barack Obama want Congress to put toward a new grant competition to overhaul the teaching profession. The program would follow the mold of the administration’s $4.35-billion Race to the Top competition in form and, it seems to a [...]
Ten states let off the No Child Left Behind hook
U.S. President Barack Obama announced today that he is letting 10 states off the hook for meeting requirements in the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The law, passed in 2001 with bipartisan support under President George W. Bush, called for all students to reach proficiency in English and math by 2014, a goal that [...]
