I mentioned on Monday that this week is National Charter School week and that I would be highlighting some charter school programs. I wanted to start off by pointing out the positive impact on student achievement attained by the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP). For those of you who are less familiar with the program, KIPP is a national network of charter schools serving low-income and minority communities.
The KIPP Academy in Lynn, Mass. has received a “high” in the categories of English Language Arts and Math for the 2007 State performance Rating. The school has also made some great progress particularly in their 6th and 7th grades, which you can find after the jump:
We all have them -- those special teachers from school that we'll always remember. It might be the teacher that taught you how to read, or the one that mentored you in choosing which college to attend. Whoever it may be -– teachers affect the lives of our students everyday. We know, and research even shows, that teachers have the biggest impact on student learning.
Over the next eight years, the United States will need to recruit nearly 3 million new teachers due to teacher turnover, retirement and increased student enrollment. However, this task will be nearly impossible if we don't start to treat teachers like the professionals they are. As we celebrate National Teacher Appreciation day today, there are three major approaches we need to take to successfully recruit and retain our teachers:
We need to give teachers the same opportunities for advancement and better pay that other professionals enjoy.
We need to offer higher salaries to compete with other professions for adults who have strong math and science backgrounds.
We need to pay teachers more when we ask them to take on harder jobs.
It's imperative that we have an effective teacher in every classroom and to do this we need to start appreciating our teachers more than one day a year. Take some time today to use the comments section of the blog to tell me about your favorite teacher.
Tomorrow is a big day in Indiana and North Carolina, and many voters will head to the polls with the state of the economy on their minds. With the economy in peril, it's no wonder why voters in both states are worried about the increasing costs to consumers coupled declining wages and outsourcing of their jobs.
We cannot fix the economy without focusing preparing our next generation of workers with adequate skills and knowledge to succeed in the global marketplace. Recent data in both Indiana and North Carolina has shown that our traditional public schools need reform. Below is overview of education statistics in these two states:
I'm back from the Milken event in Los Angeles and with over 3,000 attendees from around the country, the event was a good place to discover and discuss the latest innovations and thoughts on topics such as health, education, and the economy. I mentioned earlier in the week that I sat on a panel at the event with 1992 Nobel Prize in Economics winner Gary Becker, Eli Broad, Michael Morris and Lowell Milken.
We had a thought-provoking discussion that focused on America's education system compared to the rest of the world. We also discussed critical solutions for getting our country back on track and fixing our schools. KTLA covered parts of the panel discussion, which you can watch in the clip below.
As I've mentioned before, I strongly believe that we are losing the education race worldwide. As recently as 1998, the U.S. ranked first in percentage of 25-34 year olds with at least a bachelor's degree, but by 2005 it had dropped to 7th. Between 2000 and 2005, out of 23 countries, the U.S. was the only country that showed no increase in its postsecondary graduation rate. And while America once had the best high school graduation rate in the world, it has now slipped to 20th out of 26 countries.
Fixing our mediocre education system is something that we must do and as I witnessed from the event – there's great interest to do so. I can only hope that the candidates will continue to offer their plans for true education reform – our students and our country deserve that.
KIPP, the Knowledge is Power Program, recently released a new report card illustrating the progress of KIPP's schools. The results are encouraging. On average, KIPP students who completed all four years at their middle school jumped from the 40th to the 82nd percentile in math and from the 32nd to the 60th percentile in reading.
Also, according to Jay Mathews from the Washington Post, the college matriculation rate of graduates of KIPP middle schools is now 82 percent. This is of great importance because more than two-thirds of the new jobs created in our economy require students to go beyond high school and acquire college education or technical training.
So, why have KIPP schools seen such success?
One reason could be the amount of time their students spend in the classroom. KIPP students are in the classroom up to 60 percent more than regular public school students. KIPP schools also have clearly defined and measurable high expectations for academic achievement. When our students know that we expect more from them – they readily accept the challenge.
I'm a firm believer in this formula: with more time and support for learning coupled with strong, rigorous standards – we will have success.
Tomorrow marks the end of Math Awareness Month. Dating back to 1986, the goal of Math Awareness Month is to create public understanding of and appreciation for mathematics. The theme for this year's celebration couldn't be more appropriate – Mathematics and Voting.
From the announcement of the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics:
In a presidential election year, voting is uppermost on our minds. Candidates vie for attention, polls are taken, debates held, blogs written, primaries conducted, and, ultimately, a general election leads to the naming of the next president of the United States. Some of us are deeply engaged in these processes, and some keep them at a distance. Yet, most people wonder at some point: Does my vote matter? Is the election process fair? Are the votes being counted correctly? The answers to these questions involve great complexity, but fortunately, mathematics and statistics provide the means to deal with such complexity.
Math is part of our lives in places we don't even recognize it. That's why it is critical that Americans put more emphasis and interest on the mathematics skills of our students. As I've pointed out many times before – compared to 30 industrialized nations, the U.S ranks 25th in math.
Check out the Math Awareness Web site – there are plenty of additional resources to download and you can also test your knowledge of math and voting.
Most importantly - let's make it a priority this year to "vote for math."
I'm blogging from the road today in Los Angeles where the campaign is participating in the
2008 Milken Institute Global Conference.
We'll be participating in a number of roundtable discussions including: "Education
Reform: Learning from the Competition in Asia," "Business Leader's
Toolkit: How Business Executives Can Influence Education Reform," and "A
Nation Paralyzed: Is the United States at Risk of Losing the Education Race
Worldwide?"
The Milken Institute Global Conference brings together some of the most
extraordinary people in the world - from scientists, business executives and
philanthropists to journalists, academics and Nobel laureates - to discuss,
debate and deliberate today's most pressing social, political and economic
challenges. I'm excited for the event and look forward to sharing some lessons
learned over the week.
Also, in case you missed it – ED in '08 was featured on ABC's World News Tonight
this weekend. Watch itand let me know what you think in the comments.
ThinkMTV/CBS released a poll with new results on young voters yesterday.
The results conclude that more young voters see education as a top issue now than they did a year ago. When asked to pick the top issue facing their generation, young voters chose education third, behind the economy and Iraq. When asked what is the "biggest problem your generation will need to address over the next twenty years" – young voters ranked fixing the education system third ahead of terrorism and health care.
I'm encouraged to see that our nation's young men and women are concerned about education and understand the critical importance of a world-class education for the future of our country.
This weekend marks the 25th anniversary of the landmark education report A Nation at Risk and education analysts are offering their own perspective on where America is in regards to education. I wrote about Secretary of Education Spellings yesterday and wanted to mention one other issue from her remarks today.
Many of the actions that A Nation at Risk recommended in 1983 continue to be largely ignored: raising standards, making coursework more rigorous, and using classroom time more effectively. These proposals were not unreasonable then, and they’re not unreasonable now.
Our campaign has put together our own analysis of the last 25 years and we’ve concluded similar results with respect to common, rigorous standards, expanding time for learning, and teacher compensation.
Over the past few months I’ve increasingly written about the dropout crisis facing our nation. One post that I distinctly remember pertains to the lack of uniformity for states reporting their dropout statistics. Yesterday, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings attempted to fix this problem by issuing proposed federal regulations which, in addition to other things, would create a uniform graduation rate reporting system among states.
The formula that states will now need to use is one that was agreed upon by the nation’s governors in 2005. Spellings also illustrated how the dropout epidemic negatively affects our economy:
Over their lifetimes, dropouts from the class of 2007 alone will cost our nation more than $300 billion in lost wages, lost taxes, and lost productivity. Increasing graduation rates by just five percent, for male students alone, would save us nearly $8 billion each year.
I think it is important that we take steps to solve our nation’s dropout crisis and it’s imperative that all states use the same formula, so we can truly know how the severity of the epidemic. Solving this crisis is going to take a lot of hard work and collaboration with leaders at all levels of government and I commend Sec. Spellings for continuing this dialogue yesterday.
You can read her full remarks at the Department of Education Web site.
Bob Herbert's column in today’s New York Times is
right on the money with what our campaign has been talking about for almost a
year now.He writes:
[Critical issues facing our country] require an educated
populace if they are to be dealt with effectively. At the moment we are not
even coming close to equipping the population with the intellectual tools that
are needed.
I have to agree with these statements and I echo his sentiments
when he concludes his piece with the phrase, “We’ve got work to do.”
Take a look at this op-ed and let me know what you think.
Today the campaign unveiled an original analysis and report card showing the lack of progress in the school reform movement since the release of the landmark report, A Nation at Risk, written by the National Commission on Excellence in Education 25 years ago.
Our schools have been underperforming for 25 years. America is slipping farther and farther behind the rest of the world academically because we have been unable to enact meaningful reforms or substantially improve student learning in the last quarter century.
We know that the American public supports education reform – the missing piece is leadership – on national and local levels. Without vigorous national leadership, states and schools cannot significantly improve their antiquated education systems. Students in our nation’s schools deserve a robust and world-class education that offers them a pathway towards the American dream.
Our report, A Stagnant Nation: Why American Students Are Still at Risk, explains that few of the National Commission on Excellence in Education's recommendations related to time, teaching and standards have yet to be enacted. The report also says that America's economic future remains gravely at risk. Here are some of our findings:
Time: A Nation at Risk urged schools and state legislatures to break the six-hour-a-day, 180-day-per-year calendar and consider seven-hour school days and 200- to 220-day school years. Yet, today only one state has a pilot program to significantly expand learning time and nationwide, the amount of time elementary school students spend learning core academic subjects has increased by only approximately 36 minutes per week, amounting to fewer than ten minutes per day.
Teaching: The Commission urged policymakers to help recruit the best and brightest to teaching by making the profession more attractive. To that end, the Commission recommended making teacher compensation "professionally competitive, market-sensitive, and performance-based." Yet today only five states have large-scale programs in place for performance pay or career-ladder incentives. And, only about eight percent of public school districts offer pay incentives to reward excellence in teaching -- a figure that has remained virtually unchanged since 1984. In 2004, only six percent of U.S. school districts could offer recruitment incentives in mathematics, despite the fact that nearly 30 percent of districts reported great difficulty hiring qualified math teachers to fill vacancies.
Standards & Expectations: The Commission recommended that states and districts raise standards and expectations so classroom grades reflect actual learning. Yet 12th grade reading and science scores dropped as average high school GPAs were increasing. Students are earning better grades in "tougher" courses, yet actual learning is stagnant or declining. In addition, states have failed to set rigorous academic standards in the lower grades. One study found that out of 32 states, not one state had set standards for 4th grade reading that were high enough to meet the proficient level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test and 24 had set standards so low they did not reach even the most basic level.
We need to do better; we can't let another 25 years go by without action. Let's stand up and call on our candidates to support real education reform. It's the only way we’re going to fix our schools and better prepare our students for the future.
I had the opportunity to attend a forum dedicated to understanding the math curriculum in Singapore. From the results of the TIMMS report in 1999 – it is clear that the way Singapore prepares its students in math is extraordinary. The style and content of the textbooks they utilize to teach their students is something that the United States could benefit from. In fact, many schools, like South River Public Schools in New Jersey, have started incorporating Singapore math textbooks into their curriculum and they’ve found the following results:
In the 3rd grade:
Advanced proficient scores increased by 12.2 percent
Proficient scores increased by 3.18 percent
Partially proficient scores decreased by 15.38 percent
In the 4th grade:
Advanced proficient scores increased by 8.43 percent
Proficient scores increased by 1.36 percent
Partially proficient scores decreased by 9.79 percent
Yesterday, millions of Americans across the company scrambled to file their tax returns before the midnight deadline in hopes that they’ll receive a substantial refund from the IRS. It was also a day where Americans really thought about all the money they’ve given up to the government or about the places they might spend their refund check. Besides taxes, Americans should also be thinking about the real cost of mediocre education.
From extra remediation classes and lost opportunities due to inadequate skills, Americans are wasting billions of dollars annually.
It’s shocking to know that the amount of time that college students need to spend in remedial courses is rising. From 1995 to 2000, the percentage of colleges reporting that students had to spend at least one year in remedial courses has increased from 28 percent to 35 percent.
Just at the community college level, families spend an additional $283 million to pay for remedial courses every year, and taxpayers foot an extra $978 million. One group estimates that, counting lost productivity from students who take remedial courses, poor preparation for college costs the United States $2.3 billion annually. (Alliance for Excellent Education. (2006). Paying Double: Inadequate High Schools and Community College Remediation. Washington, DC: Author)
This is a problem that we can solve. By implementing real education reform, including common, rigorous standards, effective teachers in our classrooms and giving more time and support for learning, our students will be better prepared for college and no longer be required to waste time or money on remedial classes.
This Wednesday marks another opportunity for the Democratic candidates for president to use a nationally televised debate to share their education reform initiatives with questions regarding the education crisis we're currently facing. If these issues were to come up, Philadelphia, the site of the debate, is the perfect place to do so. According to the latest Education Research Center report, Philadelphia has a 49.6 percent graduation rate. That means more than 50 percent of high school seniors in the Philadelphia school system are facing a life with extremely limited economic prospects.
As I've mentioned many times before, these statistics have a negative impact on our economic competitiveness here at home and around the world. It's going to take real presidential leadership to solve this crisis and reform our education system. It’s imperative that this conversation begin in earnest Wednesday night.
Our team will be leading a discussion of the documentary Two Million Minutes Wednesday at Mastery Charter School in Philadelphia. In gearing up for the upcoming event, I've been giving a lot of thought lately to charter schools. As many of you know, charter schools are founded by parents, educators, community groups or private organizations and they are funded with taxpayer money. Essentially, they operate as deregulated public schools that accept increased accountability in exchange for decreased regulations and requirements.
A colleague of mine came across an interesting working paper published by RAND on "Evaluating the Performance of Philadelphia’s Charter Schools" and I thought I’d share it with you. The paper reports that Philadelphia has seen a dramatic increase in the number of charter schools since 1997. Beginning with only three, the school district now has over 60. The report examines the effects that charter schools have had on student achievement in Philadelphia and its results are quite impressive.
I chair Strong American Schools and direct the ED in 08 campaign. I come to this effort after serving as Governor of Colorado for 12 years and most recently as Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
