Closing Out the Week, Looking Ahead

Today I'd like to take a few moments to highlight some of the many interesting events and happenings from this past week that I didn't have the chance to write about earlier.

First, a couple of different articles ran this week that are worth reading. BusinessWeek released an interactive feature focusing on America's declining economic competitiveness and its links to education.

The High Cost of Losing Teachers

Money is a powerful motivator, and a new study showing just how the staggering rate of teacher turnover affects the bottom line may be the incentive districts need to take a long hard look at how to keep teachers in their classrooms.

Earlier this week, the Alliance for Excellent Education released a new brief, What Keeps Good Teachers in the Classroom?: Understanding and Reducing Teacher Turnover, that examines the causes and implications for the hundreds of thousands of teachers who leave their schools each year.

On the Ground at the Ohio Debate

Last night we saw the final debate among the Democratic candidates before voters head to the polls for the key primary contests next week in Texas and Ohio. The candidates met at Cleveland State University, while Brian Williams and Tim Russert moderated what was at times a feisty debate.

ED in '08 was one of the debate's sponsors, which is why you may have seen some of our signs and logos around the spin room following the broadcast.

Responding to the NASSP on Two Million Minutes

Recently, the National Association of Secondary School Principals took a look at the documentary Two Million Minutes: A Global Examination. Readers of this blog are familiar with the film and its message of urgency, but the NASSP had a different take. In their statement, they write, "Two Million Minutes opens a conversation about what we value in U.S. culture and the reality of a global economy. But it fails to prove its case against U.S. public schools."

ED in '08 on NBC Nightly News

NBC Nightly News says of education, "in a globalized world, it's increasingly [an issue] of national importance," and I couldn't agree more.

ED in '08 Senior Policy Analyst Adam Thibault appeared on the NBC Nightly News last night. The report discusses the role of education in the election and why such a weighty issue hasn't played a more prominent part of the campaign dialogue.

More Time for More Subjects

It's a cold and wet morning today in Washington, DC and throughout much of the northeast. D.C. public schools are open today, but many surrounding districts have closed their schools against the icy weather. As a youth growing up in Colorado, I welcomed the occasional snowy day as much as any youngster, but now, as an educator and advocate, I understand the value of every moment our students spend in a classroom.

States Make Progress on Closing the Expectations Gap

Yesterday morning, Achieve, Inc. released its third annual report, "Closing the Expectations Gap 2008." The news is good - a majority of states have committed to raise expectations for high school students, and more than one-third of states have already adopted college and career-ready standards and graduation requirements.

I've blogged before about the need for all states to hold their students to high academic standards, and I'm not alone.

Generation Next Knows All About ED

As a part of the Youth Outlook Media blog-a-thon, in which youth media bloggers from around the country discuss those issues that are important to the younger generation, I asked the ED in '08 Web Editor, Brian Wolly, to write about why education is such an important issue to young voters:

Our organization, ED in '08, is a nonpartisan public awareness campaign aimed at elevating education to the top of the list of our nation's priorities. We are also calling for a vigorous and thorough discussion of the issue by the candidates for president in 2008.

Same Message, New Urgency

Last week, at the Yale School of Management's Education Leadership Conference, my colleague, ED in '08 executive director Marc Lampkin, had the opportunity to do just that. ...

At the conference, Marc spoke about the need to apply urgency that education reform feels toward political activism. Despite the commitment many in the education community share toward reform, I often notice that relatively few consider themselves to be politically relevant, or use their voices to make education more of a priority for policy makers.

TIME Magazine on Teachers and the Candidates

The cover story of this week's TIME Magazine is a must-read piece, "How to Make Great Teachers," which takes a long hard look at some of the challenges facing the teaching profession, and features a guide about the election and education, detailing where the presidential candidates stand on issues such as teacher pay, and a longer school day or year.
TIME also promotes the efforts of ED in '08 in the sidebar, "A Voter's Guide to Education," referring to us a "nonpartisan group [that] is a clearinghouse for potential solutions to persistent problems in U.S. education."

The Economists' Take

One of the challenges we encounter when trying to raise awareness around the education crisis is that it's not always easy to show how things like dropout rates or the falling performance of U.S. students on an international scale directly impact the average American (or, more to the point, their wallet).

Last week, the ED in '08 policy team and myself participated in a lengthy meeting at the American Institutes of Research to hear perspectives on U.S. education policy and the economy from a series of top economists, including Alan Krueger, Cecilia Rouse, and my son, Paul Romer, among others.

Missing the Point

I was surprised and disappointed to read Jay Matthew's column on international competitiveness in The Washington Post yesterday. Now Matthews is a guy who really cares about our schools, and recognizes that we need some drastic reforms to fix the persistent problems plaguing America's education system. That's why I was taken aback by his opinion that we needn't worry about American students losing ground.

Adding Community Colleges to the Discussion

We spend a lot of time talking to educators of elementary and secondary students, but this morning I had the opportunity to address the 2008 Community College National Legislative Summit, and hear from the leaders of community colleges from across the United States. It was a packed house, with over 1,000 attendees.

I spoke about our work here at ED in '08 and the challenges facing our schools, challenges that impact the millions of students who enroll in colleges each year, about half of whom attend community colleges.

Performance Pay at the Highest Levels

Last week, Adam Thibault, ED in '08's senior policy analyst, attended a panel on NCLB reauthorization up on Capitol Hill and returned with some interesting perspectives about steps that individual districts have been taking to make school reforms and accountability work. A lot of important figures in American education were present, including Secretary Tommy Thompson and Governor Roy Barnes, Co-chairs of the Commission on No Child Left Behind, and several key congressional staffers.

To the Field Teams- Many Thanks

In the lull between the storm of caucuses and primaries across the country, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the thousands of ED in '08 supporters nationwide who have turned out to our field events, worn a button, signed a petition, or held a sign in solidarity with our mission here at ED in '08.

Narrowing the Field

And then there were five…

In the past two weeks, we’ve seen a handful of competitive candidates and a few relatively minor ones hang up their spurs and call it quits. Last night, overt the course of an evening of “too close to call” primary races, the five remaining presidential hopefuls made it clear that it may still be some time yet until we have a definitive nominee in each party.

ED in the Super Tuesday States, Part II

Yesterday, I started to lay out the state of public education in each of the twenty-four states that are in the midst of presidential primaries and caucuses today. Our ED in ’08 interactive map is a great way to look at the education figures in your state.

ED in the Super Tuesday States, Part I

Well, tomorrow is Super Tuesday, a day that has most political pundits jumping up and down in excitement and the rest of us holding our breath to see which candidates will rise above the fray to win voters and delegates. With such a diverse group of states in play, tomorrow will be a day that really starts to give a sense of the national election, rather than a series of state-specific contests.

Too Much Math, Too Little Learning

Last week, our policy team attended an event at the Brookings Institute that revealed some thoughtful insights on U.S. math standards and curriculum. In short, there's too much of it. As Education Daily reports, "it covers too many topics in each grade level and it lacks a standard sequence - the order in which students study subjects."