Diplomas Count

Yesterday, I participated in a press conference for the release of Diplomas Count 2008: School to College: Can  State P-16 Councils Ease the Transition?.  The third annual report from Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center projects that 1.23 million students will fail to graduate in 2008 and nearly 30 percent of 9th graders will fail to make it to graduation in four years.

However, what I found particularly striking in this report was the break-down of graduation rates by U.S. congressional district.  Diplomas Count includes a unique map that displays the graduation rate in each congressional district.  There are great disparities throughout the map—some districts graduating over 85 percent of their students and some graduating less than 55 percent—and the next president and 50 governors must make solving this dropout crisis a priority.

This map raises an alarm bell about the critical need for leadership to fix this problem.  It is my hope that the next president will keep a copy of this map on his or her desk to remind him every day of the problem that plagues our nation and the importance of education reform.  I urge the next president to use this map and work with the governors across America to address the low-graduation rates plaguing each state.  I believe that we absolutely cannot solve the economic issues facing our country without solving the crisis that this map represents and raising graduation rates across the nation through a coordinated effort with local, state and national leaders.  Someone must take responsibility for the sad story told in this map.

Condition of Education 2008

Last week, the National Center for Education Statistics released The Condition of Education 2008 report. The report presents indicators or important developments and trends in U.S education. These indicators focus on participation and persistence in education, student performance, other measures of achievement, the environment for learning, and resources for education.

I'm pleased to find that the scores of both 4th and 8th grade reading were higher than the scores in 1992.

However, the reading scores of our 12th graders have declined since 1992.

The decline of our 12th graders’ reading scores is a critical problem. Students who are unprepared for college will waste time and money taking remedial classes. Moreover, only 30% of students who take remedial reading in college ever earn a degree.

In order for our students to succeed in college, work and life we need to adequately prepare them in our classrooms.  This means finding a way to sustain increases in academic achievement through high school and graduation.

Achieving Progress in Rural Areas

The Center for American Progress has recently come out with a new report, Additional Learning Opportunities in Rural Areas. The report simply states, "Rural, low-income students are more at risk of becoming high school dropouts than their city and suburban peers."

That concerns me.

Coming from Colorado, I'm familiar with rural communities. However, for those of you who aren't – rural communities are determined by a number of characteristics including the size of the community, the population density, and local job availability.

I was pleased to read that the Center for American Progress cites extended learning time as a promising strategy as a way to improve the achievement of rural students.

For example, one school highlighted was KIPP Gaston in Gaston, N.C. They have already utilized extended learning time as a means for enhancing student achievement. All students are in class there from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. every day and half a day every other Saturday. The students also attend a three-week, full day summer session.

In the latest KIPP Report Card, Kipp Gaston's 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th graders have ranked higher than their North Carolina counterparts in every category. Check out the breakdown after the jump:

Oregon and Kentucky

For the past several weeks, I've been highlighting the education stats in the remaining primary states. We've only got a few left to go and today Oregon and Kentucky are voting. Also, the campaign is screening the documentary Two Million Minutes in Richmond tonight at the Byrd Theatre in Carytown. The event is free and open to the public, if you're around -- stop on by.

Oregon Facts
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (2007)
% 4th graders proficient in reading: 28
% 4th graders proficient in math: 35

% 8th graders proficient in reading: 34
% 8th graders proficient in math: 35

According to the state’s own assessments (2007)
% 4th graders proficient in reading: 79   
% 4th graders proficient in math: 71   

% 8th graders proficient in reading: 68   
% 8th graders proficient in math: 70   
(Source: U.S. Dept. of Education)

High School and Beyond:
% 9th graders who graduate from high school on time: 71
% high school graduates who go right on to college: 46
% college freshmen who earn a diploma within six years: 55
(Sources: Education Week; The NCHEMS Information Center)

Kentucky Facts   
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (2007):
% 4th graders proficient in reading: 33
% 4th graders proficient in math: 30

% 8th graders proficient in reading: 28
% 8th graders proficient in math: 27

According to the state’s own assessments (2007):
% 4th graders proficient in reading: 73   
% 4th graders proficient in math: 60   

% 8th graders proficient in reading: 64   
% 8th graders proficient in math: 49   
(Source: U.S. Dept. of Education)

High School and Beyond:
% 9th graders who graduate from high school on time: 70
% high school graduates who go right on to college: 57
% college freshmen who earn a diploma within six years: 44
(Sources: Education Week; The NCHEMS Information Center)

Education statistics from West Virginia

Last week, I shared with you some of the education statistics in Indiana and North Carolina. Today, as primary voters head to the polls in West Virginia, I wanted to highlight some similar statistics in the state:

Student Performance:                
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (2007):
% 4th graders proficient in reading:    28
% 4th graders proficient in math:    33

% 8th graders proficient in reading:    23
% 8th graders proficient in math:    19

According to the state’s own assessments (2007):
% 4th graders proficient in reading:   
% 4th graders proficient in math:    79   

% 8th graders proficient in reading:   
% 8th graders proficient in math:    71   

High School and Beyond:
% 9th graders who graduate from high school on time:     76
% high school graduates who go right on to college:        53
% college freshmen who earn a diploma within six years.     44
(Sources: U.S. Dept. of Education; The NCHEMS Information Center)

Cost to the State:
Approximately 6,700 students did not graduate from West Virginia’s high schools in 2007; that cohort of West Virginia students forfeited $1.7 billion in lifetime earnings by dropping out.

If West Virginia’s high schools graduated all students ready for college, the state would save almost $3.8 million a year in community college remediation costs and lost earnings.
(Source: Alliance for Excellent Education)

As the primary season is winding down, it is time for the candidates in both parties to talk more about their plan to bring about real education reform. All Americans deserve to know how we are going to fix our schools, recruit and retain quality teachers and provide more time and support for learning.

New Report from KIPP Charters

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.

We’re Still at Risk

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. 

She said:

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.

The Christian Science Monitor and Seattle Times also agree.

Waiting another 25 years before we act to solve this crisis is unacceptable:

• We cannot afford to fail in our mission to provide students with a world-class education.
• We cannot afford to graduate millions of high school seniors who lack skills in reading and math that they should have learned in middle school.
• We especially cannot afford to continue slipping farther and farther behind the other nations of the world.

Our students deserve better, and our nation’s economic security is at greater risk now than ever before.

Uniformity in our Graduation Data

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.

A Stagnant Nation

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.

The Real Cost of Mediocre Education

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.

NAEP Results Still Show Need for Systemic Change

Sam Dillon's headline grabbed my attention this afternoon. He writes, “Students Lack Writing Skills in Test." After reviewing the results myself, I tend to agree.

Today the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has released the results of the 2007 writing assessment. In an analysis of the results, Dillon wrote, "The test, administered last year, showed that there were modest increases in the writing skills of low-performing students since the last time a similar exam was given, in 2002. But the skills of high-performing eighth and 12th graders remained flat or declined."

This morning I offered the following statement in regards to the NAEP results:

Today’s test results offer a sobering look at student achievement in writing America’s schools are simply not preparing its students to compete in a global economy.  According to the results released today by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 24 percent of 12th graders are proficient in writing. What's more, a report released earlier this week revealed that nearly half the students in the 50 largest urban school districts are not graduating on time with a regular diploma.

We must not be complacent. We need to raise expectations for all of our students and we need leaders who will make education reform a national priority. If we continue to fail our students, Americans will increasingly get beat for the best jobs, negatively impacting the nation's economy.

Disturbing News on Dropouts

Yesterday was a busy day for the campaign. In the morning, I was on a panel at America's Promise's dropout prevention summit. The event focused around a new report that the Education Research Center released on high school graduation rates. The report details that only about one-half of the students in the 50 largest cities graduate with a high school diploma.

It is these school districts that account for nearly one-quarter (23 percent) of the 1.2 million students nationwide who fail to graduate with a diploma each year. As all eyes are on Pennsylvania – I wanted to point out that the Philadelphia City School District has a 49.6 precent graduation rate – 20 points below the national average.

This number is disturbing.

A Preview of the Next NAEP Report

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) will be releasing the 2007 writing assessment this Thursday at the Library of Congress. This report will provide information on the performance of our nation's eighth and twelfth-graders and include comparisons to performance in 1998 and 2002. Results will also be available for 45 states, 10 large urban school districts, and the Department of Defense schools. Dr. Peggy G. Carr, Associate Commissioner, Assessment Division, NCES will be discussing the results on an online chat following the release of the findings and I encourage you to pre-submit a question for the discussion at the NCES Web site.

Comparing States to Nations

For those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you’ve heard me say many times that America’s youth are falling behind in terms of education on the international stage as compared to other countries like Japan, Singapore, Hong-Kong, Finland and China. The American Institute for Research (AIR) confirms this in their recent study, “Chance Favors the Prepared Mind: Mathematics and Science Indicators for Comparing States and Nations.”

The main finding in this report is that the highest achieving states in the United States are performing significantly below the highest achieving countries.

As ED in ‘08 prepares to bring our message to the remaining primary states, I wanted to take a moment and share with you the reports findings as it evaluated Pennsylvania, Indiana, and North Carolina.

With a score of 38, Pennsylvania’s math performance fell behind countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands.  Indiana’s math performance fell behind Hungary and Estonia with their score of 35. Finally, North Carolina received a score of 22, which puts them behind Slovenia and Russia.

These results should wake America up as to the steps we need to take to get our education system back on track. We need comprehensive education reform that will increase our current education standards, provide our children with effective teachers in every classroom, and finally give our youth more time and support for learning.

Growing the GDP

Building on the recent discussions on skills-based learning we've been seeing, I wanted to highlight these new findings from the education research journal Education Next - it seems even more research shows that the weak cognitive skills of U.S students are harming our economic growth.

We've heard many times now that in the most recent PISA tests U.S. students again trailed the average international scores achieved by students in 30 other developed nations, scoring 21st in science and 25th in math.

Two Policy Panels, Two Takes

It's only Tuesday, and already this has been a week filled with policy discussion. Yesterday, ED in �08's executive director Marc Lampkin was part of a panel at the American Enterprise Institute called "Education as a Presidential Issue: Historically and in 2008," talking about some of the particular challenges that we've seen in this election around the issue of education. He touched on some of the factors that we at ED in '08 have been facing, including a cynical national media, the dominance of the Iraq war early in the primary season, and the shadow that NCLB casts over the education debate and ongoing governance issues.

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.

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.

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.

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."

Predicting Graduation

Last week, Craig Jerald, our former Policy Director here at ED in '08, was part of an interesting presentation by the American Youth Policy Forum on improving the transition from middle grades through high schools. He, along with education researchers Robert Balfanz and Elaine Allensworth, pointed out some key findings that should inform both educators and policy makers as they develop strategies to address America's dropout crisis.

America's Stalled Graduation Rate

Postsecondary Education Opportunity recently released a report that tracks trends in high school and college graduation rates in industrialized nations... Take a look.

Talking Business at Education Matters

I caught a flight earlier today to Boulder, where tomorrow morning I'll be the keynote speaker at "Education Matters," an annual event held by Impact on Education and the Boulder Chamber of Commerce. They have a simple goal that I completely support - to educate the local business community about the important links between public education and a strong economy.

Grading the Nation... Ed Week Releases Quality Counts 2008

This morning Education Week and the Pew Center unveiled their much-anticipated Quality Counts report, their 12th annual study of the states on education. Ed Week was good enough to come by our offices on Monday to brief us on their findings, which are pretty interesting, and hold many implications worthy of the candidates' attention.