This week, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights has released a new report,"Reversing the Rising Tide of Inequality: Achieving Educational Equity for Each and Every Child." The Leadership Conference aims to bolster the effort to achieve both quality and fairness in our nation’s public education system. In the report, The Leadership Conference explains the current available state remedies for inequity; examines the...
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On April 10th, President Obama released his Fiscal Year 2014 Budget. Overall, for education, it’s good news. The Administration is requesting $71.2 billion in discretionary appropriations for the Department of Education in fiscal year 2014, an increase of $3.1 billion, or 4.5 percent, over the fiscal year 2012 level.
The 2014 budget request for the Department of Education is focused on six priorities: (1) high-quality early learning opportunities for all children, (2)...
The Center for American Progress (CAP) has a released a new report, "Mayoral Governance and Student Achievement: How Mayor-Led Districts Are Improving School and Student Performance," examining mayoral control of school districts. This model began as a strategy to raise urban school performance. It began in Boston in 1992, followed by Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, and many others. Over the last 20 years, almost 20 urban school systems have been...
California State Senate has introduced new legislation that will provide more career-oriented curriculum and training for California students by enhancing the connections between schools and industry. The Dropout Reduction and Workforce Development Bond Act of 2013, SB 594, creates these new business-school partnerships that enable students to have more opportunities for career training leading toward middle class jobs, while business and industry will benefit from growth in California’s skilled workforce. Programs serving economically disadvantaged students in school districts with high...
A solid education that prepares a student for college and careers makes a huge life difference for a boy of color raised in poverty. That education can be the starting point for attaining so much more in life and breaking the cycle of poverty for himself and his family.
But getting that education is no easy task. It takes hard work, persistence, and focus. And sometimes, even that is not enough. You see, for low-income students, succeeding in school is like running a three-legged race with poverty as your partner. It slows you down. Sometimes it trips you up. It can even cause you...
On February 19, 2013, the Equity and Excellence Commission publicly released its report, "For Each and Every Child: A Strategy for Education Equity and Excellence." This Commission was formed in 2011 by the U.S. Department of Education. This idea to form this Commission was conceived by Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA) and Chaka Fattah (D-PA), who through their work on the House Appropriations Committee secured funding for the Department’s Office of Civil Rights to conduct the Commission. The Commission's charge was to provide advice to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education on the...
Senator Harkin (D-Iowa) has announced that he will not seek re-election when his current term ends in 2014. Harkin has been a champion of education and disability issues for decades, first in the House and later in the Senate. He currently chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee as well as the Senate appropriations committee responsible for k-12 funding. Senator Harkin has been working for several years on getting the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA formerly known as NCLB) reauthorized. The last draft version of the reauthorized bill was quite...
StopBullying.gov, an initiative of the US Department of Education's Office of Safe and Healthy Students, has launched a new Spanish website: http://espanol.stopbullying.gov/.
Like the English-...
On January 10, 2013, Education Week released its annual Quality Counts publication. This year’s report, Quality Counts 2013: Code of Conduct—Safety, Discipline, and School Climate, considers the impact that a school’s social and disciplinary climate have on students’ ability to learn. The report includes analysis of issues such as peer relationships, a sense of safety and security, and school disciplinary policies. It also includes highlights from a survey of school administrators and educators about their perspectives on...
Schools gather a lot of data to draw an academic picture of a student such as test scores, grades, and attendance. But what schools know less about are the root causes that explain why a student does not come to school, or why their grades are slipping. In Northern Kentucky, school leaders are learning that understanding these root causes are the key to being able to provide individual student interventions and school-wide services that increase student success.
Schools in Northern Kentucky were selected by The Ready by 21 National Partnership and Gallup to participate in piloting...