Tough Choices or Tough Times calls for first redesign of the American education system in a century. This report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce shows how the dynamics of the global economy will lead to a steady decline in the American standard of living if this country does not undertake the first thorough overhaul of its education system in a century.
Closing the Gaps
This plan includes strategies for reaching each of the goals and an annual performance measuring system. The Plan and related documents are provided in this link.q
Aligning Postsecondary Expectations and High School Practice: The Gap Defined
Policy Implications of the ACT National Curriculum Survey® Results 2005–2006
Specific recommendations from the College Board for curriculum alignment between High Schools and Colleges.
The Costs and Benefits of an Excellent Education for All of America’s Children
Is excellent education for all America’s children a good investment? We know that education is expensive, but poor and inadequate education for substantial numbers of our young may have public and social consequences that are even more costly. This study examines not only the costs of investing in services to provide an excellent education but also the costs of not doing so.
Reclaiming the American Dream
For a country in which education is the premier means for promoting equal opportunity and social mobility, increasing college access and success for low-income students is a moral, social, and economic imperative.
Read the recommendations from this research supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Learning to Finish
Visit the Pew-Partnership's Dropout Prevention Learning to Finish Wiki for excellent information and articles designed to increase high school completion for all students.
Alliance for Excellent Education
The mission of the Alliance for Excellent Education is to promote high school transformation to make it possible for every child to graduate prepared for postsecondary education and success in life. Read some of their Issue and Policy Briefs.
Rethinking the First Year of College
http://soeweb.syr.edu/academics/grad/higher_education/Copy%20of%20Vtinto/Files/RethinkFirstYearCollege.pdf
Taking Retention Seriously
http://soeweb.syr.edu/academics/grad/higher_education/Copy%20of%20Vtinto/Files/TakingRetentionSeriously.pdf
What Works in Student Retention? (Four-Year Public Colleges)
http://www.act.org/path/postsec/droptables/pdf/FourYearPublic.pdf
Latino Youth and the Pathway to College
http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/31.pdf
America's Perfect Storm
A report from ETS's Policy Information Center, America's Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing Our Nation's Future, looks at the convergence of three powerful sociological and economical forces that are changing our nation's future:
- substantial disparities in skill levels (reading and math)
- seismic economic changes (widening wage gaps)
- sweeping demographic shifts (less education, lower skills)
The Paradigm Trap
Getting beyond No Child Left Behind will mean changing our 19th-century, closed-system mind-set.
Education Week. By William Spady
Quality Counts 2007--From Cradle to Career
Smart states, like smart companies, try to make the most of their investments by ensuring that young
people’s education is connected from one stage to the next—reducing the chances that students will be lost
along the way or will require costly remedial programs to acquire skills or knowledge they could have
learned right from the start.
Increasingly, states worried about the skills of their future workforce and stiffer economic competition from
abroad are trying to connect education from birth to adulthood—or as the title of this report suggests, from
cradle to career—so that more students are prepared for further study, work, and citizenship.
How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century
Time Magazine, December 10, 2007
Are They Really Ready To Work?
Employers’ Perspectives on the Basic Knowledge and Applied
Skills of New Entrants to the 21st Century U.S. Workforce