Daily News Roundup, March 2, 2010

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Some of the News Fit to Print

COLLEGE AND CAREER STANDARDS CATCHING ON IN STATES
With President Barack Obama having recently proposed to tie federal aid for disadvantaged students to states’ adoption of “college- and career-ready” standards, a new report finds that the number of states that have such standards has mushroomed since 2005, and now stands at 31. But the report, based on a survey of states, indicates that they have been slower to embrace assessments, high school graduation requirements, and, most especially, “comprehensive” accountability systems to match those standards. “What started off as isolated efforts among individual states has become a national movement producing a national consensus: Standards must be aligned to college- and career-ready expectations,” says the report by Achieve, a Washington-based group formed by governors and business leaders. “In just five years, it has become the new norm.” The premium article is courtesy of Education Week and ECS.

OBAMA FOCUSES ON SCHOOL DROP-OUTS
President Barack Obama is offering $900 million in grants to states and school districts to turn around low-performing schools -- but recipients would have to take drastic action, such as replacing principals, reopening schools as charter schools or closing them outright. Obama was to announce the plan Monday at an education event sponsored by the America's Promise Alliance, the youth-oriented organization founded by former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his wife, Alma. Obama also planned to discuss ways to better prepare students for college and careers. The White House says 1.2 million students drop out of school each year, and only about 70 percent of entering high school freshmen go on to graduate. About 2,000 high schools turn out half of all dropouts, and the administration says it will work with states to identify those schools with graduation rates below 60 percent. Obama's 2011 budget proposal includes $900 million for School Turnaround Grants. That money is in addition to $3.5 billion to help low-performing schools that was in last year's economic stimulus bill. The article is in the Boston Globe.

EFFORTS TO PROVIDE DATA ON COLLEGES FALL SHORT
Higher education will have to be more accountable for its performance and more open to consumers about the actual cost of attending a college, and help people make easier comparisons among institutions, in order to succeed as the nation's economic engine, says a new report from two nonprofit think tanks here. Two major voluntary efforts under way to measure and report colleges' costs and academic effectiveness are inadequate, and provide parents and students with too little information to make informed choices about where they will get the most from their tuition dollars, say researchers at the two organizations, the libertarian-leaning  American Enterprise Institute, and Education Sector, which is a proponent of reforming higher education. The article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

RAVITCH TURNS CRITIC
In 2005, former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch wrote, "We should thank President George W. Bush and Congress for passing the No Child Left Behind Act ... All this attention and focus is paying off for younger students, who are reading and solving mathematics problems better than their parents' generation." Four years later, Ravitch has changed her mind. The interview is on NPR’s Morning Edition.