The American Graduation Initiative

Fifty years ago, President Truman called for a national network of community colleges to dramatically expand opportunities for veterans returning from World War II. Today, faced with rapid technological change and global competition, community colleges are needed more than ever to raise American skills and education levels and keep American businesses competitive. President Obama has called for an additional 5 million community college degrees and certificates by 2020 and new steps to ensure that those credentials will help graduates get ahead in their careers. The American Graduation Initiative will build on the strengths of community colleges and usher in new innovations and reforms for the 21st century economy.  It will:

• Call for 5 Million Additional Community College Graduates
• Create the Community College Challenge Fund
• Fund Innovative Strategies to Promote College Completion
• Modernize Community College Facilities
• Create a New Online Skills Laboratory

Roughly half of community college students complete a credential or transfer to a four-year college after six years. In contrast, nearly two-thirds of students who begin in a four-year institution complete a bachelor’s degree in the same time period. However, since not all community college students intend to complete a formal program of study, how should community college students’ intentions be characterized? A new National Center for Education Statistics report proposes a classification scheme to address this question. The report analyzes outcomes for beginning community college students according to how "directed" they are toward completing a program of study. Levels of direction are based on factors associated with student persistence and degree attainment, and outcomes examined included institutional retention, student persistence, four-year transfer rates, enrollment continuity and first-year attrition.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics studied career trends for teachers and released favorable predictions for the job outlook for preK-12 teachers, as well as information on how and why the employment of teachers will change over the next few years.

• While the employment of preK-12 teachers is projected to grow at a rate average with other professions, job prospects are particularly favorable for teachers in high-demand fields like math, science, and bilingual education, or in less desirable urban or rural school districts.
• Overall student enrollments through 2016 are expected to rise more slowly than in the past, but fast-growing states in the South and West will experience the largest enrollment increases.
• Due to a large increase in funding for early childhood education and a projected higher enrollment growth for preschool age children, preschool teaching positions are expected to grow much faster than the average for all occupations.
• Most job openings will result from the need to replace the large number of teachers who are expected to retire before 2016.

That too many young people come out of high school ill-prepared for college or the work force is little disputed. The questions of why that's so and how to fix the situation have too often resulted in finger pointing. However, the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association have released common standards designed to align high school and college curriculums in mathematics and English-language arts. These standards could create a set of widely embraced national (but not federal) standards for what high school students need to know to be "college ready" or to have the skills to enter the work force. They will be research and evidence-based, internationally benchmarked, aligned with college and work expectations and include rigorous content and skills. While the process of stitching the standards down into high school curriculums and linking them upwards to colleges' admissions or placement policies will take years, K-12 and higher education experts who have toiled in this terrain for years describe the development of the core standards as clearing a major hurdle.

The importance of play to young children’s healthy development and learning has been documented beyond question by research. Yet play is rapidly disappearing from kindergarten and early education as a whole. Children now spend far more time being taught and tested on literacy and math skills than they do learning through play and exploration, exercising their bodies, and using their imaginations. Many kindergartens use highly prescriptive curricula geared to new state standards and linked to standardized tests. In an increasing number of kindergartens, teachers must follow scripts from which they may not deviate. These practices, which are not well grounded in research, violate long-established principles of child development and good teaching. Crisis in Kindergarten, a report published by the Alliance for Children, asserts that the stifling of play has dire consequences - not only for children but for the future of our nation. This report attempts to bring broad public attention to the crisis in our kindergartens and to spur collective action to reverse the damage now being done.

A new analysis of existing online-learning research by the U.S. Department of Education reveals that students who took all or part of their class on line performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction. The study says online learning is deserving of analysis, because it is one of the "fastest growing trends in educational uses of technology." Most of the studies examined by researchers dealt with college-level courses, and Department of Education officials caution against generalizing the report's findings to the K-12 level. Still, the report could help educators as they seek to create effective learning environments for all students.