About 28 different languages are spoken in the halls of this school, where Black, White, Latino and Asian students from all walks of life mingle easily in the cafeteria. On warm days they gather on the front lawn or the concrete steps of the school’s stadium. The African-American students, who make up 54 percent of the student body, can claim as many advantages as any other group: Some are the children of cardiologists, college professors,lawyers and corporate executives. One might think that the national education gap between Black and White students does not apply in this largely middle-class setting. Not so,- says the school’s principal, Angela R. Davis, who is African-American.

Read Entire Article, courtesy of Essence Magazine. (PDF File)

The unemployment rate for men is running 2.7 percentage points higher than for women – a “just unprecedented” spread, according to economist Mark Perry at the University of Michigan-Flint.

One obvious reason: The downturn has hammered manufacturing, construction and other male-dominated sectors, while going easier on female-heavy fields such as health care and education.

But a less-appreciated factor could make an even bigger difference in the long run.

For years now, women have been earning the most college degrees. That trend is accelerating, leaving experts to wonder if men are somehow missing the latest economic wake-up call.

Given a knowledge-based economy and a sluggish outlook for skilled trades, men are facing the economic recovery with significantly bleaker career prospects than the opposite sex.

Rutgers University’s Lionel Tiger expects a “slow but persistent exile of males from higher education,” while anti-feminist scholar Christina Hoff Sommers sees a future with “a lot of strong women and a lot of disaffected men,” prone to crime and unable to form stable families.

Women familiar with the wage gap, glass ceiling and marriage penalty may well scoff at the idea of male status at risk in the working world. But the educational-achievement divide is real and growing, even if its ultimate consequence is anyone’s guess.

The Education Department’s latest projections show that by 2018, women will be earning more sheepskins in every category, including professional degrees for law, medicine and business.

The biggest difference isn’t so much who starts college, but who finishes. Men drop out at much higher rates.

It’s possible that economic issues play a role in that. Male students working to support their educations, for instance, may be more likely to drop their studies for the lure of a full-time paycheck. In addition, family attitudes have changed from the days when women were viewed as a lower priority for tuition support.

Those issues pale, however, next to academic performance. Females overall perform much better in grade school and beyond. By the time they’re teenagers, in fact, the die is cast.

“Boys and young men don’t do as well in school,” said Claudia Buchmann, a professor at Ohio State University who studies gender disparities in education.

All this is quite different from the male-dominated education and job markets of the past, and everyone, it seems, has a favorite explanation. A more immediate question: What’s the impact?

From his perch in the front lines of manufacturing decline, economist Perry of Flint believes more men will respond to the lack of blue-collar work by heading to school.

Young men who would have gone straight to car factories recognize that “the future is not there,” Perry said. “Now you go for the degree.”

Buchmann doubts that.

“People don’t necessarily look at the economy and say, ‘This is what I have to do,’ ” she said. “Trends don’t change real rapidly.”

In the coming decade, the wage gap will narrow as more women enter high-paying fields and reduce the time away from their careers for child-rearing and other family commitments, Buchmann predicted.

“There’s no doubt a college degree will continue to distinguish the haves from the have-nots,” she said.

So don’t be surprised if the next “man-cession” is even more one-sided than this one.

View original article here.

Until recently, South Atlanta was one of the estimated 1,000 high schools in the U.S. where, at most, 50% of freshmen received diplomas three years later. Collectively, America’s more than 20,000 high schools graduate just 71% of their students. This means 1.2 million young people a year — about 7000 every school day — are dropping out without the necessary skills to get and keep a good job.

Low graduation rates affect America’s ability to compete in the global workplace. “To get this economy back on track, we need to lower our high school dropout rates,” says U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “These students need an education, and our economy needs these students.” A 2008 report from the nonprofit organization Education Trust found that the United States is the only industrialized country where teens are less likely than their parents to earn a high school diploma.

All of us suffer when our high schools fail. Economists estimate that the students who drop out each year result in $320 billion in lost wages, taxes, and productivity. In recent testimony before Congress, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates singled out improving graduation rates as a priority. “Every student in America should graduate ready for college, a career, and life,” he said. “Every child. No exceptions.”

Dropouts are also a drain on tax dollars. Adults who’ve never worn a cap and gown are more likely to draw on government resources like welfare and Medicaid. UC Santa Barbara researchers studied high school dropouts in California and found that each year’s group of dropouts cost the state $46.4 billion over their lifetimes. Part of that astronomical figure comes from correctional costs. “Kids who don’t graduate are more likely to get into trouble and end up in jail,” says former U.S. Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell, who founded America’s Promise Alliance, a nonprofit group that aims to improve graduation rates. “It’s a loss of human talent that will hurt America and that we can’t afford.” Currently, around 40% of state prison inmates are high school dropouts.

School districts have been experimenting with different ways to combat the dropout problem. One of the most promising approaches is being tried in Georgia, a state that posted a woeful 58% graduation rate a few years ago. In this program, at-risk teenagers are matched with graduation coaches. Like sports coaches, graduation coaches nag, guide, coax, and cheer their students toward earning enough credits to get to the finish line—in their case, graduation day.

“Coaches address one of the largest needs of kids who are falling between the cracks,” says Jay Smink, executive director of the National Dropout Prevention Center at Clemson University in South Carolina. “They let them build a strong relationship with a caring adult. Coaching is one of the best programs we have to help kids stay in high school.”

In Atlanta, there is a graduation coach at every middle and high school. Thanks to the coach program, which started in 2006, and to other anti-dropout efforts, South Atlanta’s graduation rate has leapt from 35.4% to 77.4%.

Dollimeshia Richmond, 17, calls graduation coach Lauren Macdonald “my secret weapon,” explaining, “She helps me figure out what I need to do to stay in school, graduate, and live out my dream of going to college.”

Dollimeshia’s mother, Yvonne, has struggled with substance abuse and been in and out of rehab programs. During middle school, her daughter spent several years bouncing between foster care and living with her mom. The chaos in Dollimeshia’s life was reflected in the transcripts of her freshman and sophomore years of high school—her grades were poor and her attendance spotty. But Dollimeshia was determined to change. “I didn’t want to live the way I’d been living,” she says. “I wanted to graduate from high school, go to college, and do better so I could help my mother and my family,” she says.

Enter coach Lauren Macdonald, 28, a wisecracking former elementary-school teacher. Each day at 7 a.m., some of the 100 or so students on her caseload start ringing her cellphone. She demands that they go to school every day. If they miss the bus, they call her, and she picks them up on her way in.

Once Macdonald’s students are in their classrooms, she meets with some of them one-on-one to review transcripts, set goals, and devise study strategies. After lunch, she talks to their teachers and roams the halls, giving pep talks, school supplies, cookies, and the occasional scolding. “She supports me. She helps me. She motivates me,” Dollimeshia says, flashing a cloud-splitting smile.

On the day I spent with her, Macdonald walked by the detention room and saw that one of her students was inside. Her body stiff with outrage, she stood in the doorway with a heart-stopping glare. A young man in the third row shielded his eyes and slumped down. “You don’t see me,” he feebly joked.

“I do see you,” Macdonald roared. “And we will talk!”

“Some of these kids need a lot of guidance, some need encouragement,” Macdonald says, “and some need a kick in the pants. The trick, I think, is never to give up on them.”

Launched throughout Georgia three years ago, the graduation-coach program costs $49 million a year. It is now also in middle schools, because experts believe that underachievement at that stage often kicks off a cycle of disengagement, truancy, and academic failure that leads to kids dropping out.

For Corey Johnson, 17, staying in school has required discipline and focus—two things that his mother, Cresia, complains are often in short supply. “He always knew what to do to succeed,” she says, exasperated.  “But knowing is not doing.”

In his freshman and sophomore years, Corey did the bare minimum of schoolwork and often skipped classes, preferring to socialize in the halls. Then graduation coach Kemba Watson put the brakes on his fun.

“We had to get him focused on the things that matter,” Watson says. To do that, she monitored his attendance and school performance. When she saw his grades start to slip, she promptly called him to her office. “She stayed on me,” Corey explains.

Finishing his senior year, Corey says that his coach has helped him lift his GPA to the low 80s. “I think he has it in him to lift it more,” Watson declares, nodding at Corey. He smiles shyly at his hands. “I want to make my mother and Miss Watson proud,” he says.

Meanwhile, junior Dolli­meshia Richmond is already looking beyond graduation day. With an 83.0 GPA and a binder full of loan and scholarship applications, she is figuring out which college to attend.

“For me, a high school diploma is the way out, and a college education is the way up,” Dollimeshia says. And with her coach’s help, she’ll get there.

Author: Peg Tyre

Source: www.parade.com

How the Money is Allocated to Each State
Sixty-one percent of the funds are allocated by each state’s population aged 5 to 24. The remaining 39 percent of funds are allocated based on total state population. Out of each state’s allocation based on these measures, 81.8 percent is reserved for the education block grant, and 18.2 percent is considered the “flexible” grant.

How the Money is to be Spent
The $39.5 billion in education grants would support K-12 and higher education during state fiscal years 2009, 2010, and 2011. A portion of the funds would be dedicated to helping states maintain K-12 and higher education funding; the remainder would flow directly to local school districts. The funds are available to states immediately, and must be spent within two years of receipt of the grant.

State Incentive Grants
States would have to apply for the incentive grants and show they have made progress on initiatives such as improving the distribution of teachers between high-poverty and low-poverty schools or establishing longitudinal data systems. For states receiving these grants, half of the funds must be passed through to local governments.

Key Target Areas of ARRA Education Funds
ARRA funds should be used to improve student achievement and address four specific areas.
1. Making progress toward rigorous college- and career-ready standards and high-quality assessments that are valid and reliable for all students, including English language learners and students with disabilities;
2. Establishing pre-K-to college and career data systems;
3. Making improvements in teacher effectiveness and in the equitable distribution of qualified teachers for all students, particularly students who are most in need;
4. Providing intensive support and effective interventions for the lowest-performing schools.

Educational Goals of the Obama Administration
1. Reform No Child Left Behind: Obama and Biden will reform NCLB, which starts by funding the law. Obama and Biden
will also improve NCLB’s accountability system so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than
punishing them.
2. Make Math and Science Education a National Priority: Obama and Biden will recruit math and science degree graduates to the teaching profession and will support efforts to help these teachers learn from professionals in the field. They will also work to ensure that all children have access to a strong science curriculum at all grade levels.
3. Address the Dropout Crisis: Obama and Biden will address the dropout crisis by passing legislation to provide funding
to school districts to invest in intervention strategies in middle school.
4. Expand High-Quality Afterschool Opportunities: Obama and Biden will double funding for the main federal support
for afterschool programs, the 21st Century Learning Centers program, to serve one million more children.
5. Support College Outreach Programs: Obama and Biden support outreach programs like GEAR UP, TRIO and Upward
Bound to encourage more young people from low-income families to consider and prepare for college.

M.H. West & Co., Inc. is a proud member of the following educational organizations:
National Head Start Association
National Alliance of Black School Educators
National Association of Elementary School
National Association of Secondary School Principals
Virginia Association of Elementary School Principals

Resources Used for this article:
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
U.S. Department of Education
www.recovery.gov
www.principals.org