What Are the Projections for Our Nation’s Future

To go to the quotation on the slide, click here. Sources focusing on the nation’s Global Competitiveness are identified in the heading with those words in ( ).

 

This webpage provides:

§         Source – Multiple Reports over Several Years – Public Agenda

§         Source – Multiple Years of Data - Institute of Educational Sciences (IES) Website

§         Source – 2007 Culture of Evidence: Postsecondary Assessment and Learning Outcomes – ETS

§         Source – 2007 America’s Perfect Storm – ETS

§         Source – 2008 – On 2 Million Minutes by U.S. News & World Report (Global Competitiveness)

§         Source – 2008 and Later – 2 Million Minutes (Global Competitiveness)

§         Source – 2008 Fall – PBS – Where We Stand: America’s Schools in the 21st Century (Global Competitiveness)

§         Source – 2011 – “A Lack Of Rigor Leaves Students 'Adrift' In College” by NPR

§         Source – 2011 – “Duncan makes a case for single education standards” by George Will

§         Source – 2011 – “Why Can't American Students Compete? ” by Newsweek  (Global Competitiveness)

§         Source – 2011 - PEPG Education Next Report “Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete”  (Global Competitiveness)

§         Source – 2012 – The Condition of Education by the Institute of Educational Sciences (IES)

 

Source – Multiple Reports over Several Years – Public Agenda

Public Agenda – an excellent website for reports on diverse issues, including education. This site provides data for multiple years and stresses providing reliable data in a form that allows individuals to judge for themselves. Individual reports from Public Agenda are listed in specific sections of this website.

 

Homepage: http://www.publicagenda.org

§         If you ask to be on their email list, they will alert you to topics as they are published.

§         The homepage for Public Agenda provides a variety of ways to access their resources, including a useful Search tool.

Source – Multiple Years of Data - Institute of Educational Sciences (IES) Website

Homepage: http://ies.ed.gov/

 

Examples of Major areas of the IES website include:

§         NCES International Activities Program, including several programs from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) to a Civics Education Survey (CivEd) - http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/

§         The Nation’s Report Card - http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/

§         National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) - http://nces.ed.gov/naal/ - including information on the survey in 1992, the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS).

 

Source – 2007 Culture of Evidence: Postsecondary Assessment and Learning Outcomes – ETS

Culture of Evidence: Postsecondary Assessment and Learning Outcomes, Educational Testing Service, 2007. (Other publications under this broad topic have varied copyright dates from 2006 to 2008.)

 

Homepage for ETS: http://www.ets.org

Main page for the report itself: https://www.ets.org/culture_evidence - The report and related ones are downloadable for free.  The report notes that institutions of higher education must “prove their programs performance” and “take their programs to the next level” to choose the students and faculty they want and to “secure access to financial support from a competitive funding pool.”

 

The report also includes information from NAAL and related authors, including the source of the quotation “only 31 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it.”

 

Source – 2007 America’s Perfect Storm – ETS

America’s Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing our Nation's Future, Educational Testing Service, 2007.

Homepage for ETS: http://www.ets.org

Main page for the report itself: www.ets.org/stormreport - The report is downloadable for free.

Main portal for the report: The portal provides tabs of information on such topics as the background of the authors of the study, the reports themselves (including an executive summary), and questions and answers:

http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/menuitem.1488512ecfd5b8849a77b13bc3921509/?vgnextoid=e9f3d944c8b70110VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD&vgnextchannel=f993d944c8b70110VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD

 

The quotations are from President and CEO Kurt M. Landgraf’s overview of the report. The ETS report covers how the United States faces:

·         “uneven distribution” of essential skills

·         perfect storm that’s threatening American prosperity and tearing at our political cohesion.”

 

Source – 2008 – On 2 Million Minutes by U.S. News & World Report (Global Competitiveness)

Article Title: “Comparing American Students With Those in China and India: Americans watch Grey’s Anatomy while their international peers study longer hours”

Author: Eddy Ramirez

Date:
January 30, 2008

Homepage: www.usnews.com

 

Quotation:

Two Million Minutes shows that "we are falling behind the rest of the world quite rapidly," says former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, who is chairman of the ED in '08 group and more recently served as superintendent of public schools in Los Angeles. "I don't know of anyone [concerned about the economy] who does not come back to [the notion] that it depends on the skill level and knowledge of our workforce, and that's our message."

Source – 2008 and Later – 2 Million Minutes (Global Competitiveness)

Homepage: http://www.2mminutes.com/ - with trailers from the documentaries available

Documentaries include:

In 2008, Robert Compton’s Two Million Minutes, documentary shown on PBS 9/30/2008.

Among his later documentaries on DVD are

§         Two Million Minutes in India – Chapter 2: A Deeper Look at Indian Education 

§         Two Million Minutes in China – Chapter 3: A Deeper Look at Chinese Education

§         Two Million Minutes: The 21st Century Solution

§         The Finland Phenomenon – “Finland's education system has consistently ranked among the best in the world for more than a decade. The puzzle is, why Finland? Documentary filmmaker, Bob Compton, along with Harvard researcher, Dr. Tony Wagner, decided to find out. The result of their research is captured in a new film, "The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World's Most Surprising School System".

Source – 2008 Fall – PBS – Where We Stand: America’s Schools in the 21st Century (Global Competitiveness)

Host: Judy Woodruff

 

Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – information spread over several programs

Homepage: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wherewestand/

The Homepage lists these Reports and provides videos from sections of this series of programs:

§         Globalization

§         Teachers

§         Achievement

§         Testing: No Child Left Behind

§         Finance

§         Voices on Education

§         Celebration of Teaching and Learning

 

Source – 2011 – “A Lack Of Rigor Leaves Students 'Adrift' In College” by NPR

Program Title:  A Lack Of Rigor Leaves Students 'Adrift' In College

Author: NPR Staff

Date:
February 9, 2011

URL: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/09/133310978/in-college-a-lack-of-rigor-leaves-students-adrift

 

The program provides an interview with Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa and an excerpt from their book Academically Adrift. The quotations are particularly helpful:

·         “The authors of Academically Adrift find that in the first two years of college, ‘with a large sample of more than 2,300 students, we observe no statistically significant gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills for at least 45 percent of the students in our study.’"

·         "Our country today is part of a global economic system, where we no longer have the luxury to put large numbers of kids through college and university and not demand of them that they are developing these higher order skills that are necessary not just for them, but for our society as a whole," Arum says. (Global Competitiveness)

·         “There's a huge incentive set up in the system [for] asking students very little, grading them easily, entertaining them, and your course evaluations will be high….According to the study, one possible reason for a decline in academic rigor and, consequentially, in writing and reasoning skills, is that the principal evaluation of faculty performance comes from student evaluations at the end of the semester. Those evaluations, Arum says, tend to coincide with the expected grade that the student thinks he or she will receive from the instructor.

 

Source – 2011 – “Duncan makes a case for single education standards” by George Will

Editorial Title:  “Duncan makes a case for single education standards”

Author: George Will

Date:
January 27, 2011

URL: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/7399730.html

 

George Will offers information from many diverse experts, including on why the reward system for state institutions is failing.

 

He also provides many quotable examples, including this one:

“We go where the smart people are,” says Howard High of Intel Corp. “Now our business operations are two-thirds in the United States and one-third overseas. But that ratio will flip over the next 10 years.”

 

 

Source – 2011 – “Why Can't American Students Compete? ” by Newsweek  (Global Competitiveness)

Article Title: Why Can't American Students Compete? Twice as many students in Singapore are proficient in math as in the United States. (Even ‘brainy’ Massachusetts lags behind Liechtenstein.) " – This article is about the PEPG report below.

Author: Eric A. Hanusek and Paul E. Peterson

Date: Aug 28, 2011

 

Homepage: Currently available at a related Newsweek publication http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/08/28/why-can-t-u-s-students-compete-with-the-rest-of-the-world.html

 

Source – 2011 - PEPG Education Next Report “Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete (Global Competitiveness)

Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete: The latest on each state’s international standing. (Includes access to the full report and to a webinar.) Note: The report makes use of two tests. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is administered by the U.S. Department of Education; the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). See the report for a discussion of these two tests.


Author: Paul E. Peterson, Carlos Xabel Lastra-Anadón, Eric A. Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann

Date: Aug 28, 2011

 

Homepage for Education Next:  http://educationnext.org/

 

Homepage for Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance:  http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg

 

Source – 2012 – The Condition of Education by the Institute of Educational Sciences (IES)

“The Condition of Education (COE) is a congressionally mandated annual report that summarizes important developments and trends in education using the latest available statistics. The Condition of Education 2012 contains 49 indicators, plus a Closer Look.” Includes access to the 2012 video, to overviews, and to the full report.

 

Date: May 26, 2012 – video shown at webinar and available at the website for the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES)

 

Homepage for the Condition of Education:  http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/

 

Location of the reports: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2012045

 – “The Condition of Education 2012 summarizes important developments and trends in education using the latest available data. The report presents 49 indicators on the status and condition of education, in addition to a closer look at high schools in the United States over the past twenty years. The indicators represent a consensus of professional judgment on the most significant national measures of the condition and progress of education for which accurate data are available. The 2012 print edition includes indicators in three main areas: (1) participation in education; (2) elementary and secondary education and outcomes; and (3) postsecondary education and outcomes.”

For international data, see http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/

For information or problems with this link, please email using the email address below.

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History – Dr. Bibus

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Last Updated:

2012 – 06/04

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