Projections of Education Statistics to 2019

New report out from NCES that covers "statistics on enrollment, graduates, teachers, and expenditures in elementary and secondary schools, and enrollment and earned degrees conferred expenditures of degree-granting institutions. For the Nation, the tables, figures, and text contain data on enrollment, teachers, graduates, and expenditures for the past 14 years and projections to the year 2019. For the 50 States and the District of Columbia, the tables, figures, and text contain data on projections of public elementary and secondary enrollment and public high school graduates to the year 2019."
I will also put a link to this source in the Education subject guide on the "Statistics and Demographics" page. http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2011017

New reporting for teacher prep programs proposed for 2012

Here is an historical summary of legislative reporting requirements (federal) as provided in Education Week (March 8, 2011).

Federal Requirements

1998 Amendments to the Higher Education Act of 1965
• Traditional teacher-preparation programs create report cards on enrollments in traditional teacher education programs and the passing rate of candidates on teacher-certification or -licensing tests.
• States create report cards ranking teacher-preparation programs based on the passing rates on those assessments, as well as those in state-approved alternative-certification programs. They also identify low-performing and “at risk” programs.
Higher Education Opportunity and Access Act of 2008
In addition to previous requirements, the law requires:
• Reporting on alternative-certification programs both inside and outside higher education programs.
• Preparation programs to report on the average scaled scores, as well as passing rates, on all licensing tests, broken out by the stage at which candidates take the tests.
• Preparation programs to report on admissions, the number of candidates by field, demographics of program participants, the number of faculty supervising clinical experiences, and programming on technology instruction and working with special populations.
• Preparation programs to set and report on goals for increasing the number of teachers prepared in shortage fields.

Fiscal 2012 Proposals
• Would eliminate some reporting requirements.
• Preparation programs would be expected to report on three outcome measures:

• Achievement growth of students taught by program graduates;
• Graduate job-placement and retention rates; and
• Graduate and employer satisfaction

• Would end the TEACH grant program and replace it with the Presidential Teaching Fellows program.

SOURCE: Education Week

Shared curricula recommended to address new Common Core Standards

A diverse group of signatories representing all levels of education, both sides of the political spectrum and business are promoting the developing of "lean" curriculum guidelines to help link the new common core standards to teaching. “To be clear, by ‘curriculum,’ we mean a coherent, sequential set of guidelines in the core academic disciplines, specifying the content knowledge and skills that all students are expected to learn, over time, in a thoughtful progression across the grades,” the document says. “We do not mean performance standards, textbook offerings, daily lesson plans, or rigid pedagogical prescriptions.” The full text of the statement along with the names/affiliations of the signatories are available here:
http://www.ashankerinst.org/curriculum.html

Exciting news from TED

Those of you who are fans of the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talks will be pleased to hear they are focusing on education, according to this news item in the Chronicle (Mar. 2, 2011)

"Long Beach, Calif.—The leaders of the annual TED conference, known for featuring short, carefully prepared talks on big ideas about technology and society, hope to apply their approach to education.
This week they announced TED-Ed, which will provide a hand-picked set of free online educational talks (expected to be even shorter than the conference talks), many submitted by educators themselves but enhanced by TED officials. An online forum, the Ted-Ed Brain Trust, will encourage discussion of how to reform teaching using the videos and other technology.
The system is not up yet, but the online forum is scheduled to open as early as next week, says Logan Smalley, whose title is TED-Ed catalyst. The videos will be added in the coming months, he says.
The project will also create an updated listing of the more than 900 existing TED talks, arranging them by categories that align more neatly to academic disciplines."

Elementary-Secondary Information System (ELSi) from NCES

"ELSi is comprised of three separate tools, which allow users to quickly view public and private school data, view commonly requested tables and create custom tables and charts using data from the Common Core of Data (CCD) and Private School Survey (PSS). ELSi utilizes frequently requested variables and tables—it’s a fast, easy way to obtain basic statistical data on U.S. schools. ELSi gives the user the ability to create customized tables by choosing row variables, column variables and filters to refine the data."

To view this new tool, visit: http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/elsi/

HS academic performance of student with hearing impairments

photo © 2010 woodley wonderworks | more info (via: Wylio)
"A gap exists between the academic achievement of youth with hearing impairments and their peers in the general population in reading, mathematics, science, and social studies, according to a new release by The National Center for Special Education Research. Facts from NLTS2: The Secondary School Experiences and Academic Performance of Students With Hearing Impairments uses data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2 dataset to provide a national picture of the secondary school experiences and academic achievement of students with hearing impairments who received special education services.

The outcomes cover several key areas, including students’ experiences in general education academic courses and non-vocational special education courses, accommodations, supports, services provided to students, and academic achievement. In addition to the findings for the overall group, this fact sheet provides findings by parent-reported levels of hearing impairments. "

The report is available here: http://ies.ed.gov/ncser/pubs/20113003/

Visualizing Data with Gapminder

This remarkable website, Gapminder, developed in Sweden allows you to visualize data "some 500 indicators (relating to health, income, education, energy, the environment, technology, and more.)" from such standard sources as the United Nations, World Bank, and OECD. Watch this 4 minute video to get a sense of what it can do. http://www.gapminder.org/videos/200-years-that-changed-the-world-bbc/
There is definitely a learning curve (here is a page with a 2.5 minute tutorial to get started) but it's a rich resource for teaching and presenting the possibilities of data.