From Kevin Thompson at the US Department of Labor’s Employment & Training Administration.  I really like the linkages that this report promotes…

Education Week, the national trade publication, has released its report “From the Cradle to Career: Connecting American Education from Birth to Adulthood.” The authors note: “In many ways, this year’s Quality Counts is a transitional document, as we move from an exclusive focus on K-12 education to a broader focus on the connections between K-12 education and the other systems with which it intersects: early-childhood education, teacher preparation, postsecondary education and training, and workforce and economic development.” The chart at http://www.edweek.org/media/ew/qc/2007/17ewi.h26.pdf contains some useful (provocative?) State comparisons on work readiness and education.

Vol. 17, Issue 26

Table of Contents

Press Packet: Quality Counts 2007

Web Extras

State Highlights Reports

The State Highlights Reports assemble important findings in an accessible format that allows readers to examine a particular state’s performance on this year’s indicators. For most indicators, national results are also provided as a benchmark against which state performance can be gauged.

Supplemental Ranking Tables

From Print

Executive Summary

Looking Through a Wider Lens

Quality Counts 2007 begins to track state efforts to create seamless education systems from early childhood to the world of work.

Overview: PRE-K-16

Improving Children’s Chances

Bolstering young people’s prospects for success requires stronger links in education from infancy to adulthood.

Spanning a Lifetime

The Chance-for-Success Index allows states to identify strong and weak links in the typical educational trajectories of their residents.

Table Chance For Success indicators PDF | Excel

Child Well-Being

Breaking the Cycle of Poverty

Reducing the disparities in children’s achievement will require reaching beyond the educational system.

Table Childhood Well-Being indicators PDF | Excel

Early Childhood

Paying Attention Earlier On

High-quality early education can help mitigate disparities in school readiness that exist between children of different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Commentary Early Intervention on a Large Scale

The economic benefits of ensuring good early-childhood development are clear. Now it’s time to design and implement a system to do it.

Table Early-Childhood Education Indicators PDF | Excel

K-12 Schooling

Gauging Student Learning

With its newly developed Achievement Index, Quality Counts 2007 offers another lens on K-12 academic performance across states.

Commentary The School-College Divide and Teacher Preparation

Rethinking the education school could put an end to the age-old argument over whether teaching is a profession or a craft.

Table K-12 Achievement Indicators PDF | Excel

Postsecondary Success

Moving Beyond Grade 12

The failure to prepare many young people for higher education is taking a toll on the U.S. rates of college enrollment and completion.

Commentary A Road Map to College and Career Readiness

Rethinking the education school could put an end to the age-old argument over whether teaching is a profession or a craft.

Table Postsecondary Education Indicators PDF | Excel

Workforce Readiness

Linking Learning to Earning

As the job market goes global, propelling more young people to higher levels of educational attainment is now being seen as an economic necessity.

Commentary A Continuum of Necessary Investments for Learning

Business, the U.S. education system’s prime consumer, sees a need for schools to think outside the traditional K-12 box.

Table Economy and Workforce Indicators PDF | Excel

International Comparisons

Losing Global Ground

The U.S. education system no longer stacks up as favorably as it once did when compared with those of other prosperous countries.

Commentary Elevating Performance in a ‘Flat World’

America’s international edge in student achievement is slipping, as other countries take education reform to heart.

Table International Perspective Indicators PDF | Excel

State of the States

State of the States: Overview

After a decade of tracking state policies in key areas related to elementary and secondary education, Quality Counts this year significantly broadens its perspective to look at the connections between K-12 education and the other systems with which it intersects.

The EPE Research Center Annual State Policy Survey

Table Standards PDF | Excel

Table Assessments PDF | Excel

Table School Accountability PDF | Excel

The Finger Lakes WIRED initiative awarded $145,476 in training grants to 14 businesses:

Monroe County: SenDEC Corp., $18,000; Magnus Education LLC, $13,910; Amdex Computer Inc., $12,905; Riverside Automation, $12,000; Micro Systems Corp., $7,878; Reflexite, $4,900; Genesee Group, $4,648.

Livingston: Hurricane Technologies, $6,189; ARKEMA Inc., $1,120.

Ontario: Tariff Affiliates Inc., $14,286; Surmotech Inc., $6,215; CTC Online, $1,600.

Wayne: IEC Electronics, $3,610.

Wyoming: Steel & O’Brien, $38,215.

I wish that descriptions of the traning grants were published, but congratulations to the grant recipients nonetheless!

The White County Economic Development director, Connie Neininger, and Purdue WIRED project director, Mark Smith, presented an overview of the Indiana WIRED program to the White County Commissioners:

[The WIRED project] has as its goals the support of local and regional entrepreneurship, preparing business for the aging population and mature workforce while equipping mature workers for jobs and building innovation and job growth in the industries of advanced manufacturing, advanced materials and agribusiness, food production and technology.

“We need to leverage all these assets; that’s what this grant is about,” said Smith. “It’s important to build networks; we’re trying to find the best ideas so everyone can use them.”

Neininger said asset mapping will be a focus of the group meetings in early 2007 so that through this sharing, White County, for example, might learn of a program in Tipton County that’s making it easier for entrepreneurs to get started. That idea then might translate to have the same impact here at home. Then, WIRED grant funds help make the project a reality.

But more research and information is needed so that White County can best use the funds it has available and part of that will come through public meetings over the next several months said Neininger.

The Purdue University Technical Assistance Program hired Christy Bozic as its manager of business innovation.  Ms. Bozic will be funded by WIRED for the first three years of her position.

Dave McKinnis, TAP Director: “Christy will be responsible for helping manufacturers with product development, manufacturing processes, supply-chain development, strategy development, business management and other related issues. She also will work closely with economic development leaders, work force development organizations, governmental offices and university contacts to help companies create and implement their plans for innovative practices.”

Bozic: “The biggest mistake companies make is thinking that they have to move oversees to reduce cost.  There are new, innovative ways to use the incumbent work force. Retraining and keeping new graduates in-state are key.”

From English as a Second Language to skills shortages to marketing to the next generation of potential workers, this monthly email newsletter from WorkforceUSA.net (which I believe is free) covers all the bases…some of which I’ve already discussed on the blog but others that I have not reviewed.  Articles, resource materials on these topics are available by the link.

Houston Strategies referred me to this well-done compilation by the St. Louis, Missouri-based East-West Gateway Council of Goverments, of data comparing St. Louis to different metro areas around the nation in terms of our many demographic points – education, age, race, income, etc.  – using the latest available data.

If you are interested in keeping up with the Jones (or at least benchmarking your community against them!), this looks like a good resource.

The AP story is on the wire, and it’s rather comprehensive – as is the report:

The group is proposing that high school end at 10th grade for many students and that teacher pension plans be scrapped for other benefits such as higher pay and 401(k)s.

The proposals, which likely will be viewed as radical by some, were presented by a decidedly establishment group that includes two dozen ex-Cabinet secretaries, school officials and business executives, along with top government leaders from the major political parties.

…The new group wants to end high school in 10th grade for many students — a point at which students would be able to take exams and go to a community college or, in some cases, stay in school and study for more advanced exams that could earn them a place at a four-year college. Somewhat similar systems are in place in other countries.

The report states that by not spending today’s resources on 11th- and 12th-graders and by making other reforms, the government could save an estimated $60 billion that could be spent on improvements to the nation’s school system.

Those include creating widespread pre-kindergarten programs and boosting teacher salaries.

The commission recommends paying beginning teachers about $45,000 per year, currently the median amount paid to teachers. To help finance the pay boost, the commission recommends moving away from traditional, defined benefit pensions to somewhat less generous retirement plans more commonly found in the private sector.

Another major shift would be to have independent contractors operate schools, though the schools would remain public. States would oversee the funding.

Interesting – the one quote from the article:

Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, said the panel felt there was no choice but to call for a major policy shift to address problems such as weak student performance and achievement gaps between white and minority students.

“They said, ‘If we don’t try something like this, we’re cooked,”‘ said Tucker, who helped organize the commission.

Let the great public debate commence.

The nasty little secret that we must address in America is that many of our workers – even some well-paid workers – do not possess basic workplace literacy skills. So says a study, “A Demand-Side Strategy to Meet Indiana’s Workforce Basic Skills Challenge” (Full Report, Executive Summary), that the Indiana Chamber of Commerce published in January 2005.

The study states that 50% of our adult workforce has low literacy skills, meaning that they have a hard time with these tasks:

Skills Needed to Get a Job

• Read a want ad and complete a written application
• Talk about skills, abilities, accomplishments, likes and dislikes
• Answer and ask questions

Skills Needed to Survive on a Job

• Follow oral and written directions, ask for clarification or reasoning, and make small talk
• Locate written information, facts or specifications
• Understand technical vocabulary and the enabling words attached to them; for example, “pour the pellets into the extruder”
• Understand and use charts, diagrams and illustrations

Skills Needed to Thrive on a Job

• Give as well as follow instructions
• Participate in group discussions
• Teach others
• Predict outcomes
• State a position
• Express an opinion
• Access and use information from diverse sources

Fortunately, The study did not go unnoticed.

The Lilly Foundation of Indianapolis just announced a $1.25 million grant to address this issue in the Hoosier State through a new program through the Indiana Chamber called Ready Indiana. Here’s a little more:

The Indiana Chamber of Commerce estimates that about 1 million Indiana workers should improve their workplace literacy skills, but only about 20,000 receive additional training each year. So the chamber is heralding a new three-year program – called Ready Indiana and paid for with a $1.25 million Lilly Endowment grant – that will help companies find the training they need for employees.

Some workers need to improve reading levels or technology skills, while others need to improve working as part of a team or following directions, said Ready Indiana director Jane Howard: “It’s not just reading and writing and math, but it’s all of the other skills that go into making a productive workforce.” The program is an important step to help workers get the skills they need in the new knowledge-based economy.

Good work. Not the most glamorous work, to be sure, but perhaps among the most important.

The Commission’s 28-page PDF executive summary of their report, Tough Choices or Tough Times, is available here.  I gather that the report is being formally released to the public at 10AM today in Washington, DC.

I haven’t had a chance to read it all in depth, but my review indicates a couple things:

1. The Commission is suggesting that the United States transition itself to a largely creative economy.  That means:

• Research
• Development
• Design
• Marketing & Sales
• Global Supply Chain Management

2. To get to this point, the United States needs to confront some tough realities about its education system:

The core problem is that our education and training systems were built for another era, an era in which most workers needed only a rudimentary education.  It is not possible to get where we have to go by patching that system.  There is not enough money at any level of our intergovernmental system to fix this problem by spending more on the system we have.  We can get where we must go only by changing the system itself.

Powerful material, indeed – and considering the supporting materials already circulated like the aforementioned Time Magazine cover story and today’s Thomas Friedman op-ed in the New York Times (subscription to TimesSelect required…sigh), it looks like this Commission has the ears of influential policy leaders.  The emphasis on the creative element – perhaps the “creative” moniker – is somewhat surprising to me, but it’s encouraging to see that leaders like those on the bipartisan Commission are looking in that direction for our country’s future.

A good day for WIRED news…

COLORADO: The Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation is starting the Colorado Energy Coalition to advance the Rocky Mountain State’s position in the emerging energy industry. And there’s a WIRED tie-in:

The CEC also wants to help ensure the state has a highly educated, well-trained work force for the energy sector. The coalition will work with the Metro Denver WIRED Initiative, a $15 million U.S. Department of Labor grant intended to increase the number of skilled workers for the region’s fastest-growing industries, such as energy.

Kevin Thompson from the US Department of Labor’s Employment & Training Administration forwarded me this complementary article from the Denver Post.

The Denver EDC offers this energy cluster overview, which is worth a read if you want to learn more about how Denver is selling itself to the energy sector.  Lots of skilled workforce data in there.

NORTH CAROLINA: Representatives of Piedmont Triad, the managing partner in the Tar Heel State’s 12-county WIRED initiative, will be attending the 19th Annual Performance Racing Industry trade show in Orlando this weekend. The article discusses motorsports’ importance to North Carolina and the fact that Piedmont Triad is leading WIRED, but no other direct ties are made. Will North Carolina be investing WIRED money in the motorsports industry?

MONTANA: The Montana State Univesity-Billings College of Technology received $1.99 million from the Federal government’s Community-Based Job Training Grant program for the creation of an Energy Workforce Training and Development Center. In part, the grant will “support the educational needs of the State of Montana WIRED (Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development) initiative to advance the development of biofuels, natural and renewable resources.”