Education and Schools

Today the Senate HELP Committee held a “roundtable” on the proposed Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that was voted out of committee two weeks ago. The roundtable came about as a result of some procedural wrangling by Sen. Rand Paul, who continues to call for greater “flexibility” for states. Today’s ESEA takeaway came from Wade Henderson, CEO of the Leadership Conference, who once and for all addressed the argument that states should be the absolute arbiters of education reform. Henderson explained that the Supreme Court studied this “states’ rights” approach to public education and “found it deeply wanting and, in fact, offensive to the Constitution.” In short – for years “flexibility” meant that states bent backwards to avoid educating the kids who need it most – including children of color, poor kids, and students with disabilities. Read more »

It’s the end of another week, and we’ve got a new roundup for you. After the jump, stories on Breast Cancer Awareness and Domestic Violence Awareness Month, girls tackling the STEM field, SNAP benefits and more. Read more »

Most people’s eyes glaze over when they hear terms like “disaggregated data.” Wonk, wonk. But advocates should take note. Disaggregated data is crucial to measuring progress for girls and a battleground issue in the school reform debate.

When schools disaggregate data, it means that they keep track of test scores for specific subgroups of students. When you don’t break down the numbers you can’t measure the success of different populations. If you don’t disaggregate – then researchers and journalists (and wonks) can’t tell how kids of color or girls are doing in school because they get lumped in with everybody else. Robert Reich, who is 4’ 10”, once quipped that he and Shaquille O’Neal have an average height of six feet. Disaggregating that data is pretty crucial to evaluating their respective dunking prospects. It’s also a key component in demonstrating student achievement and in making schools accountable for the success of their entire student population. Read more »

Did you know that over 904,000 children were served by Head Start in 2009? Or that college graduation rates for women have increased by over twenty percentage points between 1970 and 2009 but that nearly 13 percent of women still don’t graduate from high school? Or that, despite working full-time, year-round, 1,168,000 women still lived in poverty in 2008?

All of this information can be found from the Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract of the United States. Read more »