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I N N O V A T O R |
News about high school innovation
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Oct. 12, 2009
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Welcome to INNOVATOR, a bimonthly report on high school change in North Carolina from the North Carolina New Schools Project. INNOVATOR informs practitioners, policy makers, and friends of public education about high school innovation in North Carolina as well as success stories and research from across the nation.
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Leaders in business, education confer on energy literacy
With issues of energy development, sustainability and conservation now topics of everyday conversation, leaders in business and education gathered last week at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at N.C. State University to talk about shaping high school curriculum and instruction to help support the state's economy and the nation's needs.
Billed as a conference on energy literacy in secondary education, the daylong meeting drew some 80 representatives from the state's leading energy providers, k-12 and higher education and government to think about ways that energy issues could be used to strengthen lessons in topics such as math and science, to enhance scientific knowledge about energy and to provide
relevance for lessons in all content areas.
With funding from Progress Energy Foundation, the conference was organized by the North Carolina New Schools Project in partnership with The Science House and the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology, and Science at NCSU, and with the Alliance to Save Energy in Washington, DC.
Participants were asked to consider four broad questions:
- Student Outcomes: What are the desired attributes of an energy literate graduate?
- Curriculum: What are the desired components and qualities of an energy literacy curriculum? How can it be integrated with existing curricula and standards?
- Community Engagement: How do we engage the broader community with schools to support student learning and economic development?
- School as an Energy Community: How does a school "walk the talk" - as a community of energy consumers, conservers, and generators?
The
collaborative efforts of the conference will help build partnerships and
networks to promote greater energy literacy integration into the curriculum of
the state's innovative high schools that focus on science, technology, energy
and mathematics.
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Prospects for high school dropouts grows bleaker, study finds
The prospects for high school dropouts have always been dimmer than those who graduate and gain some kind of postsecondary education, but a new study provides sobering data showing that dropouts now face an even bleaker future.
The study, by researchers at Northeastern University, is based on census and other government data from 2006-2008 and tracks key effects associated with educational attainment, including employment, parenting and contact with the criminal justice system. On all of those fronts, the researchers found, students who fail to complete high school are far more likely to be unemployed, a single parent or in prison than those with a high school diploma or college degree.
The odds against dropouts who are minorities are even worse. The researchers found that among black male dropouts between the ages of 16 and 24, almost one in four were incarcerated on any given day in 2006-2007, compared to about one in 14 male dropouts who were Asian, Hispanic or white. The average rate of joblessness for dropouts between the ages of 16 and 24 was 54 percent in 2008; for jobless rate for blacks was 69 percent. By contrast, the 2008 jobless rate for high school graduates in the same age range was 32 percent and for college graduates or higher, 13 percent.
While the study notes that such gaps have worsened as a result of the current recession, students who fail to finish high schools will continue to face grim prospects even after the economy improves. The researchers conclude that the nation faces an imperative to ensure more students graduate high school and continue their education as well as to find ways to re-engage those students who have already dropped out.
"There is an overwhelming national economic and social justice need to prevent existing high school students from dropping out without earning a diploma and to encourage the re-enrollment and eventual graduation of those dropouts who have already left the school system," the researchers argue. "In the absence of concerted efforts to bolster their academic achievement, their formal schooling, the occupational skills and their cumulative work experience, their immediate and long term labor market prospects are likely to be quite bleak in the U.S. economy even after the end of the current economic recession, which for many of these youth has turned into a labor market depression."
Among the study's other findings were these:
- Only 60 percent of the nation's dropouts in the age range 16-24 worked at some point during 2007 -- a year-round joblessness rate of 40 percent.
- Mean annual earnings of dropouts ages 16-24 were $8,358 in 2007, compared to an average of $15,149 for all young adults. High school graduates with no postsecondary education had an average income of $14,600; those with a bachelor's degree had an average income of about $24,800.
- Nearly 38 percent of women ages 16-24 during 2006-2007 had given birth, compared to 30 percent of women in that age range with a high school diploma and 6.4 percent of women with a bachelor's degree.
- Nearly 23 percent of young women ages 16-24 in 2006-2007 were single mothers, compared to 17.5 percent of high school graduates and 2.6 percent of women with bachelor's degrees.
- The average high school dropout will cost taxpayers more than $292,000 during their working lives, resulting from lower tax revenues, public assistance costs and incarceration costs.
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Lt. Gov. Dalton launches panel to link high schools, workforce
A new commission led by Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton convened today with the goal of forging stronger links between the state's growing number of early college high schools and the economic needs of the regions where they're located.
The work of the 20-member panel is intended to build on the success of the state's early college high schools, which allow students to graduate with a high school diploma, an associate's degree or two years of transferrable college credit. The commission will focus in particular on creating more rigor and relevance for students and raising their career readiness.
"I'm excited about this opportunity to strengthen our high school curricula and make education more relevant for students," Dalton said. "They'll be getting a leg up on 21st century jobs, and out employers will benefit from a better-prepared workforce."
As a member of the state Senate, Dalton authored the 2003 Innovative Education Initiatives Act, which provided the flexibility necessary for the creation of early college high schools, which are located on the campuses of community colleges or four-year colleges and universities. Nine additional early college high schools opened this fall term, raising to 69 the total number of the innovative schools open statewide.
The commission aims to identify themes for the schools that match the economic development needs of the communities where they're located. Many will likely focus on the state's emerging, technology-based economy, including schools focused on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), while others might be tailored to areas of workforce shortages, such as nursing or teaching.
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NC and 12 other states tested by tough Algebra II exam
North Carolina and a dozen other states participating in a trial of a demanding Algebra II assessment found for the second year that most students fall short of a standard reflecting readiness for entry-level college math.
All 13 of the states that voluntarily administered the shared exam, developed as part of the American Diploma Project, had fewer than 20 percent of the test takers with scores at the level considered being prepared for college math, according to a report on the exam. The overall results were similar to those from last year, when the exam was first given.
The exam was developed jointly by 15 states, including North Carolina, that are part of the larger ADP network, launched in 2005 to better focus secondary education on graduating all students ready for college and work. Part of that focus is ensuring that students master advanced algebra skills that require abstract reasoning and thinking. Four of the 13 states that administered the Algebra II exam also participated in a trial of a shared exam in Algebra I. North Carolina gave only the Algebra II exam.
Because states varied widely in the percentages of students who took the test, comparisons among states aren't possible. Arkansas, for example, administered the exam to 81 percent of its Algebra II students, while Massachusetts gave the test to just 1 percent. In North Carolina, 2,551 students - 3 percent of Algebra II students - took the exam.
Still, of the North Carolina students who were tested, 14.3 percent received scores in the range considered "prepared" for entry-level college math and 4 percent scored at the level considered "well prepared."
Achieve, the Washington-based organization that established the ADP network and helped coordinate the math exams, said in its report about the latest test performance that states must focus more aggressively on improving the quality of curriculum and instruction in Algebra I and II.
"If states can be as successful on these critical next steps as they have been in creating the assessments," the report concludes, "they will have truly changed the prospects for their students by ensuring that student choices regarding their future college and career plans are based on having a strong foundation in mathematics that makes all paths possible."
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Become a fan of NCNSP on Facebook; join the discussion
North Carolina New Schools Project now has its own Facebook page.
If you are a Facebook user already, become a fan today and contribute to the
conversation. If not, you can follow the page without joining Facebook,
but you won't be able to post your comments or content. Either way, please take a look here. Back to top
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INNOVATOR is produced
by the North Carolina New Schools Project, an initiative of the Office of the
Governor and the Education Cabinet with the support of the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation and other businesses and foundations. For story suggestions or to opt out of receiving
this e-mail report, please send an e-mail to innovator@newschoolsproject.org or call Todd
Silberman at (919) 277-3760.
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