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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
The American student loan crisis is often seen as a problem of profligacy and predation. Wasteful colleges raise tuition every year, we are told, even as middle-class wages stagnate and unscrupulous for-profit colleges bilk the unwary. The result is mounting unmanageable debt. (The New York Times)
As the country debates the best way to improve the quality of teachers in struggling public schools, Harvard University is launching a training program it hopes will serve as a national model. (The Washington Post)
From the mid- to late nineties, I endured Saturday morning Chinese school the way many of my fellow children of immigrants did: with a healthy a mix of indifference and resentment. While my non-Chinese friends spent their mornings at youth soccer games, I was stuck inside a heritage school classroom for at least two hours, practicing traditional characters and reading texts about buying bai tsai at the supermarket. (The Atlantic)
The United States continues to fall behind internationally in producing a college-educated workforce as other nations send more of their citizens to university. And in the very early years, many countries are now sending a much higher percentage of their kids to preschool than the United States. (The Hechinger Report)
A generation ago, a high school diploma could open doors, especially to well-paying manufacturing jobs. But today, with technology radically reshaping the U.S. economy, many of those doors have closed. The high school diploma is as important as ever — but as a stepping stone to a higher degree, no longer as a destination. (NPR)
Maryland
High school teacher Alison Hanks-Sloan tried every way she could to stop 20 immigrant students from dropping out. She and a group of teachers gave them career counseling, visited their homes, and even brought in business leaders to explain how much more money they could make with a diploma. (The Baltimore Sun)