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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
Education technology is still at its earliest stages and has yet to live up to its promise, philanthropist Bill Gates told an audience of thousands of ed-tech entrepreneurs and investors at the ASU GSV Summit here. “We really haven’t changed [students’ academic] outcomes,” he acknowledged. (EdWeek)
Liquid courage is a necessity when examining the data on Ph.D.s in the latest NSF report, “The Survey of Earned Doctorates,” which utilized figures from the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. The report finds that many newly minted Ph.D.s complete school after nearly 10 years of studies with significant debt and without the promise of a job. Yet few people seem to be paying attention to these findings; graduate programs are producing more Ph.D.s than ever before. (The Atlantic)
Some futurists fear we may be creating a caste system in the United States based on unequal access to quality education. Education in Virginia, and everywhere in the United States, remains the domain of local governments. This is particularly true for raising the funds to modernize deteriorating K-12 facilities. (The Washington Post)
Massachusetts officials on Thursday announced a new program to encourage students attending community colleges to finish their programs and move on to four-year institutions. (Inside Higher Ed)
For-profit college ITT Technical Institute has received a demand from its accrediting body that the school justify its accreditation amid allegations of bad behavior involving a loan program. (The Wall Street Journal)
The Alabama Legislature today overwhelmingly passed the state’s largest education budget and largest pay raise for school employees since the Great Recession. (al.com)
Last week I received a message from Rocio Gonzalez, a parent of two boys attending Jordan High School in Watts. Growing up in an L.A. neighborhood known more for gang violence than for college graduates, Rocio understood that a quality education provided the best shot for her two sons to succeed. So as a single mom who did not complete high school, she did everything she could to make sure her sons did – from researching the best neighborhood schools and learning the right questions to ask her son’s teachers to taking them to local universities across the state. (EdSource)