SBE Weekly Reader Sep. 24. 2009
A Tennesseean, Memphis resident Bob Compton, has produced the sequel to 2 Million Minutes, this one with proposed solution. A preview of the movie is below, and you can read an article about it here.
Effective Leaders
Here is my review of Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great, in the education context. A quote from Collins that is easy to translate to education:
The good-to-great leaders understood three simple truths. First, if you begin with “who,” rather than “what,” you can more easily adapt to a changing world. . . . Second, if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away. The right people don’t need to be tightly managed or fired up; they will be self-motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great. Third, if you have the wrong people, it doesn’t matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won’t have a great company. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.
Secretary Duncan referred to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from a Birgmingham jail in his talk about the reauthorization of NCLB.
Secretary Duncan invites students to produce video about what role education will play in their future (for $1,000!)
Rigorous, Relevant Curriculum
A Memphis public school is using data to drive serious interventions in 9th grade.
Texas is working to align its high school and college entry standards.
The Florida Board of Education FL Board of Ed. toughens and broadens its rating system for high schools.
High schools will now receive an overall letter grade based half on student performance and learning gains on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, and half on five new measures: graduation rate; participation in advanced courses; post-secondary readiness; the graduation rate of at-risk students; and growth or decline in those areas.
Sufficient Resources
What would the economic benefit be if Nashville reduced the number of dropouts by 50%?
Total additional wages in an average year: Nearly $28 million
Percentage of new high school graduates who continue their education after high school: 35 percent
Total new homeowners: 1,800
A new report details the economic impact of reducing drop outs in many cities across the U.S., including Nashville (click to see the Nashville specifics).
Here’s another article showing how California could save $550 million a year by reducing its dropout rate by half.
High school dropouts, who are more likely to commit crimes than their peers with diplomas, cost the state $1.1 billion annually in law enforcement and victim costs while still minors, according to a study being released today.
The California Dropout Research Project at UC Santa Barbara found that cutting the dropout rate in half would prevent 30,000 juvenile crimes and save $550 million every year.
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