What should be on the new administration’s “to-do list” under the heading of education? That was the question posed to a panel of education experts Education Sector brought together this week at the event “Should There Be an Undersecretary of MOOCs? A Waiver Watchdog? And Other Questions for the Next Four Years.” The experts, all members of Education Sector’s K20 Task Force, took onContinue Reading »

The power of data. States should start keeping tabs on how their high school graduates fare in college, a new report released Wednesday says. By tracking these students, their success rates, and whether they need to take remedial courses to finish, high schools can better modify their curriculums and more adequately prepare students for college and careers. ES analysts also argued for this flowContinue Reading »

The Community College Research Center has a new policy brief looking at student progression through remedial coursework in community colleges that’s well worth your time. Using data on more than 250,000 students entering one of 57 community colleges in 7 states in the fall of 2003 or the fall of 2004, Thomas Bailey, Dong Wook Jeong, and Sung-Woo Cho were able to look at the progression stContinue Reading »

In the course of presenting a very interesting paper on international college rankings at an accountability conference I co-hosted yesterday, Ben Wildavsky made an observation that I strongly endorse: international competition in higher education isn’t a zero-sum game. In fact, I think there’s a good argument that America would be better off if we no longer towered above most other Continue Reading »

Matt Yglesias had an indirect hit on an important piece of data this morning. In the post, he uses Census data to show that a majority of Americans attend college. What he glosses over in the process, though, is that 17 percent of Americans in 2007 reported their highest level of educational attainment as “some college, no degree.” In other words, about a fifth of adult Americans aContinue Reading »

Various Nazis have been apocryphally quoted as saying “Whenever I hear the word ‘culture,’ I reach for my gun.” When people like Cato’s Brink Lindsey, writing in the New Republic($), identify culture as the chief source of educational inequality, I feel the same way.

The “riddle” Lindsey purports to solve is why low-income people are less likely Continue Reading »