The July 25, 2011 issue of Straight A's, the Alliance's biweekly newsletter is now available. This week's issue focuses on President Obama's Education Roundtable with key leaders from the nation's businesses; a new Alliance study showing the annual income difference between a high school dropout and a high school graduate in every state (It's an average of $8,000); and new reports on the economy's need for more college graduates and the link between school discipline and high school dropouts in Texas.
Individual articles from this week's issue are listed below or you can download a .pdf of the entire newsletter at http://www.all4ed.org/files/Volume11No15.pdf.
GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS: Obama Hosts Education Roundtable with Nation's Business Leaders: On July 18, President Obama, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and Domestic Policy Council Director Melody Barnes met with top executives from the nation's leading businesses to discuss what the business community can do to ensure that the United States has a skilled, educated, and competitive workforce.
"DIPLOMAS MEAN DOLLARS": High School Graduates Earn $8,000 More Annually Compared to High School Dropouts, According to New Data: Released in conjunction with the July 18 White House Roundtable on Education with Business Leaders, new data from the Alliance for Excellent Education reveals that high school graduates earn a national average of $8,000 more annually compared to high school dropouts.
THE UNDEREDUCATED AMERICAN: United States Failing to Meet Demand for College-Educated Workers, New Report Finds: Even though the national unemployment rate continues to hover above 9 percent, individuals with postsecondary education are in high demand among employers and will continue to be as the economic recovery takes hold and hiring picks back up, according to The Undereducated American, a new report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Unfortunately, the United States has failed to meet this demand and has been "underproducing" college-educated workers for decades, the report finds.
BREAKING SCHOOLS' RULES: Study of Texas Seventh Graders Finds Students with Disciplinary Actions Five Times More Likely to Drop Out: Nearly six in ten public school students were suspended or expelled at least once between their seventh- and twelfth-grade school years, according to a new study of nearly one million Texas public secondary school students released by the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center in partnership with the Public Policy Research Institute of Texas A&M University. The report, Breaking Schools' Rules: A Statewide Study of How School Discipline Relates to Students' Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement, also finds that disciplinary actions had a significant impact on whether a student graduated from high school.
