The truth about jobs and four year degrees
Two insightful new reports from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. You can read them here and here. The two studies demolish what passes for conventional wisdom on job creation in post Great Recession America. First and foremost, it is not true that we have too many with four year degrees. From […]
Alarm bells needed II
We finished our last post this way: The bottom line: the Massachusetts approach has worked, Michigan’s hasn’t. Seems like its time for Michigan to learn from the state with the highest student achievement in the country. In this post lets look at the data. It comes from the just released 2015 NAEP, the nation’s report card […]
Alarm bells needed
Lots of new data on student achievement by Michigan k-12 students. All with a single conclusion: we are a national laggard. All kids, not just poor kids, minority kids, urban kids. The results from the new state M-STEP assessment show Michigan students in reading––at all tested grade levels––to be about 50% proficient. In math its […]
The case for a stronger safety net
Two insightful Eduardo Porter columns for the New York Times. One entitled The myth of welfare’s corrupting influence on the poor. The other entitled The Republican party’s strategy to ignore poverty. Both worth reading. The first makes the case that the evidence is that safety net programs do not significantly reduce individual’s willingness to work […]
Work requires broad skills
More evidence that work increasingly requires broad, rather than narrow occupation specific, skills. Terrific article in the Atlantic entitled The Unexpected Schools Championing the Liberal Arts: Military academies and chef schools say the humanities are essential to their graduates’ success. How can that be you ask. Aren’t the liberal arts useless skills that lead to crushing student […]
The case for building broad skills for all
The Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21) has developed an approach to education for all children that is designed to develop the skills that employers hire for. Those same skills are the foundation that all of us will increasingly need to adjust to constant change in labor markets. What follows in bullet form is the […]
Prosperity and college attainment II
In my last post we explored the alignment between state’s per capita income and the proportion of adults with a four year degree. Increasing four year degree attainment is a powerful lever in dealing with many of Michigan’s still substantial economic challenges. Here, in bullet form, is that case: Michigan Today Michigan is now structurally […]
Prosperity and college attainment
Data are now available for 2014 for per capita income and education attainment by state. Michigan ranks 35th in per capita income and 34th in the proportion of adults with a four year degree or more. Michigan is now structurally a low prosperity state. Every year from 2006 through 2014 the state has ranked between […]
Two books about poverty
Two highly recommended books about poverty in America: Stuck in Place by Patrick Sharkey $2.00 a Day by Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer In this post we will focus on Stuck in America. I will write about $2.00 a Day in the next. Sharkey (NYU) details how living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty across generations […]
Saying one thing and doing another
I have noted frequently that business, political and media elites are increasingly advising other people’s kids not to pursue a four year degree while their kids overwhelmingly are pursuing a four year degree. The advice stems from the not accurate conventional wisdom that unless you get a four year degree in a STEM field you […]