Educational Attainment

Last week I discussed an important new report from the Harvard School of Education, Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century. This week I want to bring some Virginia context to that report.

Reasons for Gender Differences in Occupations are Complex

Men and women are frequently segregated into different jobs. Math and hard science jobs are dominated by men, while jobs working with people tend to be dominated by women. Why this happens has long been the subject of debate.

CTE Facing Federal Budget Cuts

With all the emphasis that's being placed on jobs and the workforce today, we'd like to think that career and technical education will be safe from budget cuts. But that's not true.

According to the American Career and Technical Education Association's CTE Policy Watch Blog, a new budget bill "poses the most serious threat to CTE funding in years."

The new legislation completely eliminates the Perkins Tech Prep program and other programs important to CTE. According to to ACTE, funding in Virginia will be cut by $2,416,795 or 8.72%.

Major Report Recommends CTE as a Model for Education Reform

Career and technical education has a key role to play in the reform that our education system requires, according to a major new report from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century.

"Cutting-edge career and technical education (CTE) bears little relationship to the old vocational education programs that were often little more than dumping grounds for students who couldn’t cut it in college-prep. Today’s best CTE programs do a better job of preparing many students for college and career than traditional academics-only programs." (p. 25)

School District "Productivity"

The Center for American Progress has released comparative data on the costs and returns of education in every American school district, in an attempt to spark a debate about educational productivity. For every school division, their website shows: