Older, Long-Term Unemployed May Lose Education Advantage

/ The Old Crank

Overall, the unemployment rate for workers with a college degree is about half the rate of those who hold just a high school diploma, but that gap appears to narrow for older, long-term unemployed workers. From an article by Arthur Delaney in The Huffington Post yesterday:

[A]dvanced degrees can lose their talismanic power. Once they become unemployed, college-educated workers are just as likely as high school grads to wind up unemployed for an extended period of time. During the year ending last June, 12.4 percent of jobless workers with high school diplomas had been out of work 99 weeks or longer, according to a Congressional Research Service report. Among unemployed Americans with a bachelor’s degree, 11.3 percent had been jobless 99 weeks or longer — a statistically insignificant difference. (my emphasis)

Delaney speculates that one of the reasons for this statistical narrowing is that workers with just a high school education are more likely to leave the labor force, which then reduces the proportion of those workers who count as officially unemployed. Another possibility, he writes, is that that “since a majority of new jobs created during the economic recovery are lower-paying and lower-skilled, they are easier for less-educated workers to learn, while higher-educated workers are simultaneously being more selective about the jobs they’re willing to work.”

Adult Charter School Proposed for Nashville County

/ The Old Crank

The Tennessean reports today that Goodwill Industries of Middle Tennessee is pursuing a  charter for an adult charter school, taking advantage of the opportunity created by recent changes to the state’s charter school law. Here are the details (note the critical caveat in the last sentence):

A Goodwill vice president said Tuesday she pursued a charter after being approached by a former employee in Nashville Mayor Karl Dean’s office to help some of the county’s 60,000 adults without a high school diploma.

Excel Academy, proposed by Goodwill Industries of Middle Tennessee, hopes to serve adult dropouts.

“The barrier to getting a job is that they don’t have a high school diploma,” said Goodwill of Middle Tennessee Vice President Betty Johnson. “There is a huge unmet need.”

Goodwill will give $100,000 in startup money for the program, fashioned after one in Indiana that has a waiting list of more than 2,000 adults. However, school district officials say it’s unclear whether state K-12 funding will cover adults who dropped out years earlier. (my emphasis)

Australia Looks to Import Skilled Workers from U.S. to Fill Vacancies in Skilled Labor

/ The Old Crank

According to the The Information Daily, Australia believes there are enough skilled workers in the U.S. to fill vacancies in their booming mining and gas industries:

Chris Evans, minister for Skills, Science and Research, expects the demand for skilled construction workers to peak over the next three to five years and said his government was looking towards the US to fill the gaps.

To do that, Australia is considering a change to their immigration policy which will enable U.S. workers in licensed occupations, such as electricians and plumbers, to have their skills assessed before they arrive for work in Australia. Under the current system, these workers are required to have their skills assessed when they arrive—a process that often takes several months.

The Daily adds, “[t]he announcement will come as a welcome relief to the US, with high unemployment rates at 8.3% despite some recent improvements.”

American industries report that they are unable to find skilled workers to fill vacancies for skilled labor here in the U.S., yet Australian government officials are so confident that skilled labor is abundant here that they are adopting policies to encourage those workers to emigrate half-way around the world for a job.

New Wrinkle in Alexandria Adult Education Controversy

/ The Old Crank

(Updated Below)

Sharon McLoone reports for the Old Town Alexandria Patch that Alexandria Virginia City Public Schools Superintendent Morton Sherman announced last Friday evening that ACPS has placed an employee on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation into “possible testing irregularities” in the ACPS Adult Education Program.

According to an ACPS statement, this incident provides evidence as to why restructuring ACPS Adult Education is so critical. “[N]ow is the right time to restructure this program with licensed, experienced staff to ensure proper management, reporting, and instruction is taking place for the sake of our students. ”

As McLoone notes in her story, Sherman and the School Board’s efforts to restructure the program have been the subject of considerable controversy.

In an odd coincidence, “Sherman and the School Board” was also the name of that really terrible band that played at your prom in 1966.

You can read the entire ACPS statement here.

Questions concerning assessment data collection are not unheard of in adult education. It would be interesting to know what warranted placing an employee on leave in this particular case.

UPDATE 4/6/12: Michael Lee Pope of Connection Newspapers has provided details on the specific issues cited by the Division of Technology, Career and Adult Education and Literacy Services in the memorandum they sent to ACPS. According to the article, the memorandum “documented an inordinate number of adult education students received the same score on a basic skills test. It also pointed out that a total of 95 students supposedly took a speaking and comprehension test on the same day.”

UPDATE 4/11/12: More details from Lisa Gartner of The Washington Examiner.