education

Poll: 60% of Americans Say Balancing Federal Budget More Important Than Improving Quality of Education

/ The Old Crank

In a recent Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup Poll, (as reported in Education Week) a majority of respondents (60%) said that balancing the federal budget was more important than improving the quality of education, “even though they said funding [was] the biggest problem facing public schools.”

The deficit issue gets a lot of attention in the media, so it would not surprise me if it’s true that many people fear the budget deficit to the point where they are willing to sacrifice federal investments in public education to reduce it. While it’s not actually necessary to sacrifice those investments any further in order to do so, it would also not surprise me to learn that it is a widely shared belief that deficit reduction must involve sacrifices  in every area of federal spending—even among people who are not, in general, hostile to a federal role in education, or to education spending in general.

These are a big hurdles for education advocates to overcome.

More on the poll in Education Week: PDK/Gallup Poll Offers Glimpse into Americans Views of Public Education – K-12 Talent Manager – Education Week.

h/t Committee for Education Funding for the pointer to the article

Great Collection of School Library Posters from the 1960s, Back When People Cared About School Libraries

/ The Old Crank

RETRO POSTER - Interested in Sports?A Flickr user recently uploaded a collection of 1960s library posters discovered “while digging through old library stuff.”

I love the poster here in particular. Who doesn’t enjoy a good book about track? (I’m sure there must be one, actually. By the way, a great collection of boxing writing was published just last year, “At The Fights: American Writers on Boxing,” edited by the late George Kimball.)

Most of the posters in this collection, like the one here, are promoting school libraries. Today, school libraries are under threat. Here in Washington, the city recently eliminated funding for school librarian positions in D.C. Public Schools with fewer than 300 students. And those with more than that 300 students, while they will still receive funding for the position, they’re not compelled to fill it.

CEPR: People Living Below the Income Poverty Line Today are Better Educated than Ever

/ The Old Crank

Last April,  the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) published Low Wage Workers Are Older and Better Educated than Ever, an issue brief showing that the average low-wage worker today is both older and much better educated than the average low-wage worker was in the past.

Yesterday, Shawn Fremstad noted on CEPR’s blog that, in addition, the number of middle-aged workers living below the poverty line with at least some college or a Bachelor’s Degree has nearly doubled between 1979 and 2010. In addition, the number of middle-aged workers living below the poverty line without a high school diploma has dropped by nearly 50% during that same period. Fremstad looks at this data nd concludes:

Increasing educational attainment by itself is not at all sufficient to reduce inequality and income poverty — we need stronger labor market institutions, particularly ones that increase workers bargaining power to address these issues.

New Policy Brief from D.C. LEARNs

/ The Old Crank

D.C. LEARNs has just published a policy brief that reviews the research on the influence that a parent’s educational attainment and literacy level has on his/her child’s literacy development and success in school. The research review was conducted by our spring policy intern, Nahid Al-Tehmazi, and the paper itself was co-written by Nahid and myself.

You can view/download the paper here.