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In the News
Mon, 04/02/2012
Getting Smart

By Tom Vander Ark

Every U.S. student should have a chance to earn college credit in high school. Even with online learning, we still haven’t reached the point of universal access to a great college prep track with college credit options. That’s why David Haglund is pushing the Students Bill of Rights in California. It’s why Christina Grant is pushing early college in New York.

Wed, 03/07/2012
The Times Union

By Scott Waldman

ALBANY — The charter school movement in Albany received $3 million from the Walton Family Foundation last year.

On Wednesday, the charitable arm of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. released the list of organizations that received the $159 million it invested in education reform in 2011. The $3.01 million Albany-based organizations received was a 27 percent increase over 2010.

Fri, 02/17/2012
Buffalo News

By Mary B. Pasciak and Tom Precious
News Staff Reporters

Every teacher in the state soon will be evaluated under a more rigorous system designed to more closely link teacher ratings to student growth on assessments and to reliable classroom observations.

Thu, 02/02/2012
WAMC

ALBANY, NY (WAMC) - New York schools could be facing a huge financial loss if an agreement is not reached on a new evaluation system for teachers and principals. The education group, the Campaign for Achievement Now, has issued a report that says schools could lose $1.7 billion dollars over two years if the new system is not in place.

Wed, 02/01/2012
New York Times

In the news on Wednesday, the tabloids continue to have a field day with the case of a teacher who has collected his $100,000-a-year salary for a decade while assigned to “rubber room”-type duty.

The case of Alan Rosenfeld, a former typing instructor, has prompted The New York Post to look more closely at the records of the case against the teacher, who was accused by six girls in junior high school “of leering at them and making inappropriate remarks.”

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Two extra years, two diplomas and one shot at a great job

Posted Thu, 02/09/2012 at 17:17
 in

Six years of high school? Longer school days? A math and science focused curriculum? It might not seem like the ideal high school experience to most, but for Alec Miller, “It’s worth it.”

Alec is a freshman at Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Opened this past September, P-TECH is the product of a cutting-edge collaboration between IBM, the City University of New York (CUNY) and the New York City Department of Education.

This partnership grew out of the understanding that unemployment isn’t just a jobs problem, but also very much a skills problem. As unemployment nationwide hovers at 8.5 percent, IBM has more than 1,600 job vacancies that it has difficulty filling because applicants don’t have the appropriate math and science background. And as we highlighted in our 2012 State of New York Public Education report, if only 45% of New Yorkers continue to pursue secondary degrees, nearly 40 percent of middle- and high-skill jobs will be left vacant by 2018.

Speaking at a business roundtable in Atlanta, Stanley S. Litow, IBM’s vice president of corporate citizenship and corporate responsibility, spoke on the importance of closing the gap between skills and jobs and increasing college completion rates.

“Public and private sector leaders will need to work together to bolster k-12 education, give students the academic tools and workplace perspectives they’ll need to complete their associate’s degrees, and focus those degrees on growth industries supported by a strengthened small business sector.”

One way to bolster education is through public-private partnerships like the one that created P-TECH. In exchange for extended hours and an extra two years of high school, students at P-TECH are eligible to earn a free associate’s degree in applied science along with their Regents diploma and a chance to be first in line for a job at IBM.

This is what motivates Alec to trek over an hour across Brooklyn to get to school. At P-TECH, Alec learns from a curriculum developed in conjunction with IBM employees and uses the extra class time to complete online coursework at his own pace on a personal laptop that is assigned to every student.

Another perk of being a P-TECH student is that every freshman is matched with a professional mentor – an IBM employee that they meet with regularly through the program’s online portal, Mentor Place.

“The goal is to say that a high school diploma is not enough,” said Rashid Ferrod Davis, the school’s principal. “In order to be competitive, students definitely need to leave with job-readiness skills so that way they can really have a shot at middle- and high-income lifestyles.”

Just recently, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced plans to open three more early college high schools modeled after P-TECH. While we applaud the growth of successful schools that plug the gaps in the school to career pipeline, we need to make sure all New York kids have the opportunity to take part in early college high school programs. Along with expanding more schools with these options, we need to equip our kids with the funds to start college early and finish college strong.

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