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WASHINGTON, D.C.— At the May 16 forum of higher education stakeholders, “edupreneurs,” and policymakers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for a Competitive Workforce (ICW) released a report on the urgent need for innovation coupled with policy reforms in higher education.
The challenges facing traditional higher education cannot be overcome without fundamental transformation brought about by strong institutional leadership coupled with policy reforms that promote innovation. The cost spiral will continue without innovations driven by e-learning and incentives built around increasing productivity. Regulations and incentives should be crafted to open the way for the most dynamic innovations, while rendering the true costs, risks, and potential benefits as transparent as possible for prospective students.
The U.S.
ICW's April webinar is a LIVE webcast of The Case for Being Bold: A New Agenda for Business in Improving STEM Education. We will be unveiling a new report addressing what needs to be done to strengthen the quality of STEM education in the United States and what kinds of bold leadership will be required on the part of the business community to make it happen.
Too often, STEM reform has entailed well-intentioned efforts to superimpose good ideas on a rickety, aged set of institutions and organizations. If today’s earnest efforts are to deliver more than that, then good intentions and thoughtful proposals must be joined by a fierce commitment to remaking America’s schools and school systems for the 21st century.
Compared to public school choice under NCLB, there has been far more research and evaluation done on the impact of SES. While the main factor for determining the success of SES must be its impact on increasing student achievement, parent satisfaction also can demonstrate the extent to which the program has been successful. Indeed, most states take into account parent satisfaction when it comes to evaluating individual providers.
Aside from actual limitations on services due to factors such as funding, the utilization of SES and public school choice has also been limited in many places by poor implementation.
Since 2003, participation in SES has increased from 233,000 students to nearly 700,000. During this same period, participation in public school choice has grown from approximately 50,000 students to roughly 150,000.
NCLB, for the first time in ESEA history, required low-performing schools to offer parents two choices: move their child to a higher-performing public school in their district or to a nearby charter school, or opt into free tutoring services. Both of these parental options were based on the premise that, rather than wait for a school to improve, parents deserve to have the opportunity to seek options that can provide immediate academic support to meet their needs – options that are widely available and utilized by millions of students from higher-income families.
This issue of the ICW newsletter provides an overview of the parental options under NCLB; the extent to which students and parents have selected these options; issues surrounding their implementation; and a look at their overall impact on students.
