A Day of Education

Hey folks!

Today we met with Lyndsay Pinkus, the Policy Manager at Data Quality Campaign. She is a lobbyist who focuses on education issues. Currently, the U.S. is well behind the majority of the industrialized world when it comes to education. Our test numbers and other measures of improvement have either fallen or stagnated over the past 15 to 30 years. This, combined with a continuous increase in education levels in competing countries means that we're even further behind.

Some of the issues facing us are funding, charter schools, and "at-risk" youth. New York City recently redefined "at-risk." For some time it meant youth at risk of dropping out, and getting involved with drugs or crime. Now, for New York, it means youth at risk of moving off the path. Namely, the path to success through college and a successful completion of high school.

The conversation on education is often driven by what the large foundations who donate to education issues want to talk about. This follows logically given the fact that you have people with big purses willing to throw money around and you can bet the media is going to talk about where they throw it. Because of this trend, central issues of the education debate have switched from early education, "No Child Left Behind." (Notice the use of the word "child." It implies early education as opposed to "youth" or "adolescence"). They now focus on high school statistics. Obama said that by 2020, the U.S. would lead the world on number of college graduates. This, again, changes the conversation from high school issues to high education. It doesn't mean that the high school problems have been solved but it does mean there will be a transition between discussions of getting people to graduate from high school and move toward conversations about keeping our population internationally competitive by ensuring a healthy rate of college attendance and graduation.

Moving forward, there are numerous issues on the table, and numerous proposals for solving/improving our country's education system. One thing everyone agrees on: we are slipping in our ability to compete internationally and if we want to remain a world power, we need to have an educated population.

Until next time!