Written by Vanessa Romo
Librarians, PE teachers, and music teachers are essential to public education, but thoseprograms have suffered as public schools cut the budget year after year after year. Some parents are fundraising to bring back and bolster the programs schools can’t finance themselves. Listen here.
Originally aired on May 8, 2012
Hosted by Michael Krasny
A study of California’s 30 largest school districts finds the recession has taken a hard hit on public education. Teacher layoffs, fewer counselors, increased demand for free and reduced-price meals has stressed California’s schools according to the report by an education non-profit. Forum discusses the findings and how schools can compensate. Listen here.
Guests: Ann Hughes, 4th grade teacher at Hillcrest Elementary School in San Francisco, Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at U.C. Berkeley, Jonathan Raymond, Superintendent of Sacramento Unified School District and Louis Freedberg, Executive Director of EdSource, an independent non-profit research and reporting organization
The California Report
Originally Aired on March 28, 2012
Written By Ana Tintocalis
For the first time in state Senate history, a committee gathered in Sacramento this week to talk about a problem that they say has been ignored for far too long: How to help the one in four California students who are non-native English speakers. Listen now.
There is a growing consensus among economists and world leaders that girls’ education is the single most effective tool for fighting poverty in developing countries. While not a panacea, education yields enormous benefits for girls, their families, and society, including increased future income, lower risk of HIV/AIDS, and improved health outcomes. Yet not all approaches to educating girls are equally effective. Join Ann Cotton, Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, and Joel Samoff as they discuss the benefits and the challenges of educating girls in Africa, and share lessons learned from years of experience working in the sector.
Listen to these great episodes tonight at 8:00pm on KQED 88.5FM and a rebroadcast tomorrow May 8, 2012 at 2:00am.
With one in four U.S. public school students dropping out of high school before graduation, America continues to face a dropout epidemic. Dropping out makes it harder for these young people to succeed in life, our economy loses hundreds of billions of dollars in productivity and our communities suffer enormous social costs. The 2012 report update of Building a Grad Nation: Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic, released March 19 by the Alliance for Excellent Education, America’s Promise Alliance, Civic Enterprises, and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, shows that the nation continues to make progress, with more than half of states increasing graduation rates.
The report also reveals that the number of “dropout factory” high schools—those graduating 60 percent or fewer students on time—decreased by 457 between 2002 and 2010, with the rate of decline accelerating since 2008. The number of “dropout factories” totaled 1,550 in 2010, down from 1,634 in 2009 and a high of 2,007 in 2002. The number declined by 84 between 2009 and 2010. As a result, 790,000 fewer students attended dropout factories in 2010 than 2002.