That’s the question Alliance for Excellent Education President Bob Wise and Ann Whalen, special assistant to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, will be answering during the latest of the Alliance’s webinars on education news from Washington, DC.

Like far too many youth today, a boy grows up knowing poverty and hard times. This boy happened to come from Stotesbury, West Virginia, a rural Appalachian community, but he could have grown up in any struggling part of the nation. He defies the odds and graduates from high school. Financially strapped, he goes immediately into the workforce at low paying jobs. But at each opportunity, he moves himself up another rung of the education ladder. Constant self-instruction is mixed with formal education, when available. He reads voraciously and memorizes long poems as a form of mental discipline.

He becomes more successful, but never relents in reading and learning. Even when performing a fulltime and stressful job—and at an age when most people view formal education as a long ago experience-he attends law school at night, earning his degree at 46. Even afterwards, learning dominates his life. He writes prolifically, he paints, he plays a musical

instrument. Not forgetting where he comes from—or how he got to where he is—he constantly reminds people that education is what is changing his life and will do the same for them.

This week we mourn the death and celebrate the life of United States Senator Robert C. Byrd. There is much to be heralded about his career. The longest serving U.S. Senator. The U.S. Senator who has held the most leadership positions. An ardent defender of the Constitution. An unchallenged master of the legislative and appropriations process.

His accomplishments are many, but his personal example is equally compelling. It was only through education that he moved from a mountain hollow to dominating the Capitol hallways.

There are millions of potential Robert C. Byrds living in today’s version of countless Stotesburys. Whether this country reaps the benefit of their potential accomplishment depends on the quality of education they receive. Senator

Straight A’s: Public Education Policy and Progress: Volume 10, No. 13

Two months in and still the issue dominating the Obama administration, the Congress, and the media is the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Every day brings new developments, including the potential impact hurricane season could have on the spill and BP creating an immediate $20 billion fund to handle damages. Everyone knows this is only the beginning.

Three more states including Utah, Wyoming, and Nevada have conditionally adopted common standards, according to Education Week

reporter Catherine Gewertz. And the Washington Post reports that the Maryland Board of Education officially voted on Tuesday to adopt common standards.

For several years, the Alliance for Excellent Education (the Alliance) has been beating the drum on the potential economic gains of a college- and career-ready education and the economic costs resulting from the nation’s high school dropout crisis. Last week, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (the Center) made a similarly powerful case that policymakers, as well as all members of society, should heed.

A new University of Chicago report finds that people who receive GEDs fare little better economically than high school dropouts when factors such as their greater academic abilities are taken into consideration

An editorial in the New York Times calls for states to develop clear, well-publicized antifraud policies to prevent educators from altering student test scores.

College freshman enrollment surged 6 percent in 2008 to a record 2.6 million and mostly due to rising minority enrollment, according to a new study by Pew Research Center.

On the heels of the release of the Alliance’s study, several major state newspapers are reporting on the economic benefits that their local metropolitan areas could experience if they were to cut their high school dropout rate in half. In a Salt Lake Tribune story, Pam Perlich, a senior research economist at the University of Utah, responded to the study, saying that the Alliance’s research was in line with other research showing that people with higher levels of educational attainment will have better economic outcomes.