On July 27, Alliance for Excellent Education President Bob Wise addressed 200 STEM education leaders in Orlando, Florida, during the GE Foundation 2015 Summer Conference, “Bridging the Gap: Success for Tomorrow with STEM Skills Today.” The following blog post was inspired by his remarks.

In Singapore, teachers are called “nation builders,” a recognition of the role they play in preparing the leaders and workers who will sustain the country’s economic health and longevity. In an Information Age economy, educators—particularly those who teach the so-called STEM courses of science, technology, engineering, and math—are the main builders of our nation’s economic success.

We’ve all heard concerns about a shortage of STEM skills among our workforce and a lack of qualified STEM workers to meet industry demands. Building the STEM workforce is critically important; but, equally important is building a sustainable base of active consumers.

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The Daily Dish digs deeper into one of the day’s top news stories on K–12 education. Make sure to add High School Soup to your RSS feed for all the latest updates and follow the Alliance on Twitter at @All4Ed for more education news.

For many students from low-income or traditionally underserved backgrounds, making it to college can be a great challenge. But First Lady Michelle Obama wants those students to know that “Beating the Odds” and achieving education outcomes beyond high school is possible in the face of even the toughest adversity.

On Thursday, Obama hosted some 130 students at the White House as part of her Reach Higher Beating the Odds Summit. As The Washington Post’s Will Greenberg writes, “First lady Michelle Obama’s “Beating the Odds” summit aims to bring together college-bound students from all walks of life so they can focus on expanding educational resources for people like them.”

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The Daily Dish digs deeper into one of the day’s top news stories on K–12 education. Make sure to add High School Soup to your RSS feed for all the latest updates and follow the Alliance on Twitter at @All4Ed for more education news.

On Wednesday, The U.S. Departments of Education and Justice asked those in the education system to “Rethink Discipline,” launching a campaign and inviting superintendents, teachers, and principals from across the country to the White House for a day-long conference aimed at tackling school climate issues surrounding disciplinary measures.

“Creating and sustaining safe, supportive schools is absolutely essential to ensuring students can engage in the rich learning experiences they need for success in college, work and life—that’s why rethinking school discipline is critical to boosting student achievement and improving school outcomes,”  U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a press release from the Department of Education. “Today’s conference shows that there are leaders across the country who are committed to doing this work. We are proud to stand as partners with these educators to say that we have to continue to do better for all of our students.”

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The following Q&A features Jason Molesky, executive director of technology and data services at Lake Area Public Schools in Lakeville Minnesota. Mr. Molesky and his district have taken the Future Ready pledge, making a firm commitment to implementing meaningful changes toward a digital learning transition that supports teachers, and addresses the district’s vision for student learning. The Alliance asked Mr. Molesky about his experience with the Future Ready Initiative.

Alliance for Excellent Education: What is your role in the Lake Area Public Schools district?

Jason Molesky: Currently, I manage our technology, student information system, digital learning, and data management teams. In addition, I coordinate state and federal accountability testing and provide data analysis and program evaluation. I’m fortunate in that my role allows me to work in several of my passions: statistics and data analysis, technology, and digital learning. I have worked in our district since 1998, transitioning from the AP Statistics classroom to district assessment in 2008. Since that time, my role transitioned slowly into its current state in August, 2014.

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The Daily Dish digs deeper into one of the day’s top news stories on K–12 education. Make sure to add High School Soup to your RSS feed for all the latest updates and follow the Alliance on Twitter at @All4Ed for more education news.

Children from low-income families face many difficulties in their young lives, from adequate access to health care, proper nutrition, and high-quality schools and teachers. All of these factors, plus many more, present a huge challenge to their pursuit of an education. As Education Week’s Caralee Adams noted Tuesday, a new report from ACT, Inc. finds that just 11 percent of low-income high school graduates who took the ACT in 2014 met all four of ACT’s benchmarks for achievement.  Education Week’s Catherine Gewertz called the figure a reminder of how much support these students need in their academic careers.

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As education strategist and author of Deeper Learning: How Eight Public Innovative Schools are Transforming Education in the 21st Century  Monica Martinez wrote in the new entry to the Alliance’s Core of the Matter blog series, efforts like the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) that aim to “minimize the unevenness of learning experiences and ensures that all students, no matter their ethnicity or economic status, graduate prepared for college, careers, and citizenship” can go a long way towards giving struggling students opportunities they might otherwise go without.

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The following blog post is another in the Alliance’s “Core of the Matter” blog series focusing on the implementation of the Common Core State Standards and struggling students. It was written by Monica Martinez, education strategist and author of “Deeper Learning: How Eight Public Innovative Schools are Transforming Education in the 21^st Century.”

I went to high school in the late 1970s and had what would be considered the typical high school experience. I had a good set of friends, played sports, and was generally engaged in all of the extracurricular events that go along with high school. At the same time, I was seemingly a serious student. I earned good grades, good enough to be on the honor roll and in at least the top 20 percent of my class, and did not struggle academically.

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The Daily Dish digs deeper into one of the day’s top news stories on K–12 education. Make sure to add High School Soup to your RSS feed for all the latest updates and follow the Alliance on Twitter at @All4Ed for more education news.

In the past two weeks, both the Senate and the House of Representatives have passed bills to rewrite the long-expired No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The scaled back role of federal government involvement when it comes to intervening in low-performing schools proposed by the Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA) from the Senate and the Student Success Act from the House have many concerned over the lack of mandated accountability measures in both pieces of legislation.

The International Business Times’ Julia Glum examined Monday the push back the House and Senate have faced over the issue of accountability from several education advocacy organizations, including the Alliance for Excellent Education, as well as the White House. Glum writes, “[These] groups say they’re concerned that shift would cause the updated law to stray too far from its original purpose. They say the federal government’s role is critical in protecting certain minority subgroups of children — specifically, those who are Hispanic, black, low-income, learning English or disabled.”

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The Daily Dish digs deeper into one of the day’s top news stories on K–12 education. Make sure to add High School Soup to your RSS feed for all the latest updates and follow the Alliance on Twitter at @All4Ed for more education news.

After two weeks of debate, Thursday afternoon the U.S. Senate voted 81-17 to replace  No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), with the bipartisan Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA). Issues of federal government involvement in education, accountability measures, standardized testing, and Title I portability were among the topics discussed at length in both the House and Senate during debates.

In a press release on his website, Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, (R-Tenn.) said the bill will ensure “a path to higher standards, better teaching and real accountability through the states and local communities, not Washington, D.C.”

Despite the good news of bipartisan support and motions to move away from the long expired, and what some have called overreaching NCLB law, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, said in a statement that the bad news is that Senate’s bill could start a retreat from gains made in public education. 

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The Daily Dish digs deeper into one of the day’s top news stories on K–12 education. Make sure to add High School Soup to your RSS feed for all the latest updates and follow the Alliance on Twitter at @All4Ed for more education news.

The U.S. Senate was busy debating and voting Wednesday on key amendments in a last home stretch towards a final vote on the Every Child Achieves Act, the Senate’s proposal to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). One key vote was that on an amendment led by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). The Democrat-sponsored provision attempted to address the accountability for low-graduation-rate high schools, low-performing schools, and schools with low-performing subgroups.

The Washington Post’s Emma Brown notes that while every Democrat voted in favor of the amendment, it failed 54-43. Brown writes opposition of Murphy’s amendment is the result of “Republicans who want to rein in the federal government’s influence over education, which they say ballooned under the Bush and Obama administrations.”

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