Community Colleges: An American Asset

“American community colleges are the nation’s overlooked asset”, according to a report from the College Board’s National Office on Community Colleges. Winning the Skills Race and Strengthening America’s Middle Class: An Action Agenda for Community Colleges recommends stronger public support for community colleges because of the key role they play in workforce development and expanding higher education access. This report calls for a three-way agreement involving national leaders, state officials and community colleges designed to put community colleges at the forefront of the effort to enhance American communities and ensure national competitiveness.

No Community College Left Behind

Increased educational requirements for teacher’s aides under the No Child Left Behind Act has had a profound and lasting effect on community colleges. As professional development demands on teachers have increased beyond the capacity of four-year colleges to meet them, two-year colleges are filling the void with a wide variety of programs intended to increase the supply of talented teachers. Many education experts believe professional development is at the center of reforming education and improving instruction, and because community colleges are more nimble than their four-year counterparts when it comes to creating new programs, they have assumed a prominent role in providing training for teacher’s aides. “No Child Left Behind is really driving what a lot of colleges are doing,” says Ray Ostos, interim director of the National Center for Teacher Education. “These colleges are able to react quickly, and a lot of them have good relationships with local school districts.

Early Learning Guidelines for Infants and Toddlers

Zero To Three believes that a clear articulation of what infants and toddlers should be learning is an important element of an early childhood system and one that may provide support to states in their efforts to address and improve quality of care. For that reason, Early Learning Guidelines for Infants and Toddlers: Recommendations for States offers recommendations and examples to states creating or refining research-based early learning guidelines for infants and toddlers. Focusing on the unique and foundational nature of the infant and toddler period and addressing issues related to process and content, this report is offered as a road map for states as they develop policies and programs that lay a strong foundation for child development and future learning through responsive, appropriate, and high-quality early experiences.

Recent State STEM Initiatives

The increasingly globalized economy means that the United States is facing more competition from other nations that are increasing the skills of their citizens in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects. As a result, in recent years much attention has focused on improving education in the STEM subjects, with initiatives commonly being put forth in the context of workforce development and college readiness, and regularly involving cooperation among the K-12, postsecondary and business sectors. Although several high-profile reports have called for action at the federal level, many state leaders, perceiving the importance of improved STEM education to their economies, have recently begun to take action, including raising graduation requirements in math and science, and developing and implementing pre-engineering curricula in high schools.

Technology Impacting Education

The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium (NMC)’s Horizon Project, a five-year qualitative research effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations. The 2008 report, the fifth in this annual series, describes six emerging technologies or practices that will likely enter mainstream use in learning-focused organizations over the next one to five years, and why each is relevant to teaching, learning and creative expression. Also highlighted are a set of challenges and trends that will influence our choices in the same time frames.

Online Nation

Online Nation: Five Years of Growth in Online Learning, the fifth annual report on the state of online learning in U.S. higher education, is aimed at answering some of the fundamental questions about the nature and extent of online education. Supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and based on responses from more than 2,500 colleges and universities, the study addresses the following key questions:

• How many students are learning online?
• Where has the growth in online learning occurred?
• Why do institutions provide online offerings?
• What are the prospects for future online enrollment growth?
• What are the barriers to widespread adoption of online education?

BONUS ARTICLE - Resource Website

NCLB and IDEA confirm that teachers need to be prepared and supported to meet the needs of all learners, both general education learners and learners with disabilities. In an effort to provide those who prepare and support teachers, the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Education offers a new resource targeted to teacher preparation programs that will provide the most up to date and research based practice and policy on how this goal might be achieved. This on-line resource provides information related to five key topics - assessment, classroom management/behavior, inclusive practices, instructional strategies, reading/literacy, and additional special education issues - as well as an opportunity to join in ongoing dialogue.