Putting our heads in the sand is not the right answer. Test scores today say a lot about what our labor force will look like over the coming decades. Our current students' skills will dictate our economic future in the long run. Understanding the implications of higher skills—as measured by regular standardized tests—provides a way of assessing how our country as a whole will fare in the coming years. It is well-documented that people with a better education tend to earn more over their lifetimes. But fewer people understand the overall effects of an educated society on the economy.

The nagging problem of significant numbers of youth leaving school unprepared for career employment has revitalized interest in vocational education, particularly apprenticeships. Support for vocational education comes from people across the political spectrum, from both labor and business groups, and from the popular media. The clearest manifestation in policy is President Trump’s executive order that calls for immediate expansion of existing apprenticeship programs while simultaneously disparaging the effectiveness of current education and training programs.

*/ THE WORLD POST June 23, 2017 Emulating Germany’s Apprenticeship System Won’t Make America Great Again We should not delude ourselves into thinking that Trump’s apprenticeship expansion will substitute for our failing K-12 schooling system. By ERIC A. HANUSHEK When U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he would expand the federal program on apprenticeships, interest in the job training plan picked up considerable steam. Those who hail the idea frequently look to Germany and its apprenticeship system for why this model might work.

*/ THE WALL STREET JOURNAL March 10, 2017 American Teachers Unions Oppose Innovative Schools—in Africa Bridge Academies show promising results in Kenya and Uganda, but unions see them only as a threat.. By ERIC A. HANUSHEK No longer content to oppose educational innovation at home, the unions representing America’s teachers have gone abroad in search of monsters to slay. For nearly a decade, Bridge International Academies has run a chain of successful private schools in the slums of Kenya and Uganda.

Reason for despair: Improved education is the key to the future for the U.S., as our economy depends on having a highly skilled workforce. While most people give lip service to the desire to improve schools in order to invest in the future, they often stop short of endorsing any significant changes in the schools. This reflects, in my opinion, two factors—an imperfect understanding of just how important quality schooling is for the country and complacency with the current situation. The complacency enters from the fact that the U.S.

Broad economic development is in the interest of all nations. To this end, at the end of September, the United Nations ratified a new set of development goals that are designed to guide investments of both nations and international organizations. These development goals are acknowledged to be ambitious – for example, “end poverty in all its forms everywhere” by 2030. But they give short-shrift to the one action, providing quality education to all, that offers hope for achieving the many different goals. The Sustainable Development Goals of the U. N.

Ministers and education officials from a wide range of countries and international agencies are converging on Incheon in the Republic of Korea this week to discuss a new set of development goals at the World Education Forum. A draft document lays out a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will follow on from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that included education goals to be accomplished by 2015. It is difficult to fault the SDGs as noble ambitions – end poverty everywhere, combat climate change, and more.

It is hard getting around the historic facts.

Despite decades of study and enormous effort, we know little about how to train or select high quality teachers.

It’s like the bad penny that keeps appearing, only it costs hundreds of millions of dollars. The city teachers union has begun pushing a new property-tax proposal tied to a union employment program. Everyone would be better off if they just stuck to teaching kids. The union’s proposal, announced with great fanfare by United Federation of Teachers boss Michael Mulgrew, is to increase property-tax receipts by placing an added burden on housing owners who do not use their city apartment as their primary residence.