- Higher education offers a ray of hope in an economically unstable environment
- Posted By:
- Karen W.
- Posted On:
- 05-Jan-2010
-
In spite of the economic disaster and turmoil, we find that the higher education sector is one that has been better off as compared to most other fields. Though the past decade was not so favourable for America, the situation is not too bad for the field of higher education. A lot of breakthrough advances have set the road for future generations to come.
No Child Left Behind is a Federal education policy initiated in the year 2001. This policy stated that every child deserves good options in life, measurement matters, we must measure success of every school with average overall achievement and continued academic failure will not be tolerated.
Graduation Rate Compact in the year 2005 came into effect in order to deal with an increase in the dropout rates.
The National Data Quality Campaign increased the quality of data systems. Race to the top program will soon close this deal and the progress of every student right from kindergarten will be tracked now by the state with the help of the data system.
Educational entrepreneurship was funded by many foundations. Human capital initiatives, school developers and learning platforms saw a surge of new talent that will have a huge positive impact for future generations.
Charter networks started performing extremely well under the most challenging circumstances and the 5000 mark was touched by the charter schools.
Educational reformists developed potent strategies such as multiple operators and models and urban school portfolios concepts.
More number of students opted for learning online where they were offered virtual environments, social networking options and digital learning that was more personalized.
Equity agenda was carried out in the year 2001 by EdTrust and advocacy of reform matured. Agenda of President Obama that included accountability, effectiveness of educators and high standards were endorsed by Education Equality Project and Democrats for Education Reforms.
National Council on Teacher Quality and the New Teacher Project framed and the Bush administration initiated new employment bargain was further aggressively pushed by President Obama.
Higher education and online learning saw a lot of funds being infused by the private sector. The interests of private investors were fuelled by latest disruptive technologies and IPOs.
Entrepreneurial vigor was evident for contributions from private sector albeit small such as Supplemental Educational Services including the low income tutoring shows that very soon these incentives pave the way for faster solutions and more investments.
These are a few significant advances that will definitely be built upon by the future decades to come. Educators will have a potent opportunity to make a significant difference with the expanded array of options, personalized digital learning and Federal policy reauthorizations.
So, all is not lost. There is still hope, a silver lining to the cloud. Foundation has been laid for rapid development in the field of education which will essentially form the backbone for the country helping to bring it to the fore once again amidst stiff global competition. American students are well on their way and are being trained to take on the career challenges head on.