Generation Opportunity is the largest non-profit, non-partisan organization involved in engaging young Americans with the important economic issues facing the US. Having launched in June 2011. Generation Opportunity has already amassed a Facebook following of over four million fans and is actively organizing Millennials across the country by encouraging increased voter registration and turnout.

As part of their informational education initiatives, Generation Opportunity has recently released new polling data in anticipation of the forthcoming 2012 Presidential election that shows young adults have their eyes and minds on the economy.

Paul T. Conway, president of Generation Opportunity and a former Chief of Staff at the US Department of Labor said:

“Young adults are sending a very clear message to the President and other elected officials – we want opportunities, not more dependency. The availability of meaningful, full-time jobs that provide the opportunity to be independent and to plan for their future is far more important to young Americans than issues such as student loan rates and further dependency on their parents’ healthcare plan. Young people know the root issue is the lack of real job opportunities, not further dependence on government, so that they are better able to provide for themselves, pay back loans, and choose the health care plans that best suit their individual needs. This generation is very savvy – they are used to customizing everything from their coffees to their iPhones and do not appreciate the lack of choice in the most significant issues they face: planning for their future and building a career.

Key conclusions from their polling are that: 64% of people aged 18-29 believes that the availability of quality jobs upon graduation is more important than low student loan rates; 61% say that the availability of jobs with health insurance plans is more important than being able to stay on their parents plan until they reach age 26; only 38% believe that the political leaders of today reflect their own interests.

The survey further revealed that because of the lackluster state of the US economy, 84% of young people are delaying a planned major purchase or life change such as buying a home, going back to further their education or saving for retirement. 26% of young people have delayed an initial plan to pay off their student loans because of the current state of the economy.

Slightly better news for the President, however, is that despite being turned off by his focus on allowing them increased dependency rather than the means to look after themselves with a quality job, 74% of Millennials plan to vote for President Obama.

The survey has an overall 3.1% sampling margin of error at a 95% confidence interval and was conducted from a random selection of opt-in participants. Quotas were used to ensure the sample population was representative of the national 18-29 population in terms of race, region and gender.

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A report recently released by the Institute for Higher Education Policy highlights 30 Minority Serving Institutions as they present a faculty-driven, classroom-based road map of practices that foster positive academic outcomes among first generation college students. The strategies presented in ‘Supporting First-Generation College Students Through Classroom-Based Practices’ have a proven track record and are based on the MSI’s experiences in the Walmart Minority Student Success Initiative, a $4.2 million program underway since 2009.

“Conversations around supporting first-generation students need to begin with the classroom, which is a perspective often overlooked,” said IHEP President Michelle Asha Cooper, Ph.D. “Through the Walmart Minority Student Success Initiative, we learned that faculty contributions and support are paramount to successful academically driven initiatives that target first-generation student achievement. These individuals are students’ primary point of contact in the classroom, and they can provide a powerful connection between in-class and out-of-class learning experiences for students new to college life.”

The IHEP brief contains insights from the Walmart Initiative on how programs can be redesigned, both in terms of instructional style and course content to focus on the key aspect of faculty engagement.

Other promising practices include: Embracing curricular changes as a way to improve student success (for example, Claflin University’s Learning in Communities for Success Project enrolled first-generation students in linked courses to enhance collaborative learning and saw completion rates skyrocket); amplifying institutional capacity to identify and track first generation students; and ensuring that these practices have both internal and external visibility.

“It’s exciting to see the creative ways that faculty members are working together, across disciplines and departments, to help first-generation students succeed in college,” said Michelle Gilliard, senior director of the Walmart Foundation. “We are also encouraged by the institutions that are integrating successful strategies from this grant into their general education and departmental requirements. It means the efforts that should be sustained, will be sustained.”

MSIs tend to have more open admissions policies than non-MSIs and therefore enroll a much larger percentage of first-generation students as well as drawing their student body mainly from underserved student populations. The 30 MSIs which took part in the Walmart Initiative received $100,000 each as a grant to help build upon programs that actively supported first-generation students. The 30 participating MSIs were selected through a competitive application process, and all benefited from the support of IHEP staff and consultants. Although the Walmart Initiative has completed, all institutions involved are continuing their campus work.

The Institute for Higher Education Policy is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting access to higher education for all students. IHEP works to develop policy and practice oriented research to aid education leaders and policymakers as they tackle the nation’s most critical education challenges.

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All over the US children are returning to school after the long summer break. Madeline Levine and Vicki Abeles, writing in the Washington Post, examine whether the process has become too commercialized and whether, in the rush to make easy buying decisions, parents are neglecting what children really need.

The last couple of weeks parents have faced a televisual assault from back to school commercials:

“Hey Parents!” the teacher in each spot calls out. “…Here’s what they’ll need!” The scenes burst into a tableau of fluorescent-clad kids banging on instruments and conducting lab experiments as a teacher belts out the myriad “must-have” school supplies they’ll need for September.

Abeles and Levine argue that while the child of course requires markers, notebooks, a calculator, and perhaps even a new backpack, these aren’t the most important things to develop academic success. Advertisements that show kids filled with boundless energy and suddenly looking forward to the term ahead because they have a shiny new folder are just marketing. What the child really needs — what will best prepare kids for a positive academic outcome — is nurturing parental and community support.

Abeles, director of the education documentary ‘Race to Nowhere’, and Levine, author of books on parenting, say that school has become an extremely stressful part of childhood as pressure is piled on from an earlier and earlier age. It’s not uncommon for parent and child to feel as if there is a chain: To get a good job one needs a top-tier college; to get into a good college one needs good grades from a top High School; to get into that high school one needs to have attended a good middle school; and access to that middle school is predicated on being accepted into a top elementary school. For those who attend weaker high schools, there is a constant fear that they won’t be able to get into a decent college and will struggle to find a well-paid job.

There is unrelenting pressure to succeed, and children are at risk of burnout and depression that a new folder won’t help them avoid — but that family support can:

To truly bring pep back into the step of our students as they return to school this fall, we don’t need to shower them with merchandise. Instead, we need to create for them a community in which the authentic measures of adult achievement are adequately valued. We need to commend mental and physical well-being. We need to praise the ability to demonstrate empathy and to maintain friendships. We need to teach the capacity to exercise self control. In doing this, we will drive our children’s enthusiasm for independence; their resilience in overcoming minor failures; their creativity and resourcefulness in the face of disappointment or challenge; and their defenses against depression and anxiety.

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This comes a week after the Home Office stripped London Metropolitan University of its power to sponsor to foreign students following the conclusion of an investigation which revealed a quarter of LMU students should not have been let into the country.

The UK Border Agency is also being blamed for the problem as it appear they abandoned the previous slate of immigration checks before the new monitoring system was properly in place.

Margaret Hodge is chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee:

“It is extraordinary that the UK Border Agency introduced its new points based system for students before proper controls were in place to replace the old ones.

“The result of the Agency’s poorly planned and ill-thought out course of action was chaos: an immediate high level of abuse of the new system and a surge in the number of student visas.

“In 2009 the number of migrants who abused the student route to work rather than study went up by as much as 40,000 to 50,000.

“Since then, the Agency has been playing catch-up, continually adjusting the rules and procedures in order to try and tackle abuse.”

The new system placed the onus on sponsoring institutions to demonstrate that their students were in the country legitimately, which replaced the previous system that saw immigration officers assess foreign students with spot checks and interviews to determine authenticity. The gap between the old system being abandoned and the new system becoming fully operational lasted nearly a year according to the PAC, and this gap created a surge in fraudulently obtained visas and abuse of the system.

Mrs Hodge said: “Despite the surge in the number of people abusing the student route, the Agency has not done enough to remove those who are here illegally.

“Even where it has been told by colleges that so-called students are not studying, it has been unacceptably slow to act.

The new focus on reducing student immigration numbers is in part because they represent the largest immigration category. Removing the illegal entries is seen as key to the government’s ability to meet its Coalition pledge to reduce net migration below 100,000 a year by 2015.

However the crackdown is also being criticized by some for its potential to damage the reputation the UK has for providing top quality higher education for foreign students, and the loss of these students will cause financial hardship to many universities. Richard Bacon, MP for South Norfolk, said that it was a mistake to treat foreign students as unwelcome interlopers.

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Administrators, teachers and students are celebrating in California after the results of standardized English and math tests were released to show a significant improvement in the number of students scoring proficient or better. 57% of students in the state scored at least proficient in English and 51% for math.

“The good news has been the steady progress despite the chaos of budget cuts,” state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said. “California has gone from having only one student in three score proficient, to better than one student in two — 900,000 more students than in 2003. This is not anything to rest upon, but it is a considerable measure of progress. We’re headed in the right direction.”

While there is celebration, there is also awareness that much more remains to be done. One in two is better than one in three, but still leaves half of students performing below grade level. There is also concern that Los Angeles is lagging behind the rest of the state with their English and math proficient percentages being 48% and 45% respectively.

This achievement lag in Los Angeles is likely caused by differing demographics, and the results have also brought attention back to the persistent problem of the achievement gap between white and Asian students and their black and Latino peers. A similar gap is also noticeable between students from high income and low income families.

Statewide, the persisting achievement gap correlates strongly to family income, but not entirely. In math, for example, black students with higher family income tested below white students whose families are at the poverty level. And Latino students whose families are not poor barely surpassed white students from low-income families.

“Income-based and racial gaps remain wide and intractable, even after a decade of school reforms aimed at narrowing these disparities,” UC Berkeley education professor Bruce Fuller said.

Of note is that problems seem to worsen as students progress through the school system as gains made at elementary level aren’t continuing through to high school. In LA Unified, 63% of elementary school students tested at grade level or higher, but only 30% of students in middle and high school were proficient.

LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy said that he was pleased with progress over time and that broader progress shouldn’t be forgotten alongside the improved test results. He noted that there has been a reduction in suspensions, an increase in attendance, and an increase in the number of students passing the state high school exit exam.

Another result that will please Deasy is that the schools where officials took controversial and aggressive action last year were among the most improved schools in the state — including results at four middle schools in the district where staff were required to reapply for their jobs, provoking outrage from teachers unions. Deasy will be relieved that his policy has been vindicated by the improvement in test results.

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The Chicago Teachers Union, with support from other public employee unions, held a Labor Day rally in the Loop this week, drawing thousands of supporters to an event that turned into a protest march around City Hall. David Roeder and Fran Spielman, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, report that teachers chanted labor slogans, waved placards and cheered several speakers.

One of those speakers was CTU President Karen Lewis, who took the opportunity to tear into Mayor Rahm Emanuel by calling him a liar and a bully. Lewis repeated again the claim, which Emanuel denies, that the Mayor has previously said the lowest scoring quarter of students were unworthy of educational support and the money should instead be targeted at those with more potential.

“On the name-calling, this is not about Rahm Emanuel or Karen Lewis,” said Emanuel spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton. “It’s about the kids of the city of Chicago and ensuring they have a full school day and year.”

As for the teacher talks, Hamilton said, “They’re making progress. They met all weekend. They have meetings scheduled all week. The right people are at the table to reach an agreement that will keep our kids in school learning and that is fair to the teachers.”

The CTU claimed a crowd of 18,000 for the rally, while other estimates were closer to 10,000. When the rally took to the streets, police took the precaution of blocking off traffic. Teachers at the rally expressed disappointment that the media was representing their fight as being one mainly about salary concerns; they see it as being a fight for the future of public education and stronger neighborhoods.

Teachers in the crowd said the school system is treating them with disrespect and, in its drive to cut expenses, refuses to spend on needed facilities such as libraries and lunchrooms. “All the parents have told me that they support a strike. They realize it’s about the kids,” said Tiera Robinson, who teaches preschool special education at Hughes Elementary School.

On Monday, September 10 more than 26,000 teachers and other school workers are scheduled to walk out on their jobs, with the strike disrupting the second week of schools for 400,000 Chicago public schoolchildren.

While there is a possibility that the strike date may be pushed back, CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey said that was unlikely considering that weekend negotiations had barely touched upon the main points of contention, instead only resolving minor points.

Chicago Public School CEO Jean-Claude Brizard has refused to comment on the situation beyond saying that people are working hard to achieve a resolution and that with academic indicators in the city finally pointing upwards, Chicago’s children can’t afford to miss a single day of school.

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Adams State University, a public university in Colorado, is being accused of contravening state law by offering students course credit in exchange for volunteer work done with President Obama’s re-election campaign. Robby Soave of the Daily Caller reports that the Colorado Fair Campaign Practices Act prohibits the use of public resources towards political campaigns — which is why many were surprised when the Adams State University advertised a ‘12 week long organizing internship for the Obama Campaign.’ To gain credit students would have to work at least 15 hours a week and take part in a full day training session on September 20th.

Oliver Darcy is editor at Campus Reform, the conservative student blog that first reported on the story. Julie Waecter, assistant to the president for communications at Adams State, has claimed that the credit offer was legal as no public resources were being deployed, but Darcy finds this position disingenuous:

“They are definitely using a few professors at least to help these students with the campaign process, so I don’t understand how it doesn’t use public resources for campaign purposes,” he said

While it remains to be seen if the school will fall afoul of the Fair Practices Act, Darcy notes that there was no equivalent internship for credit offered for those wishing to work on the Romney campaign.

The school has since withdrawn the course, citing lack of interest instead of acknowledging they may have made a mistake. Waechter also claimed that the reason internships were only offered for those who wished to work towards re-electing the President is that the Obama campaign was the only one to reach out to the school:

“The Obama campaign did approach the school. Others campaigns did not,” she said, adding that the school would have considered a similar offer from the Republican campaign of Gov. Mitt Romney.

Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, says that universities shouldn’t be offering class credit for political activity at all.

“The principle here is that this sort of stuff does not belong in the classroom, and that also it is not something for which students should be receiving academic credit,” said Wood in an interview with TheDC News Foundation.

“The public funding that goes into a university is not there to advance political campaigns.”

Adams State’s story is similar to one Wood reported on where Professor Brian McHale of Ohio State University asked colleagues to give precious class time to Obama campaign organizers to encourage students to pitch in with the reelection effort.

Wood says that incidents like those at OSU and ASU are far from isolated and that they fit an established pattern of improper cooperation between university officials and the Obama campaign.

“It’s one of those things I add to the documentation of fairly numerous instances in which the Obama campaign has crossed the line.”

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New rules came into force this week which have increased the powers of the UK’s Ofsted — the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills — and toughened up the regime to a point that Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, calls ‘zero tolerance’.

Julie Henry of the Telegraph writes that head teachers will now receive less than 24 hours’ notice of an Ofsted inspection and that those inspections will be far more rigorous, including checking payroll to ensure that weak teachers aren’t receiving performance bonuses. Ofsted inspection teams will also be observing more classrooms than in the past and listening to more primary pupils prove reading competence in hopes that it will stem the tide of children who arrive at secondary school unable to read.

Alongside the new Ofsted regime, new rules to expedite the sacking of substandard teachers are also coming into effect. New ‘capability’ procedures mean dismissal can now take as little as a term rather than a full school year for heads and governors to remove the worst performing staff.

Mr Gove said poor teachers would no longer be tolerated:

“We’ve got a great generation of young teachers but every hour a child spends with a bad teacher blights their future,”

The ‘satisfactory’ rating for school has been changed to ‘mediocre’ and schools judged to be below ‘good’ standard will no longer be able to coast, instead being ordered to improve and face reinspection within two years.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, said:

“From this week, school inspections will further challenge schools to ensure a good education is provided for all our children.

“I make no apology for introducing an inspection framework that raises expectations and focuses on the importance of teaching. The new short-notice inspections allow inspectors to see schools as they really are.

“I believe all children, regardless of where they live or what their parents can afford for them, have the right to a good education and that belief is at the heart of our work at Ofsted.”

The new regime also means that Ofsted and the government are looking to enforce the idea of merit pay for teachers. The inspectors will be looking for a strong link between performance and salary, actively checking that weak teachers are low on the overall salary scale. This comes after earlier warnings from Sir Michael that unsatisfactory teachers should be subject to a pay freeze to ensure that they didn’t earn as much as more capable colleagues.

Unsurprisingly the teachers unions are unhappy with the changes. Kevin Courtney, deputy secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said:

“No other profession would accept this level of scrutiny and mistrust.

“As professionals, teachers should obviously be accountable but new proposals on appraisal and capability procedures alongside new rules on teacher observation have little to do with raising standards.

“They will simply de-motivate teachers and risk them leaving the profession.”

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A recent study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine suggests that teenagers with an autism spectrum disorder are up to four times more likely to be bullied at school than their peers from the general population. Andrew M. Seaman, writing for Reuters, reports that the estimated rate of bullying victims among kids generally is 11%, but the study suggests that nearly half of those with an ASD are being bullied at school.

Previous studies have found that children who are bullied are at higher risk of depression and have higher incidences of anxiety and loneliness. These children also do much worse academically than those who are not being picked on. This is especially disturbing for those concerned with enabling positive academic outcomes for those with an ASD as they are already statistically more likely to struggle in school than other kids and with the added negative effects of bullying are now facing a dual problem.

“I would argue that the bullying interventions that we’re using now, if not tailored, are ineffective,” said Paul R. Sterzing, the study’s lead author from the University of California, Berkley.

Researchers argue that schools should target their anti-bullying work towards more vulnerable populations such as those with an ASD or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Sterzing added that the problem risks growing further as the number of kids being diagnosed with a form of autism keeps increasing. Latest estimates suggest that one in 88 children in the US have a disorder somewhere on the autism spectrum.

Using records from a 2001 survey of 920 parents, Sterzing and his colleagues found that 46 percent of parents said their autistic teenagers were the victims of bullying and 15 percent thought their children were bullies themselves. Nine percent of moms and dads said their kids were both victims and bullies.

Debra J. Pepler wasn’t involved in the study, but does research on bullying among vulnerable child populations at York University. She said that there are strategies that parents and teachers could employ to reduce the rate of bullying towards children suffering from an ASD such as ‘circles of support’ being created within classrooms. These are groups of children who are educated properly regarding the victim’s affliction and are then able to provide help and support.

Sterzing told Reuters Health that teens with autism and ADHD or those who had autism and were in regular classes were both especially likely to be victims of bullying.

That, however, does not mean kids with autism should be separated from their peers and put in special education classes. Instead, Sterzing said it could mean that regular classes haven’t been doing a good job of including kids with autism.

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Carmen McCollum, writing for the NWI Times, reports that Public Law 90 in Indiana will require all public school teachers and principals to be evaluated annually starting this fall. It also restricts eligibility for salary raises to those who receive a rating of ‘highly effective’ or ‘effective’. Teachers who are evaluated at ‘improvement necessary’ or ‘ineffective’ will have their salaries frozen.

Last year, the Indiana General Assembly passed legislation that requires schools to consider factors other than just seniority and degrees in determining salary increases. Those factors include educators’ performance on annual evaluations, leadership responsibilities and the academic needs of students.

The evaluation must include multiple rigorous measures and some form of objective student data — such as test scores, said Emily Garrett, the Indiana Department of Education’s spokeswoman for educator effectiveness.

There are some exceptions. Garrett said that school corporations which had entered into a collective bargaining agreement before April 21 could avoid implementing the new collective bargaining laws until the current agreements expire. Private schools that receive public tax dollars under the state’s voucher program may also continue to follow their own policy for evaluating educators.

Many school districts are using the state-created evaluation tool known as RISE to comply with Public Law 90. It uses 19 categories to grade teachers on measures including classroom instruction and lesson plans. School districts are free to use RISE as created, or customize it for their individual needs.

River Forest Superintendent Jim Rice said what he likes about the state’s model is it gives principals an opportunity to be instructional leaders in guiding teachers become better professionals in the classroom.

“Professional development is one of the components required in RISE,” he said.

Rice said principals, along with several teachers trained as secondary evaluators, attended a training program, making them more comfortable with the process.

Lake Ridge Superintendent Sharon Johnson-Shirley said the RISE method was an important element in successfully moving her school off of probationary status.

However, RISE isn’t the only evaluation tool, and there are other methods available. RISE has also been subject to criticism, as Representative Vernon Smith said that the RISE program fails to take into consideration social issues which affect students and environmental factors that distract students.

Hobart Superintendent Peggy Buffington said her school would be among those using Marzano’s Casual Teacher Evaluation Model. This model focuses on how teachers approach different types of lessons and which strategies work best at raising student achievement for specific lesson segments. Those who prefer this method say that it appropriately values the complexity of teaching and identifies specific strategies for improving student achievement.

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