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A new study out of Kansas is adding to the pile of evidence that early childhood education not only has academic benefits for children (particularly disadvantaged youth), but economic benefits for society.

America’s Edge, a national nonprofit organization of business leaders whose members “work to strengthen businesses and the economy through proven investments in children,” has released a new report finding that in the short-term, for every $1 invested in early-learning programs in the state, a total of $1.68 is generated in spending. Early childhood education outperforms retail trade ($1.65), transportation ($1.63), construction ($1.59), wholesale trade ($1.51), and manufacturing ($1.46).

And remember, these are short-term benefits. Many other studies have documented the longer-term economic benefits of investing in early learning. Consider:

• An evaluation of Chicago Public Schools' federally funded Child Parent Centers (CPCs) finding that for every dollar invested in the preschool program, nearly $11 is projected to return to society over participants' lifetimes—the equivalent of an 18 percent annual return.
• A study showing that Georgia’s lottery-funded pre-kindergarten program was estimated to save the state $212.9 million over
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Taxation is a hot-button political topic and everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. On Monday, as I waited to mail my tax returns, I took a minute to reflect on the importance of public funding in connection with the United States’ longstanding value of education. Thomas Jefferson, who would have been 269 on April 13, viewed knowledge as essential to a thriving democracy. Writing to William C. Jarvis in 1820, he explained the connection: "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their controul with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is, not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” When it comes to the importance of education, I’m in agreement with Jefferson and I’m proud of the U.S. public education system. ...

Recently we have been hearing - from some politicians, the media and certain “ed reformers” - that teachers are one of the problems facing education today. While the importance of good teachers is often acknowledged, (sometimes unintentionally and sometimes intentionally) the current education workforce is portrayed as lazy, entitled, indifferent and the guardian of the status quo.

This rhetoric corresponds to the lowest teacher job satisfaction in decades, as evidenced by the MetLife Foundation’s recent Survey of the American Teacher. Last summer, I wrote about the mood at the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) annual conference. I titled the post, America’s Premiere Teachers: Demoralized, Infantilized, and Fearful?

Teachers certainly have a right to be demoralized, given not only the rhetoric surrounding them but the conditions in which they are working, which are acknowledged to be stressful and which may further deteriorate, as the effects of the economic recession continue to work their way through our education funding systems.

So it’s more important than ever that we celebrate teachers. One way in which you can help: Vote for an AFT Everyday Hero. The American Federation of Teachers has sifted through hundreds of ...

I’ve always had a fascination with shipwrecks. Specifically the Titanic, and in my defense, since long before James Cameron’s film came out in 1997. When I was 8 years old, my dad took me to see Robert Ballard (who discovered the wreck in 1985) at the local high-school and I promptly got into a discussion with two enthusiasts as to the significance of wrecks in general, including the World War II battleship Bismarck and the Andrea Doria, which claimed the lives of a family friend’s parents when he was just a child. The sinking of Titanic occurred 100 years ago Sunday, but its lessons live on for future generations.    ...

When and how did you learn about credit cards and credit scores? Did your parents teach you; did they lead by example; did you take a course; or did you learn by trial and error? What does just paying the minimum payment each month really mean in the long-term? April is National Financial Literacy Month and an opportunity to examine school’s role in educating young Americans when it comes to financial decision-making.

I did not have much exposure to financial education during my high school experience, but I was fortunate enough to learn a great deal from my mother and to have her support my navigation of the college financial aid process. Since graduation, I’ve also participated in a number of seminars, all of which  have proven tremendously helpful when it comes to my own financial decisions about higher education, home ownership, savings and investments and planning for retirement. It makes me wonder what decisions and mistakes I would have made without that enhanced understanding. ...

Recently, I’ve been reminded of the wealth of publicly supported educational resources outside the classroom that offer rich learning opportunities for students of all ages.  I’ve also mulled over how formal public schooling can take advantage of some of the resources and experiences to which I’ve been exposed.  Certainly, I’ve been involved for many years in advocating for the appropriate and effective use of new and emerging technologies to meet our teaching and learning needs in the public classroom.  But I’m reminded that nothing can change the ‘being there’ and there are ways that the technology can help us ‘be there’ as learners and also explore primary sources in ways not possible before.

My first reminder of the riches available to all of us was in January when the Learning First Alliance Board of Directors met at the Library of Congress in the elegant Jefferson Room.  In addition to hearing from the Librarian of Congress, we also learned from the Library’s education staff about the extensive work that’s been done providing access to the digitized version of primary sources and the educational enhancements that have been applied to these sources…i.e. you can now see the original version of the Declaration of Independence that Jefferson wrote along with the edits, identified by their author, and see which edits appeared in the final version and ...

A recent report from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) suggests that arts education can help narrow the achievement gap that exists between low-income students and their more advantaged peers. But new data from the federal government suggests that low-income students are less likely to have access to arts education than their higher-income peers. 

Certainly arts education is important for its own sake. But in a time of tough budget choices, arts education advocates must speak to its tangible benefits, which the NEA report clearly does. By nearly every indicator studied, a student from a low-socioeconomic (SES) background with a high-arts educational experience significantly outperformed peers from a low-arts, low-SES background, closing (and in some cases eliminating) the gap that often appears between low-SES students and their more advantaged peers.

And not just the standardized test score gap. The report does show that low-SES eighth grade students who have a history of high arts engagement have higher science and writing scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) than those who do not. Such high school students had better GPAs than their low-arts, low-SES peers (and in some instances, than all students). But I was more impressed with some of the other outcomes ...

On a webinar yesterday hosted by the National Education Association’s (NEA) Priority Schools Campaign, Anne Henderson* offered a hopeful vision for the future of family and community engagement in public education. She predicted that the time is coming where schools really understand that engaging families and communities is a core strategy for school improvement. It will no longer be considered an extra, something to address after we’ve taken care of academic issues. In other words, it will be an integral piece of the puzzle.

Research from the past thirty years certainly supports this vision. And so do countless individual stories. On that same webinar, representatives from Oklahoma’s Putnam City West High School shared how family and community engagement lead to academic gains at their school.

Putnam City West serves a rapidly changing student population. In 2004, 10% of the student body was Hispanic. This year, 25% is. Thirteen percent of students are ...

Editor’s Note: Our guest blogger today is Ann Meier Baker. She is President and CEO of Chorus America, the advocacy, research, and leadership development organization that advances the choral music field.  Her 25-year career has included several leadership positions in the arts and in education.

Students composing songs about chaos theory, tessellations, and the Fibonacci Sequence is just the beginning.

March is Music In our Schools Month and this annual celebration is a wonderful opportunity for people to sing (pun intended) the praises of outstanding school music programs that are an important part of a comprehensive and competitive education. Today, while there is an enormous amount of compelling evidence about the value of these opportunities for young people, the reality is that school music programs are being cut at an alarming rate, leaving some of us wondering if it’s more appropriate to sing a dirge this month, rather than a song in celebration.

For example, in national research commissioned for Chorus America’s Chorus Impact Study, more than one in four educators surveyed said there is no choral program in their school  and, of the educators who said that their school has no choir program today, 31 percent said their school used to have such a program. And yet these same educators also agree that choir participation helps make students better team players, develops stronger social skills, leads to better emotional expression and management, improves overall academic performance, and helps instill self-discipline. These are the very skills and strengths students will need as they come of age in the 21^st century—as a society, we cannot afford to ...

As a member of the Millennial Generation, I couldn’t help but notice “The New Generation Gap in Schools,” an article in the March issue of the American School Board Journal, published by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) that asserts Millennials are arriving in schools – as parents – and that the public education community can prevent a new generation gap by earning our support.  I certainly agree.

The article’s generation profile says we are more diverse, racially tolerant, less conservative and less likely to have served in the military than the generations before us. We tend to be more liberal, socially and politically which may lead us to support public schools philosophically and theoretically, but does not automatically guarantee we will send our children to traditional public schools. ...