Forty-eight states cooperated in producing the proposed standards, which amount to a new road map for American public education. If a majority of states were to adopt them over the next few months, which experts said was a growing possibility, the new standards would replace the nation’s motley current checkerboard of locally written standards, which vary greatly in content and sophistication. And adoption of the new standards would set off a vast new effort to rewrite textbooks and standardized tests.

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For Utah Scholars Core Course of Study click here

Washington »

Obama told governors he wants a change in law that would allow states to receive federal aid for poor students only if they adopt academic standards that are deemed to truly prepare children for college or careers out of high school.

The move would require a change in the nation’s main elementary and secondary education law, which became known as the No Child Left Behind Act during the presidency of George W. Bush.

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“U.S. unemployment is dismal right now, but slicing it by educational attainment makes a compelling case for anyone to increase their level of education. As shown below, Americans with bachelor’s degrees and higher have just a 4% unemployment rate. There isn’t an unemployment disaster for this demographic

Yes, we know that the university educational system isn’t perfect. A lot of people probably learn somewhat useless skills and college degrees are expensive to attain. Yet give us 100 people with degrees vs. 100 without degrees and the first 100 will tend to have more people with marketable knowledge and skills than the second 100, even if a few of the college educated wasted their time and money. You’ll never know exactly what skills lead to the best jobs, but collecting different kinds of knowledge, in large amounts, has a high probability of eventually paying off financially. Better yet, if you study seriously, it also has a guaranteed intellectual payoff.

Thus for all the sophistry about education being a waste of money or broken, you can’t ignore suspecting that there’s a reason why successful people around the world, for hundreds of years, have tended to spend great amounts of time and money educating their children.”

Click here for educational attainment chart

One such local initiative supporting the idea that educationl attainment makes a difference in unemployment rates is the Utah Scholars Initiative. The Utah Scholars Initiative is a high impact program intended to motivate students to complete a defined course of study, while in high school, that will propel them to college and subsequently the workforce.

Students receive a presentation in the 8th grade given by volunteers from local businesses, community groups, and insitutions of higher education, demonstrating the relationship bewteen educational attainment and employment acquisition. Student’s learn that education is advantageous for not only getting a good job to support themselves and their future goals, but educational attainment also creates numerous opportunities that may not have otherwise been available to them.

For more about the Utah Scholars Initiative click here