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OECD Report Finds U.S. Lags Behind Other Countries in Higher Education Attainment Rate

19
Sep 2012

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s 2012 Education at a Glance report has found that while the U.S. boasts high education attainment levels overall, it lags behind other countries that are increasing attainment levels at a higher rate.

The report analyzed the education systems of the 34 OECD member countries in addition to Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

In the U.S., 42 percent of all 25-64 year-olds have reached higher education—making it one of the most well educated countries in the world, but behind Canada (51 percent), Israel (46 percent), Japan (45 percent) and the Russian Federation (54 percent). When it comes to the young adult population, however, the U.S. ranks 14th among 37 OECD and G20 countries in the percentage of 25-34 year-olds boasting higher education attainment, at 42 percent. This puts it above the OECD average of 38 percent, but over 20 percentage points behind the leader, Korea, at 65 percent.

According to the report, higher education attainment levels in the U.S. are growing at a below-average rate compared to other OECD and G20 countries. Between 2000 and 2010, attainment levels in the U.S. increased by an average of 1.3 percentage points annually, while its OECD counterparts boasted a 3.7 percentage-point increase per year overall.

“Based on these trends, the U.S. may find that an increasing number of countries will approach or surpass its attainment levels in the coming years,” the U.S. country report reads. {snip}

These trends are also mirrored in the graduation rates of higher education institutions, the report states. In 1995, the U.S. ranked second behind New Zealand in graduate output among 19 OECD countries with comparable data. In 2010, it ranked 13th among 25 countries with comparable data. Though the higher education graduation rate in the U.S. grew from 33 percent to 38 percent over this time frame, the increase paled in comparison to that of its OECD peers, whose graduation rates on average nearly doubled from 20 percent to 39 percent.

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Students threaten teacher on Facebook

07
Sep 2012

A group of Year 12s at a northern suburbs high school posted on Facebook that a female teacher should be raped and murdered, prompting Education Department director-general Sharyn O’Neill to warn students and parents to show respect for teachers.

Six students were suspended from Ballajura Community College for writing the derogatory and sexually suggestive comments about the teacher online.

The department confirmed that some of the remarks referred to rape and murder.

Ballajura acting principal Cheryl Townsend said the comments appeared on three private Facebook profiles two weeks ago.

“This type of online abuse is absolutely unacceptable,” she said.

“As soon as this was brought to our attention, we acted quickly to discipline the students and meet their parents.”

Ms Townsend said the school and community had offered support to the teacher, who had decided not to report the matter to police.

The students, who expressed regret for their actions, were suspended for between one and five days depending on the nature of what they wrote.

They were also banned from taking part in a river cruise, a Year 12 fun day and from attending the final Year 12 assembly.

Ms O’Neill said she supported the school’s strong stance.

“We expect better behaviour and more respect from our students towards teachers and school staff,” she said.

“This sends a clear message to students and parents everywhere that you cannot hide behind faceless Facebook and you must show respect to teachers.”

Education Minister Peter Collier said Commonwealth laws allowed Federal and State police to investigate online threats.

“The bullying of school students and staff by any means is simply unacceptable,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the advent of social media such as Facebook has provided bullies with an additional vehicle for intimidation.

“As with any form of bullying, this will not be tolerated in our schools.”

Shadow education minister Paul Papalia said online abuse was a serious issue and he was not convinced that suspending individual students would send a strong enough message.

He said Labor was proposing a new State law to deal with cyber bullying.

WA Secondary School Executives Association president Rob Nairn said students often made inappropriate remarks on social media without thinking through the consequences.

He said highly abusive comments should not be tolerated

“I don’t believe these types of comments would be suitable for anybody, whether they are a teacher or anyone else,” Mr Nairn said.

WA Primary Principals Association president Stephen Breen said the notion of respect had dwindled in society in recent years, which had filtered into schools.

“In primary schools, we spend a lot of our time and resources on the development of the social skills of children,” he said.

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NYC Public Schools Change ‘Discipline Code’ to Ease Penalties for Smoking, Cursing, Cutting Class

01
Sep 2012

Students may be catching a break if they misbehave in school. The rules surrounding suspensions in New York City schools are changing.

The changes to the discipline code should result in far fewer suspensions, CBS 2’s Vanessa Murdock reported Wednesday.

“Our goal is to make sure the schools are providing a safe environment for our students, but also we just don’t push students out of the classroom where they’re not learning as well,” Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said.

What will be different? Well, for starters Walcott said cutting class and cursing will no longer be grounds for suspension.

Neither will smoking, something that left a few parents bewildered.

For kindergarten through third grade, shoving used to warrant a suspension, but won’t anymore.

“I don’t think suspension should be on the table for shoving in kindergarten. They’re so little, they need to learn,” parent Sharon Kennedy said.

Education law specialist Nelson Mar said the adjustments are a great “first step” toward changing school culture.

“Often times when children are removed for disciplinary measures it has a negative impact on education, so they have a greater likelihood of actually failing their classes and also a greater likelihood of them dropping out,” Mar said.

Vandalism and physical altercations in middle and high school still warrant suspension.

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Crime goes hand in hand with lack of education, says study

04
Jun 2012

The tilt towards crime and delinquency is strongly linked to the high percentage of illiteracy among Muslims, states a research study on Muslim prisoners conducted by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in 2009.

The report based on interviews with 3,086 Muslim inmates across 15 jails in Maharashtra, reveals that 31% of the undertrials and convicts could not read or write, while another 61% could barely understand the written word having studied only up to Class IV.

Only a small number of inmates from the minority community had completed their higher secondary education, while few had gone to college or completed their postgraduate degree, states the report by Dr Vijay Raghavan and Roshni Nair from the Centre for Criminology and Justice of TISS.

“If we add the percentage of illiterates to those educated up to the primary level. Only 0.6% had completed their graduation while the number of postgraduates was a marginal four,” the 117-page survey report states.

The study was complied after sessions with offenders, prison authorities, kin of the prisoner and representatives of voluntary groups working with inmates.

Poverty and lack of education among Muslims have surfaced as the key reasons for them taking to crime, the report suggested. The highest number of illiterate inmates was found in Mumbai and Thane.

Of the total 614 undertrials and convicts in Thane jail, 176 were had never been to school while 378 had barely attended primary school. Of the 709 inmates in Mumbai jails, 225 were uneducated and another 475 had studied only up to Class IV.

A majority of the inmates interviewed by the team admitted that lack of education was the main reason for their deprivation.

The report suggests that close to 48% of the Muslim prisoners had no vocational training which in turn resulted in unemployment.

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Why You Should Read Ken Bruen the Master of Irish Noir

17
Mar 2012

If Ken Bruen did not exist, only the devil could have invented Jack Taylor. Taylor is the hero—and that’s casting a pretty wide net in defining the term—of nine novels as nasty and profane as anything written in the English language coming under the heading of crime fiction. (His most recent novel, Headstone, was published last fall.)

 

Though he’s built up a sizeable following stateside, Bruen is still largely a phenomenon waiting to happen here. The 2010 film London Boulevard, made from a Bruen novel (not in the Jack Taylor series) starring Colin Farrell and Keira Knightley and directed by William Monahan, screenwriter for The Departed, was considered “too foreign” for American audiences and has scarcely been seen here. The BBC miniseries of the first Jack Taylor novel, The Guards, was critically acclaimed in the U.K. but has still not made it on to American TV.

Perhaps Americans are used to their private detectives being of sounder moral character. The Galway-based Taylor is a former policeman fueled by Jameson’s, the occasional line of coke, and, as he puts it in The Guards, “a mix of rage and sadness, and it’s a dangerous cocktail.” Top o’ the mornin’ to ya.

Bruen has no patience with Hollywood’s brand of Irish sentimentality. “The old folk say, ‘When you hear a bell ring, it’s an angel getting her wings.’ Mind you, the old folk believe all kinds of weird shite.” Much of that shite comes from Jack’s ma. In a refreshing reversal stereotype of Mother Machree married to a drunken lout, Taylor reveres the memory of his da and can’t stomach his mother. Every gesture she makes is fraught with deceit and self pity: “She sighed. It was what she did best.  She could have sighed for Ireland.” Or, as he expressed it another time, “My mother is a walking bitch.”

Not that Jack is without reverence for old, or at least Old Ireland. He’s been to the States, lived in London, and has even seen a bit of Dublin, but he goes back to Galway, which is just big enough for his ego and small enough to be a last bastion of things worth saving. He’s not above slipping 10 euros into the cap of a street busker playing “Carrick Fergus,” and is fond of the elderly woman who runs Bailey’s Hotel, where he lives, “Perhaps it’s that we are both of that endangered species, ‘Old Galway,’ and our time is truly limited.”

 

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