Education Public Policy - National Graduation Rate Up to 80% (UNIT 5)

US public schools reach graduation milestone, new report says

 

Education public policy has helped to improve the public school graduation rate in the United States drastically over the past several years. More measures are being taken to ensure that students do not dropout, from more one-on-one contact with students to shutting down schools with high dropout rates. The current graduation rate is around 80 percent, and researchers are beginning to predict a 90 PERCENT national graduation rate by 2020.

The current data and public policy's success is amplified by the decrease in minority and low income dropouts. There has been a decrease as well in "dropout factories" (schools that produce high amounts of dropout students). If the rate remained the same from the early 2000s, studies show that around 1.7 million students would have dropped out between then and now.

Various changes in state laws and government intervention has aided this improvement. Many people are giving their own advice for how the United States can get its graduation rate up to 90 percent. Even though there has been minimal improvement in other areas, education has certainly been successful in, at the least, keeping more students in school. Current public policies about education are providing positive results that will hopefully continue to trend positively for some time.

Revamping the Bureaucracy - Civil Service Reform(UNIT 4 PART 3)

Study: Civil servant system outdated 

According to the article, it is time for reform of the Federal civil service system. The author claims that the system is over 60 years old, and, without rigorous reform, it will have major consequences for our country. The article blames the hiring, training, promoting, and classifying mechanisms of the bureaucracy to be the problem. In the bureaucracy, the merit system is used to hire new workers, and the Pendleton Act assures that civil service employees are hired based on merit, not patronage. 

The author cites several surveys and studies about the topic. She says that the system is still set up for clerical government jobs, but most Federal jobs are now "knowledge-based." She claims that the competition for the "nation's top talent" is too high, and the government isn't getting enough. The article lists ways for the government to revamp the bureaucracy systems, such as changing the way workers are paid, reexamining the General Schedule classification system, and giving more flexibility to hiring standards. It concludes by stating that the civil service is in dire need of reform, and that while legislation has yet to be proposed, some politicians are considering opening up conversation about it.