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By the time you read this, we will have reached a plateau.  436,000 people like you have come to this website and read at least one or more articles.  200,000 of the readers are “unique” having come to the site for the first time.  The viewers come from around the world – the United States , Canada, Europe, South America and Eastern Europe.  The largest number of viewers after the US and Canada come from Morocco.

Obviously the problem of dropouts or disaffected youth is a global one. I wish I could thank each of you for your input and suggestions.

Franklin has been asked to do three presentations at the Embassy Suites at Kingston Plantation for the National Dropout Prevention Forum on February 14-17.

On Monday,February 16 Franklin will present “It’ Not About Change; It’s About Improvement

February 17 Franklin will present 2 workshops, one dealing with Bullying and the second dealing with Leadership.

Additional information and registration can be done at www.dropoutprevention.org

Franklin has a featured article, in the January issue of STEM Magazine www.stemmagazine.com/115.php

Franklin Schargel
Schargel Consulting Group
www.schargel.com
505/823-2339

The latest annual Quality Counts from Education Week examines issues and forces shaping early-childhood education, and how new academic and accountability demands are changing early-childhood education for administrators, teachers, and children. It includes an Early Education Index that analyzes data through 2013 to portray state participation in early-childhood programming, preschool, and kindergarten, with a specific emphasis on low-income families. The nation as a whole received a grade of D-plus for early-childhood education, which varies dramatically across states, spans public and private sectors, and falls under a patchwork of programs, institutions, and laws. The report also graded states overall on education: The nation as a whole gets a C. Massachusetts topped the ranking with a B, followed by New Jersey, Maryland, and Vermont, in that order. Wyoming reached the top 10 for the first time with a B-minus. Mississippi fell last with a D; New Mexico and Nevada were only slightly higher. On spending alone, the U.S. dedicated an average of $11,735 per pupil. Vermont topped the spending list at $18,882, with Utah at the bottom with $6,688. In terms of equity, the nation overall got a B. Alaska was the only state that gave more funding to property-poor districts than wealthier ones. Notably, individual states simultaneously earned widely differing scores on spending and equity. Florida, for example, was second in equitable distribution of funding, but 46th in spending. Vermont, though first in spending, was 45th in equity.

We need to identify the causes of why Wyoming was able to rise to the top ten.

According to Child Trends, nearly one in three U.S. children lives in a home where a language other than English is spoken. The proportion of children who are dual language learners has grown, but the number who speak English less than “very well” has declined. Children in households where a language other than English is spoken were more likely to live with two parents than were children whose only language is English. Read more on this website, childtrends.org

According to the Hechinger Report, https://hechingerreport.org –

Led by continuing drops at private, for-profit colleges, higher-education enrollment declined this fall for a sixth semester in a row, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

The number of students overall fell by about 1 percent, or 250,000, at the very time that policymakers are pushing to speed up the pace at which the nation is producing college graduates.

Most of the decrease is among students over 24, who researchers said were either leaving college or deciding not to enroll as the economy improves and more jobs become available. The number of students finishing high school is also down, meaning there are fewer of them bound for higher education.

Most of the decrease is among students over 24, who researchers said were either leaving college or deciding not to enroll as more jobs become available

There appeared to be a particularly sharp decline at community colleges, whose numbers fell by 6 percent, though part of that is because some of those colleges have added bachelor’s degree programs and their students have been reclassified into the four-year, rather than two-year, category.

When that shift is taken into account, community college enrollment fell by 3.6 percent, the Clearinghouse reports.

The number of students at four-year private, nonprofit institutions rose about 1.6 percent, though the growth was concentrated at the largest campuses. The enrollment slide at private, for-profit colleges slowed to less than half of 1 percent, down from last year’s nearly 10 percent plunge.

What is not included in this report is that the possibility of huge outstanding student loan debts may have encouraged students not to enroll or continue their college education.

The share of prime-age men “” those 25 to 54 years old “” who are not working has more than tripled since the late 1960s, to 16 percent. More recently, since the turn of the century, the share of women without paying jobs has been rising, too. The United States, which had one of the highest employment rates among developed nations as recently as 2000, has fallen toward the bottom of the list.

According to a New York Times/CBS News/Kaiser Family Foundation poll that provides a detailed look at the lives of the 30 million Americans 25 to 54 who are without jobs.

Many men, in particular, have decided that low-wage work will not improve their lives, in part because deep changes in American society have made it easier for them to live without working. These changes include the availability of federal disability benefits; the decline of marriage, which means fewer men provide for children; and the rise of the Internet, which has reduced the isolation of unemployment.

At the same time, it has become harder for men to find higher-paying jobs. Foreign competition and technological advances have eliminated many of the jobs in which high school graduates once could earn $40 an hour, or more. The poll found that 85 percent of prime-age men without jobs do not have bachelor’s degrees. And 34 percent said they had criminal records, making it hard to find any work.

The resulting absence of millions of potential workers has serious consequences not just for the men and their families but for the nation as a whole. A smaller work force is likely to lead to a slower-growing economy, and will leave a smaller share of the population to cover the cost of government, even as a larger share seeks help.

“They’re not working, because it’s not paying them enough to work,” said Alan B. Krueger, a leading labor economist and a professor at Princeton. “And that means the economy is going to be smaller than it otherwise would be.”

The trend was pushed to new heights by the last recession, with 20 percent of prime-age men not working in 2009 before partly receding. But the recovery is unlikely to be complete. Like turtles flipped onto their backs, many people who stop working struggle to get back on their feet. Some people take years to return to the work force, and others never do. And a growing body of research finds that their children, in turn, are less likely to prosper.

“The long-run effects of this are very high,” said Lawrence F. Katz, a professor of economics at Harvard. “We could be losing the next generation of kids.”

For most unemployed men, life without work is not easy. In follow-up interviews, about two dozen men described days spent mostly at home, chewing through dwindling resources, relying on friends, strangers and the federal government. The poll found that 30 percent had used food stamps, while 33 percent said they had taken food from a nonprofit or religious group.

They are unhappy to be out of work and eager to find new jobs. They are struggling both with the loss of income and a loss of dignity. Their mental and physical health is suffering.

Yet 44 percent of men in the survey said there were jobs in their area they could get but were not willing to take.

Men today may feel less pressure to find jobs because they are less likely than previous generations to be providing for others. Only 28 percent of men without jobs “” compared with 58 percent of women “” said a child under 18 lived with them.

What Nonworking Men Say

Among every 100 men ages 25 to 54 who do not work:

64	Want a job
45	Have looked for a job in the last year
25	Have looked for a job, and would be willing to take one that pays minimum wage
44	Think there are local jobs they could obtain, but they are not willing to take
34	Have been convicted of a crime
17	Say their physical health is poor
43	Say not working has been bad for their mental health
48	Say health problems or disability is a major reason they are not working
19	Say family responsibilities are a major reason
35	Say a lack of good jobs available is a major reason
30	Receive food stamps
4	Receive unemployment benefits
22	Get money from a spouse or other employed person in their house
20	Get income from temporary work or odd jobs
90	Have ever had a full-time job
25	Have had a full-time job, and earned more than $40k in their last job
22	Have missed a rent or mortgage payment because they stopped working
13	Have had utilities turned off because they stopped working
45	Say they are financially secure
25	Are mostly happy about not working
30	Think it’s very likely they will be working in 1 year
42	Think it’s very likely they will be working in 5 years

Source: The New York Times, CBS News and Kaiser Family Foundation poll, conducted Nov. 11 to 25, with 363 nonworking men (and 639 nonworking women, not shown) ages 25 to 54.

A study published in October by the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies estimated that 37 percent of the decline in male employment since 1979 could be explained by this retreat from marriage and fatherhood.

There is also evidence that working has become more expensive. A recent analysis by the Brookings Institute found that prices since 1990 had climbed most quickly for labor-intensive services like child care, health care and education, increasing what might be described as the cost of working: getting a degree, staying healthy, hiring someone to watch the children. Meanwhile, the price of food, clothing, computers and other goods has climbed more slowly.

Mr. Katz, the Harvard economist, said, however, that some men might choose to describe themselves as unwilling to take low-wage jobs when in fact they cannot find any jobs. There are about 10 million prime-age men who are not working, but there are only 4.8 million job openings for men and women of all ages, according to the most recent federal data.

Millions of men are trying to find work. And among the 45 percent of men who said they had looked in the last year, large majorities said that to get a job they would be willing to work nights and weekends, start over in a new field, return to school or move to a new city.

In 1968, the federal minimum wage was $1.60 per hour, which translates to approximately $10.90 in 2013 dollars. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, which translates to $15,080 for a full-time, year-round worker. The last time the Federal Minimum Wage was raised was in 1997.  So as the cost of living has increased, people who are employed at the bottom step of the economic ladder have not had their wages increased as many companies have experienced growth and profits.  Obviously, there is a growing gap between these people and the rest of society and somewhere along the way, there will be a break.

According to Diane Ravich’s blog and news reports, the new federal budget strips all funding from Race to the Top. According to the reports, states wanted to be eligible for part of Arne Duncan’s $4.35 billion in Race to the Top funding, they were required to adopt the “college and career ready standards,” aka Common Core, even though no one had ever field tested them. States had to agree to evaluate teachers to a significant degree by student scores, even though there was no evidence for doing so. States had to open more charters, transferring control from public to private management. States had to create massive data systems to track students.