In addition to his overall review of state finances, Taylor also issued a special report on K-12 schools and community colleges, which are dependent on the state budget, and it contained a not-so-rosy projection of their finances. Enrollment in both systems has been declining, thanks to interrelated demographic and economic factors, while their costs have […]
The US manufacturing industry continues to gain momentum. Job openings have been growing at double-digit rates since mid-2017, and are nearing the historical peak recorded in 2001.1 In this dynamic manufacturing environment, Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute launched their fourth skills gap study, to reevaluate their prior projections and move the conversation forward on today’s […]
Call it the automation paradox: The infusion of artificial intelligence, robotics and big data into the workplace is elevating the demand for people’s ingenuity, to reinvent a process or rapidly solve problems in an emergency. The new blue-collar labor force will need four “distinctively more human” core competencies for advanced production: complex reasoning, social and […]
Commentators and political factions blame these labor market problems on everything from bad trade deals, to declines in manufacturing jobs, to corporate greed, to outsourcing, to an uncompetitive tax and regulatory environment, to lax immigration policy. But there is another contributing factor that receives less attention: the weaknesses of secondary, postsecondary, and job-training systems in […]
You probably think you know which states have the best and worst education systems in the country. If you regularly dip into rankings such as those published by U.S. News and World Report, you likely believe schools in the Northeast and Upper Midwest are thriving while schools in the Deep South lag. It’s an understandable […]
Generally, California’s six million K-12 students are not doing very well academically, as comparisons with pupils in other states on standardized federal tests have shown, and that’s particularly true of poor and English-learner students. The study’s findings were underscored last week by the release of the state’s latest “Smarter Balanced” test results. Once again, they […]
The Sacramento City Unified School District is even more in the red than previously thought: By 2020, the district will have a structural deficit of $48 million by 2020 if cuts aren’t made, a gap that’s almost $12 million more than announced in June, and $8 million more than the district’s most recent estimates. “It’s […]
Two separate panels of experienced California teachers and administrators were given background information and three days together to help answer a longer version of this question: How much would it cost to provide all California students the academic knowledge, skills and opportunities they’ll need to successfully pursue their plans after high school and participate in […]
For the second year in a row, California students’ test scores have inched up so slowly that, by some estimates, it could take a generation for disadvantaged students to close the achievement gap with their peers. That was the sobering assessment on Tuesday as the California Department of Education released the 2018 results of the […]
The Sacramento Unified School District offers us another example of how expediency can backfire. Late last year, the district’s teachers were threatening to strike for higher pay, and Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg intervened, mediating a new contract that averted the strike and gave teachers an 11 percent raise. Later, it emerged that the money for […]
The researchers conclude that “while public schools in California spent about $69.7 billion on school operations in 2016-17, an additional $22.1 billion—32 percent above actual spending—would have been necessary for all students to have had the opportunity to meet the goals set by the state Board of Education. On a per-pupil basis, the adequate district-level […]
In two recent posts, I detailed the United Teachers of Los Angeles contract demands on the school district and reported that a strike was likely. And of late, the situation has gone from bad to dire. Perhaps the biggest issue revolves around the union’s demand for a 6 percent pay hike – retroactive to last […]
In the next four years, more than 75 million jobs may be lost as companies shift to more automation, according to new estimates by the World Economic Forum. But the projections have an upside: 133 million new jobs will emerge during that period, as businesses develop a new division of labor between people and machines. […]
A new human-machine frontier within existing tasks: Companies expect a significant shift on the frontier between humans and machines when it comes to existing work tasks between 2018 and 2022. In 2018, an average of 71% of total task hours across the 12 industries covered in the report are performed by humans, compared to 29% […]
• California’s education system is moving in the right direction but is still in need of capacity building to support a decade of reforms. Over the past decade a multitude of reforms have resulted in some improvement. But, the system still must ensure that educators and other practitioners have the skills, information and materials they […]
