White House economists have identified a potential stumbling block to maintaining the U.S. economy’s momentum: a lack of well-trained workers. The economy appears poised to expand this year at the fastest clip since the recession ended in 2009. That has allowed employers to extend their streak of consistent hiring, which began in 2010, and push […]
Renewed economic growth, a booming job market, and the evolving nature of work are transforming the face of the labor market, resulting in changes in the skills American employers need, as well as new and different opportunities for American workers. In the United States, investment in skill development is largely “frontloaded” during the first 25 […]
Teacher collective bargaining is a highly debated feature of the education system in the US. This paper presents the first analysis of the effect of teacher collective bargaining laws on long-run labor market and educational attainment outcomes, exploiting the timing of passage of duty-tobargain laws across cohorts within states and across states over time. Using […]
Americans are burdened with about $1.4 trillion in student loan debt. One in four has a low wage job, which is by far the highest proportion of any advanced economy. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of thousands of open positions in the U.S. in fields like cybersecurity, cloud computing, computer programming, data science, tech support and […]
Economists are raising their estimates of second-quarter U.S. growth after new government figures showed a smaller-than-expected trade deficit for May. The Commerce Department on Wednesday reported the trade deficit in goods narrowed 3.7% in May from the prior month, as exports climbed 2.1% and imports rose a more modest 0.2%. Export growth adds to the […]
LAUSD and other K-12 districts have recently seen a 50 percent increase in per-pupil financing from taxpayers, much more flexibility to spend special-purpose money, and extra aid to raise academic achievement of poor and/or English-learner students. However, the district’s enrollment is declining, mandatory payments into employee pension systems are rising sharply to shore up their […]
The Oakland school district ignored standard accounting practices and inappropriately manipulated taxpayer funds, actions that in some cases amounted to the misuse of state or federal funding, according to a report by an independent state agency that provides fiscal oversight and support to schools. The report by the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, or […]
The cutbacks were necessary even though Gov. Jerry Brown’s recently signed a budget expanded state education spending by $3.9 billion or just over 5 percent, according to reports. It’s the seventh year in a row that Brown has expanded school funding; however, students and teachers aren’t feeling the difference, according to Alex Barrios, chief communications […]
Overall, 2016–17 scores changed little from 2015–16. This is quite different than in the previous year, when students made large gains. This pattern is consistent across the seven racial and ethnic groups reported by the CDE. The previous higher growth rate may have resulted in part from systemic factors, such as better understanding of the […]
OUSD will get much worse. School budgets in California are supposed to be extra healthy during bull markets, when tax revenues swell from capital gains. But the other side of that coin is that California schools are expected to suffer financial distress during bear markets when capital gains decline. If OUSD is in trouble in […]
Statewide, only a few majors are gender balanced—meaning that half the bachelor’s degrees are awarded to women and half to men. In 2016, according to federal data, among the 22 most popular majors in California’s public and private nonprofit colleges, more than 60% of the bachelor’s degrees in 10 majors and fewer than 45% of […]
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) faces immense fiscal challenges. The district has lost more than 245,000 students in the last 15 years. Deficit spending is projected to drain the district’s reserve level from 11.64 percent of total general fund expenditures in 2016–2017 down to a projected -5.61 percent by 2020–2021—even assuming five years […]
The table above shows the number of bachelor’s degrees by major field of study and gender for the College Class of 2016, ranked by the female share of each field (based on recently released Department of Education data here). A few observations: 1. Overall, women earned 57.34% of all bachelor’s degrees in 2016, which means […]
The Bay Area’s growing manufacturing sector is often portrayed as the region’s last best chance to bring back some of the well-paying, blue-collar jobs that have been disappearing for decades. But entrepreneurs at the forefront of the so-called “modern maker” movement — nimble boutique companies crafting everything from robots and drones to custom eyeglasses and […]
As California leaders prepare this week to change the way the state funds its community colleges, a revolt is growing among professors who say it’s too much too soon for a system already undergoing rapid transformations to improve dismal student outcomes. Over the past two months, the academic senates from at least half a dozen […]