Daily Lumina News 020620

The Plain Dealer’s Patrick O’Donnell had a feeling his story was bigger than just Cleveland. His team heard reports of people graduating from high school and struggling to find gainful employment, while employers in the area complained of a mismatched skill level when hiring for trade jobs.
His research ultimately led to a 10-part series called "Pathways to Prosperity" that examined the cultural differences in the European and American approaches to the relationships between the workforce and higher education.
In this interview, O’Donnell talks about his experiences as an American journalist abroad and what’s stopping Americans from adopting more centralized apprenticeship structures.

Researchers at the Urban Institute used student-level data from Connecticut and Virginia and worked with policymakers in those states to assess their data needs in measuring student outcomes and the performance of colleges.
The resulting reports include an effort to compare colleges' graduation rates by adjusting for student characteristics, a case study and interactive data dashboard on college graduation rates in Virginia, an analysis of equity gaps in graduation rates, an assessment of program-level completion metrics in Virginia, an analysis of earning metrics for graduates using data from Connecticut, and a report with key lessons for policymakers.

Parents are playing a more hands-on role in California’s ongoing quest to grow the number of students who pursue technology-related professions.
At schools around the state, parents are learning how to code alongside their young children as a way to increase interest in computer science as a potential career path. Called Family Code Night, these events are designed to help address the need to expand the pipeline in order to meet the demand of one of the state’s fastest growing job sectors.

The Varsity Blues scandal, in which wealthy parents paid bribes to get their kids into elite universities, unveiled a hard truth about college admissions in California: Opportunity is not equal.
Public educators and policymakers should take Varsity Blues as a challenge to level the playing field for students who aspire to go to the best colleges, no matter their backgrounds, argue Susana Cooper and Michal Kurlaender. They could start by giving more students access to a college preparatory opportunity that can help them succeed: dual enrollment.