Category Archives: 21st Century Learning

DREAM BIG, ENGINEERING OUR WORLD – Update

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The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Fresno Branch and Younger Member Forum would like to invite faculty, students, and parents to the ASCE Dream Big screening. Our previous movie screening date has SOLD OUT, BUT we have opened a SECOND SCREENING DATE. The second screening will be held on Saturday, February 25th located at Campus Pointe’s Maya Theater across from Fresno State. The screening is 100% free, but tickets are limited, so reserve them now!Attached is a flyer with all the information. ASCE professionals will be eager to meet our future leaders and answer any questions they may have. Hope to see you and your students there!

Please use this link to obtain tickets for the Saturday showing. Please bring a printed copy of your ticket(s) to the movie showing:

www.ascedreambigsaturday.eventbrite.com

Please Note – If you have advanced tickets for the Wednesday showing (February 22nd) there is no need to register for the Saturday showing. Please bring a printed copy of your ticket(s) to the movie showing. Flyers for this event do not count as tickets.

 If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact our K-12 Outreach coordinators Analisa Gonzales (agonzales@bcf-engr.com) and James Loy (jloy@markthomas.com).

 All around the world, engineers are pushing the limits of ingenuity and innovation in unexpected, imaginative, and amazing ways. Dream Big: Engineering Our World, a giant-screen film about engineering, will take viewers on a journey of discovery from the world’s tallest building to a bridge higher than the clouds. Along the way, the audience will witness how today’s engineers are shaping the world of tomorrow.

http://www.asce.org/dream-big/

http://www.dreambigfilm.com/

James Loy, PE
Senior Design Engineer

(559) 447-1938 x3114 | (559) 374-3114 direct

Mark Thomas & Company
Providing Engineering, Surveying and Planning Services
www.markthomas.com

 

ENGINEERING – DREAM BIG

#justbecauseyoushouldknow, #mathiswhereitsat, #pieedu, 21st Century Learning, Engineering, Science

Please see the email below from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Fresno Branch. If this email is being forwarded to you and you would like to receive them directly, please contact Jon Dueck at jdueck@fcoe.org.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Fresno Branch and Younger Member Forum would like to invite faculty, students, and parents to the ASCE Dream Big screening. The screening will be held on Wednesday February 22nd located at Campus Pointe’s Maya Theater across from Fresno State. The screening is 100% free, but tickets are limited, so reserve them now!Attached is a flyer with all the information for screening times, ticket reservation, and events going on during National Engineers Week. Members of ASCE Fresno will be present on February 22nd and will be attending the 6:30 pm showing.  ASCE professionals will be eager to meet our future leaders and answer any questions they may have. Hope to see you and your students there!

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact our K-12 Outreach coordinators Analisa Gonzales (agonzales@bcf-engr.com) and James Loy (jloy@markthomas.com).

All around the world, engineers are pushing the limits of ingenuity and innovation in unexpected, imaginative, and amazing ways. Dream Big: Engineering Our World, a giant-screen film about engineering, will take viewers on a journey of discovery from the world’s tallest building to a bridge higher than the clouds. Along the way, the audience will witness how today’s engineers are shaping the world of tomorrow.

http://www.asce.org/dream-big/

http://www.dreambigfilm.com/

 http://www.dreambigmovie.eventbrite.com

James Loy, PE
Senior Design Engineer

(559) 447-1938 x3114 | (559) 374-3114 direct

 Mark Thomas & Company
Providing Engineering, Surveying and Planning Services
www.markthomas.co

Stats about High School and College Dropouts

#justbecauseyoushouldknow, #pieedu, 21st Century Learning, Educational News

Eye-Opening Stats about High School and College Dropouts

Guest blog post by Chad Aldeman

With Congress busy debating the future of federal education policy, here’s a thought-provoking statistic: American adults in the 1940s had about the same odds of being a high school graduate as today’s Americans have of being a college graduate.

Beyond the pure shock value of this dramatic shift, it begs the question of whether the two rates will grow at the same rates. Will we boost college attainment rates in this century as fast as we increased high school attainment in the last century?

So far, they’re relatively close mirrors of each other. In 1910, 13.5 percent of American adults had a high school diploma. Forty years later, that figure had risen 21 percentage points. In 1975, 13.9 percent of American adults had a bachelor’s degree. 38 years later, that figure had risen 18 percentage points.

The graph below shows how these two trend lines look remarkably similar. The key question is what will happen next.

chad college-hs completion

 

We already know what happened to high school attainment rates. We shifted from relatively slow progress through the first half of the 1900s into a much faster rate of growth between 1950 and 1980. In those 30 years, the percentage of American adults with a high school diploma or GED (General Education Diploma) doubled from 34.3 percent to 68.6 percent. Today we’re inching toward 90 percent of our adult population with a high school diploma or GED.

There are still schools with low graduation rates, but even those are falling fast. Nationwide the number of dropout factories—high schools with a graduation rate under 60 percent—declined from more than 2,007 in 2002 to 1,146 in 2013. Similarly, the number of students enrolled in those dropout factories plummeted from 2.6 million to 1.1 million, even as the total student population nationwide increased.

As I show in a new report for Bellwether Education Partners, rapid progress at the high school level, combined with very slow progress in postsecondary education, has led to dramatic changes in our society. And in 2009, the U.S. passed an almost-inevitable milestone: There are now more American adults who have dropped out of college than have dropped out of high school.

chad more college hs dropouts

 

In pure, raw numbers, college dropouts are now a bigger problem than high school dropouts. Today there are 29.1 million college dropouts versus 24.5 million Americans with less than a high school diploma. It’s safe to predict that this trend will only accelerate as older generations with lower educational attainment rates are gradually replaced by new generations with higher attainment rates.

A number of factors contributed to these changes. In the labor market, employers send a powerful signal that they value candidates with higher levels of education. Individuals are more likely to be employed, and to earn higher wages, for higher levels of education. Compulsory attendance laws played a role too, accelerating high school attendance and completion rates. The introduction of the GED began as a way to offer returning World War II veterans a path to a high school diploma without having to go back to high school. Over time, it took on an even bigger role for other groups of high school dropouts. There are now 6 million Americans with a high school equivalency degree like the GED. That alone accounts for about 3 percent of the increase.

More recently, No Child Left Behind forced schools and districts to start paying attention to high school graduation rates. Those accountability mechanisms helped kickstartanother push to get all students through high school, a reform that has particularly paid off for low-income and minority students and for students with disabilities.

Will college attainment rates keep making slow but steady progress, as they have over the past 40 years, or will we start to see faster growth like we did for high school attainment rates? In my recent paper, I argue that enhancing high school policies could be one lever for policymakers. If states truly held high schools accountable for what happens to their students after graduation, they would build robust portraits of high school quality that measured things like advanced high school course-taking rates, student engagement, and student outcomes in college and careers. All of these steps would ease the transition from high school into college.

But we shouldn’t let higher education institutions off the hook for oversubscribing students to remedial courses or for failing to graduate large portions of their students. It’s an open question whether we’ll make the equivalent policy adjustments in higher education as we did in K-12: will someone create a “GED for college” or will we start holding colleges accountable for their graduation rates to boost education attainment? The answers to these questions matter both to the individuals graduating today and to our broader society going forward.

Chad Aldeman is an Associate Partner at Bellwether Education Partners and the author of “Mind the Gap,” a new report making the case for re-imagining the way states judge high school quality.

Best Jobs for 2017: College Degree Not Necessarily Required

#justbecauseyoushouldknow, #pieedu, 21st Century Learning, Educational Support, Skills and Talents, Student Support, , , , , , ,

By Jeff Clabaugh | @wtopclabaugh
December 2, 2016 10:49 am
Plumbing, HVAC repair and electrician are three of the hottest job fields for 2017. (Thinkstock)

WASHINGTON — The professions expected to show one of the biggest job growth rates in 2017 and the largest growth in sheer number of jobs will be trade skills, according to a year-end report from CareerBuilder and labor market data provider Emsi.

The U.S. economy is expected to add just over 1 million new jobs in fields such as electrician, plumber and HVAC technician in 2017. That’s a job growth rate of 8 percent. The average hourly earnings for professionals in those fields will be $21.38, or about $45,000 a year in 2017, the report says.

While skills trades generally don’t require a college degree, they do require significant training, through apprenticeship programs and both in-class and on-the-job experience.

The professional category that will show the largest job growth rate in 2017 will be information technology. CareerBuilder says that field will add 472,000 jobs next year, for a growth rate of 12 percent. In demand jobs in that field will include data scientists, user interface developers and mobile software engineers.

Business and financial operations, health care and sales also make CareerBuilder’s list of the five top professions for job growth and opportunities in 2017.

“Our research shows that employers are very invested in expanding head count in areas such as analytics and data science, product development and sales as they strive to stay competitive in B2B and B2C markets,” said CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson.

“Skilled laborers will also see high employment demand in the year ahead as will workers in clinical roles,” he said.

CareerBuilder and Emsi used a variety of national and state employment resources as well as online job postings to come up with their list of 2017’s best jobs.  The full list is below:

BESTJOBS
(Courtesy CareerBuilder)

U.S. Voting & Election Resources

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The Office of the Federal Register does not have official ties to these web sites and is not responsible for their content or maintaining their existence on the Internet.

Voting

The Election Process

Campaign Finance

State Sites

Electoral College Teaching Resources

What is the Electoral College?

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The Electoral College is a process, not a place. The founding fathers established it in theConstitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.

The Electoral College process consists of the selection of the electors, the meeting of the electors where they vote for President and Vice President, and the counting of the electoral votes by Congress.

The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. Your state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators. Read more about the allocation of electoral votes.

Under the 23rd Amendment of the Constitution, the District of Columbia is allocated 3 electors and treated like a state for purposes of the Electoral College. For this reason, in the following discussion, the word “state” also refers to the District of Columbia.

Each candidate running for President in your state has his or her own group of electors. The electors are generally chosen by the candidate’s political party, but state laws vary on how the electors are selected and what their responsibilities are. Read more about thequalifications of the Electors and restrictions on who the Electors may vote for.

The presidential election is held every four years on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. You help choose your state’s electors when you vote for President because when you vote for your candidate you are actually voting for your candidate’s electors.

Most states have a “winner-take-all” system that awards all electors to the winning presidential candidate. However, Maine and Nebraska each have a variation of “proportional representation.” Read more about the allocation of Electors among the states and try topredict the outcome of the Electoral College vote.

After the presidential election, your governor prepares a “Certificate of Ascertainment” listing all of the candidates who ran for President in your state along with the names of their respective electors. The Certificate of Ascertainment also declares the winning presidential candidate in your state and shows which electors will represent your state at the meeting of the electors in December of the election year. Your stateÂ’s Certificates of Ascertainments are sent to the Congress and the National Archives as part of the official records of the presidential election. See the key dates for the 2016 election and information about the roles and responsibilities of state officials, the Office of the Federal Register and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and the Congress in the Electoral College process.

The meeting of the electors takes place on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December after the presidential election. The electors meet in their respective states, where they cast their votes for President and Vice President on separate ballots. Your state’s electors’ votes are recorded on a “Certificate of Vote,” which is prepared at the meeting by the electors. Your state’s Certificates of Votes are sent to the Congress and the National Archives as part of the official records of the presidential election. See the key dates for the 2016 election and information about the roles and responsibilities of state officials and theCongress in the Electoral College process.

Each state’s electoral votes are counted in a joint session of Congress on the 6th of January in the year following the meeting of the electors. Members of the House and Senate meet in the House chamber to conduct the official tally of electoral votes. See the key dates for the 2016 election and information about the role and responsibilities of Congress in the Electoral College process.

The Vice President, as President of the Senate, presides over the count and announces the results of the vote. The President of the Senate then declares which persons, if any, have been elected President and Vice President of the United States.

The President-Elect takes the oath of office and is sworn in as President of the United States on January 20th in the year following the Presidential election.

 

Learn about the Electors

 

Roles and Responsibilities in the Electoral College Process

The Office of the Federal Register coordinates the functions of the Electoral College on behalf of the Archivist of the United States, the States, the Congress, and the American People. The Office of the Federal Register operates as an intermediary between the governors and secretaries of state of the States and the Congress. It also acts as a trusted agent of the Congress in the sense that it is responsible for reviewing the legal sufficiency of the certificates before the House and Senate accept them as evidence of official State action.

See the key dates for the 2016 election and information about the roles and responsibilities of state officials, the Office of the Federal Register and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and the Congress in the Electoral College process.

Important Election Dates

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The 2016 Presidential Election

Results from the 2016 Presidential Election will be posted as they become available.

Summary of Key Dates for the 2016 Presidential Election
June through October 2016

The Office of the Federal Register, on behalf of the Archivist of the United States, prepares Electoral College instructional materials for the Archivist to send to the governors of the 50 States and the mayor of the District of Columbia.

The materials include:

Under the 23rd Amendment of the Constitution, the District of Columbia is allocated 3 electors and treated like a state for purposes of the Electoral College. For this reason, in the following discussion, the word “state” also refers to the District of Columbia and the word “governor” also refers to the Mayor of the District of Columbia.

November 8, 2016—Election Day

Registered voters cast their votes for President and Vice President. By doing so, they also help choose the electors who will represent their state in the Electoral College.

Mid-November through December 19, 2016

After the presidential election, the governor of your state prepares seven Certificates of Ascertainment. “As soon as practicable,” after the election results in your state are certified, the governor sends one of the Certificates of Ascertainment to the Archivist.

Certificates of Ascertainment should be sent to the Archivist no later than the meeting of the electors in December. However, federal law sets no penalty for missing the deadline.

The remaining six Certificates of Ascertainment are held for use at the meeting of the Electors in December.

December 13, 2016

States must make final decisions in any controversies over the appointment of their electors at least six days before the meeting of the Electors. This is so their electoral votes will be presumed valid when presented to Congress.

Decisions by states’ courts are conclusive, if decided under laws enacted before Election Day.

December 19, 2016

The Electors meet in their state and vote for President and Vice President on separate ballots. The electors record their votes on six “Certificates of Vote,” which are paired with the six remaining Certificates of Ascertainment.

The electors sign, seal, and certify six sets of electoral votes. A set of electoral votes consists of one Certificate of Ascertainment and one Certificate of Vote. These are distributed immediately as follows:

  • one set to the President of the Senate (the Vice President) for the official count of the electoral votes in January;
  • two packages to the Secretary of State in the state where the electors met—one is an archival set that becomes part of the public record of the Secretary of State’s office and the other is a reserve set that is subject to the call of the President of the Senate to replace missing or incomplete electoral votes;
  • two packages to the Archivist—one is an archival set that becomes part of the permanent collection at the National Archives and Records Administration and the other is a reserve set that is subject to the call of the President of the Senate to replace missing or incomplete electoral votes; and
  • one set to the presiding judge in the district where the Electors met—this is also a reserve set that is subject to the call of the President of the Senate to replace missing or incomplete electoral votes.

December 28, 2016

Electoral votes (the Certificates of Vote) must be received by the President of the Senate and the Archivist no later than nine days after the meeting of the electors. States face no legal penalty for failure to comply.

If votes are lost or delayed, the Archivist may take extraordinary measures to retrieve duplicate originals.

On or Before January 3, 2017

The Archivist and/or representatives from the Office of the Federal Register meet with the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House in late December or early January. This is, in part, a ceremonial occasion. Informal meetings may take place earlier.

January 6, 2017

The Congress meets in joint session to count the electoral votes. Congress may pass a law to change this date.

The Vice President, as President of the Senate, presides over the count and announces the results of the Electoral College vote. The President of the Senate then declares which persons, if any, have been elected President and Vice President of the United States.

If a State submits conflicting sets of electoral votes to Congress, the two Houses acting concurrently may accept or reject the votes. If they do not concur, the votes of the electors certified by the Governor of the State on the Certificate of Ascertainment would be counted in Congress.

If no Presidential candidate wins 270 or more electoral votes, a majority, the 12th Amendment to the Constitution provides for the House of Representatives to decide the Presidential election. If necessary the House would elect the President by majority vote, choosing from the three candidates who received the greatest number of electoral votes. The vote would be taken by state, with each state having one vote.

If no Vice Presidential candidate wins 270 or more electoral votes, a majority, the 12th Amendment provides for the Senate to elect the Vice President. If necessary, the Senate would elect the Vice President by majority vote, choosing from the two candidates who received the greatest number of electoral votes. The vote would be taken by state, with each Senator having one vote.

If any objections to the Electoral College vote are made, they must be submitted in writing and be signed by at least one member of the House and one Senator. If objections are presented, the House and Senate withdraw to their respective chambers to consider their merits under procedures set out in federal law.

January 20, 2017 at Noon—Inauguration Day

The President-elect takes the Oath of Office and becomes the President of the United States.

General Authority

The Archivist of the United States, as the head of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), is responsible for carrying out ministerial duties on behalf of the States and the Congress under 3 U.S.C. sections 6, 11, 12, and 13.

NARA is primarily responsible for coordinating the various stages of the electoral process by helping the States prepare and submit certificates that establish the appointment of electors and validate the electoral votes of each State.

The Archivist delegates operational duties to the Director of the Federal Register. The Federal Register Legal Staff ensures that electoral documents are transmitted to Congress, made available to the public, and preserved as part of our nation’s history.

The Office of the Federal Register Legal Staff reviews the electoral certificates for the required signatures, seals and other matters of form, as specified in federal law.

Only the Congress and the courts have the authority to rule on substantive legal issues.

Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration

Math Leadership Conference in Visalia

#pieedu, 21st Century Learning, Teacher Support

It’s Not Too Late to Register!

We are excited to welcome two outstanding mathematics leaders to the Central Valley Region 7 Annual Mathematics Leadership Conference on October 20, 2016 at Tulare County Office of Education.  Please join us to hear Cathy Seeley and Harold Asturias as they help us understand what needs to take place in a mathematics classroom to help all students become powerful mathematical thinkers.   

 Cathy Seeley is a former president of NCTM and the author of several powerful books on effective mathematics instruction.   

Harold Asturias is the Director of the Center for Mathematics Excellence and Equity (CeMEE) at the Lawrence Hall of Science and is devoted to helping teachers more effectively teach English Language Learners in the mathematics classroom. 

 Registration includes the book: Principles to Action.  This is a great resource to use in your PLCs back at your site.  See the attached flyer for the registration link and additional information.

math-flyer-10-20-2016-copy