Category Archives: Graduation

Kids who graduate in NM may help cut crime

Leave a reply

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – A new plan to cut crime in New Mexico looks at getting more kids to graduate from high school.

One economist estimates if five percent more young men graduated in New Mexico, It could save the state $38 million in prison and jail costs.

Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman says kids who graduate are less likely to be arrested and sent to jail.

Heckman also adds if that same five percent of high school grads also went to college, their combined income would be $20 million higher than if they hadn’t gone to college.

Read complete article here

ABQ Running Start for Careers, a new high school retention and workforce development program.

Leave a reply

The goal of Running Start for Careers is to give students direct entry into industry-developed and industry-taught programs in career development areas during their 11th and 12th grade years.

Running Start will allow electives to be utilized so that students who participate in approved programs will be able to graduate with the rest of their classmates.      Continue reading →

David Foster Wallace Classic Commencement Address

Leave a reply

David Foster Wallace Commencement Speech

In 2005, writer David Foster Wallace stood before the graduates of Kenyon College and delivered a memorable and impactful commencement address.

The speech, later turned into a book titled This Is Water, has become a classic to many, up there with Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford address. Videogram company The Glossary has revived Wallace’s words with a video visualizing the concepts described by the writer, who died in 2008.

The Glossary describes the speech as “the most simple and elegant explanation of the real value of education.”

30 Years Later Nation Remains At Educational Risk

Leave a reply

President Ronald Reagan’s Education Department issued the report “A Nation at Risk”  30 years ago.

This article describes what has, and hasn’t, happened since 1983, and provides interesting historical contexts for conversations about education today.

I’m linking to it rather than copying it to honor Philip Elliott’s AP copyright.

Hope you enjoy it.