Vice President Biden Issues Call to Action to Boost College Graduation Rates Nationwide

Vice President Releases College Completion Tool Kit to Help Chart the Path

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Vice President Joe Biden today issued a call to action to boost college graduation rates across the country and help the nation meet President Obama’s goal for the United States to have the best-educated workforce and the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. Speaking at the first annual Building a Grad Nation Summit, Vice President Biden – who has made college affordability and accessibility a key priority in his role as chairman of the Middle Class Task Force – called on each Governor to host a state college completion summit, released a new college completion tool kit for states and Governors to draw ideas from, and announced a new grant competition focused on helping institutions of higher education boost completion rates.
 
“Right now we’ve got an education system that works like a funnel when we need it to work like a pipeline,” said Vice President Biden. “We have to make the same commitment to getting folks across the graduation stage that we did to getting them into the registrar’s office. The dreams and skills of our college graduates will pave the way to a bright economic future for our nation.”
 
To meet the President’s 2020 goal, the United States will have to increase the number of college graduates by 50 percent – turning out at least 8 million additional graduates by the end of the decade.
 
“America once led the world in the number of college graduates it produces, and now we’ve fallen to ninth,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who delivered opening remarks at the Summit on Monday evening.  “While our educational advancement stalled, other countries have passed us by. We need to educate our way to a better economy, and governors must help lead the way.”
 
To help governors develop college completion plans, the Administration is releasing a calculation of each state’s share of the President’s 2020 goal as well as a comprehensive college completion tool kit of suggested policies to help governors boost college graduation rates. The toolkit identifies seven no-cost or low-cost strategies that governors can use, fifteen related action steps, and a series of existing federal resource streams from which to draw. The strategies include aligning high school exit and college placement standards, linking state funding to college success in boosting completion rates, making it easier for students to transfer among colleges, and re-engaging adults with some college experience but no degree.
 
“The best jobs and fastest growing firms, whether in biosciences, technology, manufacturing, trade or entertainment, will gravitate to countries, communities and states with a highly qualified workforce. In order for America to lead the world, every governor will have to lead the way at home,” Duncan said.
 
The Administration is also making a number of financial resources available to help governors execute their plans to boost college completion rates. Today, the Department of Education is announcing that it is accepting applications for the 2011 Comprehensive Grant Program, which is part of the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). The Comprehensive Grant Program will provide a total of $20 million to colleges to implement plans that can increase success and improve productivity in postsecondary schools. The program aims to award innovative reform practices that have the potential to serve as models for the nation.
 
In addition to these grants, the Administration has also proposed two programs in its 2012 budget. The First in the World initiative, which in its initial year would provide $123 million in competitive funds, would support programs that embrace innovative practices to accelerate learning, boost completion rates and hold down tuition. Secondly, states can also apply for College Completion Incentive Grants, which would give a total of $50 million in awards to reward states and institutions for undertaking reforms that produce more college graduates.
 
The release of the college completion toolkit and announcement of financial resources follows a number of efforts by the Obama-Biden Administration to increase access to and the affordability of higher education. The Administration has dramatically boosted Pell grant funding by more than $40 billion; increased tax incentives for higher education by more than 90 percent through the American Opportunity Tax credit; simplified the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, making it easier for students to apply for grants and loans; provided common-sense student loan repayment options with the Income-Based Repayment program; and implemented a program that forgives the debt of students who dedicate 10 years to public service after graduation.
 
Note to editors:  See HERE for a copy of the college completion toolkit, and HERE for the state-by-state 2020 completion data.

Background on the Vice President's Trip to Howard High School to Celebrate One-Year Anniversary of Race to the Top Awards in Delaware

Today, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will be in Wilmington, Delaware to celebrate the first year anniversary of the first Race to the Top Awards, which marked the beginning of a transformative and highly successful investment in education. Nearly a year after being awarded $100 million in Race to the Top funding, Delaware’s grant has significantly helped the state make progress toward improving its education system. In remarks at Howard High School of Technology, the Vice President and Secretary Duncan will discuss the success of teacher collaboration in Delaware, as well as how winning the future in education will continue to require investments that promote a shared responsibility among everyone involved; reform at the state and local levels; and a focus on achieving results. They will be joined in Wilmington by Governor Jack Markell, Senator Chris Coons, Representative John Carney and President of the Delaware State Education Association Diane Donohue
 
Background On Teacher Collaboration:
 
The Administration has consistently sought to lift up the work labor and management can do to support student success when they work collaboratively. In February, the Department, along with key partners like the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) sponsored a two day conference attended by 150 school districts – including the School Board President, teachers union president and Superintendent from each district -- to identify labor-management relationships, policies and agreements that can drive student achievement.
 
From the work of Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools with its local NEA affiliate to reduce the achievement gap in the district, to Los Angeles’ ABC Unified School District in Los Angeles, where an over decade-long partnership with the AFT local has lead to annual increases in the district’s score on California’s Academic Index, this important work is happening all over the country.
 
Background on Race to the Top:
 
The $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund is an unprecedented federal investment in reform. The program includes $4 billion for statewide reform grants and $350 million to support states working together to improve the quality of their assessments. The Race to the Top state competition is designed to reward states that are leading the way in comprehensive, coherent, statewide education reform across four key areas:
 

• Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace;
• Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals how to improve instruction;
• Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most; and
• Turning around their lowest-performing schools.

Background on Award Timeline:

• March 29th, 2010: Delaware and Tennessee were announced as winners of the first phase of the competition
• June 14th, 2010: Delaware received the first 12.5% of its award
• July 22nd, 2010: Delaware received the remainder of its award
• August 24th, 2010: the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island were announced as winners of the second phase of the competition

Year One Accomplishments in Delaware:
 
Teacher Collaboration:
As part of the application process, the Delaware State Education Association (DSEA) and all 19 of its local affiliates signed on to the State’s application. DSEA and its locals have continued to be very involved in implementation:

• Over 300 educators helped develop student growth measures in 30 content areas, building student performance into teacher assessment.
• Educators helped develop plans for the 90 minute collaborative planning time so that all educators in core subjects will meet in small, relevant groups for 90 minutes weekly to identify best practices and coordinate lesson plans. Teachers will also work with data coaches two times a month beginning next year to make sure that metrics on student achievement are informing their teaching.
• The DSEA worked closely and continuously with the Governor and State Secretary of Education over the past year in overseeing the implementation process and troubleshooting problems that arose.

Additional areas of progress:

• Delaware adopted the Common Core Standards for math and English Language Arts and trained 9,000 teachers on the basics of these new standards.
• Delaware launched an online assessment system to measure student progress in a timely and reliable manner so teachers can use it to inform their instruction.
• Delaware recently entered into a contract with Wireless Generation, LLC to provide data coaching services so that, by this spring, teachers in an initial 6 districts and 1 charter school will have regular access to data coaches that will help them use the information from the online assessment system to enrich their instruction and improve student performance.
• Delaware instituted a new Partnership Zone which targets the lowest-achieving schools.  The State has approved the first four Partnership Zone schools’ reform plans which include adopting longer school days and school years, increasing instructional time, requiring leadership and staffing changes and gaining flexibility in staffing decisions, use of lead partners, and other critical changes.
• Delaware designed and instituted a nine-month professional development program to provide districts with the skills to continue to implement their portion of the Race to the Top plan over the next three years.

Background on Howard High School of Technology:

• Howard High School of Technology is an 860-student school located three blocks from the downtown Wilmington business district.
• Howard High School’s building was declared a National Historic Landmark due to the role the school played in the civil rights movement. Howard first opened in 1867 and was the only institution in the four-state area of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to offer a complete high school education to Black students and was one of the earliest Black secondary schools in the Nation. Howard was also one of the schools involved in Brown vs. Board of Education.
• The student population is 74 percent African-American, 14 percent Caucasian and 1 percent Asian. Sixty-one percent of the student body is low income.
• More than half of the students who accept admission to Howard have not previously met grade-level math and/or reading standards on state assessments.

Howard’s Race to the Top Progress:

• Howard High School was selected as one of the first four schools in the state’s Partnership Zone program. Since its selection, Howard has put together and the state has approved a transformation plan to turn around the school.
• Teachers at the school have developed and agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding that modifies the collective bargaining agreement for teachers at the school, allowing for implementation of the transformation plan.
• A new principal has been put in place.
• There is a high level of educator engagement with 40 faculty currently serving on committees that are developing specific details of the Partnership Zone plan
• In April, a site-based parent coordinator will be hired to increase parent outreach and support services, especially targeting families of students struggling.
• This summer, the school will launch a Summer Intensive Learning and Leadership Academy for underperforming students entering the 9th grade.
• Next year the daily schedule for grades 9 and 10 will be restructured into small learning communities. Students will stay together for their core classes and teams of teachers will collaborate on individual student needs and tie vocational coursework to what students are studying in their academic classes.
• Delaware will offer incentives to attract highly qualified academic teachers to Howard.
• This year, the University of Delaware launched a new STEM residency program, funded, in part, by the Race to the Top Award. The program places science and math experts in residency teaching programs at Delaware high schools, where they work with a certified teacher while they pursue graduate courses in education at the University of Delaware. The program placed eight teachers this year, including five at Howard.

Readout of Vice President Biden's Call to President Karzai

Earlier today, Vice President Biden called President Karzai to get an update on the situation in Afghanistan and to underscore our ongoing commitment to Afghanistan, including our efforts to protect Afghan civilians. President Karzai was appreciative of the call, reiterating the need to prevent harm to Afghan civilians and to continue to build our strategic relationship.