The EDFacts Initiative

EDFacts is a U. S. Department of Education initiative to put performance data at the center of policy, management and budget decisions for all K-12 educational programs. EDFacts centralizes performance data supplied by K-12 state education agencies (SEAs) with other data assets, such as financial grant information, within the Department to enable better analysis and use in policy development, planning and management. The purpose of EDFacts is to:

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“ These educational gaps impose on the United States the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession.”

An excerpt from the McKinsey Group Report, “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools” (www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/socialsector/achievementgap.asp),  April 2009.

This report finds that the underutilization of human potential in the United States is extremely costly. For individuals, our results show that:

• Avoidable shortfalls in academic achievement impose heavy and often tragic consequences, via lower earnings, poorer health, and higher rates of incarceration.
• For many students (but by no means all), lagging achievement evidenced as early as fourth grade appears to be a powerful predictor of rates of high school and college graduation, as well as lifetime earnings.
• For the economy as a whole, our results show that:
  • If the United States had in recent years closed the gap between its educational achievement levels and those of better-performing nations such as Finland and Korea, GDP in 2008 could have been $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion higher. This represents 9 to 16 percent of GDP.
  • If the gap between black and Latino student performance and white student performance had been similarly narrowed, GDP in 2008 would have been between $310 billion and $525 billion higher, or 2 to 4 percent of GDP. The magnitude of this impact will rise in the years ahead as demographic shifts result in blacks and Latinos becoming a larger proportion of the population and workforce.
  • If the gap between low-income students and the rest had been similarly narrowed, GDP in 2008 would have been $400 billion to $670 billion higher, or 3 to 5 percent of GDP.
  • If the gap between America’s low-performing states and the rest had been similarly narrowed, GDP in 2008 would have been $425 billion to $700 billion higher, or 3 to 5 percent of GDP.

Put differently, the persistence of these educational achievement gaps imposes on the United States the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession. The recurring annual economic cost of the international achievement gap is substantially larger than the deep recession the United States is currently experiencing.4 The annual output cost of the racial, income, and regional or systems achievement gap is larger than the US recession of 1981–82.

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The Implementation Checklist for Supporting Multicultural Learning
a product of the High School Reform Strategy Toolkit at www.highschooltoolkit.com

Note: I don’t care for the term “multiculturalism” since to me it sounds like an ideology or set of religious beliefs.

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Report to the Ford Foundation and American Association of Museums from a National Meeting of Museums:
The Exhibiting and Dissemination of Knowledge on Race, Racism, and Identity

Consensus Point IV: A homogenous museum staff often does not have the experiences or clarity to understand the value, import and possibilities involved in presenting subject matter such as that involving identity, race and racism. For that reason, diversity of representation in museum personnel is critical.
The staff and boards of museums seldom reflect the communities that are being represented in programs involving race, racism, and identity, thus constraining the success of such programs. Decision makers do not understand the necessity of presenting some topics, and so they are passed by; or, if the project is presented, the program development and marketing may miss the mark. The irony is that the public’s confusion, fear, and misinformation which create the need for presenting complex topics can also constitute the reason why such topics are not presented. Youth, people of color and others from diverse backgrounds can bring ideas and perspectives to museum decision making and programming. While recruitment policies at museums have improved, much remains to be done. Raymond Codrington of the Field Museum put it this way, “It basically comes down to programming so we need to have people in place as employees who think in different ways. What role does a cultural institution play in a city with a changing urban demographic? We need to diversify.” Others voice similar sentiments, “You have to ask,‘Does staff represent what is being said the exhibit?” and, “Mainstream staff cannot understand ethnic experiences.” As Lonnie Bunch, President of the Chicago Historical Society, pointed out in a speech to the Board of the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, museums continue to be woefully remiss in diversifying staff at the highest levels of
decision-making.

From – The Exhibiting and Dissemination of Knowledge on Race, Racism, and Identity
…. more at http://www.fieldmuseum.org/ccuc/exhibiting_race.pdf

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The Implicit Association Test: A means to uncover unconscious biases (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/).

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