Loc:Hooyi

Education Week’s Diplomas Count 2009 released earlier in June includes two very interesting (and addictive if you are a data geek like me) interactive tools, Graduation Rate Trends 1996-2006 and Graduation Rate Map Tool.

The Grad-rate Map Tool, using Google Map, shows you state and district graduation rate data. These data include demographic data as well as grad data from the past decade. So, the first thing I did was to check the graduation rate for my old high school’s district.

To my surprise, I discovered that the class year before my own graduating year achieved a 98% rate (which was about 30% higher than national average). It is the highest (by 10% or so) comparing to all the other graduating years, before or after, in the same district.

How I remember all those smart ass upperclass students that my mother just won’t stop comparing me to….

The trend map graphically display state-level data over the past decade. The U.S. national average has been (slowly) improving from 66.4% in 1995-96 to 69.2% in 2005-06.

(More education-related infographics from Edweek here)

Tuesday is the inauguration of Barack Obama. Here’s a look at previous inaugural speeches’ mentions of education.

What will Obama say about education in his speech (if any)? Well, if he does say anything significant about education, it will be added to this widget.

Quotes compiled by Edweek’s reporter, Kathleen Kennedy Manzo. Widget created by me. Just something fun to work on a friday and for Edweek’s inauguration ‘09 coverage.

Finally in the last presidential debate education made an appearance. Want to find out more about what Obama and McCain stands on this very important issue?

Diane Rehm recently hosted a segment on “The Presidential Candidates’ Education Proposals.” Some guests include Michelle Rhee and Lisa Graham Keegan.

(disclaimer: I work for Edweek.org.)
Edweek on Tuesday (10/21) carried a live webcast of a debate between the education advisers of both the Obama and McCain camp. The turn out was great. The debate itself was very informative and at times testy. You can see the archived webcast or read the transcript from this page.

Or, stay tuned to Edweek’s Youtube channel for clips of the debate broken down by topics. And check Edweek’s Vimeo Channel for full archived videos.

Also, who can miss out on the twitter fun? If you search for #tcdebate or tcdebate on twitter, you should see all the related tweets - which were shown here during the debate (bottom of page now after debate ended).

Speaking of fun, can’t miss out on Wordle either! Here’s the word cloud generated from the debate transcript. BIGGEST word is “education.” (seriously? there’s a shocker…not.)

(updated 10/23 17:05)
Edweek’s reporter/blogger David Hoff actually used another Wordle cloud to blog about the focus of the debate. I created this alternative version stripping out some common words (as you can see from the first cloud) that do not help indicate the focus (i.e. “education, senator”).

Ok, this is the end of my self-promotion of the day!