Great Lakes Region Increases Hiring

Great blog post from the Wall Street Journal highlighting recent job growth in the Great Lakes region. 

Great Lakes, Good Job Market 

College hiring is rebounding in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions, but remains muted in the Northeast, Southeast and Southwest, Dow Jones’s Melissa Korn writes this week.

Companies based in the Great Lakes area expect to hire 13% more new graduates with bachelor’s degrees regionally for the 2010-2011 academic year compared with the year earlier, according to a recent survey by the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. The region includes Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin.

The uptick stems in part from pent-up employer demand after years of hiring “sporadically, at best,” says study author Philip Gardner. He expects manufacturing, professional and science-related jobs to bounce back, especially at smaller companies.

The survey was conducted in September and October.

Sustainable Leadership in Urban Schools

Earlier this week, Cleveland Schools CEO Eugene Sanders announced his intentions to resign. Sanders retirement came as a surprise to many throughout the city. Just six months ago he announced a wide scale school transformation plan, calling it the most important work of his career. While the district has asserted its intentions to continue moving forward with the plan, its success is without a doubt in question.

Cleveland, like many other cities with failing schools, is struggling to keep students and attract high-quality teachers. Bold reform is needed. But can it be achieved without sustainable leadership?

The D.C. public schools face a similar challenge. This past November, school Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Mayor Adrian Fenty suffered an electoral defeat that has put the city’s education transformation plan in jeopardy.  While Mayor-Elect Vincent Gray has promised to continue those reforms, there is still a sense of uncertainty about the future.  The challenges facing Americas education system are too daunting for inconsistent leadership. School chiefs need time to implement their plans.  And elected officials need to think creatively about how they hire superintendents. Even more importantly, superintendents must implement succession planning into their human capital strategies. All of these factors are critical to ensure school effectiveness.

It is my hope that Cleveland community leaders will do their due diligence to ensure our next schools chief has the commitment and the vision to turn around Cleveland’s schools. With a 54% graduation rate, one of the lowest in the nation, we need more than a plan…we need a movement.