A University of Washington analysis found teacher turnover increased substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic, as school systems struggled to maintain adequate staffing levels. Existing patterns of inequality persisted, with the highest rates of teacher turnover impacting schools serving higher shares of students of color and low-income students.

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After-school STEM programs integrate Indigenous knowledge.

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Washington STEM’s High School to Postsecondary Collaborative is a group of 40+ schools and districts who are looking at student enrollment data to get more students into dual credit programs that can launch them into college.

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Washington STEM’s new State of the Children reports were developed in partnership with 50+ “co-designers” from across the state. The results highlight areas for meaningful policy changes while also incorporating voices of families with children often overlooked in the conversation about affordable child care.

Elementary science is key to developing well-rounded students who can navigate a rapidly changing world: from managing their health and homes, to understanding a changing environment.

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Washington STEM relies on data that are publicly available. But how do we know what’s reliable? In this blog, we’ll look how education policy data is sourced and used in Washington STEM’s reports and dashboards.

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Can the agricultural inputs market address the conditions that created the 2010 food crisis? What role will small farmers play in the future of Egypt’s food security?

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Residents question whether sustained high doses of chemical pesticides are to blame for a rash of cancer diagnoses.

Originally published in June 2012, in Community Times magazine, Cairo, Egypt.

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Who built the Giza Pyramids? Not who we thought. A new look at the lives of ancient Egyptian workers uncovers the truth of a national myth – and questions whether any of us are actually free.

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Each summer Egypt faces rolling black outs. The electricity ministry proposes market restructuring, but is it enough for green energy to take off?

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Despite water disputes with neighbors, Egypt seeks to increase its water share to enable larger cargo volumes on the Nile.

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With costs, temperatures and competition for resources on the rise, the only certainty is that LE 1 per kilo tomatoes are gone for good.

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Driven by demand for natural resources and favorable demographics, Egyptian interests are finding fertile ground for investment in Ethiopia and Sudan.

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Health advocates cry foul as the controversial Decree 373 links generic drug prices in Egypt to the cost of brand-name drugs.

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A trek to discover Egypt’s ecolodges usually starts along a bumpy, dirt road in the high mountain region of South Sinai. Within the St. Katherine Protectorate, established by the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency in 1995 and named a UN World Heritage site in 2002, lies El Karm ecolodge.

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At the end of next year the Kyoto Protocol will sunset and with it the controversial Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Designed to fund emission reductions in developing countries, some critics say the CDM did little to reduce the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity or catalyze renewable energy projects.

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As any scientist knows, there is no substitute for rock phosphate. Known as P2O5, rock phosphate is the mineral that literally holds DNA together and is a crucial ingredient in agricultural fertilizers. Global supplies are finite and prices ever-increasing.  Asia is the largest consumer of phosphate fertilizer and investors are turning to Egypt as technological advances make its 1 billion tons of rock phosphate reserves more economically feasible to extract.

However, despite winning accolades for an improved business environment and plentiful pro-investment rhetoric, Egypt’s mining industry has failed to secure the type of capital inflows that would help it move up the supply chain

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Days before protesters massed in Tahrir Square on January 25, another storm was brewing. In December, the Cairo governorate removed outdoor ads from rooftops downtown, impacting thousands of advertising jobs, from designers to suppliers to printers to installers. In response, the Egyptian Union of Advertising turned off lighting on signs downtown for two nights. Then on January 23, union members appeared in a television debate with the Ministry of Culture’s National Office of Urban Harmony (NOUH) that drafted the signage regulations. “The response was… well, as you can see, the people were with us,” joked Haytham Erfan, head of the advertising union, referring to the civil unrest that swept the nation. Now the industry has asked the new Cairo governor to revise the regulations to help save the outdoor marketing industry. 

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The message from finance minister Samir Radwan and the rest of the Egyptian delegation to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s spring meeting last month was clear: “We need cash.” By the end of his trip, Radwan had secured $2.2. billion in soft loans from the World Bank, further adding to Egypt’s external debt, $34.9  billion, its highest point in five years.

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t a recent seminar discussing the uses of public opinion surveys, the message was clear:  Ignore the opinion of the people at your own peril.  As Egypt prepares for its first free elections in decades, public opinion surveys are conducted almost weekly as parties scramble to formulate platforms that will attract voters. More and more, political parties and individual candidates are seeking the services of consultants to give them a leg up in the upcoming election season. 

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As the end of the fiscal year approaches, more companies around the globe are adding extra pages to their financial reports. Shareholders want to hear how companies are impacting their communities and there is much discussion of the so-called triple bottom line that refers to people, planet and profits. At least that was the impression of the Egyptian delegation to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) biannual conference, held May 26-28 in Amsterdam.

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For 18 days, the venerable Egyptian Museum received plenty of TV time as a backdrop for protests and clashes in Tahrir Square, and reports that it had been vandalized were a catalyst for early concerns about the long-term damage to the country’s crucial tourism industry.  On February 20, nearly four weeks after Police Day protests marked the beginning of the end of the regime of president Hosni Mubarak, the museum reopened its doors to a trickle of tourists. 

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Although aquaculture in Egypt has been around for thousands of years, modern projects typically have been geared toward exports, offering delicacies such as jumbo shrimp and sea cucumbers to customers willing to pay top dollar. But with an estimated gap of 800,000 metric tons between supply and in-country demand, Egypt is poised to expand its aquaculture industry to produce fish as an affordable source of protein for domestic consumption.

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Since 2005, about 3,800 new rooms have been added to Cairo’s luxury hotel inventory with the opening or “rebranding” of no fewer that half a dozen properties, a spurt that might seem incongruous in light of the global financial crisis and subsequent recession. Many industry insiders, however, see the growth as part of a much-needed reawakening of the city’s luxury lodging market. 

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Let’s not fight; let’s work together.” A noble sentiment, unless spoken by business rivals; then it could be the crime of collusion. Competition Law No. 3 (2005) was meant to foster a fair and competitive market, resulting in better-quality products at lower prices. But enforcement was left to the discretion of individual ministers and thereby subject to political influence. Until now. 

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