To be considered “proficient,” Illinois juniors will have to “earn a higher score on the SAT than the one that’s correlated with college readiness,” writes Catherine Gewertz in Ed Week. The state board of education’s policy doesn’t affect students’ grades or graduation, she explains. But their high schools will lose points in the new accountability system if 11th graders score below 540 in English or… Read more →
I was reared and schooled in Detroit, where poverty and oppression eloquently danced while violence and crime serenaded the communities. The crime and oppression in my neighborhood drove me to submit a college application that would change my life’s trajectory. I wasn’t going to college to become an adult; I already faced mature challenges and struggles long before I filled… Read more →
SAT scores are way up this year, the College Board reported this week. And that might be cause for celebration, if you wanted to ignore these three facts. The test is easier than it was a year ago. The achievement gap between students of different races and parental education levels is just as entrenched as ever. And fewer than half… Read more →
“All throughout high school, they made it sound like going to college was our only option,” says Derrick Roberson, a 17-year-old high school graduate in southern California. Vocational classes were seen as second-class. But he had doubts. “After you go to college, where do you go? It can open doors for you, but not as much as they make it… Read more →
We’ve known this for a while, but here’s another survey to add fuel to the fire: Parents tend to inflate their kids’ academic progress and deflate their kids’ emotional resilience. In a nutshell, they don’t worry enough about the fact that schools are increasingly unable to prepare students with the skills they need to succeed in college and the workplace–and… Read more →
School reform advocate Derrell Bradford and policy writer Andy Rotherham hit on it. Illinois education writer Tracy Dell’Angela has a blog focused on it. Teacher/education writer Robert Pondiscio said it was a factor in the anti-charter vote in Massachusetts last fall. And former Education Secretary Arne Duncan famously broached the subject in 2013. “It” is the long overdue conversation about… Read more →
Schools are cheating their students by offering “dual-credit lite,” charges Kevin Teasley, founder of the Greater Educational Opportunities Foundation in Indianapolis, on Flypaper. Offering dual-credit (aka dual-enrollment) classes on the high school campus gives students no experience of learning on a college campus with college-age students, he writes. Often, “dual” instructors are high school teachers, not college instructors. Students who take… Read more →
Ninety percent of parents believe their children are performing at “grade level” or higher in their schoolwork, according to a Learning Heroes survey this spring. Yet only about a third of high school graduates are ready for college-level courses, writes Fordham’s Mike Petrilli in Education Next. Ignorance isn’t bliss, he argues. If students and their parents knew they weren’t on track… Read more →
The letter was thin and flat. The letter was thin and flat. I’m embarrassed to say it took a second for me to realize. Traditionally, they sent acceptance letters in big envelopes, but could things be different now? Maybe they sent the bulk of the information through email. By the time the letter had been in my hands for two… Read more →
Sam Radford’s daughter got straight As in school. That should be the gold standard for being in good shape to go to college, right? Wrong. We travelled to Buffalo, New York to talk to Sam and get his story. Watch Sam’s clip below (the full video is here). Sam’s story shows how hard it is for families to pony up money… Read more →