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COMMENTARY
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Stand and Deliver
April 2, 2010
WATSON SCOTT SWAIL, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute
This week saw the passing of a giant in the teaching field—Jaime Escalante. Escalante was made famous, in part, by Washington Post writer Jay Mathews in the book Escalante: The Best Teacher in America. But more famous through the movie version of the book, Stand and Deliver, in 1988 featuring Edward James Olmos and Lou Diamond Phillips.
For the uninitiated, Stand and Deliver is about an East LA teacher, Escalante, who was able to get his students to pass the Calculus AP course, against all odds, by working them hard and having them come in every Saturday morning to study. If my memory serves me well, every Escalante student passed the AP exam. And the College Board, my former employer, balked at the results, accused the students of cheating, and required them to re-take the exam because they couldn’t possibly have passed.
After all, they were poor Latino kids. How could they have passed AP Calculus? READ MORE...
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| STATISTIC OF THE WEEK |
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Approximately two-thirds of fourth-graders both nationally and in large city schools reported never using a calculator while taking mathematics tests or quizzes.
Source: NAEP 2009 Mathematics Assessment, NCES
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THE NEWS
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ACADEMIC PREPARATION
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Indiana gets $61 million to help low-achieving schools
By Grace Schneider, Indiana Courier-Journal
Federal education officials said Friday that Indiana will receive $61.3million in federal stimulus funding to help improve persistently low-achieving schools, including five elementary schools in Clark and Floyd counties. School systems will have to compete for the money under the U.S. Department of Education's School Improvements Grants program. The funds are part of $3.5billion that will be made available to states this spring from money set aside in the 2009 budget and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the federal agency said.
Boston students flood cyber-bullying hotline with complains
By Travis Andersen, The Boston Globe
Students at Boston public high schools have reported several cyber-bullying complaints, including Facebook pages with derogatory captions and crude remarks directed at women. Matthew Wilder, a spokesman for the Boston Public Schools, said that officials learned of the reports "in the last few days" following calls to a new city hotline. Officials with the city's school, police, and health departments met earlier this week to discuss strategies for cyber-bullying prevention. Wilder said it appears that students at Charlestown High School launched the Facebook pages, which show photographs of girls as well as crude remarks.
U.S. awards $600M in education grants
By Dorie Turner, Associated Press
The U.S. Department of Education on Monday awarded Delaware and Tennessee $600 million as part of the competitive "Race to the Top" program to help states improve student performance and transform struggling schools. The states, selected from 16 finalists, received the grants in the first round of the $4.35 billion federal competition, with both tweaking their education laws and enlisting the support of their school districts and teachers unions to better their chances.
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| POST SECONDARY ACCESS SUCCESS |
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College said to enrich disadvantaged students most
By Alyson Klein, Education Week
The students who are least likely to attend postsecondary education are the very ones who stand to derive the greatest economic benefit from earning a college degree, according to a study scheduled for publication today in the American Sociological Review. The study found that college graduates whose demographic and academic backgrounds suggested they’d be among those least likely to go to college—including black and Latino students, low-income students, and those whose parents did not attend postsecondary education—got the biggest bump in income from their diplomas.
Applications to elite universities rise
By Jacques Steinberg, The New York Times
With many of the nation’s most selective colleges and universities scheduled to inform applicants of their decisions on Thursday, one trend already appears to be emerging: Applications to elite private colleges rose again this academic year, despite the economic constraints on many families. As a result, admission rates often fell to record lows. Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Cornell, Stanford, M.I.T. and Duke each reported sharp increases in applications this year compared with last year. Undergraduate applications to Harvard, for example, rose nearly 5 percent, to 30,489, said William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid. Only 6.9 percent of those applicants, or 2,110, were admitted, Mr. Fitzsimmons said, down from 7.5 percent in 2009.
Many Washington region colleges limit tuition increases
By Daniel de Vise, Washington Post
Many of the most prestigious -- and expensive -- colleges in the Washington region have capped annual tuition increases at 4 percent for the coming academic year, a gesture, school officials said, of fiscal restraint and a signal to families of the college-bound that they are doing their part to be affordable. Several schools said their fall tuition reflects the smallest annual increase in many years. Tuition increases were uncharacteristically small this year as well, for concern that a significant increase would scare off recession-weary families.
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| INTERNATIONAL NEWS |
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Chancellor’s pre-hustings STEM largesse steals the Conservatives’ thunder
By Melanie Newman, The Times Higher Education
Universities in England have welcomed a Budget pledge to fund up to 20,000 additional student places in science and technology subjects next year, but the move has reignited debate about the government's policy of favouring so-called STEM subjects over others. Alistair Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer, pledged £305 million for universities in his Budget speech last week. The sum includes £250 million for the extra places in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, including 5,000 on part-time degrees and 5,000 on foundation courses.
Indian students wield tests for college spots
By Jim Yardley, The New York Times
India has one of the world’s youngest populations, often called its “demographic dividend,” yet as the middle class has steadily grown, so has the cutthroat competition for the limited slots in the country’s system of higher education. High school seniors must pass national board exams to graduate from high school. But those same board exams also serve as the rough equivalent of SATs for students applying to most programs in many universities, especially in the humanities. However, students applying to some universities, especially those with technical programs like engineering, must also take separate entrance exams.
Across the globe, colleges struggle to keep up with employers’ needs
By Aisha Labi, The Chronicle of Higher Education
Equipping graduates with the skills that employers want is one of the central roles of higher education, but how effectively universities around the world are meeting that challenge is a matter of strenuous debate. Several of the sessions here at Going Global, a two-day higher-education conference organized by the British Council, Britain's international organization for educational and cultural relations, were devoted to subjects related to the role of international universities in educating and training the work force of the future.
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| REPORTS WORTH READING |
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"Benchmarking and Benchmarks: Effective Practice With Entering Students”
The Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE), a national assessment for community and technical colleges launched in 2007 by the Center for Community College Student Engagement, released a new report introducing six SENSE Benchmarks of Effective Practice with Entering Students. It broadly demonstrates how colleges can use the process of benchmarking in their efforts to evaluate and improve institutional performance and student success.
Fueling the Race to Postsecondary Success: A 48-Institution Study of Prior Learning Assessment and Adult Student Outcomes
This report by The Council for Adult & Experiential Learning (CAEL) provides information and data from a multi-institutional study on Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) and adult student outcomes. The study examined the records of 62,475 students at 48 colleges and universities, primarily in the U.S. but also in Canada. Findings from the study show that PLA students had better academic outcomes, particularly in terms of graduation rates and persistence, than other adult students. For example, 56% of PLA students earned a postsecondary degree within seven years, compared to 21% of non-PLA students. Additionally, many PLA students shortened the time required to earn a degree, based upon the number of PLA credits earned.
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