Category Archives: College Preparation

How did this St. Paul 18-year-old ace the SAT and ACT?

Tad Vezner:

arents and teachers call him St. Paul’s low-key whiz kid. Jake Heichert grew up spurning studying, sleeping through the occasional exam — and, most recently, earning a rare pair of perfect scores on the ACT and SAT.
Last week, his family sat around their living room, wondering how it all happened.
Rich and Susan Heichert’s only child received a 2400 on his SAT college assessment test in May. In February he scored a 36 on his ACT. He earned perfect 5s on his Advanced Placement tests in chemistry, U.S. history, and government and politics.
Oh, and calculus, Jake added. Almost forgot.
His parents searched for an explanation.
“Do you study, Jake?” Susan asked.
“We’ve never seen it,” Rich added.
“They told us he might have a learning disability,” Susan said of the day Jake was born, oxygen deprived.

Via Ed Gadfly.

Standard & Poor’s Recognizes 20 Wisconsin Schools for Narrowing Achievement Gaps (including Madison’s Cherokee and Black Hawk)

Standard & Poors “School Matters”:

Standard & Poor’s School Evaluation Services today announced it has identified 20 Wisconsin schools that have significantly narrowed the achievement gap between higher- and lower-performing student groups during the 2003-04 and 2004-05 school years. This is the first year Standard & Poor’s conducted an achievement gap analysis in Wisconsin.
The 20 schools are located in 19 school districts throughout the state. One school district–Madison Metropolitan School District–has two schools that have significantly narrowed at least one achievement gap between student groups. And one of those two schools, was able to narrow the gap among multiple student groups.
Of the 20 Wisconsin schools that have narrowed the achievement gap, one school is recognized for reducing its black-white gap, two schools for narrowing the gap between Hispanic and white students, and 17 schools are recognized for narrowing the gap between economically-disadvantaged students and all students.
Brown Deer Middle School in the Brown Deer School District was the only school recognized for narrowing the achievement gap between its black and white students.
Two schools: Preble High School in the Green Bay Area School District and Cherokee High School in the Madison Metropolitan School District are recognized for narrowing the gap between Hispanic and white students.

More:

  • Summary Findings 108K PDF

  • Wisconsin Schools home page on S & P’s School Matters site.
  • Susan Troller:

    Black Hawk Middle School and Cherokee Middle School were hailed along with 18 other Wisconsin schools for significantly narrowing achievement gaps between groups of students in different demographic groups.
    Madison was the only district to have two schools cited for progress in this area, which has drawn increased scrutiny and concern among educators and parents nationwide over the past decade. In addition, Cherokee was the only school that was able to narrow the gap among multiple student groups.
    “This is a great boost for our staff as we go back to school next week,” Cherokee Principal Karen Seno said. “It’s an absolute recognition of their professionalism, commitment and the effectiveness of their practices.”

Involving Families in High School and College Expectations

Jennifer Dounay [PDF]:

he numbers are astonishing and unfortunately all too familiar – while four in five high school students expect to complete a college degree, fewer than a third will actually emerge from the high-school-to-college pipeline with a baccalaureate six years after high school graduation. A growing number of parents see a college degree as absolutely necessary for their child’s success, and more students believe that they will attain this goal. But the sad fact is that only one in three will complete a college degree. This policy brief examines the troubling gap between educational aspirations, what students (and parents) need to do to achieve those expectations, and what states are doing to better communicate to students and parents the importance of being academically prepared for college and the steps to take to achieve that level of preparation.
Students (and their parents) expect they’ll finish high school and go to college
Most high school students today (and their parents) believe they should – and will – graduate from high school and complete some form of postsecondary education. As the graph below makes clear, this expectation has been rising since 1980 for every racial and socioeconomic group.

Madison Student SAT Results Released

Madison Metropolitan School District [SAT Wisconsin Report – 244K PDF]:

Madison students taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scored significantly above their state and local peers, continuing a trend of more than a decade.
Madison students’ composite score was 1251, well above Wisconsin students’ composite score of 1188 and the national composite of 1021. (See tables below for details.) The composite score combines a student’s math and verbal scores on the test. Each section of the test is worth 800 points.
For the first time, the SAT was expanded to include a writing test, however, several Madison seniors took the SAT prior to the change, so the writing sample is not included in the composite totals. But the 370 Madison students who did take the writing test had a mean score of 599, compared with 577 for state students and 497 nationally.
The participation rate by Madison seniors was 22.6%, down from 24% last year. Only 402 students took the SAT test. Most Madison students take the ACT college entrance exam, with 70% of Madison seniors taking the ACT in 2005-2006.

Continue reading Madison Student SAT Results Released

College Sophomore Advice to Freshman

Megan Twohey:

The students – from Alverno College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW-Whitewater and Marquette University – offered a variety of tips and personal experiences. One had a roommate situation she didn’t think would work out – at first. Another became a science major, much to her surprise. A third found help picking his classes through a Web site called myprofessorsucks.com.

Math Disaster

NYC Teacher Bruce Winokur:

Teaching mathematics has been my profession in New York City public schools since 1969, first at I.S. 201 in District 5, then at J.H.S. 17 in District 2, and since 1983, at Stuyvesant High School. I’m also the father of a 10-year-old daughter who attends District 2 schools and a member of an organization, Nychold (nychold.com), dedicated to bringing sanity to math education.
I’m a firm believer in public education, the great equalizer. Sadly, over the past 10 years, I’ve witnessed how badly things can go wrong. I am referring specifically to the constructivist math curricula that abound in our city public schools in general and more specifically in District 2, where I live, teach, and raise my daughter.
Constructivist curricula, such as TERC and CMP, forsake algorithms, postulates, and theorems (the foundation of math) as well as teacher-centered learning. Instead, they have students working among themselves in groups, loosely guided by the teacher in a drawn out attempt to “discover” math truths.
In my Upper East Side neighborhood, an incredible number of intelligent young students from the fourth grade and up are seeing private math tutors. Many of these are not the type of children who would normally struggle in arithmetic or elementary algebra. As a result of the way they’re taught elementary math, they find themselves unable to do real math. When they’re taught math in a more traditional way by their tutors, they invariably find themselves relieved and highly critical of the way they’ve been taught mathematics.
At Stuyvesant, we have a disproportionate number of freshmen from District 2 taking our introductory algebra course. Most Stuyvesant students have already completed that course before they enter our school. The ratio of District 2 students to non-District 2 students in those classes is close to twice that same ratio in the freshman class as a whole.

Writing Off Reading

Michael Skube:

In our better private universities and flagship state schools today, it’s hard to find a student who graduated from high school with much lower than a 3.5 GPA, and not uncommon to find students whose GPAs were 4.0 or higher. They somehow got these suspect grades without having read much. Or if they did read, they’ve given it up. And it shows — in their writing and even in their conversation.
A few years ago, I began keeping a list of everyday words that may as well have been potholes in exchanges with college students. It began with a fellow who was two months away from graduating from a well-respected Midwestern university.
“And what was the impetus for that?” I asked as he finished a presentation.
At the word “impetus” his head snapped sideways, as if by reflex. “The what?” he asked.
“The impetus. What gave rise to it? What prompted it?”
I wouldn’t have guessed that impetus was a 25-cent word. But I also wouldn’t have guessed that “ramshackle” and “lucid” were exactly recondite, either. I’ve had to explain both. You can be dead certain that today’s college students carry a weekly planner. But they may or may not own a dictionary, and if they do own one, it doesn’t get much use. (“Why do you need a dictionary when you can just go online?” more than one student has asked me.)
As freshmen start showing up for classes this month, colleges will have a new influx of high school graduates with gilded GPAs, and it won’t be long before one professor whispers to another: Did no one teach these kids basic English? The unhappy truth is that many students are hard-pressed to string together coherent sentences, to tell a pronoun from a preposition, even to distinguish between “then” and “than.” Yet they got A’s.
Exit exams have become almost a necessity because the GPA is not to be trusted. In my experience, a high SAT score is far more reliable than a high GPA — more indicative of quickness and acuity, and more reflective of familiarity with language and ideas. College admissions specialists are of a different view and are apt to label the student with high SAT scores but mediocre grades unmotivated, even lazy.

Bill McCoy has more.

Two-year schools add four-year option

Becky Bartindale:

ndiana University’s 90 30 program is just one model. It allows students to take 90 semester units at a community college and the final 30 units through correspondence or online courses at the equivalent of Indiana in-state tuition rates. In addition to Gavilan, the Indiana program is being offered at 16 other community colleges in California, including De Anza in Cupertino, Hartnell College in Salinas, Santa Rosa Junior College and City College of San Francisco.
Other area schools also are developing collaborative relationships that let students earn bachelor’s degrees without leaving the community college campus.
This fall, the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology in Palo Alto will offer courses leading to a bachelor’s degree in psychology at De Anza College in Cupertino. The new program, which emphasizes the importance of social justice, is the first bachelor’s degree offered by a professional school known for its doctoral programs. Tuition this year will be about $27,500.

“Is Our Students Learning?”

Kevin Carey:

Imagine you’re about to put a chunk of your life savings into a mutual fund. Now imagine you peruse the various “best mutual fund” guides on the news rack, only to find they’re all missing crucial pieces of information. The guides list where the fund managers went to college, how much investment capital they’ve attracted, and what kind of “experience” investors had at the annual fund meeting. But they don’t tell you what you most want to know: What the funds’ rates of return have been–or if they’ve ever made a dime for anyone. You might still decide to invest in a mutual fund, but it would be a heck of a crapshoot. And with their scorecard hidden, fund managers wouldn’t be under much pressure to perform, let alone improve.
That imaginary mutual-fund market pretty much shows how America’s higher-education market works. Each year prospective college students and their parents pore over glossy brochures and phone-book-sized college guides in order to decide how to invest their hard-earned tuition money–not to mention four years of their lives. Some guides, like the popular rankings published by U.S. News & World Report, base ratings on factors like alumni giving, faculty salaries, and freshman SAT scores. Others identify the top “party schools,” most beautiful campuses, and most palatial dorms.
But what’s missing from all the rankings is the equivalent of a bottom line. There are no widely available measures of how much learning occurs inside the classroom, or of how much students benefit from their education. This makes the process of selecting a college a bit like throwing darts at a stock table. It also means that colleges and universities, like our imaginary mutual-fund managers, feel little pressure to ensure that students learn. As anyone who’s ever snoozed through a giant freshman psychology 101 lecture knows, sitting in a classroom doesn’t equal learning; knowledge doesn’t come by osmosis.

Related: Washington Monthly’s Annual College Guide.

Continue reading “Is Our Students Learning?”

The Overachievers

Eugene Allen:

“The Overachievers” is part soap opera, part social treatise. Robbins identifies her main characters — four juniors, three seniors and one alum who’s a college freshman — by how they’re perceived at Whitman. Then she stands back and lets them prove otherwise. Julie, the Superstar, is so plagued by self-doubt that she worries she will be voted “Most Awkward” by her senior classmates. Sam, the Teacher’s Pet, runs out of time to find and interview a Muslim for an assignment in his Modern World class, so he makes one up and writes a fake transcript of their conversation. And A.P. Frank, who took a grueling all-Advanced Placement course load his junior and senior years of high school, wants nothing more than a decent social life when he gets to college. I was so hooked on their stories that I wanted to vote for my favorite contestant at the end of every chapter.
The book is less effective when Robbins leaves Whitman to gather supporting anecdotes from students in other parts of the country. After a while the kids at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Ill., sound like the kids in Kentucky, who sound like the kids in Vermont, who sound like the kids in New Mexico. There’s also a detour into the cutthroat world of private schools in Manhattan that would have worked better as the seed for another book. Nice coup, sitting in on interviews and admission decisions at the Trinity School, but can we please get back to Bethesda?

Tattered Cover Link: The Overachievers by Alexandra Robbins.

College Competition & Ninth Grade

R.C. Barajas:

Our son is poised on the knife’s edge between middle and high school, and we have arrived — as if by time machine, it seems — at the moment when we must decide where he will spend his last four years of mandatory education.
We are welcomed, and given an overview from several educators, including Arlington Superintendent Robert Smith, and about half an hour later parents splinter off to presentations in various rooms around the school. Represented here are the four Arlington high schools: Washington-Lee, which has the International Baccalaureate option; high-achieving Yorktown; H-B Woodlawn, with its hugely popular alternative approach; and Wakefield, which is open to all Gunston Middle students who want to continue in Spanish immersion. Each of these schools appeals to us in some way, so I want to get information on all of them. Topping the list at the moment, though, is the continuation of Spanish immersion, so I follow our close-knit group of parents to where Wakefield is presenting.
Wakefield’s principal, Doris Jackson, is very charismatic. She’s been with Arlington Public Schools for 15 years — this is her fifth as Wakefield principal, and the staff members standing behind her this evening in Room 110 smile at us with pleasant zealotry. Jackson says the school believes fervently that the makeup of Advanced Placement classes should mirror the racial, ethnic and economic makeup of the general student body. To this end, in the spring of 2004, Wakefield launched an effort to support any and all students who want to take AP classes: a preparatory program called AP Bridge, which is designed to help entering students overcome their hormone-induced brain scramble by strengthening their time management and study skills. Visualizing Sebastian’s junk heap of a desktop, I scratch a large “!” in my notes.

More students, fewer spaces

Megan Twohey:

Flash back 25 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and you’d find admissions standards that are sure to shock aspiring Badgers of today.
The university guaranteed admission to all high school graduates in the top half of their class. It accepted more than 80% of applicants.
“I walked upright,” Dan Conley, a 1981 graduate, said with a chuckle. “That’s how I got in.”
How times have changed.
Now students are discouraged from applying without a grade-point average from 3.5 to 3.9, an ACT score of at least 26 and a class rank in the 85th to 96th percentiles. The acceptance rate for Wisconsin residents is 65%. No student is guaranteed a spot in the freshman class, no matter how good his or her grades are.

Raising the Bar?

Elia Powers:

One of the largest community college systems in the country is looking into creating an honors college with free tuition and fees for high-achieving high school students who are looking to transfer to competitive four-year institutions.

Houston Community College System
administrators have discussed the possibility of starting the program by fall 2007, but the governing board has yet to formally discuss the plan, which calls for a centralization of existing university-level courses and high admissions standards.
Whereas Houston Community College accepts any Texas student with a high school diploma, the honors college would probably require students to have at least a 3.5 grade point average and an equivalent SAT score, said Maria Straus, director of learning initiatives at the college.

A Historical Look at Student Debt

Inside Higher Ed:

The landscape for student borrowing has changed significantly in the last 15 years, in several ways: The federal government now has different rules for who can borrow (and how much debt they can take on), and, of course, the price of college has continued to shoot ever skyward. For those and other reasons, it’s difficult to fully gauge the implications for today’s borrowers of a study on student indebtedness released Wednesday by the U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics. But the report found that most borrowers who finished college in the early 1990s were able to manage their student loan burden without enormous strain.
The report, “Dealing With Debt: 1992-93 Bachelor’s Degree Recipients 10 Years Later,” taps into one of the government’s most vibrant databases of student outcomes, the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study, to examine the debt burdens and repayment histories of students who graduated with four-year degrees during the 1992-93 academic year.

Academic Competitiveness and National SMART Grants

US Department of Education:

To meet the growing need for improved math and science instruction, on Feb. 8, 2006 President Bush signed into law two new student grant programs–the Academic Competitiveness Grant (ACG) and National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (National SMART Grant) Programs.
$790 million is set aside for the 2006-07 academic year for these grants, which were created by the Higher Education Reconciliation Act of 2005. The grants will encourage students to take more challenging courses in high school–making success in college more likely, according to research–and to pursue college majors in high demand in the global economy, such as science, mathematics, technology, engineering and critical foreign languages.
Academic Competitiveness Grants will be available to students for their first and second academic years of college. National SMART Grants will be available to students for their third and fourth academic years of college.

US Dept of Education: Academic Competitiveness Grants

US Department of Education:

Participation in a rigorous secondary school program of study may qualify a postsecondary student to receive an ACG, if otherwise eligible. The Secretary recognizes at least one rigorous secondary school program of study for each state annually. States may submit proposals for recognition or may elect to accept rigorous secondary school programs of study pre-recognized by the Secretary. The following are recognized rigorous secondary school programs of study for each state for the 2006-07 award year.

Wisconsin [PDF]:

  • A set of courses similar to the State Scholars Initiative
  • Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) courses and test
    scores.

  • Wisconsin Coursework Requirements.
  • Wisconsin Dual Enrollment Program.

Minnesota Governor Proposes Two Years “Free” College Tuition for the Top High School Students

Patricia Lopez and Dan Wescoe:

Nearly all high school students in the top fourth of their graduating class would get free tuition at any state college or university, under a plan proposed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Tuesday.
An estimated 15,000 students would get two years free at the University of Minnesota or Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system schools as early as fall 2007 and could continue the free ride in their final two years by majoring in science, technology, engineering or math.
Families making as much as $150,000 in adjusted gross income would be eligible — about 93 percent of the state’s households.

Brave New World: Are our kids ready to compete in the new global economy? Maybe not

Marc Eisen:

Most of us have had those eerie moments when the distant winds of globalization suddenly blow across our desks here in comfortable Madison. For parents, it can lead to an unsettling question: Will my kids have the skills, temperament and knowledge to prosper in an exceedingly competitive world?
I’m not so sure.
I’m a fan of Madison’s public schools, but I have my doubts if such preparation is high on the list of school district priorities. (I have no reason to think things are any better in the suburban schools.) Like a lot of parents, I want my kids pushed, prodded, inspired and challenged in school. Too often — in the name of equity, or progressive education, or union protectionism, or just plain cheapness — that isn’t happening.

Continue reading Brave New World: Are our kids ready to compete in the new global economy? Maybe not

“What is This Diploma Worth?”

Alan Borsuk:

But there is a crisis for many of those who graduate, too – a crisis of educational quality and rigor that generally goes unspoken, perhaps for fear that it’s not politically correct to talk about it.
If students who graduate from MPS – still the largest single body of high school students in southeastern Wisconsin and by far the most diverse – are to be successful, they need to be better prepared than they are.
The diploma gap can be seen in the scores on ACT college entrance tests. The composite score for MPS students taking the tests in 2004-’05 was 17.5, the lowest in at least the last nine school years. Statewide, the average was 22.2. At Homestead High, one of the better local schools, the average was 25.
Eric Key, a math professor at UWM who analyzed the scores of incoming students on math placement tests, looked at data on the average math scores of MPS students on the ACT and said, “These scores are basically saying they’re ready to start ninth grade.” It’s not an official judgment – ACT doesn’t say what a ninth-grader ought to score – but the point stands. ACT does say what a student ought to score to have a reasonable chance of doing well in a first level college math course – a 22. The MPS average score in math: 17.
The degree to which low rigor is a problem varies not only between MPS and other districts but within MPS, where some high schools are clearly more challenging than others.

A Letter to Parents Regarding Reading

Brett:

Research has clearly shown that parental involvement – parents seen reading in the home, parents reading to their children, parents ensuring that children have an array of reading materials available to them – is one of the most critical indicators of success in helping a child learn how to read.
And the education community treats this as an unmentionable secret.

Jim Doyle’s Wisconsin Covenant

Channel 3000:

Gov. Jim Doyle asked the University of Wisconsin-Madison Board of Regents Friday to support his “Wisconsin Covenant” plan.
First proposed at his State of the State address, the plan calls for eighth-graders to make a pact with the state. The students would have to sign a pledge to stay out of trouble, take college prep classes and earn a B average — and in return the state provides a financial aid package for a college in the UW system.
“This is our opportunity as a state to declare that among our very, very highest priorities is to increase the number of college graduates. And one of the ways to do it is to make sure that kids who have met their promise to us, no matter what their economic background, have college ahead of them,” said Doyle.

Doyle’s press release.

New Study Examines Industry’s Demand for Highly Educated Workers

The Campaign for College Opportunity:

Can California Keep it’s Competitive Edge?
California has long been regarded as a center of innovation and industry. The state ranks as the sixth largest economy in the world, and much of this economic success has been driven by a highly-educated workforce.
Yet, looking ahead, California’s competitive advantage – and therefore our economic vitality and quality of life – may be at risk. California’s population is growing in regions of the state and among ethnic groups with lower levels of educational attainment.
“Keeping California’s Edge: The Growing Demand for Highly Educated Workers,” is a new study commissioned by the Campaign for College Opportunity and researched by economists at the Applied Research Center at California State University, Sacramento. Looking forward to 2022, this study identifies growing sectors seeking highly educated workers, analyzes the economic value created by those workers and identifies the top six industries with the most at stake in our state’s highly educated high demand future.

Executive Summary [pdf] Fast facts, Full report [pdf]
There’s a webcast today @ 1:00p.m. CST where you can listen to a variety of perspectives from education and business leaders on the report. A number of my classmates immediately left Madison after graduating from the UW for a warmer climate and far better tech career opportunities in California. They’ve not returned.
Lisa Krieger has more.

MMSD Cross-High School Comparison — continued

I recently posted a comparative list of the English courses offered to 9th and 10th graders at Madison’s four high schools. The list showed clearly that West High School does not offer its high achieving and highly motivated 9th and 10th grade students the same appropriately challenging English classes that are offered at East, LaFollette and Memorial.
Here is the yield from a similar comparison for 9th and 10th grade Social Studies and Science.

Continue reading MMSD Cross-High School Comparison — continued

UW-Madison and MATC Finalize Transfer Agreement

Channel3000:

A new agreement allows qualified students at Madison Area Technical College guaranteed admission to the University of Wisconsin-Madison as transfer students.
The program announced Wednesday by both schools is intended for students who begin as freshmen in MATC’s liberal arts transfer program.
Qualified students who complete 54 credits in specified areas and earn a 3.0 grade-point average will be guaranteed admission to UW-Madison when they apply as transfer students.

The Gap According to Black

Bridging the Achievement Gap: Positive Peer Pressure – Just the Push Students Need to Succeed
Cydny Black:
The decisions we make, especially as adolescents, are influenced by the people who surround us, and by how we feel about ourselves. I’ve found that the encouragement of my friends and family, and the examples they set, have a lot to do with my academic success. My friends challenge themselves and encourage me to do the same. This concept is known as peer pressure—a term that often has a negative connotation. In many situations, however, peer pressure can be positive and powerful. Positive peer pressure can give students the push they need to succeed.
It occurs to me that friends who value academic success help give us the support we need to do well. Not only does it help to have friends who push us to do better in school, but these friends also help us to feel better about ourselves.
In school, I notice that many students who are not making the leap over this gap are students who are surrounded by negative reinforcements. These students often lack friends who value education. Negative friends don’t challenge themselves by taking difficult classes, or holding Thursday night study sessions. Negative friends don’t work with you to prepare for final exams.
So what can we do? For all the students reading this who are succeeding in school, my advice is to step out and lend a helping hand to those who are not as successful. Be a supportive classmate, and more importantly, be a good role model. Promote the idea that getting good grades does not mean you’re acting “white” or “selling out” and it definitely does not mean you’re nerdy.

” I’m Not Really Talented and Gifted, I Just Play One for the PC Crowd”

Dr. Helen:

Wouldn’t the proper way to answer the question of why Blacks and Hispanics are lagging behind Whites and Asians be to conduct research on the factors that may be causing the discrepancies and remedy those rather than setting up a phony group of gifted students whose only gift may be that they have a teacher who holds self-esteem and looking diverse in higher regard than children actually learning anything?
With such unscientific inquiry, it is no wonder more and more parents are homeschooling or turning to private schools to educate their children. I foresee that the more schools substitute “diversity” for education, the more parents will take flight from the public schools.

The link includes several interesting comments.

A Formula for Failure in L.A. Schools

This is from a recent article in the Los Angeles Times. I was alerted to it by the Daily Howler blog http://www.dailyhowler.com/. I mention this because that site has had some great education coverage lately and will soon be launching an all-education companion blog.
http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-dropout30jan30,0,3211437.story?coll=la-news-learning
THE VANISHING CLASS
A Formula for Failure in L.A. Schools
Because they can’t pass algebra, thousands of students are denied diplomas. Many try again and again — but still get Fs.
By Duke Helfand
Times Staff Writer
January 30, 2006
Each morning, when Gabriela Ocampo looked up at the chalkboard in her ninth-grade algebra class, her spirits sank.
There she saw a mysterious language of polynomials and slope intercepts that looked about as familiar as hieroglyphics.
She knew she would face another day of confusion, another day of pretending to follow along. She could hardly do long division, let alone solve for x.
“I felt like, ‘Oh, my God, what am I going to do?’ ” she recalled.
Gabriela failed that first semester of freshman algebra. She failed again and again — six times in six semesters. And because students in Los Angeles Unified schools must pass algebra to graduate, her hopes for a diploma grew dimmer with each F.
Midway through 12th grade, Gabriela gathered her textbooks, dropped them at the campus book room and, without telling a soul, vanished from Birmingham High School.
Her story might be just a footnote to the Class of 2005 except that hundreds of her classmates, along with thousands of others across the district, also failed algebra.
Of all the obstacles to graduation, algebra was the most daunting.
The course that traditionally distinguished the college-bound from others has denied vast numbers of students a high school diploma.
“It triggers dropouts more than any single subject,” said Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer. “I think it is a cumulative failure of our ability to teach math adequately in the public school system.”

Continue reading A Formula for Failure in L.A. Schools

Advanced Classes Open Doors for Minorities

School district works to boost participation
By Kelly McBride
The path toward post-secondary education formed naturally for 18-year-old Wekeana Lassiter.
Her mom always emphasized the importance of learning. An older sister attends college at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. And Lassiter is a studious Green Bay Preble High School senior with aspirations of becoming an architect.
If college was a given, the Advanced Placement courses that are preparing her for it — as well as allowing her to earn college credit — made just as much sense for Lassiter, who will attend UWM in the fall.
“Originally, why I took AP classes was to get credit,” said Lassiter, who is enrolled in AP physics and AP calculus. “Now that I’m in them, they’re really difficult, (but) it’s awesome. You get kind of a feel about how college classes are going to be.”
But the doors that have opened for Lassiter, who is black, have in many cases stayed closed for some of her peers, say officials in the Green Bay School District.
Minority participation in AP courses continues to lag behind that of their white counterparts, with a lower percentage of minority students, by about 15 percentage points, taking AP courses than that of whites during 2004-05, data show.
But the figures are improving, and district officials say new initiatives can help alter the disparity.

“Beat the Achievement Gap” Student Conference

The Simpson Street Free Press will be holding a city-wide “Beat the Achievement Gap” conference on Saturday, February 25, at 2:00 p.m. at LaFollette High School, 702 Pflaum Road. At the conference, students will take the following pledge: “I will be an active role model for younger students. I will work to spread a positive message of engagement at my school and in my community. I will encourage academic success among my peers.”
For more information, see “The Gap According to Black: A Feature Column by Cydny Black” and the inspiring two-page spread entitled “Education: Bridging the Achievement Gap” in the January, 2006, issue of The Simpson Street Free Press.
Additional information at www.simpsonstreetfreepress.org

College Goal Sunday

WKOW-TV:

The goal of college goal Sunday is to help high school students fill out this the free application for federal student aid – or the FAFSA form. Students and their parents were taken through a step-by-step process of filling out the FAFSA something organizers say is the most important step in getting high school students to attend schools of higher education.
While 48 percent of Wisconsin High School students say they plan on attending college many don’t follow through because they don’t know where to look for financial aid. There were 14 families that attended the event in madison – and organizers hope they can expand that number next year. College goal sunday held in 12 different locations around the state. Wisconsin is one of 24 states that participated in the college goal sunday event.

College Aid Plan Rates US High School Academic Rigor

Sam Dillon:

The measure, backed by the Bush administration and expected to pass the House when it returns next month, would provide $750 to $1,300 grants to low-income college freshmen and sophomores who have completed “a rigorous secondary school program of study” and larger amounts to juniors and seniors majoring in math, science and other critical fields.
It leaves it to the secretary of education to define rigorous, giving her a new foothold in matters of high school curriculums.
Mindful of the delicate politics at play when Washington expands its educational role into matters zealously guarded as local prerogatives, senior Department of Education officials said they would consult with governors and other groups in determining which high school programs would allow students to qualify for grants.

Rebuilding the American Dream Machine

The Economist:

One of the more unlikely offices to have been flooded with mail is that of the City University of New York (CUNY), a public college that lacks, among other things, a famous sports team, bucolic campuses and raucous parties (it doesn’t even have dorms), and, until recently, academic credibility.
A primary draw at CUNY is a programme for particularly clever students, launched in 2001. Some 1,100 of the 60,000 students at CUNY’s five top schools receive a rare thing in the costly world of American colleges: free education. Those accepted by CUNY’s honours programme pay no tuition fees; instead they receive a stipend of $7,500 (to help with general expenses) and a laptop computer. Applications for early admissions into next year’s programme are up 70%.
Admission has nothing to do with being an athlete, or a child of an alumnus, or having an influential sponsor, or being a member of a particularly aggrieved ethnic group—criteria that are increasingly important at America’s elite colleges. Most of the students who apply to the honours programme come from relatively poor families, many of them immigrant ones. All that CUNY demands is that these students be diligent and clever.

Clarification of plans for 9th and 10th grade science at West HS

If you were at the West HS PTSO meeting last night (report to be posted soon for anyone who was unable to attend — the topic was an update on the SLC initiative by SLC Coordiator Heather Lott), then you know that the question of what 9th and 10th grade science will look like next year and thereafter was left somewhat unanswered. I had the following clarifying email exchange with West HS Principal Ed Holmes today:

Continue reading Clarification of plans for 9th and 10th grade science at West HS

West Moves Ahead With English 10 Restructuring

West High School has decided to move ahead with their curriculum reduction plan. The school has posted a document explaining the changes on their website. The one concession that the school has made to parents is their decision not to require students to give up time at lunch in order to earn an honors designation. Instead, there will be an embedded honors component where students will be expected to complete more complex assignments and take more challenging exams. Support for struggling students will now occur in the classroom as well.
From the document:

The staff training necessary for full implementation of the tenth grade English program will include:
• The basics of how to differentiate in the classroom. What is really meant by differentiated instruction? How is it successfully implemented at the high school level?
• Best practice strategies for supporting struggling learners in the heterogeneous classroom.

Response to “This is Not Your Grandchild’s Madison School District”

This is an open response to Mary Battaglia and Larry Winkler’s posts on the data showing rising numbers of low income and minority students in the Madison Metropolitan School District.
I tend to agree with Larry Winkler’s take that the “low income” and “minority” data is more of a diversion from the larger discussion of standards and achievement in our schools. The district and board have presented data on low income and/or minority status (not synonymous) as if it is an explanation or an excuse for the low expecations and low achievement levels of portions of the district student body.
We need to rethink to how our schools and educational programs operate and are staffed if we are to achieve high educational standards during a time of demographic change. We are seeing changes that include more low income students, students of color, populations for whom English is a second language, and students of all backgrounds who face extraordinary challenges at home. We also are seeing more stress among students who are under extreme academic pressure at home and at school in ways that did not exist twenty years ago.
We don’t have the same populations that we had five or ten years ago. Why would expect to sustain high academic achievement without a discussion of whether we need to realign our human and financial resources in order to do so? (And I’m not talking about one-directional PowerPoint presentations that don’t get at the issues.)

Continue reading Response to “This is Not Your Grandchild’s Madison School District”

Academic gap shrinks; both levels drop

By Michele Munz
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Sunday, Oct. 30 2005
The gap in academic achievement between black and white students in the St. Louis area has decreased in the past five years, according to findings released Sunday of the first comprehensive study of school districts’ efforts to reduce the gap – but only because the academic performance of white students dropped more than that of black students.
The study concluded: “An alarming fact came forth: the decrease in the gap was not due to an increase in achievement by black students, but, instead, resulted largely from a decrease in achievement levels by both black and white students.”

Continue reading Academic gap shrinks; both levels drop

2005 ACT Scores: Minnesota #1, WI Minority Achievement Gap Increases

Alan Borsuk (69% of Wisconsin’s Class of 2005 took the ACT):

Wisconsin kids in the Class of 2006 averaged 22.2 on a scale of 36 on the ACT, the same score for Wisconsin for the sixth straight year. But the average score in Minnesota moved up a tenth of a point to 22.3, breaking last year’s tie for the best record among 25 states where the ACT is the dominant exam.
Wisconsin officials said 10.2% of the 45,700 students in the Class of 2005 who took the ACT were from minority groups, up from 9.8% in 2004.
However, the gap between white students and some minority groups, particularly African-Americans, remained a major concern, both Ferguson and Burmaster said, and the new results presented little evidence that the gap was closing.
The composite score of black students in Wisconsin was 16.9 this year, compared with 17.2 a year ago. The composite score of white students stayed the same at 22.6.
ACT officials also report results based on whether students took what is considered a “core curriculum” for getting ready for college – at least four years of English and three years of math, natural sciences and social sciences.

Wisconsin students who did that had an average score of 22.9 while those who took less than the core program averaged 20.9. Both figures were a point or better than the comparable national averages.

ACT data and results are available here.

Parents Question Math Strategies in Boston

Surely, the quote of the day:

”What’s going to happen when they go into a store? Are they going to say, ‘Do you happen to have 25 Cheerios so I can break it down?’ ” said Jacqueline Azulay of Roslindale, who sees her two daughters going to great lengths to break large numbers into manageable pieces. ”I think they need to teach basic math.”

Vanessa Parks dives into the math wars with many interesting quotes.

West again proposes eliminating Accelerated Biology

Information from West High reveals that once again the Accelerated Biology course is being slated for the chopping block. The cutting of this course is being proposed as part of the initiative to maintain all inclusive, heterogeneous classrooms. Proponents of this cut, propose an alternative “Honors” designation for interested students who wish to be challenged above the standard course curriculum. Under this proposal, these “honors” students would do additional work alongside the standard curriculum that they would be completing in the heterogeneous classroom.
It was just this past spring, that a community letter writing campaign kept the accelerated biology class from being eliminated. If interested in sharing your thoughts on this program cut, please contact Mike Lipp, Science Dept. chair, Mikki Smith, Vice Principal in charge of scheduling, or Principal Ed Holmes.

The value of AP courses

A study published this year in Psychological Science by April Bleske-Rechek and colleagues highlights the importance of Advanced Placement (AP) courses. Students who took AP courses in high school were much more likely to go on and obtain an advanced degree after graduating from college than similar students who did not take AP courses. This suggests that if we want students to make the most of their intellectual abilities, and if we want society to benefit from this intellectual capital, we need to provide these students with appropriate levels of challenge in their school coursework.

Continue reading The value of AP courses

Nation’s students unprepared for college

A new report from ACT reveals that the vast majority of America’s high school students have not taken the courses they need to be successful in college or in the workforce. The report Crisis at the Core found that only 22% of the 1.2 million 2004 high school graduates who took the ACT exam in 2004 met all three of the ACT’s readiness benchmarks in science, math, and English. The report highlights the importance of taking high level courses in math and science.

Continue reading Nation’s students unprepared for college

Academic Ranking of World Universities – 2004

Fascinating look at the top 500 World Universities, from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s perspective (the UW, my alma matter is #18). Criteria and weights are based on:

We rank universities by several indicators of academic or research performance, including alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, articles published in Nature and Science, articles in Science Citation Index-expanded and Social Science Citation Index, and academic performance with respect to the size of an institution.

Would Shakespeare Get Into Swarthmore?

John Katzman, Andy Lutz, and Erik Olson write: How several well-known writers (and the Unabomber) would fare on the new SAT.

In the summer of 2002 the College Board announced its plans to change the SAT. The new test will (surprise, surprise) contain several higher-level algebra questions, will no longer contain analogies questions, and will�as part of a whole new section on “writing”�includ an essay question. It is scheduled to be administered for the first time in March of next year.
To illustrate how the essays on the “new” SAT will be scored, The Princeton Review has composed some typical essay questions, provided answers from several well-known authors, and applied the College Board’s grading criteria to their writing.