In “Respecting Teachers in the Sunshine State,” a recent City Journal opinion piece, Marcus Winters argues that the new Florida law that effectively eliminates tenure for new hires, abolishes seniority-based layoffs, and allows educators’ salaries to be determined through performance-based schedules will save the educational system, which currently “treats teachers like interchangeable widgets.”

Jack Gillum and Marisol Bellow explore high erasure rates on tests in high performing D.C. schools in “When Standardized Test Scores Soared in D.C., Were the Gains Real?“  Many schools that received performance bonuses had much higher than average rates of wrong answers changed to correct ones, triggering investigations.  Most of the schools were cleared; however, uncertainty about the data still remains.  The article raises questions about whether pressures to achieve performance-based incentives might lead to corrupt behavior.

Finally, this recent feature in New York magazine takes a look at Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public school system, and her educational reform agenda.

Harvard and Princeton announced on Thursday that they will restore their early admission program for the Fall 2012 application cycle, despite criticism that early acceptance programs favor higher-income applicants, particularly those who do not need to worry about comparing financial-aid offers from different colleges.  The two schools suspended their early admission program in 2006, hoping that other highly selective programs would follow suit.  However, only University of Virginia, did — and UVa announced a return to early admissions late last year.  All three schools offer “early action” programs, meaning that acceptance is non-binding, and applicants may wait until April to assess other offers.  Here is the New York Times and Chronicle of Higher Education with more details.

In “What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness,” Clark Wheldon, writing for City Journal, discusses the use of vague filler words–”like,” “you know,” “sort of”–which function as a way to avoid saying anything concrete or specific:

“I recently watched a television program in which a woman described a baby squirrel that she had found in her yard. “And he was like, you know, ‘Helloooo, what are you looking at?’ and stuff, and I’m like, you know, ‘Can I, like, pick you up?,’ and he goes, like, ‘Brrrp brrrp brrrp,’ and I’m like, you know, ‘Whoa, that is so wow!’ ” She rambled on, speaking in self-quotations, sound effects, and other vocabulary substitutes, punctuating her sentences with facial tics and lateral eye shifts. All the while, however, she never said anything specific about her encounter with the squirrel.”

It’s a useful reminder of the way in which we sometimes hide behind words, not just in spoken English, but in our writing as well, using language to avoid saying anything at all.

In a recent blog posting to The Atlantic, John Tierney collects an assortment of confusing and often disheartening articles regarding the current state of higher education.  The articles concern topics such as the decline in number of  hours spending studying and preparing for class, the stress and depression faced by many college students, and the changing budgets for institutions of higher education, which increasingly shift funds away from instruction and toward administration and recreational facilities.  Tierney, a high school teacher at a prestigious private school in Boston, ends with some comments regarding the students he teaches:

Some of the students I teach work really hard.  They’re good, diligent students. I’m happy to teach them and am proud of their accomplishments.

But, my sense is that most of the students at this school spend enormous amounts of time watching television, checking out Facebook, and otherwise engaging in totally unproductive activity. They certainly don’t read anything!  In fact, I would say that the number one problem in contemporary American education is that students do not read enough.  Their reading comprehension is horrible.  Their vocabularies are impoverished.  They cannot talk about anything outside their own closed little worlds.

Our own personal observations certainly confirm the importance of an active reading life.  Reading can be hard work, particularly when you read the kind of complex articles and stories that truly build critical thinking skills.  These same articles, however, are also the ones that yield the greatest insight into the greater world beyond the narrow place we typically inhabit.  The students we know who read for pleasure outside of school have more advanced critical thinking abilities, find it easier to compose essays for their college applications, and face far less difficulty in preparing for standardized exams.  It can be hard to find the time, certainly, but consider it an investment that will yield educational dividends and enrich your intellectual life.

In  “The Art of Good Writing,” Adam Haslett of the Financial Times considers the way in which sentence form dictates content.  In reviewing Stanley Fish’s new book, Haslett compares the rules endorsed by Strunk and White — those emphasizing brevity — with some more complex sentences from Henry James, David Foster Wallace, and others,  to show that meaning cannot be separated from sound.  It’s an excellent article, and worth reading to see how it applies not just to literary fiction, but essay style in general.

In “To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take Tests,” Pam Belluck of the New York Times discusses the results of a recent study which indicates that tests are not only useful to confirm how much we have learned, but are also useful in the learning process itself.  She writes:

The research, published online Thursday in the journal Science, found that students who read a passage, then took a test asking them to recall what they had read, retained about 50 percent more of the information a week later than students who used two other methods.

Participants in the study were divided into four groups, each of which used a different study method.  Those in the group that scored highest were asked to take a “retrieval practice” test, which involved studying a passage, writing a 10-minute “free-form essay” on what they recalled from the passage, rereading the passage, and taking the test again.

This study confirms two things we have always believed at Stylus.   First, it affirms the importance of “writing to learn,” the practice of short, low-stakes writing assignments to cement learning.  Second, it reinforces our recommended method of preparing for standardized tests, which involves repeated testing but, more importantly, thorough understanding of what makes an answer right or wrong.  It is not enough to merely take and score the practice section; we see much more improvement among those students who carefully review the mistakes they made, predict and confirm why the correct answer is right and their answer wrong, and then retake a similar (or even the same!) section.  This practice is particularly beneficial in studying for the SAT because College Board tends to use very similar questions from year to year–variations on a theme.

The Times article is worth reading in full to explore how it might apply to techniques of learning in general.

“With college application deadlines looming, and some early decision letters already in the mail, high school seniors are facing a lot of anxiety.

There’s enormous pressure on kids these days. But it turns out that getting schools, parents — and even kids — to ratchet it down is easier said than done.”

A recent report on NPR discusses the measures some high schools are taking to reduce stress for students, such as eliminating AP classes and instituting homework-free weekends.  On the other hand, might these measures hurt students’ chances of getting into the most elite schools?

In a recent New York Times article, Jacques Steinberg explores whether the benefits of attending a selective private college really outweigh the costs:

“The sluggish economy and rising costs of college have only intensified questions about whether expensive, prestigious colleges make any difference. Do their graduates make more money? Get into better professional programs? Make better connections? And are they more satisfied with their lives, or at least with their work?”

The answer to most of these questions turns out to be “it depends.”  For more details, continue reading here.

U.S. News and World Report has a recent feature on several major changes to the college admissions process:

Colleges, swamped by applications from increasingly anxious high schoolers, are changing their admissions rules to weed out applicants who try to game the system by getting easy A’s or plagiarizing their essays.

Interviews with admissions officers at some of the nation’s most popular colleges reveal recent and important shifts in the weighting of traditional admission factors. Recommendations and high school class rank matter less to many colleges, especially big public universities, than they used to. Instead, a growing number of colleges of all types are putting more emphasis on students’ essays and the difficulty of applicants’ high school classes.

Read on here for the eight major changes in detail.

THE numbers keep rising, the superlatives keep glowing. Each year, selective colleges promote their application totals, along with the virtues of their applicants.

For this fall’s freshman class, the statistics reached remarkable levels. Stanford received a record 32,022 applications from students it called “simply amazing,” and accepted 7 percent of them. Brown saw an unprecedented 30,135 applicants, who left the admissions staff “deeply impressed and at times awed.” Nine percent were admitted.

The biggest boast came from the University of California, Los Angeles. In a news release, U.C.L.A. said its accepted students had “demonstrated excellence in all aspects of their lives.” Citing its record 57,670 applications, the university proclaimed itself “the most popular campus in the nation.”

Such announcements tell a story in which colleges get better — and students get more amazing — every year. In reality, the narrative is far more complex, and the implications far less sunny for students as well as colleges caught up in the cruel cycle of selectivity.

This New York Times article examines the methods colleges use to boost their selectivity ratings–and the consequences of these actions.