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.

“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.

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.

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?

“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.

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.