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.

This New York Times article explores the ways in which colleges separate “superinvolved parents” from their children on move-in day.

A company called Ultrinsic is making it possible for students to win money by betting on their grades at 36 colleges.  Students can be rewarded for earning A’s or take out grade insurance if they think they will not do well in a class.  Is it wise to motivate students with monetary rewards?  Is betting on grades even legal?

In her recent American Prospect article, Sara Mead argues that, in terms of educational reform, we should shift our focus toward early literacy rather than older students.

“Why focus on early literacy? Because whether children can read well by the end of third grade is a strong predictor of how they are likely to do in the future — in school, at work, and as parents and citizens. The facts are sobering. Children who do not learn to read proficiently by the end of third grade are unlikely ever to read at grade level. These youngsters are at high risk for later school failure and behavioral problems, for dropping out of high school, and for a host of negative life outcomes once they reach adulthood. For example, poor reading skills in the early elementary grades are highly correlated with later delinquency. According to the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 38 percent of all youth in juvenile detention read below the fourth-grade level.”

Students who do not learn to read by the end of third grade are at a severe disadvantage, as this is the age when students stop “learning to read” and start “reading to learn.”  These same students may be act out and create behavioral problems within the classroom precisely because they lack the literacy skills necessary to succeed at higher levels of education.  The article is a good reminder of the importance of developing early literacy skills and making reading a primary focus within the curriculum.

According to a recent MDRC study, small non-selective high schools are graduating more students than their larger counterparts.  From the study’s overview, here is a brief rundown of the findings:

• By the end of their first year of high school, 58.5 percent of SSC enrollees are on track to graduate in four years compared with 48.5 percent of their non-SSC counterparts, for a difference of 10.0 percentage points. These positive effects are sustained over the next two years.
• By the fourth year of high school, SSCs increase overall graduation rates by 6.8 percentage points, which is roughly one-third the size of the gap in graduation rates between white students and students of color in New York City.
• SSCs’ positive effects are seen for a broad range of students, including male high school students of color, whose educational prospects have been historically difficult to improve.

However, Clara Hempbell of the New School’s blah blah blah wonders whether the “collateral damage” caused by opening these small schools outweighs the possible benefits.  “As the large dysfunctional schools were closed, thousands of students were diverted to remaining large schools.”  With the increase in enrollment came a decrease in attendance and graduation rates.

Follow this story in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Houston Chronicle.

According to a recent New York Times article, public documents reveal that many charter schools are engaging in questionable financial practices, opening them up to greater scrutiny.

“During its first years of operation, the Niagara Charter School in Niagara Falls spent thousands of dollars on plane tickets, restaurant meals and alcohol, and more than $100,000 on no-bid consulting contracts. Yet the school’s teachers resorted to organizing a fund-raiser to buy playground equipment.

When the Roosevelt Children’s Academy, a charter school on Long Island, fired its management company after paying it more than $1 million a year, it hired two of the school’s board members as new managers — and paid them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And in the Bronx, the Family Life Charter School pays $400,000 annually to rent classroom space from the Latino Pastoral Action Center, a “Christ-centered holistic ministry” led by the Rev. Raymond Rivera. Mr. Rivera also happens to be the school’s founder.”

Continue reading here.

The results of the NAEP national reading test are in, and while fourth graders showed significant improvement on reading tests, eighth graders did not.  Despite the fourth graders gains, the scores are still strikingly low, on city-, state-, and nationwide levels.

Nationally, only 31 percent of fourth- grade public school students are at or above the “proficient” level in reading, a standard defined by the test as “competency over challenging subject matter.” Sixty-five percent are at or above the “basic” level, with partial mastery of knowledge and skills that are considered fundamental.

Among fourth graders in New York State public schools, 36 percent are at or above the proficient level in reading, and 71 percent are at or above the basic level — both better than the national results for public school students. In the city, 29 percent of fourth graders are at or above proficiency, and 62 percent are at or above the basic level — both figures that are below the national percentages, but better than those of many other urban school systems.

To read more, follow this link to the New York Times article discussing the test results.

A recent Time magazine article by Amanda Ripley discusses a study performed by Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr. to determine whether financial incentives really improve student performance.  The experiment involved four different payment schemes implemented in four different cities.  Fourth and seventh graders in New York were paid $25 and $50 respectively for good test scores, but the test showed no change on scores over the  control group.  In Chicago, 9th graders were paid different amounts for each grade they received–$50 for an A, $35 for a B, and $20 for a C.  There, students received better grades than the control group, but standardized test performance did not improve.  In Washington D.C., “middle schoolers [were] paid for a portfolio of five different metrics, including attendance and good behavior.”  These students performed better on standardized reading tests.  In Dallas, second graders were paid $2 for each book they read and successfully completed a test on.  The Dallas experiment seems to have been the most successful, with students showing significant improvement on standardized reading comprehension tests.  The article is lengthy, but worth reading for more specific details as well as Fryer’s overall conclusions.