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Thursday, September 15, 2011

324. College Access and Success News



Here are links to recent news on college access and success.

by

Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)





1. Rural schools draw support from their communities, by Sally Holland - #cnn http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/13/rural.community.education/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1 -"College enrollment is really low," she said, noting that only 17% of adults in rural communities have a college degree. Studies have shown that children with college-educated parents are more likely to attend college themselves."


2. SAT reading scores fall to lowest level on record - Tribune Chronicle - Warren, OH: http://bit.ly/p5vt2c via AddThis - "The main message from the College Board was the importance of a rigorous curriculum, which is a strong and perhaps growing predictor of SAT scores."


3. Youngstown News, City schools’ rank is ‘nothing to celebrate’ by Denise Dick - http://www.vindy.com/news/2011/sep/15/city-schools8217-rank-is-8216nothing-to-/ via @vindicator - “It hurts me to look at the data,” Heffner said. “It hurts me to think about those kids.” While there have been improvements, Heffner wants things to progress faster. “Every day you delay is a day you put children at risk for not getting an education,” he said."


4. Part 4: Answers to Your Back-to-School Admissions Questions, by ROBIN MAMLET and CHRISTINE VANDEVELDE: http://nyti.ms/owpLOW - "We are in what I call the financial aid doughnut hole – too many assets to qualify for aid with one in private college now, but too little money to write those big checks without pain."


5. For-Profit Seal of Approval, by Paul Fain - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/ppuioX via @AddThis - "A for-profit-college trade group has released standards of conduct that it hopes will become a Better Business Bureau-style “seal of approval” for colleges that sign them, giving assurance and consumer protection to students. But industry observers say too few for-profit institutions have endorsed the standards from the Foundation for Educational Success to give that seal real power, at least for now."


6. SAT Scores Drop, by Scott Jaschik - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/nlK8Ch via @AddThis -"Gaps are also evident by racial and ethnic group. Asian Americans continue to show gains -- even as this year other groups do not. Over the last three years, the combined average scores of Asian American test takers have gone up by 30 points, while every other group showed declines."


7. Not Marching in Step, Elizabeth Murphy - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/ql6mGn via @AddThis - "As it stands, Brown has maintained an agreement with Providence College to provide Army ROTC services to Brown students, a relationship the committee recommended keeping."


8. Will Saving for College Hurt Financial Aid Chances? by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://moneywatch.bnet.com/spending/blog/college-solution/will-saving-for-college-hurt-financial-aid-chances/6608/ via @cbsmoneywatch - "Colleges don’t care about any savings that you’ve squirreled away in retirement accounts. A family can stash millions in retirement accounts and it won’t impact their chances for financial aid. Schools realize that parents need to save for retirement."


9. New STEM Schools Target Underrepresented Groups, by Erik W. Robelen -http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/09/14/03stem_ep.h31.html via @educationweek -"While STEM schools historically have tended to target the top math and science students in a state or district, the new wave appears to have a broader reach, with many of the schools aimed especially at serving groups underrepresented in the STEM fields, such as African-American, Hispanic, female, and low-income students."


10. Pay for Only 4 Years of College. Guaranteed. by Alan Schwarz - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/education/15fifth.html?hpw - "Four-year degree guarantees, as they have become known, are being offered at a growing number of smaller private colleges. They work as a marketing tool, giving colleges a way to ease parents’ fears that their children might enjoy college enough to stick around for five or six costly years. And they help to focus attention on the task at hand: graduating in four years."


11. Poor Are Still Getting Poorer, but Downturn’s Punch Varies, Census Data Show, by Jason DeParle and Sabrina Tavernise: http://nyti.ms/neIez9 - “There’s been a suburbanization of poverty,” said Alan Berube, a Brookings demographer, who cited the growth of service, retail and construction jobs that lured low-income Americans to the suburbs before the recession. “The notion of poverty being only in inner cities and isolated rural areas is increasingly out of step with reality.”


12. Continuing Financial Strain Dims Prospects for Public 2-Year Colleges, Report Says,by Jennifer Gonzalez - http://chronicle.com/article/Continuing-Financial-Strain/128995/ - "More importantly, the financial strain threatens to undermine the nation's college-completion agenda and overall economic prospects, the report concludes."


13. Pipeline Into Partnerships offers minority students a chance, by Sarah Garland: http://usat.ly/pnYV7l#.TnIJ_CBq1-Y.twitter via @USATODAY - "Under the program, called Pipelines Into Partnerships, the college's admissions office outsourced much of the responsibility for choosing 17 members of its incoming freshman class to KIPP, the largest charter chain in the country, as well as to a high school in Brooklyn and the Boys and Girls Club of Schenectady, N.Y."


14. What the decline in SAT scores really means, by Valerie Strauss - The Answer Sheet - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/what-the-decline-in-sat-scores-really-means/2011/09/14/gIQAdUzdSK_blog.html via Washingtonpost.com - "At some point, all of the evidence will start to convince policy-makers that the punitive test-driven reforms won’t improve academic achievement, especially among the growing numbers of first-generation students and English language-learners."


15. Marriage, College, Job Won't Ward Off Bankruptcy, by Eric Morath -http://on.wsj.com/qqCaw0 - "The study found that those holding a bachelor’s degree accounted for 13.58% of filings last year, up from 11.2% in 2006—a 21% increase. Those holding high school degrees still accounted for the largest percentage of filers, 36.27%, but their proportion of all filers fell by 8.6%."


16. Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily ▸ today's top stories about college access and success, via






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