388. 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. Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily ▸ today's top stories on college access and success via @rottenbornj ▸ http://paper.li/rottenbornj

2. NAEP Scores: Achievement Gap in D.C. Still Wide Education News - http://shar.es/oTbKI

3. More on the D.C. Achievement Gap and Michelle Rhee's Legacy - http://bit.ly/u20rqW

4. Chicago Teachers Union Organizes Parents Against CPS ‘School Actions’ -http://www.enewspf.com/latest-news/school-news/29530-chicago-teachers-union-organizes-parents-against-cps-school-actions-.html

5. Maya Cole: Why I will vote against Madison Prep http://bit.ly/uBtOk3

6. Researchers Probe 'Myths' Around Math Gender Gap, by Sarah D. Sparks - http://t.co/cMCj6Ybx via @educationweek

7. Start the scholarship search with fact-finding http://t.co/nxBiwOEU & The Charlotte Observer Newspaper: http://t.co/8g9wlTX2 via @AddThis

8. Vanderbilt, Duke are South's most selective colleges - http://t.co/nq2Xv3VW via @nashvillebiz

9. Rice is most selective college for admissions in Texas - http://t.co/4F4i0JrT via @HOUBizjournal

10. On College: What struggles do you reveal on your college application? - San Jose Mercury News http://t.co/WSInAjqR

297. Summer College News

Here are some links to today's stories

about college access and success.

by

Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

1. Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily ▸ today's top stories on college access and success via @rottenbornj ▸ http://t.co/UftEiOc

2. NCAA cost-of-attendance puzzle: many schools, many methods, by Calder Silcox, Steve Berkowitz, and Jodi Upton - http://t.co/6IG4nQ3 via @USATODAY - "Instead, each school's financial-aid office makes an estimate — and each school uses its own formula. An estimate for in-state and out-of-state students is reported to the NCAA each year."

3. New school set to open, by Virginia Shank - Tribune Chronicle - Warren, OH: http://bit.ly/ofUjGz - "In 1997 the state legislature passed a law allowing community, or charter schools, to operate in Ohio. According to the Ohio Department of Education, there now are some 300 such schools in Ohio, including several in the Mahoning Valley. The privately operated schools receive public dollars, and typically cater to at-risk pupils. Like other community schools, STEAM is to be funded with public money; therefore, there is no cost to the family for a student to attend."

4. Debt, Dropouts and Degrees, by Libby A. Nelson - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/n6DiJq - "The report, “Debt to Degree: A New Way of Measuring College Success,” was released Wednesday by Education Sector. Its authors say they aim to give a more complete picture of higher education -- rather than judging by graduation rates alone or by default rates alone -- by dividing the total amount of money undergraduates borrow at a college by the number of degrees it awards."

5. Debt to Degree: A New Way of Measuring College Success, by Kevin Carey and Erin Dillon - http://www.educationsector.org/sites/default/files/publications/Debt%20to%20Degree%20CYCT_RELEASE.pdf - "The American higher education system is plagued by two chronicproblems: dropouts and debt. Barely half of the students who start college geta degree within six years, and graduation rates at less-selective colleges oftenhover at 25 percent or less. At the same time, student loan debt is at an all-timehigh, recently passing credit card debt in total volume. Loan default rates haverisen sharply in recent years, consigning a growing number of students to yearsof financial misery. In combination, drop-outs and debt are a major threat to thenation’s ability to help students become productive, well-educated citizens."

6. Texas orders ATI to stop enrolling new students - http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9OORN3G2.htm - "The Texas Workforce Commission has ordered ATI Enterprises Inc. to halt new enrollment at its 16 careers schools and complete training programs for current students. . . . The commission in April announced the company had been put on probation and required an outside auditor to review 2010 placement results."

7. University Reveals the Secrets of Winning Merit Scholarships, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/6qmUu8v via @cbsmoneywatch - "That’s why I was excited when the University of Rochester decided to share its fascinating accounting of just what mattered when the school was deciding which applicants would get its latest round of merit awards. After the university’s freshmen class had been selected, Jonathan Burdick, Rochester’s dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid, sat down this summer and analyzed the merit scholarship numbers to determine what admission factors had influenced the scholarship decisions."

8. Bloomberg to Use Own Funds in Plan to Aid Minority Youth, by Michael Barbaro and Fernanda Santos - http://nyti.ms/qOwY7K - "Even as crime has fallen and graduation rates have risen in New York over the past decade, city officials said that black and Latino men, especially those between ages 16 and 24, remained in crisis by nearly every measure, including rates of arrest, school suspension and poverty. Although the populations of young white, black and Latino men in New York are roughly the same size, 84 percent of those in the city’s detention facilities and nearly all of those admitted to children’s and family services facilities are black and Latino youth, according to data from the Bloomberg administration. “The magnitude of the disparities is stunning,” said Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor for health and human services. “It’s tragic.”

9. Teach for America 2011 acceptance rate: 11 percent, by Jenna Johnson - Campus Overload - http://t.co/TQlr2g6 via @washingtonpost - "Since 2008, Teach for America has compiled a “top contributors list” to rank schools of similar size by the number of students who are accepted into the program. This year, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor had the highest number of students selected, with 119. For medium-sized schools, Harvard led the pack with 66 placements. And for small schools with fewer than 2,999 undergraduates, Spelman College had 36 placements."

10. America's Top Colleges: Forbes List - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/03/forbes-top-colleges-for_n_917203.html#s320311&title=Williams_College - "For the second year in a row, Williams College, a small, western-Massachusetts liberal arts school, has been named as the best undergraduate institution in America. With total annual costs adding up to nearly $55,000, a Williams education is certainly not cheap, but the 2,000 undergraduates here have among the highest four-year graduation rates in the country, win loads of prestigious national awards like Rhodes and Marshall Scholarships, and are often rewarded with high-paying careers."

11. HBCU Voices: Students On Why HBCUs Remain Relevant - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/03/hbcu-voices-students-on-w_n_917066.html#s320667&title=Danyelle_Gary_Hampton - "Here at HuffPost College, we asked current HBCU students to share what their schools meant to them. The response to this question was overwhelming. Many students said they were accepted to "predominantly white institutions," but chose instead HBCUs to connect to their past and present. Others said they sought the communities they found at HBCUs, or wanted to continue a family tradition of HBCU education."

286. Summer College News

Here are some links to today's stories

about college access and success.

by

Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

1. Column: Combat pay for teachers will help students, DeWayne Wickham - http://usat.ly/oYQfub via @USATODAY - "Those good teachers who take on the job of educating young people in neighborhoods where the body count of underachieving students rivals that of Afghanistan's killing fields deserve combat pay."

2. Frustration with the Feds, by Libby A. Nelson - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/o8eId5 - "Most notable, of course, was the shift from a mix of bank-based and government lending to 100 percent government lending last summer, which changed the way the majority of student loans were issued. But the past year has also brought the end of the summer Pell Grant, the controversial rules on program integrity and the fight over the “gainful employment” regulation. Many new regulations will take effect in the coming months, including new measures of default rates and the hefty disclosure requirements for institutions that sponsor vocational programs subject to the gainful employment regulations."

3. Online and Incomplete, by Scott Jaschik - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/pDffVx - "But a new study urges caution to those who believe that online education is a panacea for educating more community college students. The study finds that students who enrolled in online courses -- controlling for various factors that tend to predict success -- were more likely to fail or drop out of the courses than were those who took the same courses in person. Notably, there was not a gap in completion between those enrolled in hybrid and in-person courses."

4. Bowdoin Says No Need for SAT While Buying College Board Scores, by Janet Lorin - http://t.co/aHSc3Kk via @BloombergNews - "Colleges from Bowdoin in Maine to Pitzer in California dropped the SAT entrance exam as a requirement, saying it favors the affluent, penalizes minorities and doesn’t predict academic success. What they don’t advertise is they find future students by buying names of kids who do well on the test . . . . The company and its competitor, Iowa City, Iowa-based ACT Inc., both nonprofit, sell names for 33 cents apiece."

5. 10 Most Expensive State Universities for Outsiders, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/1MRTusS via @cbsmoneywatch - "Beware of extremely expensive out-of-state public universities. When you include tuition, fees and room/ board, the most expensive state universities for nonresidents are costing more than $50,000 a year . . . . The University of Michigan happens to be the most expensive public university in the nation for nonresidents, according to US News & World Report. Here are the top 10:"

6. Half of Texas' Students Have Been Suspended, Study Finds, by Nirvi Shah - http://t.co/d94aVpy via @educationweek - "Also, the study raises concerns about how nearly half the students disciplined 11 or more times also were in contact with the Texas juvenile justice system, raising the specter of the so-called “school-to-prison” pipeline . . . . Some groups of students were more vulnerable to suspension or expulsion than others, the study found. For example, 75 percent of African-American students were expelled or suspended, compared to 50 percent of white students.Also, 75 percent of students with disabilities were suspended or expelled, compared with 55 percent of students without a disability."

7. School Discipline Study Raises Fresh Questions, by Alan Schwarz - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/education/19discipline.html?_r=1&hp - "The study linked these disciplinary actions to lower rates of graduation and higher rates of later criminal activity and found that minority students were more likely than whites to face the more severe punishments."

8. A Sociologist Returns to the Mean Streets of His Youth, by Peter Monaghan - http://bit.ly/q4UNeZ - "In the boys' world, he says, "instead of feeling that you can graduate high school and go to college as a coming-of-age ritual, now you might grow up thinking that in order to show your manhood, you have to get locked up."

9. MinnPost - Admission Possible: Closing a disturbing divide in Minnesota's educational landscape, by Sharon Schmickle : http://bit.ly/pQ8t0v - "A disturbing divide cuts through Minnesota’s educational landscape. On one side, middle- and upper-income kids thrive academically in keeping with the state’s longstanding emphasis on quality education. On the other side, low-income minority kids can’t seem to get a toehold on success.Not only is this a breach of social justice. It also is a serious economic problem."

188. MVCAP fyi

See free MVCAP e-books on college admissions and financial aid for sharing, printing, and downloading at our online resource library: http://issuu.com/mvcap

1. Fraternity official reacts to shooting - TribToday.com - Tribune Chronicle - Warren, OH: http://t.co/ACjh8AU

"This senseless act of violence has stunned the fraternity, the collegiate community and all who respect civility in our nation. The weight of this tragedy strengthens our resolve to uplift humanity at every station in life as we carry the hope and promise of our Brother, Jamail Johnson," Ray said."

2. Jamail Johnson, YSU Shooting Victim, Died Trying To Save Others - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/08/jamail-johnson-youngstown_n_820296.html

‎"As gunfire rang out and people ran for their lives, 25 year old Jamail Johnson ran toward the shooters. Johnson pushed them out of the fraternity house, potentially saving dozens more people from injury or death.Johnson continued on, even after being shot, eventually losing his life trying to protect others."

3. College Warns Accepted Applicants: Keep ‘Shoulder to Wheel’, by C. O. Gerszberg - http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/mom-u-02-08/#more-27735

"To be more specific, we expect you to continue the courses that you committed to take, to maintain achievement commensurate with your ability, and to sustain your extra-curricular commitments and leadership."

4. Left in the Hall, by David Moltz - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/hCVUNY

"Even the 22 percent of community college students who took placement tests had difficulties enrolling in the courses in which they placed. Nearly 30 percent of students who took English or mathematics placement tests were unable to enroll in all of their recommended courses last semester."

5. Classroom Matters, by Steve Kolowich - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/fAxDIg

“The majority of students who had Spanish in high school found it helpful,” says Glynis Cowell, director of the Spanish program there. However, she added, “For the true beginner it probably wasn’t as smooth a transition.” The university attracted a lot of attention a year and a half ago when it announced it was going to start teaching entry-level Spanish only on the Web."

6. Harkin Calls On For-Profit Colleges To End Deceptive Recruiting Practices - http://help.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/?id=068bd7c1-0311-447a-97b3-66eb01337012&groups=Chair

“Rather than offering students a better life, these types of strong-arm, emotionally abusive tactics are all too typical of schools that have little or no interest in providing students the academic help and support they need to succeed," Harkin said. "When these types of deceptive and exploitative tactics are used to enroll students, we should not be surprised to see high drop out and high default rates . . . .”

7. AdmissionSplash: Facebook Application Predicts Likelihood of Getting Into College - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/08/facebook-application-pred_n_820277.html

‎"AdmissionSplash asks students to submit a short or long personal profile including quantitative and qualitative characteristics, such as test scores, grades and extra-curricular activities, which colleges consider when making admissions decisions. The program then uses this information, along with public admissions statistics, to predict the student's chance of getting into any of the 1,500 colleges . . . ."

8. Perry to Push Texas Colleges to Offer $10,000 Degree, by Ross Ramsey - http://t.co/rHjvyd6 via @TexasTribune

"Gov. Rick Perry will challenge the state's colleges and universities to offer a $10,000 bachelor's degree, including books, in his State of the State speech later this morning, according to sources familiar with some of the proposals. Perry also wants lawmakers to consider outcome-based financial support for those schools . . . ."

9. 25 Private Colleges With the Best Graduation Rates, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/kXyrCi5

‎"The schools that enjoy that nation’s highest graduation rates are among the country’s most elite private universities and liberal arts colleges. The students who attend these schools are high achievers and the institutions are among the wealthiest, which permits them to offer an abundance of resources to their students."

10. Big, Big Money Problem: Finding Funds for Pell Grants, by Alyson Klein - http://t.co/kITZzHc

‎"There is a major, major shortfall in the Pell Grant program, which finances scholarships to help low-income students attend college. . . . That means that in order to keep grants at their current levels (the maximum is $5,550), Congress will have to find more than $5 billion in fiscal year 2011. Part of that money was included in the stop-gap measure that's currently funding the entire federal government . . . ."

11. 'Achieving the Dream' Produces Little Change at Community Colleges, by Jennifer Gonzalez - http://chronicle.com/article/Achieving-the-Dream-Produces/126304/

‎"Most of the original 26 colleges in the Achieving the Dream project have relied on data to drive strategies designed to increase student achievement—for example, the introduction of learning communities and courses in how to succeed in college. But those efforts have not resulted in more students' completing developmental courses, a necessity for the many underprepared students who hope to complete degree or certificates. . . ."

• Follow the most important stories on college admissions and financial aid on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rottenbornj


• For links to articles on college admissions and financial aid, you can "friend" Joe Rottenborn at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=23325544


• "Like" the MVCAP fan page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=23325544#!/pages/Mahoning-Valley-College-Access-Program-MVCAP/284002915922


• You can join the group MVCAP Financial-Aid Friends at this page: http://www.facebook.com/?sk=2361831622#!/group.php?gid=126580419181


• Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily for today's top stories on college admissions/financial aid in newsletter form - http://paper.li/rottenbornj

174. MVCAP fyi

See free MVCAP e-books on college admissions and financial aid for sharing, printing, and downloading at our online resource library: http://issuu.com/mvcap

1. Book Review of Donna Y. Ford, Reversing Underachievement Among Gifted Black Students, 2nd Ed, by Dick Kantenberger - http://exm.nr/fhLds7

“Blacks represent some 20% of public school enrollment, [yet] they constitute only 4% of students who perform at the 95th percentile or above on standardized tests,” says Dr. Donna Y. Ford in her recently released 2nd edition of Reversing Underachievement Among Gifted Blacks, published by Prufrock Press, Inc."

2. For Many, College Isn't Worth It, by Richard Vedder - Inside Higher Ed http://t.co/gXu3iBA

"An even-handed interpretation of the data is that college is “worth it” for some significant number of young people, but is a far more problematic investment for others. The call by President Obama, the Lumina and Gates Foundations, and many higher education advocates to rapidly and radically increase the number of college graduates is fundamentally off-base."

3. 7 Ways to Improve SAT and ACT Scores, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - The College Solution (usnews.com): http://t.co/ZpG7ooI

‎"Here are seven ways for teenagers to improve their SAT and ACT scores or limit the damage of mediocre results:"

4. 'Apocalyptic' Budget Sends Waves of Fear Across Texas Higher Education, by Katherine Mangan - http://chronicle.com/article/Apocalyptic-Budget-Plan/125997/

"No new applicants would be accepted for the state's largest financial-aid program for low-income students, the Texas Grant program. It served 87,000 students this year with grants of up to $6,780 per year, but it would serve only 27,000 students in 2013 under the House plan. Joseph P. Pettibon, associate vice president for academic services at Texas A&M, said he worried that low-income students either would not be able to attend four-year colleges or would take on too much debt if lawmakers approved the proposed cuts."

5. Texas Inks $300-Million Deal With ESPN for New TV Network, by Libby Sander - http://chronicle.com/article/Texas-Inks-300-Million-Deal/126000/

"The timing of the announcement was sobering: Also on Wednesday, Texas lawmakers wrestled with proposed cutbacks of nearly $772-million in the state's two-year budget, including nearly $100-million for the Austin campus."

6. Harvard’s unofficial early admission process, by Valerie Strauss - http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/harvards-unofficial-early-admi.html

"Sometimes students will approach Harvard and ask for some indication of whether they will be accepted. They are given one of three responses, he said: likely, possible or unlikely to be admitted. Likely responses essentially means a student will be admitted, assuming they don’t flunk out of senior year in high school. Last year, he said, Harvard issued about 300 “likely” notifications."

• Follow the most important stories on college admissions and financial aid on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rottenbornj


• For links to articles on college admissions and financial aid, you can "friend" Joe Rottenborn at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=23325544


• "Like" the MVCAP fan page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=23325544#!/pages/Mahoning-Valley-College-Access-Program-MVCAP/284002915922


• You can join the group MVCAP Financial-Aid Friends at this page: http://www.facebook.com/?sk=2361831622#!/group.php?gid=126580419181


• Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily for today's top stories on college admissions/financial aid in newsletter form - http://paper.li/rottenbornj

173. MVCAP fyi

See free MVCAP e-books on college admissions and financial aid for sharing, printing, and downloading at our online resource library: http://issuu.com/mvcap

1. Help with Financial Aid as Reimagined by the MTV Generation, by Jacques Steinberg - http://nyti.ms/gN8U5r

‎"Those three ideas are the finalists in the “Get Schooled Affordability Challenge.” It is a national competition staged by MTV and the College Board, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in which current and aspiring college students were asked to devise better ways to administer and award financial aid."

2. New Research Examines Parent and Student Experiences with the Federal Financial Aid Process - http://advocacy.collegeboard.org/college-affordability-financial-aid/rethinking-student-aid/news/cracking-the-code

"Based on extensive focus-group and survey research with parents & students, the study found that nearly half of the parent respondents did not know the cost of attending a public college in their home state, & only 44% of Latino parent respondents were aware of the Pell Grant."

3. So, Students Don't Learn -- Now What? by Allie Grasgreen - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/eAoleW

‎"The book and its corresponding report document the findings of research that followed 2,300 undergraduates through four years of college, at 24 unidentified but academically representative institutions, to measure progress in their critical thinking and analytic reasoning skills. The measurement tool was the Collegiate Learning Assessment, which the students took during their freshman, sophomore and senior years."

4. The Financial Aid Information Gap, by Sam Petulla - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/dHUt1C

"The report from the College Board's Advocacy and Policy Center, "Cracking the Student Aid Code," finds that many parents have little understanding of how much it costs to attend college and of financial aid options -- and that the knowledge deficit is biggest for those who already have the least access to higher education: students from Latino families and from low-income backgrounds."

5. Texas budget draft cuts $13.7 billion in spending, by April Castro - http://t.co/sUAUhbO via @washingtonpost

"The budget draft . . . would cut funding entirely to four community colleges and would generally eliminate financial aid for incoming freshmen and new students. The Texas Grants scholarship program would drop by more than 70,000 students over the next two years."

6. Paying for College With a Duffle Bag Stuffed With Cash, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/Zgl9dmU

"Do you feel sorry for Ramos? I don’t. And here’s why: If Ramos — or his parents - didn’t want to pay top dollar to attend a public university, the Sacramento resident should have stayed in California where he would have qualified for in-state tuition. Out-of-state flagships like CU are eager to admit students like Ramos, who hail from elsewhere, because they can gouge them. The tuition for Colorado residents is $8,511. For non-residents it’s $29,493."

7. College Board: Families Need Earlier Education About Costs, by Caralee Adams - http://t.co/T0zCYfg

"Knowing about the Pell Grant program depended on level of education and ethnicity. While 82 percent of African-Americans and 81 percent of Caucasians said they knew about the program, just 44 percent of Latino parents did. About 91 percent of parents with a bachelor's degree were aware of Pell Grants, 85 percent of parents with an associate's degree, and 62 percent of parents with a high school education or less, the survey found."

8. Breaking the 'Cruel Cycle of Selectivity' in Admissions, by Jerome A. Lucido - http://chronicle.com/article/Breaking-the-Cruel-Cycle-of/125935/

"For colleges, the cycle is a relentless drive for status, prestige, and revenue, in which the metrics are unequivocal: Applications must increase, test scores must rise, acceptance rates must fall, and enough full payers must attend to finance the institution's goals and aspirations."

9. The 2010 Broad Prize - http://www.broadprize.org/asset/0-30largedistsbetterperform2010.pdf

"30 Large Urban School Districts Show Better Relative Academic Performance Than Their States for African-American, Hispanic, or Low-Income Students."

• Follow the most important stories on college admissions and financial aid on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rottenbornj


• For links to articles on college admissions and financial aid, you can "friend" Joe Rottenborn at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=23325544


• "Like" the MVCAP fan page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=23325544#!/pages/Mahoning-Valley-College-Access-Program-MVCAP/284002915922


• You can join the group MVCAP Financial-Aid Friends at this page: http://www.facebook.com/?sk=2361831622#!/group.php?gid=126580419181


• Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily for today's top stories on college admissions/financial aid in newsletter form - http://paper.li/rottenbornj