358. 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. Advice on Whittling Your Admissions Essay, by Alan Gelb: http://nyti.ms/rORahK - "Most first drafts I see are several hundred words beyond that mark. That is to be expected, but by the second and third drafts, they are very close to the 500 word count. I almost never encounter essays that justify exceeding that limit. The extra verbiage usually reflects problematic writing choices, so I would like to offer a few tips on how to keep your essay concise with no sacrifice of meaning or impact:"

3. Home States of College Freshmen: Why They Matter, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://moneywatch.bnet.com/spending/blog/college-solution/home-states-of-college-freshmen-why-they-matter/7074/ via @cbsmoneywatch - "Fifty two percent of students attend colleges within 100 miles of them home, according to a UCLA study. Actually most students never leave their own state. New government statistics illustrate just how popular the home state is with many college students."

4. Curriculum Matters: Study: Pre-K Crucial to Best 3rd Grade Reading Outcomes, by Catherine Gewertz - http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2011/11/in_the_face_of_state.html via @educationweek - "They found consistently that children who attended preschool and half-day kindergarten had substantially greater chances of doing better on the reading test than those who had attended only full-day kindergarten. The benefits were particularly strong for Hispanic and low-income students and those learning English."

5. Excellence Without Equity Is Neither, by Eric Witherspoon - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/11/02/10witherspoon.h31.html via @educationweek - "For every student to succeed, everyone must believe that success for all is possible and that failure is not an option for any student. This belief is fundamental and must be shared by every student and adult in a school. Expectations correlate directly with results."

6. Experts: Half of foster kids quit high school - US news - http://www.mail.com/news/us/808440-experts-half-foster-kids-quit-high-school.html via @maildotcom - "Sommer, 19, is among the roughly 50 percent of the nation's 500,000 foster kids who won't graduate from high school, experts say. Nearly 94 percent of those that do make it through high school do not finish college, according to a 2010 study from Chapin Hall, the University of Chicago's research arm."

7. NAEP scores rise, but income gap sees little change, by Nick Pandolfo - http://hechingered.org/content/naep-scores-rise-but-income-gap-sees-little-change_4485/ - "Fourth- and eighth-graders’ scores showed modest improvement and racial achievement gaps narrowed on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” which was released Tuesday. The gap between disadvantaged students and their more affluent peers remained largely unchanged, however, and widened in fourth-grade reading."

8. Since 1990s, U.S. Students’ Math Has Sharpened, but Reading Lags, by Sam Dillon - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/education/us-students-math-skills-sharpen-but-reading-lags.html?_r=1&hpw - "Mr. Driscoll and other officials and experts put forward several hypotheses to explain the trends. Children learn most of their math in school, and even though math instruction in the United States in general lags behind that in some high-performing countries, the experts said, it has improved over the past two decades. Reading achievement, in contrast, reflects not only the quality of reading instruction in school classrooms, they said, but also factors like whether parents read to children and how much time students read on their own outside school. And many children in the United States are spending less time reading on their own."

9. Putting Zuckerberg’s Millions to Work for Schools, by Jodi Rudoren - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/giving/putting-zuckerbergs-gift-of-millions-to-work-for-newark-schools.html?src=recg - "In a school district of 40,000 students, 62 percent receive free or reduced-price lunches. Nearly half of those who enter high school do not finish. Among those who go on to college, 98 percent need remediation."

10. U.S. students make gains in math but stall in reading, by Lyndsey Layton - http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/us-students-make-gains-in-math-but-stall-in-reading/2011/10/31/gIQATYdYcM_story.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive - "The tests, often referred to as the nation’s report card, also showed minimal progress in narrowing the achievement gap between white students and their black and Latino counterparts, despite nearly 10 years of federal law designed to close that margin."

327. 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. A Manual for 'Helicopter Parents' to Land Their Aircraft, by Lionel Anderson: http://nyti.ms/nEt2dQ - ". . . The coming years, invariably, will require your daughter or son to embrace a level of independence from you unlike any before. While difficult, it’s necessary and promises far more good than harm in the long term. Near or far, afford your child the space to discover when they need you and when they don’t."

2. Calculating Costs and Benefits, by Libby A. Nelson - Inside Higher Ed - http://bit.ly/q0Bbr8 via AddThis - "The net price calculator requirement, which came about as part of the Higher Education Act reauthorization in 2008, is intended to give students and parents a better idea of how much college costs. On average, college tuition was discounted 42 percent in 2010, meaning that most students actually paid well over half of the sticker price. But students often don't learn how much they will pay until they've already applied, been admitted and had an aid application evaluated."

3. The Hazards of Applying To a Reach School, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://moneywatch.bnet.com/spending/blog/college-solution/the-hazards-of-applying-to-a-reach-school/6646/ via @cbsmoneywatch - "If you want to capture the best financial awards from a college, it’s important to apply to schools that represent good academic matches. If you reach for the moon, be prepared to pay a high price."

4. Early Achievers Losing Ground, Study Finds, by Nirvi Shah - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/09/20/05gifted.h31.html via @educationweek - "Tracking the individual scores of nearly 82,000 students on the Measures of Academic Progress, a computerized adaptive test, the study found, for example, that of the students who scored at the 90th percentile or above in math as 3rd graders, only 57.3 percent scored as well by the time they were 8th graders."

5. 2010 Data Show Surge in Poor Young Families, by Sabrina Tavernise - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/poor-young-families-soared-in-10-data-show.html?_r=1&src=rechp - “Young families with children are now six times as likely to be poor as elderly families,” Professor Sum said. “This is a major generational change. From a public policy standpoint, we should be very deeply troubled by this.” Economists cited several reasons for the rise. First was the economy. College degrees hold greater value now, while opportunities for low-skilled workers have dwindled, as manufacturing and other industries have declined. That has pushed more young families into poverty."

6. The Unwitting Damage Done by the Spellings Commission, by Robert Zemsky -http://chronicle.com/article/The-Unwitting-Damage-Done-by/129051/ - "And where Miller and Spellings had come up short, Robert Shireman, then-deputy undersecretary of education, and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan succeeded, putting in place a regulatory environment that provides the department with a broad role in determining what kinds of higher education are eligible for the federal government's $100-billion-plus investment in student financial aid."

7. College Bound: Teacher-Turned-Photographer Returns to Document School’s Success, by Kayla Webley - LightBox: http://ti.me/rlclLT via @TIME - "The first step in achieving those big dreams is attending college. This year—and every year—every single student at North Star Academy in Newark, New Jersey has been accepted into at least one four-year college. 95% go on to enroll in one of those four-year institutions. Compare that with the fact that in 2004 only 26% of graduating seniors in the entire Newark school district said they planned to attend college, and it’s clear the school is doing something right.
The school’s mission to “prepare each student to enter, succeed in, and graduate from college,” permeates everything at the school. The classrooms are named after prestigious universities like Princeton and Harvard. For field trips they visit campuses like Stanford, Georgetown and Boston College. The idea behind all of this is to make college an attainable reality, the natural next step upon graduation. That mindset is often the case for middle class students, but not for disadvantaged children for whom college is often a far-off dream."

8. Up-And-Coming Colleges: U.S. News List - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/19/up-and-coming-colleges-us-news_n_969468.html - "College presidents, provosts, and admissions deans were asked to nominate up to 10 colleges in their U.S. News Best Colleges ranking category "that are making improvements in academics, faculty, students, campus life, diversity, and facilities. These schools are worth watching because they are making promising and innovative changes."

9. Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily ▸ today's top stories about college access and success, via @rottenbornj ▸ http://t.co/x7cmxSo