296. 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. ROTCs return to Ivy League, by Jim Michaels - http://t.co/cHv2lFV via @USATODAY - "Since the Pentagon last year repealed "Don't ask, don't tell," that argument was nullified and anti-ROTC campuses have become more receptive to the military. The Navy has reached agreements with Yale, Harvard and Columbia to establish programs on their campuses."

3. Students, seniors may feel impact of debt deal, by Sandra Block - http://t.co/L0pf2Jb via @USATODAY - "Interest on federally subsidized student loans for graduate students will accrue while students are in school. Currently, interest on doesn't begin to accrue until they graduate. The change will take effect on July 1, 2012, says Justin Draeger, a spokesman for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.In addition, the deal will eliminate on-time repayment incentives for all federal student loans, effective July 1, 2012. Currently, federal Stafford loan borrowers who make 12 consecutive on-time payments are eligible for a rebate of 0.5% of the loan amount, which is applied to the 1% repayment fee."

4. 'Uneducated Guesses' by Scott Jaschik - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/r8WeGA - "Between 2001 and 2009, the passing rate on AP exams fell from 60.8 to 56.5 percent -- as the number of students who took an AP exam increased from 17 percent to 26 percent of the public high school population. As the critical articles noted, however, some high schools had very low pass rates, while others had very high rates."

5. 12 Things College Freshmen Should Be Doing Now, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/bQJXedk via @cbsmoneywatch - "Are you heading to college for the first time later this month? If so, it’s important to start getting prepared. Here are 12 things that you should be doing now:"

6. Statistics Show More Grandparents Caring for Grandchildren, by Sarah D. Sparks - http://t.co/kCijOX9 via @educationweek - "As of 2005, the most recent data, grandparents cared for 13.8 percent of preschoolers—more than Head Start, day-care centers, and nursery schools combined. They also provided care for 12.8 percent of all school-age children ages 5 to 14. The Census Bureau found the average time children spent in their grandparents’ care also increased, from 13 hours a week in 2005 to 14 to 16 hours per week in 2006."

7. Debt Deal May Offer Only Temporary Reprieve for Student-Aid Programs, by Kelly Field - http://chronicle.com/article/Debt-Deal-May-Offer-Only/128468/ - "It also provides $17-billion over two years to shore up the Pell Grant program, which has doubled in cost over the past three years and faces a multibillion-dollar deficit.By closing most of that gap, the deal makes it easier for appropriators to maintain the maximum award at $5,550 in 2012 without slashing other programs. But the reprieve comes at a cost and is likely to be temporary. To pay for Pell Grants, the deal will end subsidies for interest on graduate students' loans while they are still in school, while eliminating the interest-rate reduction for on-time loan repayment for all borrowers."

8. Stone-Cold Sober Schools: Princeton Review List - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/03/stone-cold-sober-schools-_n_916935.html#s321095&title=Brigham_Young_University Which area college made this list? - "Not all colleges have parties where students do keg-stands with abandon. According to the Princeton Review, the schools listed below are the most stone-cold sober in the country."

9. Schools With The Happiest Students: Princeton Review List - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/02/happiest-students_n_915868.html#s320143&title=Rice_University - "Happiness and an academic setting don't have to be mutually exclusive, at least according to the Princeton Review. The Review surveyed more than 122,000 students nationwide on everything from party habits to study habits. See below for the schools where students maintain a rosy outlook."

10. Solving achievement gap will take innovation, Harvard professor says, by Erin Albanese MLive.com - http://t.co/sJaKfu1 - "The U.S. is failing to prepare large numbers of young people to succeed in the 21st century economy, he said. The goal is to increase learning for white children and even more quickly increase that for blacks and Hispanics who are further behind.“Nationally, it’s in our interest for all groups of students to reach their full potential,” he said."

11. The Top 10 U.S. Colleges for Financial Aid, By Sheryl Nance-Nash: http://srph.it/qufAsZ http://t.co/SAL3ycl via @AOL - "The company considered how many students received aid compared to the number of students who needed it, how much of their financial needs were met and how many students received all the aid they needed, as well as how satisfied students said they were with their awards."

211.Unstack the Odds--Black Males: A Crisis, Pt 2

Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!
by
Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

6. Black Males: A Crisis, Pt 2

“Albert Taylor remembers seeing a Youngstown man blow marijuana smoke in the face of his child to make the child hungry because the boy was sick and did not want to eat. That the father felt it OK to blow marijuana in the direction of his child, who has sickle-cell anemia, demonstrates a difficulty young black people have in raising the next generation.” (John W. Goodwin Jr., “Youth and Violence,” The Vindicator, March 13, 2011, p. A1.)

In his article “Proficiency of Black Males Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected” on the release of the report A Call for Change, reporter Trip Gabriel of The New York Times cited this striking fact:
“Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys. Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.” (Trip Gabriel, “Proficiency of Black Males Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected,” The New York Times, November 9, 2010.) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html?_r=2&hpw

Further, Gabriel quoted Ronald Ferguson, who directed the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, as follows:
“There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,” said Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. “They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have.”

Those include “conversations about early childhood parenting practices,” Dr. Ferguson said. “The activities that parents conduct with their 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. How much we talk to them, the ways we talk to them, the ways we enforce discipline, the ways we encourage them to think and develop a sense of autonomy.” (Trip Gabriel, “Proficiency of Black Males Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected,” The New York Times, November 9, 2010.) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html?_r=2&hpw

207. Unstack the Odds--Early Childhood Learning

Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!
by
Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

3. Research on learning in early childhood

“Ferguson also noted that the gap develops rapidly as young minority students approach kindergarten. Though there is ‘not much of a gap’ around the first birthday, a divergence in test scores is already apparent by age three, he said.”-- Ronald F. Ferguson, director of Harvard’s Achievement Gap Initiative, quoted in Rediet T. Abebe, “Panel Discusses Educatin Gap,” The Harvard Crimson, February 24, 2011.) http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/2/24/gap-achievement-ferguson-students/#

Some indicate the odds begin stacking in a child’s first years. An discussion of this phenomenon was done by then editor Paul Tough in a seminal—and provocative—article entitled “What It Takes To Make a Student: Can teaching poor children to act more like middle-class children help close the education gap?” in The New York Times Magazine of November 26, 2006. In that masterful synthesis of research, condensed into but a few pages, the native Canadian cited a number of studies—and seemed to connect their dots. First, was research on language acquisition published by University of Kansas child psychologists Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley in 1995 on 42 Kansas City families with newborns. For three years, these two researchers “. . .visited each family once a month, recording absolutely everything that occurred between the child and the parent or parents.” (Paul Tough, “What It Takes To Make a Student: Can teaching poor children to act more like middle-class children help close the education gap?” The New York Times Magazine, November 26, 2006, p. 47.)

According to Tough, the researchers learned “. . .first, that vocabulary growth differed sharply by class and that the gap between the classes opened early. By age 3, children whose parents were professionals had vocabularies of about 1,100 words, and children whose parents were on welfare had vocabularies of about 525 words. The children’s I.Q.’s correlated closely to their vocabularies. The average I.Q. among the professional children was 117, and the welfare children had an average I.Q. of 79.” (Ibid.)

As for the reason for those differences, the writer cited Hart and Risley’s finding as follows: “By comparing the vocabulary scores with their observations of each child’s home life, they were able to conclude that the size of each child’s vocabulary correlated most closely to one simple factor: the number of words the parents spoke to the child [emphasis added.] That varied greatly across the homes they visited, and again, it varied by class. In the professional homes, parents directed an average of 487 ‘utterances’—anything from a one-word command to a full soliloquy—to their children each hour. In welfare homes, the children heard 178 utterances per hour. (Ibid., pp. 47-48.)

Not only did the number of “utterances” vary in homes by class, according to Tough, so, too, did “the kinds of words and statements that children heard varied by class.” As he put it:
“The most basic difference was in the number of ‘discouragements’ a child heard—prohibitions and words of disapproval—compared with the number of encouragements, or words of praise and approval [emphasis added.] By age 3, the average child of a professional heard about 500,000 encouragements and 80,000 discouragements. For the welfare children, the situation was reversed: they heard, on average, about 75,000 encouragements and 200,000 discouragements. Hart and Risley found that as the number of words a child heard increased, the complexity of that language increased as well.” (Ibid., p. 48.)

As for the payoff, Tough indicated the following:
“Hart and Risley showed that language exposure in early childhood correlated strongly with I.Q. and academic success later on in a child’s life [emphasis added.] Hearing fewer words, and a lot of prohibitions and discouragements, had a negative effect on I.Q.; hearing lots of words, and more affirmations and complex sentences, had a positive effect on I.Q. The professional parents were giving their children an advantage with every word they spoke, and the advantage just kept building up.” (Ibid.)

Other research summarized by the reporter was from a team led by Columbia professor Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, who “. . .has overseen hundreds of interviews of parents and collected thousands of hours of videotape of parents and children, and she and her research team have graded each one on a variety of scales.” According to Tough, they concluded the following: “Children from more well-off homes tend to experience parental attitudes that are more sensitive, more encouraging, less intrusive and less detached—all of which, they found, serves to increase I.Q. and school readiness [emphasis added.] They analyzed the data to see if there was something else going on in middle-class homes that could account for the advantage but found that while wealth does matter, child-rearing style matters more.” (Ibid.)

Tough continued his survey of research on early childhood learning by citing the work of Martha Farah, from the University of Pennsylvania, who “. . . has built on Brooks-Gunn’s work, using the tools of neuroscience to calculate exactly which skills poorer children lack and which parental behaviors affect the development of those skills. She has found, for instance, that the ‘parental nurturance’ that middle-class parents, on average, are more likely to provide stimulates the brain’s medial temporal lobe, which in turn aids the development of memory skills [emphasis added.]” (Ibid.)

The writer also described the anthropological research of Annette Lareau, which looked at the culture of early childhood. As he summarized:
“Over the course of several years, Lareau and her research assistants observed a variety of families from different class backgrounds, basically moving into in to each home for three weeks of intensive scrutiny. Lareau found that the middle-class families she studied followed a simlar strategy, which she labeled concerted cultivation. The parents in these families engaged their children in conversation as equals, treating them like apprentice adults and encouraging them to ask questions, challenge assumptions and negotiate rules. They planned and scheduled countless activities to enhance their children’s development—piano lessons, soccer games, trips to the museum [emphasis added.]” (Ibid., p. 49.)

Tough described Lareau’s findings as follows: “The working-class and poor families Lareau studied did things differently. In fact, they raised their children the way most parents, even middle-class parents, did a generation or two ago. They allowed their children much more freedom to fill in their afternoons and weekends as they chose. . . but much less freedom to talk back, question authority or haggle over rules and consequences. Children were instructed to defer to adults and treat them with respect. This strategy Lareau named accomplishment of natural growth.” (Ibid.)

The reporter related Lareau’s research to the cultural attitudes and behavior children develop. As he states it: “In public life, the qualities that middle-class children develop are consistently valued over the ones that poor and working-class children develop. Middle-class children become used to adults taking their concerns seriously, and so they grow up with a sense of entitlement, which gives them a confidence, in the classroom and elsewhere, that less-wealthy children lack. The cultural differences translate into a distinct advantage for middle-class children in school, on standardized achievement tests and, later in life, in the workplace.” (Ibid.)

As for the assets some children will possess compared to others, Tough characterizes them in this way: “But the real advantage that middle-class children gain come from more elusive processes: the language that their parents use, the attitudes toward life that they convey. However you measure child-rearing, middle-class parents tend to do it differently than poor parents—and the path they follow in turn tends to give their children an array of advantages [emphasis added.] As Lareau points out, kids from poor families might be nicer, they might be happier, they might be more polite—but in countless ways, the manner in which they are raised puts them at a disadvantage in the measures that count in contemporary American society.” (Ibid.)

Paul Tough commented on the achievement gap simply—and starkly: “There had, in fact, been evidence for a long time that poor children fell behind rich and middle-class children early, and stayed behind.” (Ibid., p. 47.)

Writing more recently about a study of 750 pairs of identical and fraternal twins tested on mental ability at 10 months and 2 years of age done by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Virginia, columnist Jonah Lehrer underscored the importance of early learning as follows: “When it came to the mental ability of 10-month-olds, the home environment was the key variable, across every socioeconomic class. But results for the 2-year-olds were dramatically different. In children from poorer households, the choices still mattered. In fact, the researchers estimated that the home environment accounted for approximately 80% of the individual variance in mental ability among poor 2-year-olds. The effect of genetics was negligible [emphasis added.] (Jonah Lehrer, “Why Rich Parents Don’t Matter,” The Wall Street Journal, January 22-23, 2011, p. C12.)

205. Unstack the Odds--Families & Access, Part 1

Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!
by
Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

2. How may a child’s family background correlate with their access to college?

“Families matter when it comes to the academic success of children, and
the social class background of children matters. That much is given.”--Peter Sacks, Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007, p. 14.)

What accounts for this unequal access to higher education and graduation? Many observers begin by examining children’s experiences in the family—indeed, the family is often viewed as the child’s “first school.” A recent study that examinined the correlation between families and access stated the following:

“Using longitudinal data, we analyze disparities in family background and potentially influential investments parents make (or are constrained from making) early and late in the high school experience, and then how the patterns uncovered shape the likelihood of college attendance. Findings confirm expectations. Specifically, racial inequalities in class background shape disparities in cultural, monetary, and parental interactional investments, with strong consequences for high school attainment/achievement. Background inequalities, and their implications for early and later family investments and achievement/attainment, explain the entire black-white gap in the likelihood of college attendance.” (Camille Z. Charles, Vincent J. Roscigno, and Kimberly C. Torres, “Racial inequality and college attendance: The mediating role of parental investments,” in Social Science Research 36, 2007, p. 329.)

That same study also commented on the importance of financial and educational status of families for students; it concluded:

“This literature suggests that household socioeconomic status (SES)—usually measured as parental income and/or education—is critically important for achievement (Alexander et al., 1987; Lareau, 1989; Mehan, 1992; Parcel and Meneghan, 1994.) Lareau (1989) suggests that this effect is partially a function of less disposable income and time for working class parents to intervene in their children’s schooling. Middle- and upper-class parents, in contrast, can invest in household educational resources, can hire tutors, are more likely to utilize ‘proper’ English in the household, and have time to meet with teachers.” (Ibid., p. 331.)

Further, these authors emphasize the importance of “cultural capital”—according to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, those “cultural habits and . . . dispositions inherited from” the family—which can help children to succeed. (from Elliot B. Weininger and Annette Lareau, “Cultural Capital,” p. 1) http://www.brockport.edu/sociology/faculty/Cultural_Capital.pdf

Of this process, Charles, Roscigno, and Torres say the following: “Higher SES parents likewise can more easily transmit cultural capital to their children: ‘high brow’ European cultural attributes, typically held in high regard in the classroom and, therefore, conducive to educational success (Bourdieu, 1977; DiMaggio, 1982; Lamont and Lareau, 1988; Roscigno and Ainsworth Darnell, 1999.)” (Charles, et. al., p. 331.)

In his recent online profile of Ronald Ferguson, Director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, reporter Michael Winerip observed the following about Ferguson’s findings:

“His research indicates that half the gap can be predicted by economics: even in a typical wealthy suburb, blacks are not as well-to-do; 79 percent are in the bottom 50 percent financially, while 73 percent of whites are in the top 50 percent. The other half of the gap, he has calculated, is that black parents on average are not as academically oriented in raising their children as whites. In a wealthy suburb he surveyed, 40 percent of blacks owned 100 or more books, compared with 80 percent of whites. In first grade, the percentage of black and white parents reading to their children daily was about the same; by fifth grade, 60 percent to 70 percent of whites still read daily to their children, compared with 30 percent to 40 percent of blacks.” (Michael Winerip, "Closing the Achievement Gap Without Widening a Racial One,” The New York Times, February 13, 2011)http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/education/14winerip.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hpw

As for the potentially-controversial topic of the effects of home environment, “ . . . Ferguson said that talking about racial differences in parenting is a social taboo and an obstacle that he often faces.” As he put it in a recent interview:
"People don't want to talk about it because they're afraid what is said will be misused," he said. "They're afraid that people will say it's their own fault, that members of low−achieving groups need to fix themselves. They're afraid that people will misuse information in bigoted ways. But if we can't have the conversation about things that we need to do differently, then we can't get around to actually doing them differently," he said. (Amelia Quinn, “Harvard lecturer spearheads movement to improve American education,” The Tufts Daily, March 2, 2011.) http://www.tuftsdaily.com/features/harvard-lecturer-spearheads-movement-to-improve-american-education-1.2502479

Ferguson’s view was then quoted to be as follows: "If we can give . . . the opportunities and help people from less advantaged backgrounds to spend more time in ways that contribute to their academic growth, in a few decades from now, we can get to a place where we're much more equal than we are now," he said. "But to do that, we've got to lay everything out on the table and work it through." (Ibid.)

200. 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. Princeton and Harvard Reinstate Early Admissions, by Catherine Rampell - http://nyti.ms/fnhiRj

". . . Both Princeton and Harvard on Thursday reinstated their early admission programs. (The University of Virginia, which had also ended its early admission program with great fanfare, gave in last year.) . . . And from the 2006 press release in which Princeton announced it was ending the early admissions program: “We agree that early admission ‘advantages the advantaged,’” Tilghman said."

2. Jane Fonda at Vassar: College Tours, Campus Legends, by Michael Kolomatsky - http://nyti.ms/gDaVt2

"College tour season will soon heat up as high school seniors make final visits to schools at which they’ve been accepted. In search of the magic that will tip the scales toward one college or another, they’ll be joined by juniors who typically begin visiting schools about now."

3. Surrender to Early Admissions, by Scott Jaschik - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/gCDaKu

"On Thursday, both Harvard and Princeton announced that they were restoring early admissions options. Significantly, they are restoring nonbinding "early action" options, not early decision -- and many skeptics about early admissions say that the biggest problems arise with binding programs, particularly at colleges that are not as generous with student financial aid as are Harvard and Princeton."

4. CNU: University accidentally sent 2,000 acceptance e-mails, by Samieh Shalash - http://bit.ly/dI7eXP

‎"Christopher Newport University e-mailed acceptance letters to 2,000 students Wednesday afternoon with the subject line "Welcome to CNU!"It was followed about four hours later by an e-mail saying the first e-mail was sent by mistake and apologizing for any confusion."

5. Lawsuit accuses TCU of fraud - http://es.pn/he7WmS

"The records describe how the 300-pound Jones remained in an English class even though the instructor considered him "dangerous," how Taylor was admitted to the university despite graduating 300th in his high school class of 377 and how both remained in good standing on their teams despite repeatedly being cited for misconduct on campus."

6. Using Social Media to Get Into College, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/988Af8a

‎"A Kaplan survey of admissions counselors from some of the top colleges and universities found that 80 percent visited potential students’ online profiles during their recruiting process. While counselors are checking students out online, they are also trying to engage them on the Internet. According to Tsouvalas, here are ways that high school students can take advantage of Facebook and other social media:"

7. 'Pathway to Prosperity' authors educate me - http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2011/02/pathway_to_prosperity_authors.html

‎"Despite the fact that nearly all young people now say that they want to go to college and that increasing percentages of high school graduates are in fact enrolling in college, our college completion rate is stuck at about 40 percent. Many organizations are now focused on the challenge of how to increase our college completion rate and have set a very aggressive target of 55 percent by 2025. But even if this very ambitious improvement goal were to be reached, what is our strategy for getting the other 45 percent of young people the skills and credentials they will need to get launched on a career path that can enable them to earn a family-supporting wage and lead a productive life? This is the big question our report raises. . . ."

8. On Science Exams, New York’s Students Fall Short, by Fernanda Santos - http://nyti.ms/g19C6n

"New York was one of 17 large cities that agreed to have their results reported separately. A large majority of those cities scored below the nation as a whole. New York was in the middle among the large cities for its fourth graders and slightly below average for eighth graders. . . . The best of the 17 were Charlotte, N.C., Austin, Tex., and Louisville, Ky.; the worst were Detroit, Baltimore and Cleveland."

9. In the so-called School of Financial Aid, it can pay to get the lowest score, by Alice Murphey - http://nydn.us/i0KvaZ

"Everybody wants to get high marks in college, but in the so-called School of Financial Aid, it can pay to get the lowest score. That's the case with your expected family contribution. Your contribution is determined by the information on your Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. (There's still time to file if you haven't already, but . . .some students are starting to receive their award letters.)"

10. Harvard Tuition Rises to $52,650, by Julie M. Zauzmer - http://bit.ly/edbKMQ

"Harvard College tuition and fees will climb 3.8 percent for the next academic year, reaching a total cost of $52,650. The jump in price will be coupled with a $2 million increase in the financial aid budget, bringing the total cost of financial aid to a record high of more than $160 million.Already, more than 60 percent of Harvard undergraduates receive some financial aid from the College."

11. Panel Discusses Education Gap, by Rediet T. Abebe - http://bit.ly/gCsSJl

‎"Ferguson also noted that the gap develops rapidly as young minority students approach kindergarten. Though there is “not much of a gap” around the first birthday, a divergence in test scores is already apparent by age three, he said."

12. What to Do as Colleges Cut Back on Financial Aid, by Jane J. Kim - http://on.wsj.com/igbgKP via WSJ.com

"Amid greater financial pressures, colleges are scaling back their financial-aid packages to students in ways that are likely to give wealthier families an admissions edge.Some colleges, such as Williams College, Middlebury College and Wake Forest University, are no longer "need blind" when it comes to admitting international or wait-listed students."

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196. 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. Two Ways to Get Kicked Out of College Before You Arrive On Campus - Auburn Journal: http://bit.ly/gZ6scR

‎"According to the 2010 State of College Admission (National Association for College Admission Counseling, September 2010, p. 28), 22 percent of colleges reported they revoked offers of admission during the fall 2009 semester/quarter. The average number of offers revoked increased 230% from 2008 to 2009. Although not stated in the 2010 report, in previous years, colleges reported the most common reason for retracting offers being a sharp decline in final grades followed by disciplinary actions (disciplinary actions most likely to result in retraction of an offer were violence, cheating, drug-related offenses and theft)."

2. Juniors Get an Early Lesson on College Applications, by Colleen Tang - Pelham, NY Patch: http://t.co/qAnuMj0

“We have five colleges coming in tonight and they’ll give their perspectives on everything from SUNY Purchase, applying as an art major to Fordham and Iona,“ said Eugene Farrell, director of counseling services at PMHS. “So we try to provide a range of perspectives on colleges and on college essays and all those other pieces. It’s information that we try to get to parents as best we can.”

3. Financial aid: One of six tools to graduate debt-free, by Husna Haq - http://t.co/NWwV16D

"Here are six ways you, too, can trim or eliminate college debt:"

4. Always worth a try to apply for financial aid, by Terry Savage - Chicago Sun-Times: http://bit.ly/gunvDV

‎"You’ll never know until you try whether you will qualify for financial aid. Unless you have saved all the money you’ll need, it’s worth a try. Some expensive schools might grant an aid package that makes them more affordable than even a local college or state school. The FAFSA — the Free Application for Federal Student Aid — is the basis for almost every financial aid decision that is based on need."

5. Study: IL Student Poverty Rate Rises - Achievement Gap Widens, by Mary Anne Meyers - Public News Service: http://j.mp/gWzyDn

‎"According to the 2011 Kids Count Report released by Voices for Illinois Children, less than half of the low-income students in Illinois are able to read at grade level."

6. Cleveland native Ron Ferguson pushes to close academic achievement gap, by Regina Brett cleveland.com: http://t.co/czSJx8z

"Education has been called the next civil rights issue. Ferguson told me it's bigger than that. We need to re-craft a national identity around new academic aspiration. We can't afford to ignore the race gap, he said. Already, in 10 states the majority of children are non-white."

7. College students must work to solve problems that affect blacks, speaker says, by Paul Garber & John Hinton http://t.co/IhYGOaw

"You need to develop causes that you are willing to die for," Marc Lamont Hill said during a fiery 50-minute speech. "You have the ability to turn the world upside down." Hill, 32, was the keynote speaker for the Seventh Annual Black Male Symposium. More than more than 220 people attended his lecture in Dillard Auditorium in the Anderson Center."

8. 63 Colleges With the Best Financial Aid, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/GHCuOTx

‎"In fact, according to a new U.S. News & World Report survey, only 63 schools out of 1,700 colleges and universities claim that they meet their students’ full financial need. . . . Here are the schools on US News & World Report’s list in alphabetical order: 63 Most Generous Colleges and Universities."

9. Buying Your Way Into College, by Jane J. Kim - http://on.wsj.com/eZHl4x

"Thanks to the recent recession, more colleges are giving seats to wealthier students—especially international or wait-listed applicants—who are willing to pay full freight."

10. College Parties, Minus the Beer Binges, by Sue Shellenbarger - http://on.wsj.com/ieuC1s

"Surveys at Purdue University, for example, show a sharp drop in binge drinking among students, to 37.3% in 2009 from 48% in 2006, says Tamara Loew, health-advocacy coordinator. She attributes this in part to a boom in late-night, alcohol-free events on or around campus, from poetry slams and dances to carnivals and "cabin-fever" parties."

11. More Students Fail Advanced Placement Tests, by Stephanie Banchero - http://on.wsj.com/ei0Nh4

"Education experts attribute the low scores to the recent national effort to push more students—no matter how ill-prepared—into AP courses, hoping to get them ready for college. They also blame school districts that have watered down the AP curriculum to accommodate lower-performing students, and students who sign up simply to pad their college applications."

12. Stanford Corners the 'Smart' Market, by Darren Everson and Jared Diamond - http://on.wsj.com/gSL4Jl

"What stands out about Stanford's class is something entirely different: what superior students they are."

13. For-Profit Colleges and Foes Await U.S. Rules, by Tamar Lewin - http://nyti.ms/i97XKt

"The data — covering all institutions of higher education — found that among students whose loans came due in 2008, 25 percent of those who attended commercial colleges defaulted within three years, compared with 10.8 percent at public institutions and 7.6 percent at private nonprofit colleges and universities."

14. US students lagging behind, by Anne Michaud - http://t.co/cN3faUU via @vindicator

"Not coincidentally, perhaps, middle school is where American students begin to fall behind their global peers. By high school, among 30 developed nations, U.S. students rank 15th in reading, 21st in science, 25th in math and 24th in problem-solving."

15. Book Chat: Why Does College Cost So Much? by David Leonhardt - http://nyti.ms/hUjPvH

"The biggest problem with our current financial aid programs is their complexity. Families have to make a series of decisions early in the process to help their children to become college material. Well-to-do families usually take care of this quite well. College is expected, and in most cases the expectation is realized. On the other hand, because they think they can never afford college, children from less well-to-do families do not take the steps one has to take to prepare for college."

16. Ethnic diversity ends, and begins, with admissions, by the Editorial Board - The Skidmore News: http://t.co/ctVGW4Z

"Our college admissions, unlike other peer schools like Hamilton College and Vassar College, considers whether a student can afford tuition as a part of his or her admission into the school; our college operates under "need-sensitive" admission, as opposed to "need-blind" admission. For example, when two prospective students with the same racial backgrounds, test scores, grades and extracurriculars apply to Skidmore, the student who requests less financial aid will more likely be accepted."

17. Yale Shifts Aid From Wealthier Families to Help Poor Students, by Oliver Staley and Janet Lorin - http://t.co/A5JoJel via @BloombergNow

‎"Beginning with students who enter this August, parents who earn between $130,000 and $200,000 a year will be asked to pay an average of 15 percent of their income, up from 12 percent for the previous three years, said Caesar Storlazzi, Yale’s chief financial aid officer, in an interview. Yale will also increase the income cap for families who pay nothing to $65,000 from $60,000."

18. The Changed Landscape, by Doug Lederman - Inside Higher Ed: http://t.co/z6x5Afs

‎"But for higher education, the sea change was most evident in the strikingly lopsided vote for an amendment that would block the U.S. Education Department from using any of its fiscal 2011 funds to carry out its proposed regulation requiring for-profit college and other vocational programs to ensure that their students are prepared for "gainful employment."

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1. YSU tries to protect its image, by vshank@tribtoday - Tribune Chronicle - Warren, OH: http://t.co/OZw3Ehj

‎''It's just to remind people, to let them know once again that YSU is safe, the campus is safe and we stand by that,'' he said. University and Youngstown city officials, including Mayor Jay Williams, have offered several reminders of YSU's safety record since one student was killed and 11 others were shot at a fraternity party near campus Feb. 6. Jamail Johnson, a 25-year-old YSU senior, died. . . ."

2. Bypass the Bookstore: ‘Fiske Guide’ Goes iPad, by Jacques Steinberg - http://nyti.ms/evin8E

‎"My colleague Eric Platt, who is closer in age to the college-going generation than I am, used the arrival of the Fiske app as an opportunity to take a whirl around the Apple store in search of other admissions-related apps. Here are a few that caught his eye, along with his thumbnail impressions:"

3. Spending Showdown, by Doug Lederman - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/h0is6j

"The distance between their positions on spending for higher education and similar debates over many other parts of the government could, at its worst, lead to a shutdown of the federal government between now and March 4, when the current continuing resolution to fund federal operations for 2011 expires. If Congress does not pass and the president does not sign new legislation by then, the government would shut down."

4. The $10,000 Question, by Steve Kolowich - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/eO2J1E

“Today, I’m challenging our institutions of higher education to develop bachelor’s degrees that cost no more than $10,000, including textbooks,” said Perry on Tuesday in his “State of the State” address. “Let’s leverage Web-based instruction, innovative teaching techniques and aggressive efficiency measures to reach that goal,” he said."

5. How Athletes Spend Their Time, by David Moltz - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/i9tanm

‎"The average Division I baseball player missed 2.3 classes per week last year, and the average Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) football player missed 1.7 classes per week last year. In both sports, this is an increase of 0.5 classes missed per week from 2006. The average number of classes missed by athletes in all other sports remained relatively unchanged from 2006."

6. College Application Rates for 2011: Which Schools Saw a Decline? - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/11/college-application-rates_n_821530.html#s237964&title=Tulane_University_1336

‎"Perhaps Tulane was hit so hard because the school received the most applications of any U.S. school in 2009, and so they added an additional essay question to their application form in 2010 to weed out uncommitted prospies. (Columbia, conversely, switched to the Common Application and received record applications this year.)"

7. Triplets, Twins, Quadruplets: Your Hidden College Discount, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/Ep17TRK

‎"Here’s great news for the mom with triplets: Parents with multiple students in college at the same time often enjoy a substantial price break. The more students in college simultaneously - they don’t have to be twins, triplets or Octo Mom’s kids - the greater the ultimate price discount. . . . Here’s why: parents’ Expected Family Contribution will drop with each additional child in college."

8. Facebook Keeps Class In When School Is Out at Ky. School, by Jenna Mink: http://t.co/mMUOlow via @educationweek

‎"It's a way to keep students on schedule, especially high-achieving students who are taking Advanced Placement classes. Thomas Jones, a social studies teacher at Warren East High School, has been communicating with students on Facebook during snow days. Jones, who teaches an AP European history course, posts videos, articles, discussion topics and test reminders. "It's just a way to keep us going. It's a way to communicate," Jones said."

9. Ronald Ferguson Works to Close Educational Achievement Gap, by Michael Winerip - http://nyti.ms/gifcwL

"His research indicates that half the gap can be predicted by economics: even in a typical wealthy suburb, blacks are not as well-to-do; 79 percent are in the bottom 50 percent financially, while 73 percent of whites are in the top 50 percent.
The other half of the gap, he has calculated, is that black parents on average are not as academically oriented in raising their children as whites. In a wealthy suburb he surveyed, 40 percent of blacks owned 100 or more books, compared with 80 percent of whites. In first grade, the percentage of black and white parents reading to their children daily was about the same; by fifth grade, 60 percent to 70 percent of whites still read daily to their children, compared with 30 percent to 40 percent of blacks."

10. Apply early, carefully for college financial aid, by Alyson Cunningham - http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/20110213/NEWS01/102130312

‎"Her advice for parents and seniors is simple: Start early. Take your time and don't wing it," she said. "Think ahead and apply early, but make sure it's good, comprehensive, complete and quality applications."

11. A year at Brown U. will cost more next year - http://www.projo.com/business/content/Brown_Corporation_Meets_02-13-11_91MFIB3_v7.133c4d8.html

"The cost of a Brown University education will increase by 3.5 percent next year, to $53,156. . . .Brown, which relies on tuition and fees for about 55 percent of its revenue, will next year charge $41,328 for tuition, $6,748 for room and $4,148 for meals."

12. Special Report: Getting That Perfect College Fit, by Natalie Kaplan - http://patch.com/A-c4m6

"According to a New York Times chart, students admitted versus the number of applicants to a particular school in 2010 ranged from a low of 7 percent at the likes of Yale University to a high of 83 percent at University of Colorado, Boulder."

13. College Bound? The Financial Aid Application Period Begins, by Frank Medina - http://patch.com/A-cXDT

"The ONLY way to apply for financial aid is through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). After a student submits their FAFSA, they will receive their Student Aid Report (SAR) either in the mail or through email. The SAR will explain the types of awards the student is eligible for. . . . In order to complete the FAFSA, dependent applicants will need to utilize their parent's tax information."

14. Warning: You May Receive A College Rejection Letter Soon, by Frank Medina - http://patch.com/A-dQTx

‎"In general, Ivy League universities and other high level institutions often reserve admission spots for the children or relatives of famous alumni or donors with deep pockets. They also offer some top notch students the ability to apply through the early admission program. Often, these schools also have sports teams and so they reserve spots for incoming athletes as well as for cheerleaders."

15. Students learn to overcome financial obstacles to college, by Richard O. Jones - http://t.co/4o2UlbH via @oxfordpress

‎"The occasion was Hamilton High’s first FAFSA Day, in which 450 seniors and their parents were invited to the Media Center to meet with Dave Murray from the Indiana-based National Center on College Costs, who walked them through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the form required to receive federal financial aid, including the federal Pell grant, student loans and need-based state grants."

16. Yale increasing tuition and board fees - http://www.wwlp.com/dpp/news/connecticut/Yale-increasing-tuition-and-board-fees

‎"The Ivy League school says tuition for 2011-12 for undergraduates at Yale College will be $40,500. Students will also pay $12,200 for their room and board. Yale Provost Peter Salovey said the average Yale scholarship will be $36,000 and that students who receive financial aid will get scholarship awards to cover the increased costs...."

17. Minneapolis schools go after the language gap, by Corey Mitchell StarTribune.com: http://t.co/dW5NVDE

"Fewer than 30% of Andersen's students are proficient in reading, state test scores indicate. Scores on math tests, where understanding English also is required, are even lower. That is not surprising at a school where 70% of students are classified as second language learners, educators say."

18. ‘Race to Nowhere’ documentary questions education system, by Jody Feinberg - Brockton, MA - The Enterprise: http://t.co/nUomrIk

"Since its release last year, this film about the harmful effects of stress on students has become must-see viewing in communities where the push for success and pressure to attend top colleges are strong. . . . The film presents a disturbing view of childhood and adolescence: overstressed students who become physically ill and emotionally depressed and cheat or take prescription drugs to get good grades."

19. From China, More Students Pursue Dream of American Education, by Jacques Steinberg - http://nyti.ms/fF4XFB

"At rural Grinnell, nearly one of every 10 applicants being considered for the class of 2015 is from China. Dozens of other American colleges and universities are seeing a surge in applications (and similar brochures) from students in China, where a booming economy means that more families can pursue the dream of an American higher education."

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1. MLK lecture tackles achievement gap, by Shanoor Seervai - The Brown Daily Herald: http://t.co/I6n3CPk

"During a question and answer session after the lecture, Ferguson addressed the issue of education perpetuating social hierarchy. "People who already have privilege tend to award it," he said, and the students whose parents are not as well-off most need to be advocated for."

2. Q&A with Ronald Ferguson - The Brown Daily Herald: http://t.co/ifq4SaR

"The thesis of my book is that we need a 21st century movement built around helping students from all different backgrounds to realize their full potential. . . . it is time for a widespread social movement. Every day, I get two to three calls from people trying to organize around the issue of equality in education. There is a sense that the current configuration is not just."

3. School scraps race-specific mentoring program, by Monika Plocienniczak - http://bit.ly/e6ypIU #cnn

"When we talk about reducing the achievement gap, do we mean merely reducing the discrepancy of test scores of white students and students of color?" asked education consultant Sam Chaltain. "Or do we mean reducing the predictive impact that things like race, class and gender have on all aspects of student engagement, performance and learning?"

4. Minority Students and A.P. Program, a Mixed Report Card, by Maria Newman - http://nyti.ms/fwxEi5

‎"But the gap between how those students performed, compared to nonminority students, is still great in most states in the country. African-Americans, for example, represented just over 14.6 percent of the total high school graduating class last year, but made up less than 4 percent of the A.P. student population who earned a score of 3 or better on at least one exam."

5. Dream On, by David Moltz - Inside Higher Ed http://t.co/ZRh8n21

"Yet according to the report, most of the measures of student success for the overall populations at the institutions did not change in a statistically significant way after five years, less because programs used were unsuccessful -- many individual efforts have been publicly lauded as successful -- than because they touched too few students."

6. Turning the Tide: Five Years of Achieving the Dream in Community Colleges - http://www.mdrc.org/publications/578/overview.html

"Trends in student outcomes remained relatively unchanged, with a few exceptions. On average, after Achieving the Dream was introduced, colleges saw modest improvements in the percentage of students completing gatekeeper college English courses and courses completed. In contrast, students’ persistence and the percentage of students completing developmental math, developmental English, developmental reading, and gatekeeper math courses remained substantially the same."

7. Assessing Developmental Assessment in Community Colleges, CCRC - http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/Publication.asp?UID=856

"More than half of entering students at community colleges are placed into developmental education in at least one subject as a result. But the evidence on the predictive validity of these tests is not as strong as many might assume, given the stakes involved—and recent research fails to find evidence that the resulting placements into remediation improve student outcomes."

8. Community College Student Survey, Pearson Foundation - http://www.pearsonfoundation.org/downloads/Community_College_Survey_Summary_201102.pdf

"This summary of results highlights the major conclusions from a nationally represented online poll of 1,434 U.S. community college students ages 18–59. The Pearson Foundation Community College Student Survey was conductedby Harris Interactive between September 27 and November 4, 2010."

9. The Achievement Gap: Am I Part of the Problem? by Chris Myers Asch - http://t.co/p3Em0TV via @educationweek

‎"By kindergarten, the achievement gap is already in place, and parents like me are at least partly to blame. Parents, not teachers (no matter how effective), are the single most important educational influence in a child’s life. And that means that parents are also part of the reason for the achievement gap."

10. Number of AP Test Takers Has Nearly Doubled Since 2001, by Lauren Sieben - http://chronicle.com/article/Number-of-AP-Test-Takers-Has/126313/

"In 2010, 853,314 graduating seniors at public high schools had taken at least one AP exam. That's an increase of more than 55,000 students since 2009. The number of students who performed well on the exams—a score of 3 or better—is also up from 2009. In 2010, 16.9 percent of test takers met that mark on at least one AP exam, a slight increase from 16 percent in 2009."

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