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And do they really care? Consider the following problem: ===================================== 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 12 The number n is to be added to the list above. If n is an integer, which of the following could be the median of the new list of seven numbers? I. 6 II. 6 1/2 III. 7 (A) I only (B) II only (C) III only (D) I and III only (E) I, II, and III ============================================== In considering your evaluation of the question, you may wish to know the following facts: this is the 13th of 16 questions for which the total time allotted is 20 minutes. The question appeared on the last of three mathematics sections and on the 8th of 10 sections overall in an exam that takes a total of 225 minutes. The test is one commonly used as part of college admissions in the United States. What factors enter into your determination of how good or bad a question this is? What assumptions are you making, if any, about what comprises a good mathematics assessment in general? Some inte...

Friday's Chronicle reports on a new study that points out how difficult it can be to identify which colleges and universities have no-loans policies designed to enhance affordability. Author Laura Perna and her colleagues find that the majority of elite institutions with these policies fail to advertise them in ways that are accessible to low-income students and families-- effectively maintaining their status as "bastions of privilege." The researchers then go on to make several helpful suggestions about how colleges could change their tactics to increase awareness and uptake of their progressive efforts. But they could've gone one step further and discussed the incentives colleges have to maintain the status quo-- that is, to continue making their current and former students and staff feel good with liberal actions, garnering attention in elite venues such as the New York Times , without fundamentally changing their overall enrollment demographics or costing too mu...

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's call for an overhaul of teacher preparation programs is certainly warranted. Reports such as Arthur Levine's in 2006 have highlighted weaknesses in the training received by many graduates of traditional, university-based teacher preparation programs. I'm one however who believes that there is role both for university-based as well as alternative providers of teacher preparation, such as Teach For America and The New Teacher Project. In a policy brief for the New Teacher Center (and related blog post ), I discuss some promising partnerships between institutions of higher education and school districts -- teacher training pipelines that by and large provide the hands-on experience and training called for by Secretary Duncan and contained within many other diagnoses of what ails traditional teacher prep. Likewise, the Carnegie Corporation's Teachers for a New Era initiative provides evidence of what effective university-based p...

Once upon a time, college students could pay their tuition with a mix of family support, financial aid, and perhaps a little work. Today, family support and aid are woefully inadequate for a broad swath of undergraduates, and full-time work is common. Is working while in college truly necessary? Are the earnings used for academic expenses related to postsecondary education, or are they frittered away on life's pleasures? Since a handful of studies indicate a negative association between working long hours and rates of degree completion, these questions have taken on broader significance. Unfortunately, few studies track students' income and expenditures in systematic ways. To better understand spending patterns, and attempt to tease out the reasons for those patterns, one would ideally have longitudinal data collected for a large sample of students, and complemented by in-depth interviews with a sub-sample of students to delve more deeply into the reasons underlying decisio...

An important survey was released this week that captures teachers' perceptions of their professional working environment. The national study of 900 teachers by Public Agenda describes educators as falling into one of three groups: "Disheartened," "Contented," and "Idealists." It also raises some serious policy implications for the placement, retention and longevity of teachers based on teachers' perceptions about working conditions, why they entered the profession, and their opinions about proposed policy reforms. But as useful as this survey may be in defining these issues at a 30,000-foot level, it does not approach the power and utility of teacher surveys that offer entire populations of educators in individual states and districts the opportunity to share their voice about working conditions, leadership support, resources, opportunities for professional learning, etc. In turn, these anonymous surveys also provide contextualized, customized s...

Renewing the War on Poverty clearly needs to be one of President Barack Obama's main objectives during the coming years. As Barbara Ehrenreich and so many others are documenting, the deteriorated safety net is failing poor people during this recession, leaving them in dire straits. So when Nick Kristof decided to pen a column for the New York Times urging the Democrats to again lead a fight against poverty, his heart was in the right place. But his aim was way off. On Thursday, he wrote that the Dems must focus on public schools, since they "constitute a far more potent weapon against poverty than welfare, food stamps or housing subsidies. " Huh? Social science researchers across the nation are scratching their heads. Where in the world did Kristof get this one? For decades, solid analyses have demonstrated that while aspects of schooling can be important in improving student outcomes and alleviating the effects of poverty, the effects of factors schools cannot and...

California is adept at building firebreaks to stop advancing wildfires throughout the state. The inferno that is the student-teacher firewall issue was apparently doused yesterday when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that eliminates a statutory ban on using student achievement data to evaluate teachers. The existence of such a restriction would have deemed California ineligible for a federal Race to the Top competitive grant award. Here is the Governor's press release. Here , here and here are background posts on the student-teacher data firewall issue in California.

Since 1958, the Federal Perkins Student Loan Program has been providing low-interest loans to needy students via campus-based revolving funds. More than 600,000 students (mostly undergraduates with family incomes under $30,000) receive a Perkins each year. The current Perkins differs from other federal loan programs, most notably the Stafford, because it is subsidized (the interest doesn't begin accruing until 9 months after graduation) and has a lower interest rate (5%, compared to the 6.8% Stafford). The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) would change the Perkins in some notable ways, not all of which are clear improvements. The proposed changes are rather intricate, and as I've spent a fair bit of time puzzling over them lately I want to bring some of my nagging questions to this wider audience in an effort to gain some insights and answers. (In full disclosure, the financial aid officer at my university, Susan Fischer, is a vocal opponent of the changes. ...

Yesterday the U.S. Education Department released proposed regulations to govern the $650 million Investing in Innovation Fund , part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, along with the $4 billion Race to the Top fund. Education Week 's Politics K-12 blog has a good summary of the proposed regulations, and the New York Times and Washington Post have articles worth reading as well. Individual school districts or groups of districts can apply for the i3 grants, and entrepreneurial nonprofits can join with school districts to submit applications. Under the proposed priorities, grants would be awarded in three categories: Scale-up Grants: The largest possible grant category is focused on programs and practices with the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of students. Applicants must have a strong base of evidence that their program has had a significant effect on improving student achievement. Validation Grants: Existing, promising programs that have good evidence of...

Well, it had to happen sometime. Faced with a thoughtful, responsive piece of federal legislation to reform the financial aid system, some ideologue had to come forward with a proposal to end federal student aid entirely. Yep, you heard me right-- get rid of financial aid. Throw out the baby with the bathwater. The Chronicle is reporting that a director of the Cato Institute's Center for Education Freedom -- aka the freedom not to be helped by the government-- is purporting that "student aid explains the pain" of rising tuition. This "higher education expert" (honestly, some people are way too kind) argues that phasing out aid will make colleges more responsive to people who pay "with their own money." Too bad this expert, Neal McCluskey, didn't bother to do his homework. If he'd cracked a book, he would've learned--fast-- how wrong he is. Not to mention unoriginal. Back in 1987 then-Secretary of Education Bill Bennett made the same a...

As I've described in several posts this year, there's an ongoing debate over the role, value, and outcomes of the private for-profit sector of higher education, particularly the 2-year schools. Community colleges are often compared to their for-profit counterparts, many times unfavorably. For example, their graduation rates are notably lower. And enrollment in the for-profits continues to rise rapidly, suggesting that consumers are voting with their feet, regardless of any hesitation on the part of academic researchers. The students, some say, are the best judge of institutional quality. But a new study suggests that student behavior may reflect another factor: institutional resources. Community colleges are historically underfunded, and as I've argued elsewhere, this seriously affects their capacity to serve students. It's one thing to point to differences in practices between the community colleges and for-profit colleges, and another thing to attribute those ...