'Chasing' college acceptance
Many of you who have a child nearing college age (and even some of you with much younger kids) may already be anxious about the admissions process and may be wondering whether your child, who hasn’t cured cancer or started a successful business already, will get into a good school.
A new report, “Chasing the College Acceptance Letter,” gives some insight into what it calls “the college admissions game.” It focuses on the chances of the average student getting accepted to a competitive four-year college; according to the most recent national data available, the average applicant earned a 21 on the ACT, completed trigonometry and chemistry, and earned a 3.12 GPA. But it also looks at lower-achieving students and high-performing applicants seeking admission to elite schools.
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Elementary gifted ed made easy
Two weeks ago I explored the possibility that high schools could challenge all students, gifted or otherwise, without having gifted programs. Quaker Valley High School outside of Pittsburgh, for instance, seemed able to create new opportunities for a variety of kids by ignoring standard procedures that had outlived their usefulness, such as homework requirements or rules against taking more than one course in the same period.
One wise reader said, in effect: Yeah, but that will never work in elementary schools.
As if by fate, I received an email shortly after from Susan Ohanian, a delightful teacher, speaker, author and blogger whose work I love, even when she is portraying me as a test-addled idiot. We may disagree on policy issues, but we have shared tastes about what good teaching looks and sounds like. In her email, she described how she brought a free-form gifted non-program to an elementary school in Troy, N.Y.
Here is what she said. Don't forget to take a look at her blog atsusanohanian.org.
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