Chicago students pulled out of class for questioning over test boycott
Some Chicago public school students were taken out of class and questioned by district investigators who are looking into a boycott staged by teachers of the mandatory Illinois Standard Achievement Test earlier this month — and their parents, who weren’t asked for permission — are angry. Chicago teachers at two public schools — Drummond Montessori […]
Teachers: ‘sit and stare’ policy is ‘spiteful’
Believe it or not, some school administrators are forcing kids who are opting out of taking high-stakes standardized tests to sit in their chairs and stare while their classmates complete the exams. (You can read about it here.) Here’s a resolution by the Buffalo Teachers Federation against this policy, which I am publishing because it […]
5 striking facts from new civil rights education data
New data released by the federal government on Friday from the Education Department’s Civil Rights Data Collection shows a lot of what we already know — many minorities don’t have access to high school courses they need for college, for example, and there aren’t enough school counselors — but perhaps the most striking is that […]
A defense (of sorts) of the SAT
Somebody had to do it. Here’s a defense of sorts of the SAT, written by Patrick O’Connor, associate dean of college counseling at Cranbrook Kingswood School, and counselor educator at Oakland Community College. By Patrick O’Connor After College Board updated the SAT in 2005, critics called the test user unfriendly and irrelevant. The 2005 […]
The Answer Sheet 3-20-14 School reformers love ‘choice,’ except when …
The Answer Sheet: Avoiding the most common financial aid application errorsIf you have kids in college, or kids who are going to be in college, you want to read this advice on how to get financial aid without making big mistakes. It was written by Mark Kantrowitz, senior vice president and publisher of Edvisors.com, a group of web sites about planning and paying for college. […] by Valerie Stra