When textbooks and other obligations soak up so much money as college begins, making a cramped dorm room comfy, colorful and classy can seem like a lost cause, but students and their families don't have to spend a lot.
AP Retail Writer
When textbooks and other obligations soak up so much money as college begins, making a cramped dorm room comfy, colorful and classy can seem like a lost cause, but students and their families don't have to spend a lot.
Experts say a cap of $75 is realistic for students moving into a room furnished with a bed, dresser and desk but nothing else.
"You're not looking for investment pieces," says Stan Williams, author of "The Find: The Housing Works Book of Decorating," and a blog called elegantthrifter.blogspot.com. "You're looking for something that fits into a small space and cheap."
Dr. Susan Baxter, assistant professor of marketing and management at LIM, a college based in New York with a focus on fashion and retailing, recommends starting with information from the college on the room's dimensions and what is supplied.
Next, students should make a list of what's missing and compare
Paul Tough in the New York Times recently made a huge point: that the graduation rate of seniors in high-poverty schools has dropped from 86% in 2000 to 68% in 2008, as the rate in low-poverty schools remained constant at 91%. This is crucial as data-driven systems like New York City and Washington D.C. have become so skilled in fabricating distorting graduation statistics, and Texas has perfected the art of hiding the low test scores of
The most interesting things about the RTTT results announced this week aren't the results themsevles, but rather what the results tell us about competitive grant evaluations and about Secretary Duncan. Despite all efforts to come up with a transparent, reliable, numerical rating system, the RTTT judging results were off in at least a couple of regards (Ohio and Hawaii, for starts). To me it's a vivid reminder that judging and evaluating quality aren't particularly reliable endeavors, even when you have total control over all the pieces (the rating system, the judges, etc). Even more, the results provide a peek into the workings of the Duncan education department or the
This morning, students, faculty, staff and other public officials gathered outside the school’s two buildings for speeches and a ribbon-cutting.
Plano ISD considers offering incentives to students who return as teachers
String of hazing incidents preceded death at Prairie View
Two Dallas ISD trustees ask whether consultant is worth it
Dallas grade school adjusts policy after letting 5-year-old leave with wrong adult
2,000 Dallas County schoolchildren still need shots before they go to class
New coalition to call for simpler teachers contract |
| Commentaries |
Online Learning Is On the Upswing-In the Public Mind At Least |
Many prospective college students and their parents believe that an ethnically diverse student body enhances the education of every pupil on campus. A university is truly diverse if there are many different ethnic groups enrolled on campus and those groups have around the same percentage of students enrolled. In other words, if a college has only one ethnic group that makes up the vast percentage of its entire student body, it's not very diverse, even though it might have many other ethnic groups represented in very small percentages.
[See our list of Great Schools at Great Prices.]
We have published the lists of the most and least ethnically diverse colleges on our Web site; the lists are broken down by college category:
What’s churning:U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan gave a back-to-school speech Wednesday at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas – home of the Little Rock 9 – that talked in detail about the Los Angeles Times series and its expected publication of teacher names with seven years’ worth of test scores attached. Duncan argues for transparency though he doesn’t advocate other districts publish names and test scores in their city newspapers. “The fact is we publish a school’s scores next to the name of a principal and a district’s scores next to the name
Race to the Top:
News from New York City:
And beyond:
CSU accused of improper management of public fundsCalifornia State University officials on Wednesday rebutted a report that said foundations affiliated with the school system held and mismanaged taxpayer money. |
Ben Miller and Phuong Ly’s expose of college dropout factories reminds me of many conversations I’ve had over the years with policymakers and foundation officials about helping more students earn college degrees. They tend to go like this: First, we need a “research strategy” to identify “best practices” that have a statistically significant impact on college graduation. Then we need a “dissemination strategy” to communicate those practices to administrators and practitioners. Colleges will adopt the best practices, and graduation rates will rise.
I think this is mostly wrong.
The article tells the story of Nestor Curiel, a former student at Chicago State University. Here’s what happened:
As the dust settles on the Race to the Top selections a general consensus has emerged that again (pdf) there were problems with the scoring. Not the sensational political tampering claims that some people are trying to allege, there is no evidence of that, but rather problems with the process. Those problems are at once more mundane and a lot more far-reaching. The Race to the Top is over for now but the problems have broader implications for federal grant competitions, especially because the Administration would like to shift toward using more competitive grants for some programs.
The rationale for moving to more competitive grants is that they involve more planning, more substantial amounts
By Katy Murphy
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 8:59 am in Steven Weinberg, test scores
As the principal architect of education reform in Massachusetts, former State Senate president Tom Birmingham, has noted, no one was sure that what was set forth in 1993 would work. And while the state has a long way to go before we can say that all students are achieving at the level we would hope for, no one today can argue with the historic success that ensued for all students in Massachusetts, topping the nation in the last three cycles (2005, 2007, 2009) of the national assessments, ranking among the top six countrieson math and science, and strong performance on the SAT and ACT exams.
It's taken hard work, tens of billions of dollars, and diligent focus across a decade and a half. It took difficult and even rancorous debate about what we teach in our schools. When
 POSTWAR: Students in a home ec lab at the University of Wisconsin in 1948. (University of Wisconsin) |
