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Friday, June 18, 2010

The Educated Guess � Newsweek’s ‘Best High Schools list’ has plenty from California

The Educated Guess � Newsweek’s ‘Best High Schools list’ has plenty from California

Newsweek’s ‘Best High Schools list’ has plenty from California

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More than one out of six – about 18 percent – of public high schools on this year’s list of Newsweek’s “best high schools” are from California. They make up 285 of the 1,663 schools on the list, which comprise 6 percent out of America’s 27,000 high schools. Ten California high schools made the top 100, including four charter high schools.
The top three are Oxford Academy (#11) in Cyprus, a school for the academically gifted that requires an entrance exam; and two charter schools: Preuss (#16), which is affiliated with the UC-San Diego and consists totally of low-income students, and Pacific Collegiate (#19) in Santa Cruz, whose low-income students comprise only 3 percent of the student body.
“Best” is subjective, difficult to measure and disputable in many instances. In Newsweek’s case, it is narrowly defined as those schools that score high on the Challenge Index, the ratio of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate tests given at a school each year divided by the number of graduating seniors. Those that score 1.0 or greater – the number of tests taken exceed the number of graduates – make the list.

The Challenge Index’s creator, Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews, argues that the index is a simple and transparent indicator of excellence, if not also equity. He points to studies showing that students who take an AP or IB course experience the rigor of a college course and are
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N.J. officials cut $140M in additional funds from school budgets-superintendent calls for end of D-grade | NJ.com

N.J. officials cut $140M in additional funds from school budgets | NJ.com

N.J. officials cut $140M in additional funds from school budgets

Published: Thursday, June 17, 2010, 9:45 PM Updated: Friday, June 18, 2010, 5:20 AM
Claire Heininger/Statehouse Bureau Claire Heininger/Statehouse Bureau
chris christie classroomAP Photo | KAREN MANCINELLINew Jersey Gov. Chris Christie answers questions posed April 6 by fourth-graders at John Hill School in Boonton, N.J.
TRENTON — After New Jersey voters rejected a record number of school budgets this spring, local officials ordered more than $140 million in additional cuts, the state announced today.
Statewide, the reductions brought the school tax levy increase to 3.65 percent from the proposed 4.77 percent, officials said. But the overall cuts made by towns where school budgets were defeated totaled just 1.9 percent of the more than $7 billion those districts proposed to voters.
In 29 districts, the budgets were left intact, according to data released by the state Department of Education.
Schools were sent scrambling this spring after Gov. Chris Christie slashed state aid by $820 million — meaning hundreds of districts lost most or all of their state aid. Voters then shot down more than 58 percent of the school budgets, the highest failure rate ever.
Christie has said he was "outraged" that in the aftermath, "so many municipal bodies did nothing or near nothing in response to a clear repudiation of the school board’s budget by the voters."
His spokesman, Michael Drewniak, today said the governor also recognizes towns that "made a mark."
"Overall, it’s a good start," Drewniak said. "There were plenty of school districts which essentially disavowed their voters, and we think that sends the wrong message."


Mount Olive schools superintendent calls for end of D-grade

by Dan Goldberg/For The Star-Ledger
Star-Ledger fileLarrie Reynolds, Mount Olive schools superintendent, in a 2000 file photo. MOUNT OLIVE — The grade of D on a report card is admittedly lousy, but it’s still passing and better than an F. If Mount Olive schools superintendent...
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More M.B.A. Graduates Will Get Jobs in 2010 - US News and World Report

More M.B.A. Graduates Will Get Jobs in 2010 - US News and World Report

More M.B.A. Graduates Will Get Jobs in 2010

While it still isn't easy for M.B.A.'s to land a job, the hiring climate has improved from 2009.

Posted June 18, 2010


Before M.B.A. student Ryan Utsumi received his diploma from the University of California—San Diegothis month, he already had a job offer in hand. He was relaxed when he graduated, but the process of landing that job had tested his nerves. Utsumi spent the better part of 2010 searching for work at finance firms and startups. He had little luck, sending numerous applications and getting just a smattering of interviews. He'd heard the job search horror stories from 2009 M.B.A. graduates, Utsumi says, and, like many of his classmates, began to sweat when the calendar turned to March and he was still jobless.

Fortunately, Utsumi got a call from Charles Schwab—the firm he'd interned with during the previous summer and stayed in touch with intermittently through the academic year—and was offered a management position in the firm's strategy group. He starts at the end of the month, and he says that he's glad that, though they had to sweat, he and his classmates had better luck finding a job in the ravaged economy than their predecessors. "The job market is a little bit better [for me] than my classmates who graduated in 2009, but it still seemed to be very competitive and it was very difficult to get my foot in the door," he says. "Ideally, I would've had something wrapped up earlier on."
While Utsumi's job search was anything but brief, his reward was a full-time position. That, experts say, is something 2010 M.B.A. graduates should expect as they wade into the employment pool. While graduates may not find their ideal job or find a position as quickly as they'd hoped, there are more jobs to be had than in 2009, which was a dismal year for M.B.A. hiring. "This time last year, I had to check to see if my phone was still plugged into the wall," says Lynne Sarikas, director of the M.B.A. career
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News: Striving for Educational Equity - Inside Higher Ed

News: Striving for Educational Equity - Inside Higher Ed

Striving for Educational Equity

June 18, 2010
WASHINGTON -- Six years after they were first published, the data that Anthony Carnevale and Stephen J. Rose produced showing that students from the lowest socioeconomic quartile of Americans were 25 times less likely than wealthy Americans to enroll in the most selective colleges have helped to reshape public policy around higher education. In addition to building the case for more federal and state financial support for students from low-income backgrounds, the numbers also helped prompt a group of highly selective public and private institutions to alter their admissions and financial aid policies and practices to focus more on low-income students.

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One of those programs, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Carolina Covenant program, was celebrated Thursday at an event here at which the Century Foundation released a followup to the 2004 book -- America's Untapped Resource: Low-Income Students in Higher Education -- in which Carnevale's and Rose's original analysis appeared.
The new book, Rewarding Strivers: Helping Low-Income Students Succeed in College, includes one chapter on the Carolina Covenant, describing the progress that one highly selective university has made in transforming itself. As described by Edward B. Fiske, the program's initial results, in terms of low-income students' access to and success at North Carolina, are promising.
But that upbeat assessment is more or less overwhelmed by the book's new analysis from Carnevale, this time co-written with Jeff Strohl, who works with the economist at Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce. Their contribution to the volume edited by Century's Richard D. Kahlenberg argues that social, racial and ethnic stratification in higher education has actually increased in recent years, despite the fledgling efforts by the most elite colleges.
That's in large part because in the last decade and a half, more






















Laptop Requirements and the Downside of Choice Joshua Kim
U. of Illinois Abandons Plan for $100,000 Statue of President Stanley Ikenberry, who returned to his old job as president of the University of Illinois when when institution found itself between presidents due to a scandal over politically influenced admissions decisions, has called off a plan by the university ...
A Professor's Push for 'Slow Reading' An Associated Press article explores how one professor at the University of New Hampshire is encouraging the "slow reading" movement -- which argues that the Internet has encouraged everyone to read everything too quickly. The movement uses such ...
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World Refugee Day Is On June 20th | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

World Refugee Day Is On June 20th | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

World Refugee Day Is On June 20th Here are the newest additions to The Best Sites For Learning About World Refugee Day: The Guardian has a graphic on refugees in the world. ABC News also has many refugee-related videos. Uzbeks flee ethnic clashes in Kyrgyzstan is a series of photos ...
Father’s Day Here are the newest additions to The Best Father’s Day Sites: What Does Father’s Day Mean to You? is an ABC video. 100 years of Father’s Day marks evolution of Dad is a short MSNBC article. Father’s Day Dates Around The World is an interactive map.
“How The World Spends Its Time Online” “How The World Spends Its Time Online” is an accessible infographic with some interesting data. I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Learn About The Internet.

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