SHOW US THE MONEY

Community colleges get lots of love from politicians these days. But although members of Congress like to be seen at community college graduations, the sector’s leaders will need to lobby hard for the latest White House-proposed funding boost to become a reality. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.

UC INVESTING MILLIONS IN NEW CYBER STUDIES PROGRAM

The University of California will unveil its first top-tier cyber courses in January - 26 online offerings, from global climate change to game theory. At the same time, it's eyeing China and even American soldiers as potential sources of cash to pay for them. The article is in the San Francisco Chronicle.

A BACHELOR’S DEGREE FOR $10,000? IMAGINE THE IMPACT

Michelle Singletary writes in the Washington Post：My oldest child, Olivia, will be heading to college in two years. So it’s already become college-saving crunch time in our household. As we’ve been putting money away, I’ve become even more passionate about helping other people find ways to cut college expenses. So I’m intrigued by Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s proposal to come up with an affordable college degree program. Perry, who’s running for president, has created quite a buzz for a bold — some say unrealistic — higher-education plan. 

CHOOSING A PATH IN COMMUNITY COLLEGE LEADS TO HIGHER GRAD RATES

Community colleges should focus more attention on helping students choose and enter college-level programs of study, new research from the Community College Research Center（CCRC）at Teachers College, Columbia University suggests. The article is in Education News.

THE MISSING LINK IN SCHOOL REFORM

In trying to improve American public schools, educators, policymakers, and philanthropists are overselling the role of the highly skilled individual teacher and undervaluing the benefits that come from teacher collaborations. The article is from the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Daily News Roundup, September 15, 2011

 

Some of the News Fit to Print

RACE TO THE TOP WINNERS FEEL HEAT ON TEACHER EVALUATIONS
Winners of the federal Race to the Top competition are facing difficult questions about how to make good on their ambitious promises to link teacher evaluation with student performance, a task complicated in some cases by resistance from educators and practical questions about how to judge job performance fairly. For some states, that means wrestling with how to evaluate teachers in subjects for which no statewide test now exists. Others face a tough task of setting specific evaluation requirements based on relatively broad laws that established those systems, which in some cases were designed to boost the states’ chances in the competition. The article is in Education Week.

TEACHERS ARE PUT TO THE TEST
MADISON, Wis.—Teacher evaluations for years were based on brief classroom observations by the principal. But now, prodded by President Barack Obama's $4.35 billion Race to the Top program, at least 26 states have agreed to judge teachers based, in part, on results from their students' performance on standardized tests. So with millions of teachers back in the classroom, many are finding their careers increasingly hinge on obscure formulas like the one that fills a whiteboard in an economist's office here. The metric created by Value-Added Research Center, a nonprofit housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Education, is a new kind of report card that attempts to gauge how much of students' growth on tests is attributable to the teacher. The article is in the Wall Street Journal.

AN ODD PROPOSAL FOR TEACHER EDUCATION
Justin Baeder writes in Education Week’s On Performance blog：What if teacher education were done by master teachers who currently work in schools（perhaps part-time, perhaps full-time with assistance）, who could supervise all aspects of the teacher's internship? Say a master teacher obtains accreditation to take on three interns at a time, and charges them $10,000 or $20,000 each（or better yet, charges a third party such as a school district or foundation）. Over the course of the year, this master teacher supervises their teaching, reviews and provides feedback on their academic work, and ensures that they emerge from the program ready to teach. All of the content that's currently taught on college campuses could be delivered online, Khan-Academy style, and the candidates' work could be scored by the mentor teacher, who can make better connections to their daily teaching practice.

SAT SCORES DROP
SAT scores are down this year. And while the College Board played down that news and attributed the falling scores to growth in the test-taking population, the downward shift runs counter to recent patterns. The data also show continuation of a trend that has concerned many educators for years：growing gaps by race and ethnicity in how students perform on average on the test. The trend in recent years has been a point up in one part of the SAT, offset by a point down in another part -- with minimal movement in total. But this year saw a three-point decline in critical reading, a one-point decline in mathematics, and a two-point decline in writing. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.

PAY FOR ONLY FOUR YEARS OF COLLEGE. GUARANTEED.
Four-year degree guarantees, as they have become known, are being offered at a growing number of smaller private colleges. They work as a marketing tool, giving colleges a way to ease parents’ fears that their children might enjoy college enough to stick around for five or six costly years. And they help to focus attention on the task at hand：graduating in four years.  The article is in The New York Times.