Statement from Chancellor Tisch and Commissioner King on Governor Cuomo's 2014-15 Budget Proposal

Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch and State Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr. today announced a new online exhibition on the New York State Museum's website featuring the only known audio recording of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1962 speech commemorating the centennial anniversary of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The online exhibition is available at: http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/mlk.

For Public Comment: Proposed Amendments to New York State's Approved Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Flexibility Waiver for 2014-2015

The primary purpose of the SIG is to provide Local Education Agencies (LEAs) with an opportunity to support the implementation of a whole-school change model in its Priority Schools.

The purposes of the School Innovation Fund are to increase high school graduation, college and career readiness of high school graduates, college persistence, and college graduation rates by increasing the availability of new high quality seats for students at most risk for dropout, disengagement, and poor academic performance.

Statement from Chancellor Tisch and Commissioner King on Governor Cuomo's State of the State Address

Mistakes in the marking of literacy and numeracy tests for trainee teachers mean hundreds were incorrectly judged to have passed.

Heads who take on failing schools should be given more time to turn them around, the Association of School and College Leaders says.

Universities in the US dominate an international league table ranking institutions by "reputation", although Cambridge and Oxford make the top five.

Head teachers from across Wales raise concerns over "unexpectedly low" results for GCSE English language exams in January.

The government gives details of its plan to to give, from September, all pupils in England free lunches for their first three years in school.

Offering bursaries to students from poorer backgrounds does not appear to improve their chances of completing degree courses, research finds.

Throughout the country, there is a tremendous unmet need for high-quality early learning. Fewer than three in ten 4-year-olds are enrolled in high-quality preschool programs, and yet, the importance of early learning is clear. Studies prove that children who have rich early learning experiences are better prepared to thrive in kindergarten and beyond.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced the sixth and final appointment to the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI). The committee's new member, appointed to a six-year term, is:

President Obama?s 2015 budget request reflects his belief not only that education is a top priority, but that America?s public schools offer the clearest path to the middle class. Investing in education now will make us more competitive in the global economy tomorrow, and will help ensure equity of opportunity for every child.

The Obama administration continued to prioritize education in the 2015 budget released today by proposing key investments in education that would create opportunity for every child.

President B

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) ? The Kansas Supreme Court will issue a decision Friday in a lawsuit filed by parents and school districts that accuses the state of not spending enough money on its public schools.

After Alabama lawmakers passed four antiabortion bills this week, one African American Democrat turned to an unusual form of race-baiting, telling his white Republican colleagues that they'd feel differently about the procedure if their daughters were pregnant with a black man's baby. ?Ninety-nine percent of all of the white people in here are going to raise their hand that they are against abortion,? state Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, said on the floor, as recorded by AL.com. The topic turned to race soon after Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin, R?Indiana Springs, the author of one antiabortion bill, compared her legislation to Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that desegregated public schools by ruling that separate is not equal. The 1954 ruling resulted in social tumult in Alabama and other Southern states and is believed to have helped usher in the civil rights movement.  The Alabama Department of Public Health, at the behest of pro-life organizations, issued a closure order in 2012 demanding the closure of the New Women All Women abortion clinic in Birmingham, one of the last clinics in the state.

Georgia Republicans, rebelling against what they see as a federal schoolhouse grab, may succeed in a first-in-the-nation bid to derail the so-called Common Core school standards while returning more control of math, social studies, and science curricula to local school districts in the Deep South state. Common Core, the new standard for public schools in 45 states and the District of Columbia, began as a push by state governors and business interests to encourage better-educated public school graduates, and Georgia was among the leaders. But now Georgia is leading a charge to bar federal interference in what students are taught or how they are tested, including the use of federal funds to reward states that adopt the Common Core. Picking up on agitation across the state, they questioned whether Common Core represents a push for higher standards or, rather, a new incursion by the federal government into state affairs.

Children would rather be scientists than actors and professional sports stars, a survey of parents has found.

A private school refused to allow a pupil treated for anorexia in a hospital for a year to return to class, the girl and her mother have reportedly claimed.

Once regarded as bastions of academic excellence and a magnet for the world?s best talent, the reputation of Britain?s top universities is in decline. Oxford and Cambridge have fallen further behind their American rivals, according to this year?s Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings.

Once regarded as bastions of academic excellence and a magnet for the world?s best talent, the reputation of Britain?s top universities is in decline. Oxford and Cambridge have fallen further behind their American rivals, according to this year?s Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings.

Children who speak English as a second language are outperforming native speakers in GCSE exams, official figures show.

What kind of careers guidance did you get at school? A selection of leaflets, a brief chat with the careers counsellor, or, like i editor Oliver Duff, a ten-minute survey telling you that you should be a Waste Treatment Plant Manager?

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) ? A principal accused of setting fire to the North Dakota high school where he worked had passed background checks and came recommended by clergy and mentors in other states, a school official said Thursday.

Thomas Sander, 30, is charged with felony arson and endangering by fire or explosion after a fire early Monday that heavily damaged Trinity High School and forced its closure. He remained jailed Thursday afternoon in lieu of a $500,000 cash bond. He did not have a listed defense attorney Thursday. Sander was hired in Dickinson last July.

"He's a graduate of a well-known and prestigious prep school in St. Louis. He has graduate degrees in administration," said Monsignor Patrick Schumacher, the board chairman for Dickinson Catholic Schools. "With his qualifications, recommendations and work ethic, we made the decision to hire him."

Sander, who has master's degrees in administration and education and was completing a master's program in theology when he was hired, graduated in 2008 from the Magis Catholic Teacher Corps at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. University spokeswoman Cindy Workman declined to release any other details, citing school policy and federal law.

Recruits to the Magis Catholic Teacher Corps make a two-year commitment to teach in certain Catholic schools throughout Nebraska and South Dakota. Sander went to Holy Ghost Catholic School in Omaha after graduating.

The Rev. Greg Benkowski at Holy Ghost did not immediately respond to questions about Sander.

Sander was an administrative intern at St. Albert High School in Council Bluffs, Iowa, from mid-January to mid-May 2013, while he earned his master's in administration from the University of Nebraska-Omaha. It was an unpaid position, and Sander was not a school employee, St. Albert President Joseph Connolly said.

Connolly said he did not know Sander well, but there were no problems with him during Sander's time at the school.

"In that role ... he was doing a lot of watching and listening, kind of taking in what's going on," Connolly said. "His performance and his behavior with us was what we would expect out of somebody with that position."

The Dickinson job was Sander's first full-time principal position, according to Schumacher. He said Sander had a good work ethic but did make some mistakes. Schumacher declined to give details but said they were issues that any first-year principal might deal with.

"I will not say there were no issues," Schumacher said. "But I will say there's no way in my mind the issues could have added up to this."

He declined to say if Sander was sanctioned for any reason during his tenure.

Sander announced to faculty on Feb. 10 that he would not return next year, but Schumacher would not say whether that was Sander's decision or if the school was letting him go.

Sander is accused of setting the contents of a file cabinet on fire, starting the blaze that caused extensive damage in the school's office area, structural damage to the ceiling there and heavy smoke damage throughout the building. No one was hurt, including a teacher who lived in an apartment on the second floor of the school building.

Schumacher labeled some of the undisclosed details of the case that he has been privy to "bizarre." He did not elaborate.

"There's a lot of speculation as to how this may have happened," he said. "Every scenario has gone through my mind. I think I've exhausted the possibilities in my mind to try and understand what was going on in his mind. I just don't know. There are no answers."

Classes were called off for the week. They are to resume Monday, with the 170 students spreading out among two elementary schools, a junior high school and a church.

___

Follow Blake Nicholson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/NicholsonBlake

Surprising no one in the test preparation industry, College Board's newly-released details on the revised SAT reveal the significant impact the Common Core Standards will have on one major college admissions test.

What do I need to know?

First, these changes aren't happening right away. If your child is planning to take the test before March of 2016, he or she will take the current version. If your child is in the class of 2017 (or later) and plans to take the SAT, these changes will probably affect you. So if you have a 9th grader at home, he or she may be among the very first to take the new SAT.

What should my child do?

1. Don't leave anything blank. The new test eliminates the ¼ point guessing penalty. Answer every single question, even if you have no idea. Don't leave a single question blank.

2. Ditch the vocab cards. Way less to memorize, but there's a catch: Plan to see words with more than one meaning. Which meaning is correct? Well, that will depend on context. Tricky. The solution: read, read, read.

3. Get comfortable with lots of interactive content. Graphs and charts will illustrate information in an adjacent passage, for example. Students will be required to interpret and synthesize information from a variety of sources on the page, not just part of a passage.

4. Write a whole different kind of essay. Gone are the days of writing ridiculous essays filled with made up historic battles and novels by fictitious authors. Writing the essay will now be more like writing one for an AP exam. You'll be given a document and asked to analyze and explain it. That sounds hard! However, "The essay prompt will be shared in advance and remain consistent. Only the source material (the passage) will change," states College Board. So knowing the essay prompt ahead of time and preparing ways to answer it will be crucial. You have more time now too, 50 minutes instead of 25. Oh and its optional (but most competitive universities will still require it).

5. Say goodbye to the 2400. It's back to the old 1600 maximum score many of us remember from the olden days. This will better enable those who were familiar with the old test and never quite got the hang of the March 2005 onwards scoring system to return to their comfortable roots. But with extensive recentering and curving, it won't be easy to compare a 1200 in 2018 with a 1200 in 2000.

6. Count on more challenging math. The 2005 revamp increased the difficulty of SAT math problems, a trend that will only continue on the new exam. From CB's description, there will be more higher-level math on the test in areas such as Problem Solving and Data Analysis. The use of a calculator will no longer be allowed in certain parts of the math test, a huge shift that will have many students weak at mental math quaking in their sneakers. Students who are able to think about math abstractly will be rewarded over those used to approaching problems in rigidly defined steps.

7. It's not all about book smarts, get ready for "real-world" contexts. Students will be reading passages and interpreting data about issues they might encounter in real life. Like what? Hopefully topics like choosing a summer job or understanding the way sales tax changes affect local communities.

8. Re-read Dr. King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail." Each SAT will contain "an excerpt from one of the Founding Documents or a text from the ongoing Great Global Conversation about freedom, justice, and human dignity." This is a really interesting change. It could spark new conversations about civic engagement and what it means to be a good citizen. It could also mystify foreign students who are less familiar with how the Bill of Rights, for example, influences contemporary law and policy here in the U.S..

9. Keep your pencils sharpened. The new SAT will still be administered on paper, but there will also be a (I predict rather slow) roll-out of an online version of the test taken on a computer. (ACT has made similar announcements about moving to an online version of the test). While it seems like a no-brainer to administer tests on computers in today's highly-connected, technologically advanced society, computers remain significantly more rare and expensive than pencils and paper. Most tests administered on computers take advantage of technology that allows for more accurate scoring despite administering fewer questions. Test takers who answer a question correctly subsequently get a harder one. Answer that one wrong and you get a slightly easier one. But tests like these are expensive to design and administer. GMAC's GMAT, for example, costs each student $250 per administration. So don't expect the SAT to go wholly online anytime soon.

10. Take advantage of free online preparation. A deal with Khan Academy will provide all students with access to free tutoring resources. While affluent families will still hire tutors for their children, more preparation material provided directly from College Board than ever before will be available online. Practicing on real material created by the makers of the test is the best way to prepare for the SAT, so this change is great news for students around the world.

Who will benefit from these changes?

? Students with excellent skills in reading comprehension, logical reasoning, and data analysis.

? Students who read independently. The best way to tackle those challenging word-in-context questions? Start enjoying the process of extracting meaning from complex texts.

? Elite high schools that engage their students in rigorous, small-class debates about ethics, philosophy and decision-making.

? High-end test preparation companies and their tutors who already teach reasoning skills (rather than test-taking tricks) and are nimble enough to adapt to these changes.

? Middle class and lower middle class students who cannot afford one-on-one test preparation but have access to free Khan Academy materials on the Internet

Who will not?

? The big test preparation firms. With more official material than ever online as well as free tutorials in how to solve difficult problems, the need for "spun" preparation material (which looks real but isn't created by the makers of the test) and tricks for solving weird SAT-specific problems is greatly lessened.

? Students who find the current test unbearably long. The new exam is three hours and fifty minutes (with optional essay) versus the current exam's three hours and forty-five minute length.

? Students with learning disabilities. Students who contend with visual-spatial processing disabilities in particular may be negatively impacted by the necessity of interpreting charts and graphs to arrive at the credited response.

? Students who do not write well under time pressure. 50 minutes is a lot more time than the old 25 minutes allotted for the essay, but it's still far less time than a diligent student would spend at home each night outlining and writing several drafts of an important short written assignment due in class. Students who dread in-class essays will find the new essay format difficult.

Exactly a year ago this week, I wasted four grueling hours taking the SAT. My peers were science fair winners, debate champions, poets and athletes, but for this short period of time, we joined together to meet the same goal: make the fewest careless mistakes possible and achieve an optimal score. The exam was a bar we all had to cross to gain admission to the colleges of our dreams, and so while none of us enjoyed the exam, we maintained focus and attention until it ended.

Standardized testing has many critics. Only 20 percent of high school teachers think the college-admissions tests as a fair measure of the work, according to the New York Times. Nikhil Goyal, education reform activism and author of One Size Does Not Fit All: A Student's Assessment of School, has called the SAT "asinine [and] flawed." For its flaws, standardized testing provides college with an objective way to measure student ability. With top-notch universities still requiring a standardized college admission test, it's safe to assume that college admission tests are here to stay.

With this in mind, the question becomes how to improve the test. The test should offer "worthy challenges, not artificial obstacles," in the words of College Board President David Coleman. This week, the College Board announced four major changes, all of which represent substantial steps forward. First, the SAT will replace archaic vocabulary words with more useful ones. This has three major benefits. First, it will make the test more practical. A high score would better predict a student's' ability to write effectively. Second, it will reduce the need for test prep. Fewer students will find themselves being forced to memorize hundreds of "SAT words" (these words are used so infrequently that they have literally become defined by their appearance in the SAT), so that they are prepared with one or two of them appear on the exam. Third, it will improve equity. Irrelevant vocabulary words favor higher income students who have a higher likelihood of having been exposed to these words and can afford/are encouraged to complete test prep courses (Princeton Review's group SAT class can cost as much as $1,699).

The SAT will also eliminate its essay requirement. Student who opt for a writing section will be asked to analyze a passage and write about it, as opposed to generating an essay based on a one line prompt. This is a positive improvement because writing an SAT essay reflected very little about a student's actual writing ability. A study by Milo Beckman (Stuyvesant High School alumnus) found that the length of an SAT essay predicted its score. Les Perelman, MIT's writing across the curriculum director agrees. In 2010 he told ABC News that he could "predict an SAT essay's score 90 percent of the time just by looking at the length." Furthermore, by providing students who do opt for the essay with greater structure, and shifting the section's emphasis from creative writing to textual analysis, the College Board will create an improved metric for students' ability to succeed in college.

The last modification to the SAT is the removal of the guessing penalty (leaving a question blank meant 0 points, but getting it wrong would incur an extra penalty of .25 points). This grading formula is foreign to most students as it is used only for the SAT. As a result, it advantages students who have well-developed test-taking skills over intelligent ones.

The updated SAT is better tailored to measure students' capabilities and therefore presents colleges with an improved metric for student success. Innovation and change by the College Board should continue: AP curriculums should be made more difficult and prices should be slashed, the SAT reading questions should be more about analysis and the College Board should have fewer trick questions. Math questions should address topics in geometry, trigonometry and pre-calculus -- actual topics that students learn in their classrooms. The SAT is still far from perfect, but the College Board should be lauded for making an effort to adapt to student concerns.

The purpose of this post is to provide a brief summary for Florida parents regarding the failure of the spectrum of so-called education "reforms" introduced and advanced by former Governor Jeb Bush (1999-2007).

I have written this brief, two-page "talking points" Word doc to complement the contents of this post. Thus, parents can use the "talking points" as a quick reference in school board meetings and legislative hearings and use the contents of this post for a more detailed explanation of the talking points (complete with links to references supporting each point).

In this post, I address the spectrum of Florida education "reform," including school letter grades; graduation rates; charters, vouchers, and virtual schools; teacher evaluation; third-grade retention, and "declaring" Florida high school graduates as "college ready."

A-F School Letter Grades

A major problem with the school letter grades is their susceptibility to manipulation. In fact, former Florida Superintendent Tony Bennett was forced to resign in August 2013 after emails implicated him in fixing a charter school letter grade during his time as superintendent in Indiana.

Letter grade formulas are also endlessly manipulated. Politico notes, "In Florida, for instance, the legislature has tinkered with the A-F school grading formula at least two dozen times in recent years ... Last year, alarmed that so many Florida students failed a new writing exam, the state board of education quickly lowered the passing score to boost more kids over the bar."

A letter grade system that changes from year to year is useless. The Florida Department of Education (FDOE) tries to promote school letter grade changes as good and also presents information on "improvement" based on their ever-changing letter grade calculations, but don't let them fool you. Tell them that you know school letter grade comparisons are meaningless unless tests, and scoring, and all other parts of the formula (including student information) are kept exactly the same from year to year.

In 2012, FDOE botched its school letter grade calculations for 213 schools and had to correct them following publication.

Graduation Rates

Florida's graduation rate has been among the lowest for years. In 2001-02, Florida's graduation rate was among the bottom five states. In 2010-11, it was among the bottom seven (three states did not have rates calculated).

The 2010-11 calculation is a better measure for state-to-state comparison since the 2001-02 rate was not calculated uniformly for all states.

For 2012-13, Florida reports its overall graduation rate as 75.6%, up from 70.6% in 2010-11. This article attributes the rise in Florida school district graduation rates-- which varies widely from district to district-- to an emphasis on college preparedness--and the ACT test. Yet Florida was in the bottom six states for its average ACT score of 19.8 in 2012.

(For comparison sake: Alabama has a 2012-13 graduation rate of 80% and a 2012 average ACT of 20.3, and it does not promote establishing charter schools or grading teachers using student test scores.)

Charter Schools

Based upon the unstable, ever-changing Florida school letter grade system, Bush-favored charters are not faring well. In 2012, more Florida charters scored A's -- and more scored Fs. (This article includes a caveat regarding FDOE's having to correct 213 school grades that it incorrectly calculated. When calculation formulas are constantly changing, errors in calculation are much more likely.)

FDOE does not properly regulate Florida charter schools. The USDOE was informed of Florida's lack of charter oversight in this September 2012 audit. One result of this lack of proper oversight is this story of a Florida charter school that paid its principal of only 180 students $519,000 after the school was slated to close and paid her husband $460,000.

Lack of charter accountability before the public coupled with the ability to manipulate school letter grades enabled Former Florida Superintendent Tony Bennett to change an Indiana charter school's letter grade -- a charter founded by someone who donated millions to Republicans -- including $130,000 to Bennett.

Vouchers

As is true for Florida charters, Florida vouchers also lack proper oversight. One Florida voucher program, the McKay Scholarship Program, supposedly provides vouchers for special needs students. However, McKay schools have no curriculum requirements and no accreditation standards. Thus, there is zero accountability for those teaching Florida students receiving McKay Scholarship money.

Florida also has a tax credit voucher program known as the Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program, in which businesses donate money to send lower-income students to private schools in exchange for tax credits. The use of tax credits is a "back door" means to paying public money for students to attend private schools.

There is a current legislative push for Florida sales tax revenue to bypass the state and to be sent directly to "scholarship organizations." Again, this is an underhanded way to use public money to finance private school education in Florida.

The final flaw regarding Florida voucher "success" is that no means exists for evaluating the effectiveness of Florida vouchers. Florida legislators wish to expand the corporate tax credit voucher program. Only one -- Florida Senate President Don Gaetz -- is pushing for voucher school accountability.

Virtual Schools

Lack of proper oversight is the common theme for Bush-promoted "alternative learning" in the form of charters, vouchers, and now, virtual schools. One for-profit virtual learning company in Florida, K12, was investigated in 2012 for a cover-up regarding its using uncertified teachers and having certified teachers sign for uncertified teachers' class rosters -- which made it appear that some teachers had classes of up to 275 students.

The quality of education via virtual schools (also known as online schools or cyber charters) is highly suspect. Oversight is definitely needed.

Teacher Evaluation

Evaluating teachers using student test scores (known as "value added modeling," or VAM) does not work. Directly attributing "pieces" of student learning to specific teachers in specific classrooms via student test scores is a mathematical impossibility -- this shows up in huge "margins of error" for teacher scores. (The margins of error for many Florida teacher VAM scores is so large that it is like saying, "We think the bullet hit the bullseye; however, it could have completely missed the target.")

Moreover, in 2012 -- the same year that FDOE botched school letter grade calculations -- FDOE miscalculated its teacher evaluations. FDOE had to retract the information only hours following its release.

In 2014, FDOE "flunked" a number of its Teacher of the Year winners and finalists using VAM. This is what happens when professional contribution and quality human interaction are replaced by numbers input into a mathematical formula: Common-sense-defying foolishness.

Third Grade Retention

Jeb Bush tried to erase social promotion in the third grade by holding back number of third graders. It did not work. Instead, Florida ended up failing a disproportionate number of minority students. Having these students repeat third grade offered the illusion of testing gains for fourth graders taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). (Third graders do not take NAEP.) In short, if more lower-performing students are kept out of fourth grade, then the resulting fourth-grade NAEP score improvement is misleading.

Read here about parents' rights to exempt children from mandatory retention in Florida. Unfortunately, some students must be retained for two years until retention is determined to be itself a failure.

Hiding Bush's Failure: The "College Ready" Declaration

In 2013, the Florida legislature passed a bill that declares high school graduates as "college ready" and places all in for-credit college courses. In doing so, the legislature has decided that ignoring a problem will make it disappear. What such legislation allows Florida to do is to state publicly that all of its graduates are "college ready" -- whether they really are or not.

The point of such "college ready" legislation is to absolve Florida policy makers (including former Governor Jeb Bush himself) from any responsibility associated with their numerous decisions regarding the ever-changing school letter grades -- or lack of accountability for Florida charters, vouchers, and online schools -- or inaccurate, damaging teacher evaluation policies -- or arguably-abusive retention legislation. After all, it certainly would make the failure of the Jeb-Bush-promoted Florida education reform "miracle" obvious if Florida graduates required remedial coursework in order to enter college.

In Closing: Accountability Needed

Florida legislators and other officials in positions of authority need to be held accountable for their decisions regarding the education of Florida's public school students. My intention in writing this post (and the attached talking-point Word doc) is to equip Florida parents to do just that.

The Jeb Bush Florida Education "Miracle" is a sham, Florida parents. Tell all who will listen that you know so. Hold Florida's elected officials accountable for what they are inflicting upon your children.

Originally posted 03-06-14 at deutsch29.wordpress.com

Hooray, America!

In a new ranking from Times Higher Education, the United States holds 13 slots in the list of the 20 universities with the best reputations.

?When it comes to the planet?s most prestigious universities, the U.S. is the undisputed champion of the world -- its dominance is quite extraordinary," said Phil Baty, editor of Times Higher Education Rankings. "Its universities take almost half of the top 100 places (its nearest rival, the United Kingdom, has 10). It is remarkable that the U.S. has strengthened its dominance during a time of austerity, when leading Asian universities have benefited from generous funding and powerful government-backed campaigns to raise their status."

Seoul National University and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology were identified in THE's release as rising stars in the world of academia. The top 20 ranking consisted of schools from the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Canada and Switzerland.

Although the list's American universities are largely Ivy League schools, two publics -- the University of California Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses -- make the top 10. Penn State University, Georgia Tech, UC-San Diego, Purdue and the universities of Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Washington and Texas are all in the top 50. How well state colleges did was of particular interest to THE.

?But there is one serious concern highlighted by the data: of the small number of US institutions falling down the list, most are from the public sector and have suffered funding cuts," said Baty. "The prestigious University of California?s top research institutions have collectively suffered and other big name state universities are losing their international status, too."

Overall, American universities have 46 of the top 100 schools, and the United Kingdom follows behind with 10 of the top 100.

Top 12 Of The Times Higher Education 2014 Word Reputation Ranking:

This week's news about changes to the SAT format that will take place in 2016 reminded me of my own SAT experience just a few years ago. At the time, I was doing a webseries for Men's Health Magazine where I would attempt a different challenge every episode. I played goalie against a Division 1 lacrosse team, battled a world-class ping pong player, and even faced off against golf legend Gary Player on the links. Then my boss suggested trying something different. He wanted me to retake the SAT. I was not enthused. Most of the stuff I'd been doing was a bit more adventurous and while I may not have excelled or succeeded at most of them, at least I didn't come off looking too foolish. This one was different. By retaking the SAT for the first time in almost 30 years, there was a pretty good chance I was going to be exposed to the world (and more importantly, my two young sons) as an actual idiot -- clinically-verified, institutionally-recognized dolt of the highest degree. My boss' only response to my trepidation was a box that showed up on my doorstep one day. In it were an SAT Study Book and a handful of #2 pencils.

People sometimes think I'm smart because I'm a writer and my wife thinks I'm good at math because I can always figure out the tip quickly at restaurants, but that doesn't exactly make me Rainman. I cracked open the Study Book with a healthy dose of apprehension (and a less-healthier supply of Bud Limes). The Critical Reading and Sentence Completion sections were up first, and I was surprised that I actually did okay. Sure, I missed a few answers, but for the most part, I was scoring well. Maybe this wasn't going to be as bad as I thought.

Then came the math section. I built up a touch of confidence when I aced the first few questions, which seemed to be based more on logic and common sense than any real math issues. The first algebra question hit me like a ton of bricks. And then a graph. And something about Pi. And radii and cylindrical proportions. Now I knew I was in real trouble. As I went through the sample tests, I came across far too many questions where not only did I not know the answer, I didn't even understand what the hell the question was asking. This might be trouble.

Test day came and I headed out to the local high school. The one thing I didn't prep for at all was the essay so, of course, it was the first thing we had to do. I make my living as a writer, so I felt that I had to at least do well on the essay section. Even if I butchered everything else, I should at least score well on the one thing that puts food on my kids' plates.

The proctor told us to open our test booklets. We had 25 minutes to finish, but I didn't think time would be an issue at all. I've cranked out thousand-word articles in less time than that, so I dove right in. My head flooded with ideas and I rushed to plot out my thoughts on some scratch paper. As the lead etched itself onto the paper, I was infused with even more brilliance. One great idea led to another. Excellent premises were established. A wonderful all-encompassing theme held all the separate pieces together in my head. This was going to be an essay for the ages. It might go into the SAT Hall of Fame. It would be revered for years to come in Kaplan courses throughout the land! Then suddenly, the proctor announced that there were only five minutes left. Uh-oh. While I had three pages of notes written down, I had yet to put anything into the test booklet. I started scribbling an endless array of discombobulated thoughts and run-on sentences. None of the wonderful ideas I had in my notes made it into my essay. I ended up trying to compare the fragile political state of Northern Africa to the plot of Kafka's The Metamorphosis and an episode of Go, Diego, Go! I had recently watched about the blue monarch butterfly. Obviously not my best work. And I still had four-and-a-half hours to go.

The rest of the morning was a blur. A 20-minute math section, followed by 25 minutes of critical reading, followed by 20 minutes of sentence completion. After my display of poor time management skills on the essay, I was now feeling constantly under the gun. I found myself sneaking peaks at the clock every time I filled in a circle with my deteriorating #2. While the time quickly ticked away for each session I was working on, the morning was passing slower than my high school career.

Eventually, we completed the final section and the test was over. I joined the line of hundreds of other kids who shuffled out of the school like extras in a bad zombie flick. After five hours of shabby fluorescent lighting, the bright sun burned my retinas like so many of those algebra problems did. But at least it was over. Nothing left to do but wait for the results.

Would they be as bad as I anticipated? Or had I been dreading the worst, only to learn that my extra 30 years of life experience actually made me smarter? It was neither. I ended up scoring 1880 out of 2400. Not great, but not as horrible as I'd feared. There's no true conversion for old scores, but my new results were mostly in line with the 1110 out of 1600 I had scored back in 1982. A little online research showed that my scores were still good enough to gain me admission at my old alma mater, Fairfield University. While it seems that I hadn't actually gotten any smarter in the past 30 years, at least I hadn't lost any of the intelligence I once had.

The only thing that really stuck in my craw from the whole experience was my poor score on the essay. I should have excelled at this part, but instead I scored four out of a possible 12 points. Four?! If you simply copied the essay topic into the booklet, you scored 2 points... and my ridiculous ramblings were only a shade better than that. How embarrassing. When it's time for my firstborn to take his SATs in another decade or so, I hope he's not surprised to see his old man sitting next to him, frantically scratching away with his faithful #2.

I was looking through some websites the other day and came across the question of what are some easy BS/MD programs. The answer to that question is very simple. There are no “easy” BS/MD programs. I understand why people want to find an easy BS/MD program. It would allow them to get all of the […]

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What are the Easy BS/MD Programs?

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The new SAT which begins in 2016 will be back to a 1,600 scoring method with the essay optional. This is the way the SAT was before the 2005 revision. Moreover, they are eliminating the penalty for wrong answers. The full scope of what the new SAT looks like will be available from the College […]

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New SAT for 2016

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The College Board has just announced that they are partnering with Khan Academy to provide FREE test prep to all students taking the SAT. They are joining forces right away to prepare students for the current SAT but the focus is on preparation for the new SAT that is coming out in 2016. Khan Academy […]

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College Board Joining with Khan Academy for SAT Prep

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Now, just so we are clear, the eight colleges of the Ivy League are some great schools. This is not meant to bash those colleges. However, not all colleges are appropriate for all students even if you can get in.  That is true for all colleges including the big name ones that people often aspire […]

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Why Turning Down an Ivy League College May Make Sense

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This time of year the requests for interviews are coming from all of the BS/MD programs. While most of my students are getting multiple interviews, rarely do they get asked to interview at every program they have applied to. And the question is always, why didn’t that program want to interview me? There are all […]

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Why You Didn’t Get an Interview for a BS/MD Program

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The folks at the Common Application have indicated that they are keeping the personal statement essay prompts for 2015 the same as they used for 2014. For those of you juniors who want to get a head start on your common app personal statement, here are the essay prompts: 1. Some students have a background […]

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Common App Essay Topics for 2015

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A bill to create a lower college-tuition rate for illegal immigrants passed a House committee Monday evening on a 7-6 vote — a historic first for the legislation, though it still faces potential death before another committee.

After heated debates over the future of two charter schools, Delaware legislators plan to hold a public hearing next week to get input from residents as it considers changes to the state's charter regulations.

Two Hawaii schools were among the 78 honored today as part of the U.S. Department of Education's Green Ribbon Schools program.

The Board of Education will hold a community meeting Tuesday night in Kapolei to hear from parents, teachers and others on the education issues facing their communities.

Iowa must strengthen its efforts to combat school bullying, Gov. Terry Branstad declared Monday, as the spotlight focused on the state's troubles in grappling with the issue.

The state Board of Education is gathering public input on a proposed campaign aimed at doubling the number of Idahoans between the ages of 25 and 34 with a college degree or a certificate from a professional technical school.