College is not always the best option for everyone. We often hear this, and for most people, it brings to mind someone who will do better learning a trade or skill. However, Taylor Wilson is an exception to this standard. At 18, he has already built a working reactor and plans to build nuclear fusion reactors. Here’s the kicker: he doesn’t plan on going to college and he’s received a $100,000 grant not to do so.

“I’ve got some technology that will really change the world, so college right now is not the best option for me,” Wilson said.

The grant Wilson received is called the Thiel Fellowship, created by Peter Thiel for individuals under 20 years old. Thiel is an investor in Silicon Valley who thinks that students shouldn’t be pursuing an expensive university education, but should instead be learning about and developing breakthrough technologies. Thiel seems to think that by encouraging students not to go to college he will inadvertently also be lowering the unemployment rate and amount of student debt that face many 20-somethings.

“You increasingly have people who are graduating from college, not being able to get good jobs, moving back home with their parents,” he said. “I think there’s a surprising openness to the idea that something’s gone badly wrong and needs to be fixed.” Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most prestigious high schools in the US is being sued by the Coalition of the Silence, a minority advocacy group, and the NAACP for discrimination against black and Latino children. On July 23, 2012 the two organizations filed the federal civil rights lawsuit against Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.

“Poor Latino kids are not being identified [for gifted programs], and I worry part of that is language,” said Martina Hone, a representative of the Collation of the Silence. “African-American kids are not being identified. I’m worried that’s race.”

In their lawsuit, the NAACP and the Coalition of the Silence claim that Fairfax County – where the school is located in Alexandria, VA – “essentially operates a network of separate and unequal schools [and] for decades, these students have been grossly and disproportionately underrepresented in admission to the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.” Read the rest of this entry »

Residents in Philadelphia must certainly be looking at charter schools a little differently today after Dorothy June Hairston Brown – a charter school mogul in the city – was charged with defrauding more than $6.5 million in taxes from three of her charter schools. Brown and four of her colleagues were charged on July 24, 2012 and have been indicted with more than 60 counts of wire fraud, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice.

In the past, Brown had earned a reputation for improving students’ test scores. However, she was also known for suing parents who questioned her practices and claiming large salaries.

“The indictment in this cases alleges that June Brown and her four co-conspirators used the charter school system to engage in rampant fraud and obstruction,” said U.S. Attorney Zane David Merneger. “My office will continue to vigorously investigate and pursue those charter school operators who defraud the taxpayers and deprive our children of funds for their education.” Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing its streak for not being accountable, the Florida Department of Education recently announced that it incorrectly graded hundreds of schools across the state. In fact, 40 out of 60 school districts in the state were affected by this miscalculation of grades.

This error occurred when the FDOE omitted one part of the newly revised and very complex grading formula that is used to evaluate the schools. Since the error was discovered, the grades have been corrected, resulting in 116 schools seeing their grades increase from a B to an A, 55 seeing their grades increased from a C to a B, and 35 schools seeing their grades increase from a D to a C.

“School grades are important to students, parents, teachers, principals, administrators, and the community,” said Gerard Robinson, Commissioner of Education. “And, while I am pleased that the continuous review process has resulted in better grades, we will continue to look for ways to improve the grade calculation process.”

The school grades are based mainly on a standardized test that focuses on reading, writing, math, and science called the FCAT. The results of these grades are used for a number of purposes, including determining which schools receive financial rewards. However, many people are saying this test is too rigorous for most students and that students might feel too discouraged after taking it.

Rick Roach, an educator who took the FCAT and did not pass, made his results public.

“It seems to me something is seriously wrong here,” he said about the test. “If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had.”

Roach currently has two master’s degrees and is a member of the Orange County School Board.

So, it seems that perhaps the Florida Department of Education should take a look at what it has been doing lately, concerning standardized tests and grading of schools in the state. Perhaps grades are not all they are cracked up to be.

“Moving forward, we need to focus our attention on the quality of the work produced and student achievement, not just a letter grade,” said Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie.

Via The Huffington Post

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It’s the End of No Child Left Behind: Now What?

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How do you make two parties who want opposing things happy? Well, if one party is a mayor who wants a longer school day and if the other is a teachers’ union that wants to keep their work day the same length of time, you can look to Chicago to find the answer.

Instead of forcing the current teachers to work a day that is 20 percent longer than the days they worked last year, the city has decided to hire more teachers to make up the extra time. The extra time in the school day will be filled with extracurricular classes, such as art, music, and PE.

Just where will these teachers come from? That’s another brilliant part of the solution: the teachers will be selected from a pool of teachers who were laid off since 2010.

However, the question still remains as to where the school district will find the $40-$50 million required to pay all of these new/returning teachers. Read the rest of this entry »

A new study from Ball State University is going to have parents of high school students, and the students themselves, quite upset and worried. According to the study, 81.3 percent of 305 high school counselors reported that their schools do not have any sort of protocol or procedure for handling reports of adolescent dating violence, which is any psychological, emotional,  sexual, or physical violence that occurs within a dating relationship.

Even more upsetting is that 90 percent of the counselors who were interviewed reported that they had not been trained in how to assist victims of adolescent dating violence within the past two years. Forty-three percent of the counselors said this lack of training was the main barrier that kept them from being able to help victims of this form of abuse. However, 61 percent of the counselors said they had indeed assisted victims of adolescent dating violence in the past two years, even though they did not have any training in the issue. Read the rest of this entry »

For many families today, the thought of paying for a college education can be quite daunting. Scholarships make a great way to fund this investment in a child’s future.

There are many different types of scholarships. Some are based on performance on standardized tests, some on financial need, and others on athletic ability. These scholarships all seem normal – and to be frank – well earned in one way or another. However, a new type of scholarship is hitting the market. Many schools have started offering scholarships to students who come from middle-income families and demonstrate academic promise.

“We certainly have found that with the recession in recent years, many middle-income families and even some higher-income families are looking for more aid,” said Earl Retif, vice president of enrollment management at Tulane University. Read the rest of this entry »

Once every five years, every Harvard graduate gets a nice little surprise. No, it’s not a raise at their jobs – although some may prefer that option. Instead, it’s the Red Book, a collection of information from every Harvard graduate that sums up what they have been doing for the past five years.

In a sense, it’s a right of passage to get your first red book, as many Harvard graduates know. Deborah Copaken Kogan, a Harvard grad, recently wrote a novel – appropriately titled The Red Book – about four former Harvard roommates who are attending a college reunion. In her novel, she describes the relationship that many Harvard alumni have with their red books.

“No data exists concerning the percentage of red books that are cracked open the minute their recipients arrive home from work, the playground, and adulterous tryst, what have you,” she says. “But the author will go out on a limb here and guess 100.” Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know that almost 50 percent of students who take an AP exam are not going to pass? That certainly has to be a frustrating factoid for those test takers. If only there was something they could do in order to improve their chances of passing those tests….Oh wait, there is now, thanks to McGraw-Hill Education.

McGraw-Hill Education has a new digital program, the ONboard Series, which is an “all-digital learning solution designed to improve students’ performance in AP classes and on exams by developing the skills they need to succeed before they enter the course.” This program is just one more step on McGraw-Hill’s journey to become the leader in education innovation.

According to the Jeff Livingston, senior vice president of College and Career Readiness at McGraw-Hill Education, many of the students who take AP classes do not pass the tests because they are not prepared for the rigorous coursework and expectations that come along with the classes. This then leads to them not preparing as well as they should for the exams. Livingston says that ONboard will aim “to better prepare students for their AP courses by providing them with the skills and background knowledge they need to be successful.” Read the rest of this entry »

What do Joe DiMaggio, Lord Krishna, Ernest Hemingway, and a sacred tree in South America have in common? No, the answer is not a bad joke like your dad might tell. Instead, these four things are all part of the subject material for a course that is currently being taught at New York University called “Baseball as a Road to God.”

Dr. John Sexton is teaching this class to 18 undergraduates at NYU. Some of them are serious baseball fans, while others don’t really know or care what Babe Ruth’s curse is. However, they all are in process of “touching the ineffable,” as Sexton describes what students are learning in the course.

“The real idea of the course,” Sexton said, is to develop heightened sensitivity and a noticing capacity. So baseball’s not ‘the’ road to God. For most of us, it isn’t ‘a’ road to God. But it’s a way to notice, to cause us to live more slowly and to watch more keenly and thereby to discover the specialness of our life and our being, and for some of us, something more than our being.” Read the rest of this entry »