• During last night’s State of the Union address, President Obama referenced the new college scorecard, promising to help parents “get the most bang for your educational buck.”

• Today the interactive scorecard was released to provide students and families an interactive tool that will help them pick their best school option.

• According to ed.gov, the tool allows for users to evaluate schools based on individual needs such as  location, size, campus setting, and degree and major programs. Read the rest of this entry »

Across the country, high school juniors and seniors are preparing for college. When I was in high school years ago, I was in tons of organizations, volunteered, and took more honors and AP courses than a high schooler should take. I did everything I could to build my resume for college and kept my GPA high. The next item I had to put on my college resume was my ACT score. Let’s just say my ACT score proved that I wasn’t as brilliant as I thought.

What is the ACT? The ACT is a national college admissions exam, testing students in five subject areas of English, math, reading, science, and writing. The highest an individual can score on their ACT is 36. Scoring a 36 almost guarantees admission into any university in the nation and large amounts of scholarship money. Across the country, universities request students to send college applications with an ACT and SAT score. But, in the Midwest, it is common for potential college students to send in just an ACT score.

Kansas ACT scores for 2012 are similar to the previous year, according to The Wichita Eagle. The data released Wednesday revealed students in the class of 2012 are not ready for college. About half of all US high school students scored below the average ACT score, a 21.1. High school classes of 2012 in Kansas had an ACT score average of 21.9, compared to last year’s average score of 22. Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama announced that he will be creating a new education initiative targeted to improving the achievement levels of African Americans in education. While in New Orleans giving a speech to the Urban League, the president stated that he would sign an order putting the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans into place.

This new educational initiative “works to make sure that all African American students can receive an education that fully prepares them for high school graduation, college completion and productive careers,” Obama said.

This initiative will be work with the Executive Office of the President and cabinet agencies to identify evidence-based practices to improve African American students’ achievement in school and coll,ege. The White House stated that this initiative will also work to “develop a national network of individuals, organizations and communities that will share and implement these practices.” The goal of this initiative will be to ensure that African American students have the same opportunities as other students. 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 »

It’s not very common that you hear about a high school whose entire senior class is going to attend college after graduation. It’s even more uncommon for that school to be in Chicago, an area that has a long history of education challenges. Considering these facts, I think it is fair to say that it is unheard of for a school facing these obstacles to accomplish this feat for three years in a row, but that is exactly what Urban Prep Academy has done.

The all-boys charter school is happy to report that all 85 members of the Class of 2012 have been accepted to colleges and universities across the country. There were even some standout students, like Vernon Cheeks, who were accepted to multiple schools; Cheeks was accepted to 14 different schools.

“It taught me how to be resilient,” Cheeks said about his time at Urban Prep Academy. “It also taught me how to be accountable for my own actions.”

The school is located in a neighborhood with a very high crime rate and is the middle of gang terrorizes. However, that hasn’t stopped the school or its students from succeeding. Founded in 2006, Urban Prep Academy has taken young men and helped them transition from barely reading at grade level to excelling and being accepted to university.

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According to new studies from the Teachers College at Columbia University, many community colleges are placing students in remedial classes when the students do not actually need them. The schools are relying on the students’ scores on standardized tests, but the studies show that they would be better able to place students in the appropriate classes if they relied on the students’ high school GPAs instead.

Most students would not like to take remedial classes if they do not have to, and the reason why this is makes a lot of sense. Remedial classes are a waste of money and time if students do not actually need them because they do not receive any credit for these classes. In fact, more than 75 percent of students who start out taking remedial classes in college do not earn a degree, and this could be simply because they get burned out taking remedial classes.

“We hear a lot about the high rates of failure in college-level classes at community colleges,” said Judith Scott-Clayton, a professor at the Teachers College and the author of one of the studies. “Those are very visible. What’s harder to see are the students who could have done well at college level but never got the chance because of these placement tests.”

The placement tests that Scott-Clayton is referring to are most commonly the College Board’s Accuplacer and the ACT’s Compass. These tests have been used at many schools since the 1980s to determine what classes students should be placed in, based on their scores on the tests. Many students are told not to prepare for the tests because they are only used for placement, but this can lead to students  being placed in classes that are not the appropriate level for them. According to the two new studies from Columbia University, schools would do well to rely less on these tests and more on the students’ high school GPAs as an indicator of the students’ abilities.

The trend is being seen in schools across the country.

“I haven’t seen the studies, but what I do know is that when I talk with leaders of community colleges, a lot of them have issues with the diagnostic tests and sense that far too many students are being put in developmental, remedial education, especially in math,” said Walter Bumphus, president of the American Association of Community Colleges. “Almost every one of them has some plan to change that.”

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It is by far the scariest, most difficult, and all-around-worst part of applying for admissions to a college or university. I know this might seem a little extreme, especially when you consider all of the time-consuming documents that you have to prepare and collect for your application for admissions (think FAFSA, the SAT, recommendation letters, etc.), but I am secure in my belief that this one part of the process is the part that makes many people avoid applying until the final deadline is upon them. What am I talking about? The personal statement or application essay, of course.

Many schools require applicants to submit a personal statement as part of their admissions application. This essay is supposed to sum up, in three pages or less, why you are an amazing person and worthy of attending their school. So, obviously, there’s a little bit of pressure to get it right. After all, you only have one chance to make a first impression on the admissions committee and this is it.

Recently, students have began using YouTube videos as substitutes for the traditional essay. Although this is a cool, new alternative that might become mainstream in the future, it currently is more of the exception than the rule. Unfortunately, that blank piece of paper is still the most common format for college admission essays. Read the rest of this entry »

When most students start receiving information about the financial costs of a higher education, they are seniors in high school. Up until that point, many are simply told that college is expensive and they should start saving, but that’s about it. Now, a new tool has been designed to help families understand how much a higher education will cost, which allows families to then begin planning on how to pay for it.

This tool is called the Net Price Calculator (NPC) and was created to be in accordance with 2008′s Higher Education Opportunity Act. Under this act, every institute of higher education that allows students to use federal aid to pay for their education must have an NPC on their website so that students can calculate the price of attending that school. Students can put in their own personal data on this NPC and the calculator shows them the net price of attending that school (tuition, room, and board included). Read the rest of this entry »

High school counselors are failing their students. When it comes time for students to make major life decisions, guidance counselors should be behind them every step of the way. But, to put it simply, their guidance is lacking.

However, it may not be their fault. A recent study by the College Board showed that public school counselors had an average caseload of 389 kids, while those in the low-income schools took on an average of 427. With such a heavy burden, counselors find that their work suffers and so do the students.

“Counselors are like teachers,” said Patrick O’Connor, director of college counseling at the Roeper School in Michigan. “When they have too many students, the amount of learning and personal contact goes down, and the quality of the counselor-student relationship suffers. Ideally, the ratio should be 100 to 1, but in this economy, counselors would be happy with 250 to 1, especially since ratios in some states are higher than 600.”

Not only are counselors taking on a huge work load, the survey also revealed that they have not received enough training to do their jobs. While 73 percent of those surveyed have master’s degrees, and 58 percent of them are administrators or teachers, only 16 percent said they were adequately trained for their job.

“Current counselor training programs are completely out of line with what students and parents want and need from a school counselor today,” O’Connor said.

Meanwhile the survey showed that schools were not deploying their counselors to tactically prepare students for college and the work place. A mere 42 percent said that their school believed in their ability to successfully drive students to meet their post-secondary education goals. Also, only 34 percent said that their school offered students academic planning for the future.

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When I was in high school, I took a few AP classes in order to earn some college credit. Some of my friends took a few college classes at the local community college. When we graduated high school, we had already earned enough credit to be considered second-semester college freshmen, and we thought we were ahead of the curve. Turns out, when compared to 19 high school students in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, we were way behind.

This year, 19 seniors at Lake Havasu High School will graduate high school will also earning their associate’s degrees. These students all took a test during their sophomore year of high school which allowed them to take dual enrollment classes during their junior and senior years of high school.

“We’ve all had to adapt to teaching ourselves how to study because things have come so easy to us before; so now our teachers expect us to help teach ourselves,” said Savanna Bailey, a senior at the school. “I’ve had a couple of anxiety attacks, but it’s all worth it whenever you really do learn more. You have to bring every single thick textbook home with you and you look, obviously like the nerdiest one in the school carrying all of your books.”

Looking nerdy seems like a small price to pay for two-years worth of free college credit, if you ask me. So how do these students make it through the insane amounts of homework and stress they must encounter while studying for both high school and college classes?

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