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President Obama said this redraft was necessary to combat the trend of lowering education standards in America. He pointed to the past few decades as an example of how American students are not as competitive as foreign students.

“Unless we step up, unless we take action, there are countless children who will never realize their full talent and potential,” President Obama said during his weekly address.

Obama’s new education reforms will require high schools to better prepare students for continuing their higher education and will more fully emphasize academic achievement than the previous No Child Left Behind program.

President Obama knows his goal to have every student graduate high school is a steep task. “Achieving this goal will be difficult,” he said. “It will take time. And it will require the skills, talents and dedication of many: principals, teachers, parents, students.”

Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this goal becomes reality in the American education system.

Via LA Times.

Evidently the people at the Princeton Review have heard several people share my same concern. They have declared March 20, 2010 as National Testing Day they are offering a free full-length, SAT, ACT, or PSAT practice test to anyone who signs up.

Why should you wake up early on a Saturday to take a test that doesn’t count for college admissions? By taking the practice test, you will become familiar with the test’s format, learn the best way to pace yourself, and receive a personalized score that shows your strengths and weakness. This will give you time to study differently, if necessary, and improve your chances for the actual test.

Everyone is different, so the way everyone studies is also different. This also determines why some people do better on the ACT or the SAT. The Princeton Review gives tips for which test is best for different people, but if you want to try the ACT when you are more of a SAT person, this is the perfect opportunity to give it a shot.

This is a great opportunity to take a real SAT, ACT, or PSAT test with absolutely no risk.

Sign-up at Princeton Review

And keep these SAT/ACT study tips in mind on March 20!

On the opposite end of the spectrum: Jake Snow is another new teacher at Frownyville Middle School. His students’ test scores have been falling every year that he has been teaching. And now, the university where Snow graduated from is being scrutinized to see if they are adequately training their students.

This imaginary practice of holding colleges accountable for training teachers to be the best teachers they can possibly be might become an industry standard soon.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently congratulated Louisiana for becoming the first state to “tie student test scores into a chain of evaluation that reaches all the way to the teacher colleges.”

Florida and Texas are also implementing plans to link students’ test scores to teacher preparation in college.

Arthur Levine, former president of Teachers College at Columbia University thinks that this method of holding colleges accountable for adequately training teachers is the model.

“I think you’re going to see a lot more of it over the next several years,’’ he says.

I think this is a great idea. If we want to reform the education system in this nation, we have to start at the very beginning. If colleges are allowing teachers to graduate who are not prepared to teach, then we can never expect the educational standards to improve. Let’s hope to see this new system implemented across the nation soon!

Constance McMillen, Via Huffington Post

A high school in a Mississippi school district canceled its spring prom because a student, Constance McMillen, asked to bring her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo to the yearly gala.

Rather than owning up to the real reasons why the prom was cancelled, school officials are instead citing that it is ”due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events.” ”Recent events” being a request by openly gay McMillen to invite her girlfriend to the prom.

McMillen told CBS News, “I just want to go to the prom and bring my date, just like everyone else gets to.”

Eighteen-year-old McMillen soon contacted the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is now seeking a court order to force the Mississippi high school to follow through with its plans for holding prom. The school district is contending that McMillen and her date, a sophomore, are violating the district’s policy against same-sex couples at the dance.

The ACLU said that district officials told McMillen that she and her girlfriend wouldn’t be allowed to arrive together and that she and her girlfriend might be requested to leave if their presence made any of the other students “uncomfortable.” The ACLU also went out to say that McMillien was told she would not be allowed to wear a tuxedo.

But the battle is just being fought in the courts. It’s being waged within the hallways of Itawamba County Agricultural High School where McMillen is being targeted by other students as the person who ruined their senior year.

The tough allegations and hurtful words aren’t detering McMillen, who is fighting hard alongside her ACLU lawyer to have the prom reinstated and more importantly, to send a strong message to students and youth everywhere that it’s OK to be gay.

Wrong. Daniel Higgins, a California resident, was recently arrested for immigration fraud when it was discovered that he was attending classes and taking exams for Middle Eastern students who wanted to keep their visas. These students would pay Higgins up to $1,500 to pretend to be them in their classes. Higgins was attending classes for more than 100 students from Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

Unfortunately, immigration fraud and the moral issue of having someone attend classes for someone else are not the only concerns. Some of these students are “persons of interest.”

“This is unique and not something we have seen in the past,” said Jorge Guzman, a special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We don’t know the motive of these men coming from these countries, why they were here or why they were not attending classes.”

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, colleges were supposed to closely monitor foreign students and make sure their visas did not expire. However, it is now obvious that some schools are not fulfilling their responsibilities.

“It tells them they have a problem, where they are going to have to do something about verifying the identification of individuals coming in to take entrance exams and classes at those institutions,” Guzman said.

Via Fox News

I often find myself forgetting a conversation I had with someone that I really should remember. What’s up with this short-term memory loss? Well, maybe it’s not that we forget, but that we don’t ever really commit these things to memory.

I attended a lecture about memorization and the steps that you need to go through in order to really commit something to your long-term memory. These steps are called “The Three R’s of Memory.” We’ll analyze them as if you were studying information you would need to know for a test.

The first step is reception. You have to be receptive to receiving information if you intend to remember it. Some tips to better receive the information in the first place is to ask questions to clarify what you didn’t understand and to review your notes before reading a chapter.

The second step is recollection. When you are taking the test, you have to be able to recall what you received early during your studies. To practice recollection, you can give yourself practice tests. This will simulate the actual test, when you’ll have to recall the information you are memorizing. If this seems hard at first, try clearing your mind of everything except the materials you are trying to memorize. Then try again.

The third step is retention. This is when you commit what you’ve learned to long-term memory. Some steps to do this are:

1. Make a conscious effort to remember what you’ve learned.

2. Organize the information you’ve learned using maps, charts, notes, or highlighting.

3. Review the material as soon as possible and as often as possible after you learn it.

4. Tell someone else what you’ve learned; teaching others is a great way to help you learn the material as well.

5. Decide why you need to remember the information, then commit to remembering it.

Committing something to memory, whether it’s a math equation or a birthday date, takes time and effort. But if you focus on the three R’s, you’re more likely to remember what you are trying to learn.

Grace had attended Lake Forest College when she was younger, and evidently held the school close to her heart. Grace died in January 2010. A little bit later, her attorney told the president of Lake Forest College that Grace had left her inheritance to the school.

How much could a woman who could afford to wear second-hand clothes have in savings? The president of Lake Forest College was shocked to learn that Grace had $7 million.

“She could have lived in any house in Lake Forest, but she chose not to,” said William Marlatt, her attorney. “She enjoyed other people, and every friend she had was a friend for who she was. They weren’t friends for what she had.”

Those are the best types of friends to have, if you are a student who wants to study abroad. Grace’s donation is going towards a scholarship for the 1,300 students who want to study abroad. Grace first created the scholarship program when she donated $180,000 to the school. Her inheritance continues her initial scholarship. And if this wasn’t enough, Grace also left her house to the school.

Her final wish was that her home would be turned into a dormitory for women, fittingly called “Grace’s College.”

Via the LA Times.

For students who now get to attend these schools, it is the opportunity of a lifetime. These college prep schools will offer the students more chances to succeed and improve their chances of attending college.

The students were selected based on socio-economic factors and census tracts, but not on race. Some critics are afraid this will hurt minorities’ chances of attending the schools. However, the schools are also accepting students from four other socio-economic tiers, so it is likely that they will have a diverse student population.

Another factor for selection of the students was their test scores. Simply put, those with the highest score, win.

Chicago Public School officials said “high-performing students from low-performing schools were significantly under-represented” at these schools. However, thanks to the new criteria for student selection and admission, students who would not have had this opportunity now do.

When the University of Maryland’s men’s basketball team beat Duke’s team on March 5, 2010, students gathered together and celebrated. They were very excited after defeated their rival, and “sang and cheered over their team’s success.”

However, police officers were not pleased. Officers showed up in full riot gear, with the goal of clearing the street. According to the Washington Post, many eyewitnesses reported that the officers were being overly dramatic, “banging clubs against their riot shields as they slowly moved forward.”

The officers were very adamant about breaking up the celebration. Officers pushed revelers, struck them with clubs, and used pepper spray.

“It was like a war zone or something,” said Kerry Kramer, a freshman at University of Maryland. “You just would hear like the shots going off, and you would just like start running because you didn’t want to get hit.”

Police officers claim they were just trying to keep everyone safe and that their actions were necessary against the “large, unruly and destructive” group of students. They say students were trying to flip a bus, throwing trashcans, and setting trees on fire.

The University of Maryland is cooperating with the police force and admits there were “several incidents representing poor judgment on the part of those participating in the postgame celebration.” The school might also consider suspending or expelling students for rioting, even if they have not been convicted in a criminal court.

“The postgame behavior of some students is inconsistent with the high standards – in academics, attitudes and in behaviors – that we have set at the University of Maryland College Park,” said Millree Williams, a school spokesman. “We will not let the poor behavior of a few taint the good behavior of many.”

Videos of the incident are currently being reviewed to determine if either revelers or police officers acted inappropriately. Hopefully these videos will also be taken into consideration before anyone is expelled.