College cost calculator

I was browsing the New York Times education page, and came across an interactive College Cost Calculator. While it’s not so useful for students about to graduate college, it could be a helpful tool for high school students who want to factor in the rate of inflation. Of course, in the case of the University of California system, annual increases in tuition aren’t necessarily stable these days.

Click on the image to use The College Cost calculator on the New York Times website.

SAT vs ACT

The College Board's SAT study guide, courtesy of thecollegeview.com

According to Fortune Magazine, SAT owner, The College Board,  and ACT’s American College Testing, “are now engaged in an undeclared war for market share and mind share.”

The SAT, created around 80 years ago to help standardize college admissions procedures, has been around quite a bit longer than the ACT, which was created in 1959. The ACT is supposedly aimed at measuring classroom achievement, while the SAT determines innate ability. From what I understand, the ACT was popular only in the Midwest region of the US for many years.

According to Fortune, over the past decade the ACT has been rising in the ranks to parallel the popularity of the SAT. In the high school class of 1999, the ACT fell only nine percentage points behind the ACT, and in the graduating class of 2009 the levels were nearly equal.

As a member of my high school’s class of 2006, I applied to private and public schools across the country. I took both the SAT and ACT, and without analyzing too deeply, I’d have to say that they seemed incredibly similar in content. The SAT tests verbal, math and writing capabilities, while the ACT tests English, math, reading and science, along with an optional written test.

The ACT is beginning to pose a threat to the SAT's dominance.

I don’t think that standardized tests truly test a person’s achievements or innate capabilities. They don’t take into consideration a person’s test-taking abilities, which is a key factor in how well people do on these tests. It see

ms as though many colleges are beginning to agree. According to TheCollegeView.com, the list of “test-optional” universities has surpassed 775. Even now as I apply for grad school, I’m learning that GRE (Graduate Record Exam) scores are not accepted at many institutions. Personally, I can’t wait for the day that they either do away with standard

ized tests completely, or develop a new way to measure  how well a student compares to other across the country.

Gates Foundation to rescue education

Bill and Melinda Gates (center and right) with Warren Buffett - photo courtesy of CNN Money

Although state and federal governments may be pinching pennies when it comes to education, Bill and Melinda Gates seek to reform the system and and spread goodwill to our school systems.

In a New York Times article from last week,  it was announced that the Bill and  Melinda Gates Foundation donated $290 million to education, the largest sum given in the past decade.

According to the article, the money will go toward three school districts and five charter groups working to transform how teachers are evaluated and how they get tenure. $100 million will go to Florida schools, $90 million to Memphis, Tennessee schools, $40 million to Pittsburgh public schools, and $60 million to Los Angeles charter management organizations.

In addition, a separate $45 million will be given as part of research initiative to study 3,700 classroom teachers in six cities, to discover what makes teachers effective.

I think it’s wonderful that someone is finally concerned with the quality of education that students are receiving.  On the Education Homepage of the New York Times, another headline read “New York Teachers at Some Schools With Low Grates Get Bonuses.” The article goes on to explain that although the schools are receiving good scores on their “report cards”, they are still meeting performance goals set by the administration or state.

Teachers should be applauded for the hard work they do in the classroom, but could they possibly be performing at a higher than a D or F level? The Gates Foundation study may help determine factors that will aid teachers in bringing their students up to a higher standard.

Literacy in Afghanistan

Education is a global issue. In Afghanistan, an estimated 90 percent of women and 63 percent of men in rural areas, where the large majority live, are illiterate, according to the 2005 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) report.

A friend of mine in the Marines who was deployed to Afghanistan in December said that the children in rural areas of the country are poorly educated, and don’t have nearly as many resources available to them as we enjoy here. This really helped to put things in perspective for me — no matter how much we may pay for an education, at least the opportunities are there and nothing (particularly the government), stands in our way of reaching educational goals.

In the video below, the tv spot features United Nations staff members and people who have benefited from the literacy program.

“Caged Bird” continued

I only have time for a short post this week, but for those of you who read my last entry on the controversy in the Orange County school district regarding Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I thought you might like an update.

Judy Ahrens, a representative of the the group wishing to ban the book from local middle school libraries, presented her case to both the Ocean View School District board in early October and the Huntington Beach City Council on Oct. 19.

No word back yet from the city council, but last week the superintendent ruled that he will allow Angelou’s book to continue to be available to students in the Ocean View School District. He did, however, ask the schools to consider issuing permission slips to check out the book.  He seems to have found a happy compromise between parents wanting to protect their children from material they personally find inappropriate, and parents who want to allow their children access to the content.

OC book ban may force “Bird” back into its cage

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the latest book to cause controversy in OC schools

“Wouldn’t they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blond, would take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn’t let me straighten? My light-blue eyes were going to hypnotize them, after all the things they said about “my daddy must of been a Chinaman” (I thought they meant made out of china, like a cup) because my eyes were so small and squinty. Then they would understand why I had never picked up a Southern accent, or spoke the common slang, and why I had to be forced to eat pigs’ tails and snouts. Because I was really white and because a cruel fairy stepmother, who was understandably jealous of my beauty, had turned me into a too-big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that would hold a number-two pencil.” –excerpted from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Orange County school districts are urging the Huntington Beach City Council to ban Angelou’s renowned autobiography, I  Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, according to an Oct. 20 article from the OC Register. Maya Angelou is one of the country’s most celebrated writers, the author of six autobiographies and recipient of a Puliter Prize nomination along with various other awards and honorary degrees.

A trustee who spoke at the city council meeting said she did not wish to read the book, but did so for “the sake of the innocence of our children.”

When I hear stories of parents trying to save children from the horrors of indecent literature, it confuses me. Yes, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings may contain graphic material, but is it really so much worse than other books housed in the very same library? In my opinion, the literary merit of the book outweighs any indecent content.  It tells about the life of a girl, Angelou, who overcomes the trials she faced in her youth, and the rape scene in question is a part of that story.

High costs for a higher education

College students, don’t put away your checkbooks just yet – with the current state of our universities’ budgets,  I wouldn’t be surprised if tuition and fees continued to rise in the coming semesters. In a report issued last week by College Board, public school tuition increased by 6.5 percent in the past year. Private college tuition increased by 4.4 percent.

According to a New York Times article, the inflation rate for tuition tends to increase by one percent from the previous decade. For example, the tuition rate in 80s  for public universities rose to 3 percent, in the 90s it was 4 percent, and from 2000-present it was 5 percent.

“The level of debt we’re asking people to undertake is unsustainable,” said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education in the Times article.

Rise in number of “English Language Learners”

An interactive map on The New York Times site shows the number of “English Language Learners,” as they are dubbed by education officials, in the United States.  It’s a term used to describe non-native speaking students, such as international students or immigrants, who are learning our language.

Click the map to see how many non-native speakers learned English in 2007 (above photo courtesy of fhwa.dot.gov)

I expected to see the heavy concentrations in the west, but was surprised to find that certain counties throughout the southeast contained a higher percentage of English Language Learners,  as I never really thought of those areas as places immigrants would choose to settle.

Even though the map is several months old,  its worth taking a look at.  Be sure to mouse over on the California region- LA County has one of the highest percentages in the state.

No free cookies at Harvard

Harvard University; photo courtesy of CNN

The headline from a New York Times article published last week read: “Leaner Times at Harvard: No Cookies.” As a result of budget cuts at Harvard, professors will no longer receive cookies at faculty meetings, morning breakfasts in most dorms will not be served and varsity athletes are no longer guaranteed free sweatsuits.

A Times blogger, Jack Hadden, referred to Harvard as the “world’s richest university,” and if you only skim over the first article its easy to believe. A suggestion given by the Harvard student body to help ease budget problems was for students to clean their own bathrooms instead of having the university hire student workers to do it.

However, read between the attempts to make Harvard seem overly privileged and spoiled and you’ll see that they’ve been hit hard by the rampant budget cutbacks as well. Hiring and salary freezes, lost libraries and 250 laid off staff members are some of the casualties of Harvard’s 30 percent decrease in the value of its endowment.

I have to wonder, if the “world’s richest university” is experiencing  budget cuts, what does that mean for the future of public universities?

Moodle vs WebCT: Out with the old, In with the new

If anyone is taking an online course at CSUN, then they may have already been introduced to the Moodle system.  In previous years, WebCT has been the learning management system (LMS) utilized in online classes.  However,  a recent article in the Sundial says that the university will be phasing out the old version of WebCT since Blackboard acquired the program and decided to cease production on updates. Fall 2009 marks the beginning of the official transition period, according to CSUN Academic Technology.