Placement tests still rule. The vast majority of colleges rely on placement tests, like ACCUPLACER, to determine whether students need to take remedial courses, despite their questionable accuracy. Education Sector’s Susan Headden wrote about the limitations of these “short, inexpensive, one-shot multiple-choice” tests in this piece. (h/t Inside Higher Ed) (National Assessment Governing Board)<Continue Reading »

Breaking news alert. Texting in class “interferes with a student’s ability to pay attention,” according to a new university study and forthcoming paper. (MLive.com)

Mainstream courses with remedial add-on. Connecticut lawmakers are considering a bill that would eliminate remedial college courses and instead, give extra help and support to students while they are in mainstream courses. (UContinue Reading »

Predicting the end of the semester. Officials at Austin Peay State University are piloting a new tool, Degree Compass, that guestimates a student’s chances of success, based on past academic performance. Last fall, it fell within 0.02 of a point when predicting grade point averages (GPAs). Could this replace those ineffective placement tests that too often (incorrectly) place students in Continue Reading »

Paying for courses they don’t need. New studies show that up to a third of community college students take remedial courses aren’t necessary, thanks to faulty placement tests. Education Sector’s Susan Headden explained the problems with placement testing into remedial courses in this Washington Monthly piece. (Inside Higher Ed)

When a rockstar life didn’t pan out.Continue Reading »

Fifth-grade courses in college? Educators in a Chicago suburb are addressing college readiness. One example: College of DuPage and six local high schools are working together to improve the math curriculum at the high school level because about 75 percent of college freshmen there who are in remedial courses are taking math. The college offers math courses, beginning at the fifth grade level, tContinue Reading »

Quick Hits is a short compilation of question-raising news stories, blog posts, and video clips that Education Sector team members are reading or viewing each day.

Over the weekend the Dallas Morning News ran a well-reported but gut-wrenching story about high school graduates unprepared for college-level work:

Nelda Contreras stood at the whiteboard and wrote: I like bananas and apples.

“Does this sentence need a comma?” she asked her students.

No, they said.

Next, she wrote: I like bananas apples anContinue Reading »

Many high school students headed to college tend to check out during their senior year, especially the second half of their senior year. By that time, they have applied for colleges and will either get accepted or not based on the work that they have already done, but the work that they do in their senior year does not matter much in that calculation. Yet, many of these same students then enterContinue Reading »

There’s a pretty strong consensus among ed-reform types that the goal of high school–and by extension, K-12 education as a whole–should be to prepare students to “succeed in the workplace and/or higher education.” The words vary, but usually that’s what people say. One of the problems with NCLB is that it’s not really focused on this goal, because itContinue Reading »