America’s Education Problem
How have decades of attempted reform, and billions of dollars, failed to improve students’ performance across the country? The Daily explores what has happened to the US education system despite real efforts to improve literacy and national test scores.
How to Get a Job After College
For all of you college seniors, December break is a great time to get your resume together and start making plans for life after school! Here’s NPR’s advice on getting a job after graduation.
Slow-Reading is the new Deep Learning
For Medium.com, David Handel, MD makes the case that speed-reading is for skimmers while slow-reading is for scholars.
Will UC schools drop their SAT scores requirement?
Will UC schools drop their SAT scores requirement? As reported by the LA Times, most students who apply to University of California schools take the SAT, and the system makes up the largest single source of test-takers for the College Board. More importantly, the decision of the largest university system in the country would very likely shape policy decisions elsewhere in the coming years. Whatever the decision in California, it will have consequences far beyond the Golden State. Stay tuned.
Big Changes Coming for the ACT!
In a very student-friendly move, the ACT announced that starting September 2020 it will allow students to retake selected sections of the ACT exam at digital testing sites. As reported by the NY Times, students will also have the option to take digital, rather than paper, ACTs on any of the national testing dates, allowing them to receive results within two business days. The ACT now fully endorses superscoring of its tests and will let students request and submit “superscored” score reports directly to colleges so that students no longer need to order and send each individual score report to their colleges.
Is Meritocracy Making Everyone Crazy?
If students of privilege are the ones who are admitted to elite colleges based on position and legacy rather than merit—then either meritocracy isn’t working properly or it wasn’t the right approach in the first place. Read on for the New Yorker’s take on elite higher education.