- Put down the brown paper bag; breathe normally. The news this week that SAT scores are lowest since 1995 (and critical reading scores are the lowest in history) might not be as bad as you think. More students than ever are sitting for the exam, drawing from a more ethnically, economically, and academically diverse pool of youngsters. Truth is, because the test’s population isn’t nationally representative and changes from year to year, we don’t know what to make of the trends, whether up, down, or sideways.
- Cash-strapped college students frequent half.com for their textbooks and consider beef Ramen to be a balanced meal. At course-selection time, frugal co-eds at Chicago’s National Louis University have a new way to exercise their miserly tendencies: Sign up for courses through Groupon.
- No one is against healthy school lunches—but the bill at the end of the meal has districts “stress eating.”
- Joseph Hawkins of Westat, via Jay Matthews, challenges anyone to name one school where a successful parent revolution took place. Well, can you?
- With overwhelming bipartisan support, the House passed the Empowering Parents through Quality Charter Schools Act, updating the charter-school provisions within the current Elementary and Secondary Education Act. So, does this signal the potential for an imminent reauthorization of ESEA? Doubtful—but the plan being cooked up in the Senate now might.
- Love Finland and fear China? Or just plain sick of PISA and want some other international-comparative data to reference in conversation? The OECD released its annual Education at a Glance report on Tuesday. Expect more from us on this front next week.
- Parents sick of endless school “open houses,” sick of sipping Hawaiian punch, shaking principals’ hands, and trying desperately to find the right fit for your child, turn to the latest Ed Next podcast for a remedy. In it, Peg Tyre, author of the new book, The Good School explains parents’ concerns and her advice to host Mike Petrilli.
