college

Students in up to 20 schools in eight states will have the chance to graduate after 10th grade, starting in the 2011-12 school year. The pilot program organized by the National Center on Education and the Economy and initially funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will require students to pass a series of college-level subject-based tests for program eligibility. The high schoolers chosen in Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont will have the option of going straight into a community college program after graduating following their sophomore year. The pilot’s goal is to reduce the number of students entering college who require remedial classes.

See Jim's quote under Myth No. 5.

Myths undercut efforts to boost Michigan's high school standards

  (Click here to read)

AMBER ARELLANO

Principals, we want to make YOUR job easier!

So we’re giving you a share of our grant to help increase your parent and student achievement. For a limited time, the grant code below will provide you with free issues of the newest editions of our most popular EduGuides:

The College EduGuide gives students the lowdown on college by sharing advice from upperclassmen, recent graduates and education experts. Parents and students access peer advice about how to get the most from a college education, the facts on financial aid and student loans, and the plan for picking the right college program.

Dear Representative Bauer and Committee Members:

Today, Michigan Legislators are facing many difficult, unpopular
decisions. As high school principals who are put between ‘a rock and a hard place’ each day, we empathize with what you are going through.

In 1999, MASSP provided testimony to the Senate as to the critical need for an award system that would provide an incentive for students to take the HS MEAP. MASSP has not wavered in our support of the

Colleges are moderately effective at letting high school officials know what their students need to know to move up, but the colleges could do more, said an audit released Tuesday by Auditor General Thomas McTavish.

The performance audit of Developmental Education at Michigan

Public Community Colleges, for the period August 2005 through May 2007, showed that 26 percent of incoming freshmen during the audit period had to take developmental courses to come up to minimum college standards. And auditors said some of the reason for that was that only 14 of the 28 community colleges had provided high school officials with their college readiness standards.

Providing a College Education that Michigan families can afford

Some interesting facts:
As reported in the Detroit Free Press:
• Michigan’s 15 public universities increased tuition and fees more than those in any other state in 2006.
• Michigan’s public universities increased tuition and fees 37% between 2003 and 2006.
As reported in the New York Times:
• The rising cost of college-even before the recession-threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans.
• Net college costs of a four year public university to a median income family was 28 percent, families in the lowest 20 percent of median income paid 55 percent of their median income to educate their children. These total percentages are reflected after financial aid is applied

The Detroit News
Thursday, April 16, 2009, Lansing
By Lou Glazer

Reversing Michigan's alarming population decline hopefully will rise to the top of the state's agenda. Particularly retaining and attracting recent college graduates. They are the key to restoring Michigan to high prosperity.

Why? Because employment growth and high wages are increasingly knowledge-based. Primarily in five broad sectors of the economy: information, finance and insurance, professional and technical services, health care and education. These industries, all of which have at least 30 percent of their employees with four-year degrees, are concentrating in the
regions of the country with the greatest concentrations of college educated adults.

The State Superintendent of Public Instruction recently hosted a meeting that he calls, “Moving from the Model T.” He wants to take the delivery of education for Michigan’s children to a new place. He, or we, don’t know what that place is but it’s not where we are now. This started from a group of schools in Southeast Michigan putting on a full court press to have the state fund an adequacy study for the current system. According to the Superintendent, that would be a waste of time and resources because the way we’re delivering education now isn’t working.

So, we have met a few times to listen to different ideas. The most recent was from Dr. Mark Tucker from the National Center on Education and the Economy.

Sunday, January 25, 2009
Nolan Finley

Survey finds children lack hope and motivation to learn.

Michigan's funk is infecting its children. More than half the high school students interviewed in the latest Your Child survey have a bleak view of life after graduation, using words such as "hard," "stressful" and "scary" to describe the future.

The students say they are most worried about failing in the real world, according to the survey conducted by EPIC-MRA of Lansing.