Of Interest

I had heard of this but never checked it out before - the online Visual Dictionary.  It could be helpful (and fun) for kids who are visual learners. 

If only we had known this sooner about Michelle Rhee.  Interesting article from John Merrow- Who Created Michelle Rhee?  Turns out, all of us. 

From Ed Week, School Board Transparency in the Digital Age.

As online and digital interactions increase, so too does public concern that officials have more opportunities to violate state open-meetings and open-records laws meant to prevent them from communicating secretly.

Maryland is among several states that are taking other steps to bring such laws into the 21st century.

The legislature set up a joint committee on transparency and open government in 2011 to examine how Maryland can promote government transparency—in the state capital, Annapolis, and locally. Committee members evaluate current policies and practices on meetings and records and make recommendations on future legislation.

"There is no reason today, and certainly no excuse 15 years from now, that every school board and police department won't have records uploaded to the Internet the moment they are finished," he said. "We are waiting and ready for Google government, where we see everything in real time." 

From the NY Times, two items of interest.  One is that although girls outperform boys across the board, their enrollment in the elite programs in the city is behind the boys.  The other is an article about scoring mishaps in finding gifted students.

Enrollment in elite programs:
While studies suggest that girls perform as well as boys in math and science classes in high school, their participation in those fields drops off in college and ultimately in careers, a phenomenon that the White House, with its Council on Women and Girls, and the National Science Foundationhave tried to reverse.

The fact that girls are underrepresented in New York’s top high schools, which tend to be focused on math and science, and which have more than a dozen Nobel laureates among their alumni, worries some academics who see the schools as prime breeding grounds for future scientists and engineers.

The racial makeup of the schools has been a combustible issue for years — 5 percent of the students accepted this month into the elite schools were black, and 7 percent were Hispanic. Civil rights groups have argued that using a test as the sole basis of admission favors students with means to prepare for the test, and have pushed unsuccessfully to have the schools adopt additional criteria, like middle school grades, for admission. 

Testing for gifted students (bold mine):Nearly 2,700 New York City students were wrongly told in recent weeks they were not eligible for seats in public school gifted and talented programs because of errors in scoring the tests used for admission, the Education Department said on Friday.

The company that both created and scored the tests, Pearson, has apologized for the mistakes, according to the department, which is now scurrying to notify parents that pupils originally locked out of the coveted programs are instead able to apply for seats.

Besides increased competition for the seats, the higher number suggests that the city has been unable to control the explosive growth in high test scores, which coincided with the growth in test preparation services. Last year, 9,644 students qualified.

Paying for a great college or getting a full ride from a good college?  There's a dilemma.