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Obama promise: Brighter education futures for kids

March 14th, 2010

By DORIE TURNER (AP)

ATLANTA — President Barack Obama is promising parents and their kids that with his administration’s help they will have better teachers in improved schools so U.S. students can make up for academic ground lost against youngsters in other countries.
A plan to overhaul the 2002 education law championed by President George W. Bush was unveiled by the Obama administration Saturday in hopes of replacing a system that in the last decade has tagged more than a third of schools as failing and created a hodgepodge of sometimes weak academic standards among states.
“Unless we take action — unless we step up — there are countless children who will never realize their full talent and potential,” Obama said during a video address on Saturday. “I don’t accept that future for them. And I don’t accept that future for the United States of America.”
In the proposed dismantling of the No Child Left Behind law, education officials would move away from punishing schools that don’t meet benchmarks and focus on rewarding schools for progress, particularly with poor and minority students. Obama intends to send a rewrite to Congress on Monday of the law.
The proposed changes call for states to adopt standards that ensure students are ready for college or a career rather than grade-level proficiency — the focus of the current law.
The blueprint also would allow states to use subjects other than reading and mathematics as part of their measurements for meeting federal goals, pleasing many education groups that have said No Child Left Behind encouraged teachers not to focus on history, art, science, social studies and other important subjects.
And, for the first time in 45 years, the White House is proposing a $4 billion increase in federal education spending, most of which would go to increase the competition among states for grant money and move away from formula-based funding.

Read the article in full at freerepublic.com

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Texas School Board’s Vote Could Make Nation’s History Textbooks more Conservative

March 14th, 2010

March 12, 2010
Terrence Stutz
AUSTIN, Texas – In a move that is expected to inject more conservative-friendly language in school textbooks across the nation, the Texas Board of Education passed new curriculum standards for U.S. history and other social studies courses Friday.

The board’s influence extends beyond the state because Texas is the one of the largest purchasers of school textbooks in the United States, The New York Times reports.

The tentatively approved curriculum would, among other things, question the assumption that the Founding Father’s wanted a secular government and tout the superiority of American capitalism. The board also consistently voted down attempts to include more references to Hispanic role models in American history.

The vote came after three days of intense debate, with a final skirmish over how to teach the Battle of the Alamo.

Board members tentatively approved the new standards 11-4 after three fractious days of debate that touched on civil rights, religion, politics, music and a host of other topics that will be covered in the new requirements for classroom instruction and textbooks.

Four of the five minority members on the board opposed the long list of standards, citing in particular the inadequate coverage of blacks and Hispanics in U.S. and Texas history.

Read the full article at hispanicbusiness.com

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Education News From Around Florida

March 11th, 2010

Florida Keys Keynoter: Schools in the Keys are reading for $8 million of “very painful” budgets cuts and layoffs.

Naples Daily News: FCAT man comes to the rescue at a Collier County High School.

Daytona Beach News-Journal: A Volusia County high school band is marching to Europe for a nine-day musical tour.

Palm Beach Post: Indianapolis Colts football star steps off the gridiron and returns home to speak with students at his Palm Beach County alma mater.

Orlando Sentinel: A plan to overhaul how teachers are paid and evaluated is now one step closer to reality. Controversy is not far behind.

St. Petersburg Times: The NAACP is taking a Pinellas School Board member to task for calling a group of students hoodlums.

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New Jersey School Report Cards for 2009 Now Available

March 11th, 2010

One of the major goals of the New Jersey Department of Education is to increase school- and district-level accountability for educational progress by communicating useful information to members of the public to be used in measuring how well their schools are doing. The New Jersey School Report Card has provided the public with information about every school in New Jersey since 1995 when the Legislature mandated the annual accountability report. You can view this report on the official website of the New Jersey Department of Education’s website.

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Assistant Dean at Columbia advises students on how to compensate for low test Score

January 12th, 2010

Courtest of Learninghub.com

Admissions to Columbia Business School are highly competitive. Only 15% of the total applications were accepted by Columbia Business School, this year. Standing out and expressing how you could contribute to the community are key elements for success while applying to top schools.

Recently, Mary Miller, assistant dean of admissions at Columbia, and international student Rui Francisco discussed criteria for admissions on how to overcome a lower-than-average score in a live chat with the students.

In response to how older applicants applying for Business School are viewed, Mary Miller, assistant dean of admissions at Columbia replied that each applicant is looked holistically.She further added that applicants are encouraged to share their individual characteristics about themselves in the application and they should tell us why now is the right time to pursue an MBA. Diversity in the classroom is integral to discussions, and years of work experience as well as breadth of experience make for lively conversation.

In response to a question about how can one offset for a lower score in GMAT, international student at Columbia University says “From my perspective as a student, the admissions committee looks at you as a whole. If your academic credentials are not as strong, you can try to differentiate yourself with other things. For instance, have you ever done something unique and challenging in your life? Some of my classmates focused their applications on personal achievements. There was my friend who climbed Mount Everest, and some others participated in the Peace Corps in Africa. Try to find something unique in you, and communicate it in your application.”

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Changes in GRE Format by 2011

January 12th, 2010

Courtesy of learnhub.com

The Graduate Record Exam (GRE) , a test taken by 600,000 students across the world each year, will look significantly different in 2011. The Educational Testing Service , which administers the exam, announced its plans to revamp the GRE. on Dec. 4, calling the changes the “largest revisions” in the test’s history.

ETS spokesman Tom Ewing said changes have been a “long time coming.” ETS first announced changes in 2006, but delayed making them until 2007 to add more Internet-based test centers. In 2007, it canceled the planned changes. The new test will include a new grading scale and an increased emphasis on reasoning and critical thinking skills, while focusing less on analogy and vocabulary sections.

Changes to the computer systems the test is administered through will allow students to skip questions and come back later to complete them before finishing the section. Previously, students could not go back to answer questions they skipped. The most significant change, Ewing said, will be in the types of prompts.

“The questions asked will be more focused and require thoughtful responses rather than strictly memorization,” he said. Ewing said exam changes will benefit future test takers.

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NYU Stern School of Business and Wharton to Accept GRE® General Test Scores for MBA Admission

January 12th, 2010

Mark I. McNutt
mediacontacts@ets.org

Princeton, N.J. (August 19, 2009) —

New York University Stern School of Business (NYU Stern) has announced that it will begin accepting GRE® General Test scores for admission into its full- and part-time MBA programs for the fall semester 2010. The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania plans to accept GRE scores in the fall semester 2010 for the fall admission class of 2011, as reported by BusinessWeek.

The official announcement by NYU Stern highlights a growing trend among top business schools of accepting GRE scores for admission into MBA programs.

The GRE General Test is now being accepted by programs in more than 250 business schools including seven of the top 10 global MBA programs, according to the Financial Times. These are The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (fall 2010), Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Instituto De Empresa (IE), China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management, and NYU Stern.

Other programs that have recently decided to accept GRE test scores include the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, ranked in the 2009 top ten by Forbes, and Queen’s School of Business in Canada, which is ranked as the number one MBA program outside the U.S. by BusinessWeek.

“Accepting GRE scores makes good business sense,” says David G. Payne, ETS Vice President and COO for College and Graduate Programs. “Opening admissions to students who wish to submit GRE scores will improve the size, diversity and quality of the applicant pool and student body. These are the kinds of tangible benefits that business schools value and what the global business community increasingly demands to meet the challenges of the 21st century.”

Payne believes the GRE® Comparison Tool for Business Schools and the recent introduction of the ETS® Personal Potential Index (ETS® PPI) have helped to drive interest in the GRE exam by MBA programs and graduate business schools.

“Professional and graduate schools, especially MBA programs, place a high value on critical personal attributes like ethics and resilience,” Payne explains. “Designed to measure these skills, ETS PPI has drawn a lot of attention from graduate and professional programs that are seeking to recruit the very best and brightest.”

The GRE Comparison Tool for Business Schools, launched last October, provides a predicted Graduate Management Admission Test® (GMAT®) Total Score from GRE Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning scores.

“The GRE Comparison Tool is very helpful to us,” explains David Bach, Associate Dean of MBA programs at Instituto de Empresa (IE) Business School. “The fact that it is accessible online makes the admissions review process easier, too.”

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MBA Admissions Director Q&A: NYU Stern’s Isser Gallogly

January 12th, 2010

Available in full exclusively at ClearAdmit.com, the nation’s leading MBA Consultant.

With round two application deadlines fast approaching, we are beginning to wrap up our Admissions Director Q&A Series here at Clear Admit. Today we are pleased to add a recent conversation with Isser
Gallogly, executive director of MBA admissions at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Gallogly understands the MBA and its potential for changing people’s lives first hand. “I am on my third career,” he said. He worked in banking after college and then returned to business school to obtain an MBA as part of a career shift toward marketing. After almost a decade working for Unilever and Loreál, he decided to shift again toward education and academia. “I know how much an MBA has changed my life both personally and professionally, and helping others on that journey seemed to me to be a very gratifying job opportunity,” he said.

Indeed, Gallogly and his staff do seem committed to helping prospective applicants. “We want to be people’s partner in the application process,” he said. To this end, NYU Stern has a range of resources for the prospective applicant in the Applying to Stern section of its website, including admissions directors’ tips and advice, podcasts, interviews with the media and more. You won’t want to miss those or the transcript of our conversation with Gallogly, which follows.

Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at NYU Stern this coming year?

Isser Gallogly: Well, I have a lot to choose from. I think one of the most interesting things that we’ve been doing lately is a series of Market Pulse events. There is so much going on in the world right now, and we’ve been having panels with our star professors and noted faculty talking about the impact of the financial crisis on the global economy and solutions for the future. .

Really, it’s just part of what you get at NYU Stern. We are a dynamic, plugged-in institution. We really try to stay on the absolute cutting edge of what is happening in the world. What that means is that our students have incredible access to all kinds of people – from the dean of the school, Thomas Cooley, to Professor Nouriel Roubini, who was predicting the current recession a couple of years ago at the IMF, to Professor Ed Altman, a leading expert on corporate distress and default.

We are dynamic, forward looking, innovative, and we change. This was a different year, and in different years you do different things. That said, I could definitely see the Market Pulse events becoming an ongoing series. They have been so successful – some have been standing room only – and it’s very likely they will be continued over the course of next year. Obviously we are all hopeful that the economy will change for the better, but especially given current conditions, I think this new addition has been an exciting and valuable one for both Stern and the business community at large.

CA: What is the one area of your program that you wish applicants knew more about?

You can read the rest of this interview at ClearAdmit.com

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Effective Learning Strategies and Stuy Skills

January 7th, 2010

By Meaghan Montrose

This is the first in a series of posts on this topic. These strategies are useful for parents, tutors, and students.

The first and most important thing to learning effectively is to have an appropriate learning environment. The setting in which you are studying can make or break your success. There are six factors to consider when establishing the best environment:

1. Location- The ideal place to learn is in an area of your home that is away from the noise and traffic of the other members of the household. This will vary from person to person. For some, the kitchen table may be the best place, but for others the kitchen might be an area where brothers and sisters often hang out or maybe it is right next to the main entrance of the house. In these cases, the constant distractions would make the kitchen a bad location.

2. Seating- To be most effective, you should be seated at a table or desk with a comfortable chair. Of course you don’t want the chair so comfortable that you fall asleep! It is easier to concentrate on your work when you are properly seated. Lying down or sitting on the floor quickly become uncomfortable positions and cause you to lose your concentration and shift around more often.

3. Comfort- The best environment contains just the right amount of comfort. Think of Goldie Locks and the Three Bears. You want to be comfortable enough so that you are not distracted by anything, but you don’t want to be so comfortable that you end up in a relaxing trance. Make sure the temperature is not too hot or too cold, change into comfortable clothes, have a drink nearby and eat a small snack before starting.

4. Distractions- Remove all distractions from your study area. Turn off email, cell phone, television, and radio. Close the curtains to any windows to eliminate being side-tracked by outside activities. Clear off your work area so there is nothing to draw your attention away such as magazines, books, or games.

5. Materials- After you start, you don’t want to have to get up every couple of minutes because you forgot something. Make sure you have all of your supplies ready and handy. This may include pens, pencils, pencil sharpener, paper, ruler, calculator, notebook, textbook, etc…

6. Timing- For many students, studying or doing homework immediately after school is not the best option. Having just finished several hours of learning at school, it is time for a little break. Give yourself some wind-down time before beginning. You may want to have a snack, watch T.V., talk to a friend, do something fun outside before it gets dark, or clean your room!

The most important factor to learning effectively and efficiently is to have the correct environment. Follow these six guidelines to create the perfect setting for success. Now, you are ready to study effectively!

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A New LSAT Resource

November 24th, 2009

Thanks to John Rood at Next Step Test Prep for providing the following insightful questions.

A short bio of you and your company

After taking the LSAT and preparing to apply to various law schools, Morley Tatro decided that he was much more passionate about the test itself than the idea of going to law school for the next three years. An avid test taker and regular SAT tutor, Morley was particularly intrigued by the “games” section of the LSAT. Sensing that test takers needed a quicker/more efficient means of obtaining real test content and solutions, Morley conceived of Cambridge LSAT as the ultimate LSAT resource center.

How did you first get the idea of electronically distributing PrepTests?

I took notice of the fact that students typically scramble to find extra prep material in the weeks leading up to any particular administration. All the typical sources tend to run low on the most recent PrepTests at the approach of each new test, and people are forced to pay for expedited shipping to get their materials rapidly. Even then, there is no guarantee that the materials will arrive on time. It struck me as odd that in this day and age of technological sophistication, a company had not yet offered LSAT prep materials in this manner.

How can students best integrate Prep Tests into their overall study plans?

Prep Tests can be used in many different ways. They can be taken timed, untimed, in their entirety, or in pieces. In the early stages of prep work, students should develop their familiarity and understanding of the test content and focus on improving their accuracy with the various question types. Breaking PrepTests into sections and taking them untimed can provide a solid foundation for later timed work. Once a person has done a certain amount of untimed work, he or she can take a diagnostic and begin to transition towards taking full-length PrepTests under strictly timed guidelines.

How was working with LSAC to license these exams?

It was a challenge at times, because LSAC has stringent requirements for delivering its content through the web. After examining a number of different options, they accepted the current method of delivery. Other than that, working with LSAC has been a breeze.

Will you be offering any other materials in the future?

We currently have logic games solutions for PrepTests 40-58, and will eventually have solutions for all the available games. We will be working with various tutors and test prep experts to develop additional materials, including strategy guides, videos, podcasts, and packages consisting of both questions and solutions.

How are you planning on working with tutors and LSAT prep professionals?

As mentioned above, our company is a radical departure from the traditional test prep company. Rather than compete with tutors and professionals, we seek to create mutually beneficial relationships with them and make it easy for their students to get the best prep materials. For those who would like to publish their own strategy guides/products, our site provides an ideal method of distribution: no inventory and no overhead. Contact us if you’d like to offer an e-book through our site: info@cambridgelsat.com

Cambridge LSAT

Cambridge LSAT

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