As all but the comatose must surely know, today is Election Day.  Be part of history.  Exercise your precious right to self-determination.  Go to the polls and vote!  For those of you in your first election, you enter at a rare time in the history of our country.  If you do vote for the first time, come back and share your thoughts here.

As I reported in an earlier post, the College Board has planned to add a new test, a miniature version of the PSAT, to its arsenal of tests.  ReadiStep would be given to eighth graders and have three 40 minute sections:  1 math, 1 verbal, 1 writing.  The level of difficulty of the test would be consistent with eighth grade expectations. The test will be available for use next fall.  It will be interesting to see a sample version of the test and measure exactly what level the College Board sees for eighth grade performance.

A recent report indicates that America suffers from a high school dropout crisis of epic proportions.  Today, kids are less likely than their parents to graduate high school.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Think about it.  How is this really possible?  In an era where a college diploma is required for so many entry level jobs, how can we put millions of kids in such jeopardy by not even graduating high school?  How can we allow one-third of our minority population to dropout?

Some may say that if a child chooses to leave school without graduating, that is his or her choice.  This is America, land of free choice right?  But that seems a complete copout.  We live together as a community, and our community survival hinges on our children becoming better educated than we.  We spend so much time criticizing the educational system about quality, but this bottom line result is truly criminal, and we must do something about it.  Now.

High school is a rite of passage and graduation is the capstone ceremony.  One cannot have the rite without actually passing, yes?  We must pass laws that mandate high school graduation as a condition of obtaining a driver’s license past the age of 19.  If someone is over 21 and has not graduated high school without a documented medical reason, that person should be guilty of a crime.  Yes, the incentives must be so high because the cost is unbelievable — what type of life can a person who lacks a high school education expect in this world today?  Employment and earnings at the lowest level.  Poor access to other resources like health and wellness.  The probability of becoming either a virtual ward of the social welfare system or the criminal justice system is staggering.  High school is a pivotal, critcal access point.  We must take drastic measures to avoid losing generations of people to lives of poverty.  We owe that to each other as a community.  And if you want to think selfishly, if you want to shrink the crime rate and the drain on Medicaid and “welfare” draws, put everyone at least through high school.  What a national tragedy.

As some of you may have read, Baylor got itself into some hot water when it was revealed that the school paid already admitted students with book credits or scholarships if they retook the SAT and increased their score by 50 or 100 points.  Baylor did so to increase their overall SAT scores they report, and presumably, to thereby improve their ranking in U.S. News.  Many have chided the school for ethical impropriety or gaming the system.  It would seem that U.S. News should simply ban a school using scores after the student has been admitted.  But the real folly of the incentive program is its probable lack of success — the odds of a student moving more than the standard deviation without test preparation is highly unlikely, so as incentive programs go, this one is weak for the student, as the cost of preparation would outweigh the scholarship offered.  And figuring that most students won’t do the prep, they won’t get the score increase, so the whole program would have flopped anyway!!!

This interesting article from MSNBC updates some of the latest controversies over dress codes, which I have written about in previous posts.  What I find striking about the article is how the trend toward uniforms has grown and that those insisting on them take such a no-exceptions policy, stating either safety concerns or sexualizing children.  Of course, the schools need to make these justifications in order to pass constitutional muster.  But the research does support their contention that uniforms encourage better learning environments by removing distractions and differences and creating a learning community.

In what seems to be a new low trend, students trying to get into the most selective universities have taken to anonymously trashing their competition, usually from the same school.  They send letters, emails, even post campaigns on MySpace and Facebook.

Why do students resort to this tactic?  Do they think colleges actually pay attention to anonymous trash like the writing in a bathroom stall?  If so, they can forget about a selective college.  Do they think they cannot get caught, that all this electronic behavior can be traced?  Do they think libeling someone will go unpunished?

Some say this is an indication of competition gone awry, of too much pressure to get into college.  I say this is nothing more than a culmination of culture feeding into the college application process.  What do teens see in the media, whether reality TV, magazines, fiction?  Or perhaps in the latest financial crisis news?  They see people using any means necessary to get the end — the end always justifying the means.  They see that instant gratification and “I want it, it’s mine” is the ethic of the time.  The madness must stop if character and integrity will have any meaning in the future entering classes of our great institutions of higher learning.

A modest proposal.  All colleges must have two students write evaluations for other students who apply to their college.  Sort of a secret shopper.  But the kicker is that no one knows who their secret shopper is, and everyone who is going to apply to college must be secretly shopped.  This nudge behavioral modification would encourage many students to play by the rules and be kinder to their fellow classmates, who just might be the key to ending their college hopes.  Admittedly this proposal has its weaknesses, from Big Brother tone to policing problems.  But finely tuned and widely deployed, it just might be the honor system we need to change the culture of our schools.

According to this article, quite a few schools are doing just that.  The reasons vary, but the frustration seems to be one of academic authority in the classroom versus one institution dictating academic excellence to all.

In reality, the AP system offers students the chance to earn college credit and prove commitment to a certain level of academic rigor.  Use the system well and you start school as a sophomore!  But for most, the AP helps raise the bar so that high school classes resemble college classes and ease the transition from high school to college.  Should kids feel pressured to take AP exams?  No, but they should be encouraged to take the best courseload they can handle to prepare best for college.  Do colleges really give too much weight to AP exams?  Probably not.  A student who can ace lots of AP exams should already stand out in GPA.  A student who does not do real well on the exams but takes the courses shows effort and willingness to accept challenge, which colleges appreciate.  But as with any standardized test result, great test scores do not guarantee college admission to the elite schools.

The complaints from teachers seems odd.  Why would a teacher complain about having to teach a more rigorous class?  The AP requires teachers use a certain book and make sure the content of the class prepares the student for the content of the exam (and the format as well).  But I know from experience that teachers go about the same AP class in very different ways.  Teachers are not prohibited from innovation or creativity or even more rigor.  Yes, if the AP grades come back poor that teacher may be removed from AP eligibility in the future, but that could happen even if the teacher gives AP practice tests every day, just as one who never did that could have students ace the AP exam.  The proof is in the quality of the class curriculum, which is the whole point of the AP — getting that rigor, that pre-college experience.

So here is one vote for not removing the AP, but making it better.

The PSAT will be given in just one month — October 15 and 18 — across the country and here in St. Louis.  It is given to juniors as part of the National Merit qualifying process, but also to sophomores who want to see how they stand in performance on the SAT.

Many kids ask me why even bother taking the test if they know they cannot do well enough to qualify for National Merit.  I tell them that is not the point of the test.  Less than 1% of students qualify for National Merit, so the test is really not designed just for them.  It is given as a way to preview the SAT, to have a real test environment with the same style questions and time pressures.  Most sophomores or juniors have not taken a test of this difficulty or length.  So taking it in and of itself helps give the student insight into what the future holds with the SAT, and that student’s relative ability at that moment in time.

But taking the PSAT cold is not a good idea because it will give you a score lower than your actual potential and you will not be able to sort out errors due to lack of familiarity from errors due to concepts or time or other skills.  Knowing your actual baseline before you take the test will tell you how well (or not so well) you did when you get the actual results back.  The more preparation one does before the test, the better the read one has after taking the test.  Plus, any PSAT prep is also SAT prep.  Finally, the earlier a jump one gets on the PSAT, the earlier the SAT process can end or the longer one will have to prepare and test multiple times if that is the necessary road.

If you want more information of preparing for the PSAT, just drop me a note here.

Jason Stephens, an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut, knows that cheating in high school is rampant.  And he is currently conducting a study on a way to end cheating.  This is the basis of his thesis:

Stephens and others say cheating has become widespread over the last 30 years. In the aforementioned national survey, a full 94 percent of high school students admitted to at least one form of cheating, ranging from allowing someone to copy their homework to cheating on a test, according to Don McCabe, a professor of management and global business at Rutgers University who has done extensive surveys on cheating.

Stephens doesn’t blame students for the phenomenon.

“Virtually all of them are cheating because the pressures of having good grades is extraordinary, more so now today than 20 to 30 years ago,” he said. “It’s not because these kids are morally bad. It’s because the stakes are higher and the time is less.”

The competition to get into a top college is fiercer than ever.

“It’s not enough to get a 4.0 grade point average. It’s also being involved in a varsity sport, volunteering in the community, maybe having a part-time job — along with the social lives these kids live,” Stephens said.

Cheating is an expedient, if deceptive, way for time-crunched students to get it all done, he said.

“Most kids see that as wrong. The sad thing is that most kids do it anyway,” he said.

Underlying all this is a major cultural shift toward achievement and materialism over the last 30 years, he said. A national survey of college freshmen shows that most students now view college as a steppingstone toward the ultimate goal of getting a lucrative job, a radical shift from 1967, when the survey began, he said.

“They’ve gone from looking at college as a place of enlightenment or the development of a meaningful philosophy to being a place where you get status and credentials in order to get a well-paying job. I even had a student refer to himself as a client the other day,” Stephens said.

Stephens thinks that modifying incentives will modify behavior.  I agree with that economic-based behavioral approach, but fail to see how his program can succeed — he wants to de-emphasize grades by moving toward projects rather than tests.  What will keep kids from cheating on projects?  And how can schools that have limited spaces and are competitive by definition evaluate students fairly without some real metric of skills?  And is competition not part of the world?  One could argue that the better incentive process to study would be severe punishment for those that cheat — including criminal prosecution.  If most people cheat because of an ethical lapse plus an apparent need, the criminal code is designed just for such a scenario.  Or one could use a form of social approbation — one caught cheating must repeat a grade and for the remainder of his or her time at school wear a uniform and work as a custodian, even when in class.  I just cannot see softening academic standards as a panacea for a moral failing.

In an unfolding saga, the GMAC, which administers the GMAT, has fully shut down a cheating ring.  As a result, 84 of the violators have had their scores wiped out.

The GMAT is a computer adaptive test.  It works off a single library of questions that can appear based upon the number of questions one gets correct.  Apparently, an “enterprising” group of individuals decided to start a website that stored these questions (they relied upon their memory to recreate the questions) and of course charge a fee for access.  It took the GMAC folks a while to break the ring because they first had to win a copyright suit to learn the names of the individuals.

Again, a story like this leaves me wondering, (a) is it not simpler just to study for the test and take it legally, (b) what could kids like this accomplish if they channeled their energy into lawful endeavors, and (c) why do people do these things knowing that ultimately they will get caught?