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'Tis better to have tried AP and earned a low grade than never to have tried at all
Taking an Advanced Placement class, struggling with college-level material and earning a low grade on the exam is a learning experience,...

Joanne Jacobs
Feb 14, 20242 min read
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A reform too far: Sorry, your kid's only 67% of a 'whole child'
Liam sat through a semester of geometry and got a C for turning in homework, earning a 75 percent average on tests and bringing in...

Joanne Jacobs
Feb 12, 20242 min read
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Dartmouth will require SAT/ACT scores to help low-income students
Dartmouth will require applicants to submit standardized test scores such as the SAT or ACT, ending a long "pandemic pause," reports...

Joanne Jacobs
Feb 6, 20242 min read
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Success Academy charters are #1 in New York in math, #3 in reading
Success Academy charter students are the best in New York state in math, third best in English Language Arts (ELA) among schools with 95+...

Joanne Jacobs
Jan 19, 20241 min read
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Fix 'em, don't nix 'em: Tests show what's working and what's not
The Zeitgeist, it is a changing. First, the New York Times ran David Leonhardt's defense of college admissions tests as a way to...

Joanne Jacobs
Jan 19, 20242 min read
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SAT/ACT scores predict success, open doors for 'diverse' students
Want equity? Require college applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores, writes David Leonhardt in the New York Times. The progressives' "war...

Joanne Jacobs
Jan 8, 20242 min read
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Graduation exams can be 'ladder of social mobility' -- or useless
For more than a century, New York students have taken Regents exams in multiple subjects to prove they were ready for college-level work,...

Joanne Jacobs
Jan 4, 20242 min read
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A diploma for you and a diploma for you! States drop exit exams
Grades are up and tests are out. "More states could abandon high school exit exams as a graduation requirement, writes Libby Stanford in...

Joanne Jacobs
Dec 19, 20231 min read
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College fail: Are the Covid kids ready to learn?
"(Are you ready?) Yes, I'm ready . . . I don't even know how to hold your hand Just to make you understand But I'm ready (ready) to learn...

Joanne Jacobs
Dec 14, 20232 min read
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Anti-racist math: 2 + 2 = whiteness
Apples and oranges featured heavily in my elementary school math curriculum, and yet I knew math was about the numbers, not about the...

Joanne Jacobs
Nov 29, 20232 min read
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'B-flation' misleads parents: 89% say their child is at grade level
Seventy-nine percent of parents say their child is receiving mostly B's or better, and 89 percent believe their child is at or above...

Joanne Jacobs
Nov 29, 20232 min read
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AP tests are tough: Is the bar too high for disadvantaged students?
"The basic philosophy of the Advanced Placement Program is simply that all students are not created equal," said the program's director,...

Joanne Jacobs
Nov 21, 20233 min read
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Disarming grades
"Handwringing" about grade inflation is "inflated," suggests Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post. She offers a piece by Jack Schneider...

Joanne Jacobs
Nov 16, 20232 min read
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Dumb and dumber: NY rethinks Regents exams
New York students will be able to graduate from high school without passing Regents exams, the state education department proposes....

Joanne Jacobs
Nov 16, 20232 min read
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'There's got to be a pony in there'
Public schools face a long, tough road to recover from school closures and pandemic chaos, writes Fordham's Dale Chu. Post-pandemic...

Joanne Jacobs
Nov 10, 20231 min read
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A-F grades don't provide enough useful feedback, say educators
Only 13 percent of teachers say A-F grades are "very effective" in giving useful feedback to students, writes Alyson Klein in Education...

Joanne Jacobs
Nov 9, 20231 min read
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SAT scores fall, as the number of test takers rebounds
Despite the surge in colleges going "test optional," the number of students taking the SAT "is growing back to pre-pandemic figures,"...

Joanne Jacobs
Oct 27, 20231 min read
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Rich kids, smart kids
Wealthy parents raise high-scoring children, according to new SAT and ACT data, reports Claire Cain Miller in the New York Times....

Joanne Jacobs
Oct 27, 20232 min read
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America needs strivers
Rewarding mediocrity is a losing strategy for America, writes Doug Lemov, author of Teach Like a Champion 3.0, on Education Next. U.S....

Joanne Jacobs
Oct 26, 20232 min read
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'A' is for 'awesome,' 'awful' and 'average'
"The most popular high school grade in America" is "A," writes Tim Donahue, who teaches high school English at Greenwich Country Day...

Joanne Jacobs
Oct 25, 20232 min read
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