by Erica L. Meltzer | Sep 7, 2016 | Blog, Tutoring
It’s back to school time… which is right about when high school juniors and their parents often start to think about prep options for the SAT or ACT. In recognition of that fact, I’m planning to devote the next few posts to issues involving tutoring and classes: what to know, what to ask, and how to decide which option is right for you.
While there are many factors to consider when choosing a tutor, there are a handful of warning signs that should cause you to run in the opposite direction. As a “second-round” tutor whose students often worked with one or more tutors before me, I had ample opportunity to learn about all manners of ineffective teaching.
I’d like to cover one of the biggest red flags here. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Sep 2, 2016 | Blog, College Admissions
According to the Boston Globe, the number of selective colleges requiring applicants to submit SAT IIs is in decline:
In the past year, Amherst College, Dartmouth College, and Williams College all have dropped the subject test requirement, taking a lead from Columbia University, which announced the new policy this spring. Duke University and Vassar College also no longer require the tests, often called SAT II.
The shift occurs amid a larger discussion in higher education about the value of standardized testing in admissions. Some colleges, especially less-selective private schools but also such public colleges as UMass Lowell and Salem State, have made the main SAT and ACT tests optional.
“We want to make the application process as fair to all students as possible,” said Mary Dettloff, a spokeswoman for Williams College. “We felt like we weren’t getting any valuable data from the SAT II scores to help us.”
So if you’re planning to apply to schools where SAT IIs are optional, does this mean you should happily remove them from your testing checklist?
Maybe not so fast. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 28, 2016 | Blog, The New SAT
This past June, Manuel Alfaro, a former Executive Director of Test Design and Development at the College Board, wrote a stunning series of tell-all posts on LinkedIn in which he detailed the numerous problems plaguing the redesigned SAT as well as the College Board’s attempts to alternately ignore and cover up those problems.
For several weeks, Alfaro posted nearly every day, each time revealing more disturbing details about the College Board’s bumbling ineptitude and equally clumsy attempts to hide it.
Then, after 16 posts, he disappeared. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 27, 2016 | Blog, SAT vs. ACT, The New SAT
For those of you still deciding between the SAT and the ACT, one factor that you need to take into account is the number of practice tests you’re planning to take. I touched on this point in a recent post, but I’d like to revisit it here from a slightly different angle.
I’m insisting on it because of a couple of recent tutoring inquiries regarding students who want to start test prep early in junior year, and who are looking to raise their reading scores by enormous amounts (in the 200 point-range). But this post is also applicable to anyone looking to spend more than a few months prepping. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 24, 2016 | Blog, College Admissions
College application season is upon us again, and if you’re a rising senior or the parent of a rising senior just starting to pull a final list of colleges together, you might be starting to notice that the whole process is, well, a little bit complicated.
Everyone talks about the famous “college essay,” but in reality that should be “essays,” plural. And potentially lots of them. There is of course the main Common App personal statement, but what you might not realize until you actually sit down and begin adding schools is that many colleges have institution-specific supplements that include additional essay questions. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 21, 2016 | Blog, College Admissions, Parents, Students
After I posted a list of reasons that students should continue to consider passing up the new SAT in favor of the ACT, I received messages from a couple of readers who said that they shared my misgiving about the redesigned test, but that they had a very practical concern regarding that exam: namely, the PSAT and qualification for National Merit Scholarships.
In both cases, they indicated that their children would be dependent on scholarship money to attend college, and that they could not afford to pass up the opportunities offered by the National Merit program.
I confess that this was the last thing on my mind when I wrote the list, but it is a very real concern, and I appreciate having it called to my attention.
I do want to address the issue here, albeit with the caveat that I am not a financial aid expert, and that you should check with guidance counselors and individual colleges because policies and guidelines and vary from school to school.
I’m going to go into a lot more detail below, but in a nutshell: If you are unable to afford college without a full scholarship and are focusing on a group of less selective public universities, primarily in the (Mid)west and South, that offer large amounts of aid to students with high stats in order to boost their rankings, then yes, National Merit can count for a lot. But otherwise, it may have little to no effect on the amount of aid you ultimately receive. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 18, 2016 | Blog, Parents, Tutors
I think it’s fair to say that one of progressive education’s central characteristics is its obsession with so-called “active learning” and its abhorrence of student passivity.
The Center for Research on Teaching and Learning at the University of Michigan defines active learning as “a process whereby students engage in activities, such as reading, writing, discussion, or problem solving that promote analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of class content,” which seems like a perfectly reasonable pedagogical prescription.
Obviously, one of the primary goals of teaching is to encourage students to engage with the material; it would be difficult for anyone to seriously argue that students should approach material passively. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 13, 2016 | Blog, The New SAT
When the redesigned SAT was rolled out this past March, most test-prep professionals that there would be a few bumps; however, there was also a general assumption that after the first few administrations of the new test, the College Board would regain its footing, the way it did in 2005, after the last major change.
Unfortunately, that does not appear to be happening. If anything, the problems appear to be growing worse.
If you’ve been following my recent posts, much of this will familiar. That said, I think it’s worth summing up some of the most important practical concerns about the new test in a single post. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 11, 2016 | Blog, The New SAT
The following was sent to me by a colleague, a longtime teacher and tutor who runs her own business; I’m posting it here with her permission. Keep in mind that the College Board has repeatedly touted “transparency” (ha!) as one of the key features of the SAT redesign.
I have a student who scored in the 400’s on her June SAT. Thought I’d look at her report (granted, not a queestion-and-answer service report) online to see what areas need work. This is what I got. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 10, 2016 | Blog, Issues in Education
While looking for models for the little sendup of progressive education that I posted recently, I came across a New York Times op-ed piece entitled “What Babies Know About Physics and Foreign Languages.” As the title and tag line (“Our kids don’t need to be taught in order to learn”) suggest, the piece is a pitch-perfect paean to the progressive ethos, touting the benefits of allowing preschoolers to learn “naturally,” through imitation.
While preschoolers can of course acquire many important skills this way, my immediate response to the article was to wonder how quickly Gopnik’s assertions about the benefits of natural learning for four year-olds would be misappropriated as an endorsement for treating higher levels of education this way.
As it turned out, I got my answer pretty quickly. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 8, 2016 | Blog
Vicki Wood over at Powerscore has posted an article on that company’s blog calling for David Coleman to be removed from his position as head of the College Board.
Citing the numerous problems that have plagued the redesigned SAT, including the cheating scandals resulting from the decision to reuse tests internationally and the hundreds of questions reportedly leaked to Reuters, Wood writes:
David Coleman is the leader of the College Board, and the responsibility for these numerous failures rightly lies with him. We believe that the only acceptable solution to these breaches—and really, the only way to save the integrity of the SAT and begin the long process of repair—is for Coleman to resign immediately. Given the arrogance he has displayed in the past we aren’t counting on him stepping down voluntarily, so it’s up to the College Board: admit responsibility, remove David Coleman, and immediately repair your broken test security system. The future of millions of college applicants is at stake. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 6, 2016 | Blog, The New SAT
Thanks to a blog reader for submitting this comment.
How many abysmal fails has College Board committed/experienced in the past 18 months?
The test (June 2015) with a misprint on the last sections about how much time students had that led to uneven test administrations across the country.
Disruptions in sending October (or was it November) scores to colleges because they started using their new system for score distribution – for the old test scores – before most admissions office had shifted over to that system (because this was still the old test format). (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 5, 2016 | Blog
The College Board has now responded to reports of a security breach involving October 2016 SAT questions by issuing the following statement: (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 4, 2016 | Blog
Reuters has now followed its exposé of widespread cheating on the new SAT with news of a massive security breach at the College Board:
Just months after the College Board unveiled the new SAT this March, a person with access to material for upcoming versions of the redesigned exam provided Reuters with hundreds of confidential test items. The questions and answers include 21 reading passages – each with about a dozen questions – and about 160 math problems…
To ensure the materials were authentic, Reuters provided copies to the College Board. In a subsequent letter to the news agency, an attorney for the College Board said publishing any of the items would have a dire impact, “destroying their value, rendering them unusable, and inflicting other injuries on the College Board and test takers.” (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 3, 2016 | Blog, Issues in Education
Just imagine if people talked about sports the same way they talk about education…
In the nineteenth century, when modern sports were invented, athletics served as an extension of the factories in which many of their players worked, reinforcing hierarchies and training athletes to be obedient and “play by the rules.” Today’s sports leagues are heirs to that model. Unsurprisingly, for many athletes, playing a sport has become a source of stress rather than one of joy.
Nothing could be more natural than the desire to run and play, but this inborn tendency is all too frequently destroyed by a system that emphasizes rote drilling of individual skills at the expense of more authentic forms of participation.
A new, more progressive model is clearly required, one that harnesses players’ innate love of games and movement, and that places players rather than sports at the center of the athletic process. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jul 31, 2016 | Blog, Issues in Education, Tutoring
In my previous post, I outlined some of the ways in which the progressive methodologies that pervade much of the American system inadvertently fuel a reliance on the private tutoring industry.
On its surface, the tutoring model would seem to be the holy grail of progressive education. Teachers are encouraged to “personalize” their approach to fit students’ unique learning styles, “empowering” them to “find their passions” and “take ownership of the learning process.” But this perspective is based on both a simplification and a misunderstanding of how teaching and learning actually work.
Oftentimes, tutoring is assumed to be effective simply because it epitomizes personalized learning. But although personalization is a component of what makes tutoring effective, it is far from the only element – nor, I would argue, is it the most important element. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jul 29, 2016 | Issues in Education
To begin this post, two anecdotes.
The first one comes from Shamus Khan’s Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School. In the book, Khan recounts the following story about a graduate of the uber-elite St. Paul’s school in New Hampshire:
“I don’t actually know much,” an alumnus told me after he finished his freshman year at Harvard. “I mean, well, I don’t know how to put it. When I’m in classes all these kids next to me know a lot more than I do. Like about what actually happened in the Civil War. Or what France did in World War II. I don’t know any of that stuff. But I know something they don’t. It’s not facts or anything. It’s how to think. That’s what I learned in humanities.”
“What do you mean, ‘how to think’?” I asked.
“I mean, I learned how to think bigger. Like, everyone else at Harvard knew about the Civil War. I didn’t. But I knew how to make sense of what they knew about the Civil War and apply it. So they knew a lot about particular things. I knew how to think about everything.” (44) (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jul 14, 2016 | Blog, Issues in Education
In continuation of my previous post, some thoughts on one of progressive education’s favorite tools: group work.
A good deal of fuss is currently being made of the importance of preparing students to work collaboratively in groups, in preparation for the twenty-first century economy. In the context of these discussions, group work, much like “critical thinking,” is typically presented as a formal skill that can be developed in the absence of any specific context.
On the surface, this is one of those claims that seems eminently reasonable. Because many well-paying jobs in the current economy do in fact require some degree of collaboration among workers, it seems logical that children should be trained to work collaboratively. (more…)
