Look, Kristof gets it!

I meant to post this Nic Kristof column as soon as it ran last Sunday.

It’s one of those rare times a journalist who doesn’t report exclusively on education actually recognizes the industry’s importance.

Kristof’s column was inspired by the $100 billion President Barack Obama allocated for education in the new fiscal stimulus package passed last week. In it, he says he used to think our “greatest national shame” was health care — but now, he said , he believes it’s education.

(Wow.)

Kristof focuses a bit more on secondary education in his column, but much of what he said addresses or applies to higher education as well:

” … America’s educational edge created prosperity and equality alike — but that this edge was eclipsed in about the 1970s, and since then one country after another has surpassed us in education. Perhaps we should have fought the “war on poverty” with schools” — Nic Kristof

Now we can only hope the Kristof following gets it, too.

Those subject tests don’t matter — Come on in!

A committee of the University of California’s regents has passed a proposal it hopes will expand the system’s applicant pool by allowing students to  bypass the SAT subject tests. The board is expected to approve the policy, which would take effect in 2012, in its meeting today.

An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education reported the measure would increase the number of California high-school graduates considered for admission by about 40 percent, which would give admissions officers at each of the nine campuses more flexibility in choosing an incoming class, and hopefully, avoid any shortfall in enrollment that could translate to a budget crisis.

Officials also said the change would reduce the number of applicants who are guaranteed admissions based on their grades and test scores. It could also increase the number of applicants from students with different  socioeconomic backgrounds, which in turn could increase the student body’s racial and economic profile.

California is the only state university that requires SAT subject tests, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling. Nationwide, 72 percent  of colleges require the ACT or SAT, while only two percent  require subject tests, according to association.

Obama: Man of change, man of … raised test scores?

Researchers from three top American universities think so.

Since last Fall, teams from universities like Northwestern and San Diego state have studied what they call the “Obama Effect” — “the elimination of a performance gap between black and white Americans in an academic test.”

Teams gave tests to a group of 84 black and 388 white Americans (proportionate to U.S. racial percentages) four times throughout the 2008 campaign and  election season: two “non-salient times,”  one week before the National Convention and one month before the election, and two “salient times,” the day following the National Convention and the day following the election.

In the “non-salient times,” the white subjects  scored an average of 12 out of 20 questions correct, while black subjects had 8.5 correct answers. But during the two “salient” tests, given immediately after Obama’s nomination acceptance speech and after his election victory, black performance improved, researchers said.

So far, professors and race studies experts are split on how true they believe the tests to be. But Northwestern University enrollment officers say they’ve seen a 21 percent increase in black applicants this year.

“It certainly sounds plausible,” said Marx, one of the lead researchers of the study. “Obama is really getting a lot of people excited and I could see how that could translate into more minority students applying to schools.”