These fascinating results from the New Zealand Initiative show the results of analyzing school performance by separating out family circumstance. This is important to do because parents often go through a great deal of trouble to send their children to a “better” school, when actually, the school they are near may do just as well for their child.
“We’re always beating up on decile one schools with a big stick because they don’t do quite as well [in analyses] but they are performing – a lot of them – admirably, given the circumstances they face.
See also these articles from RNZ (which highlights the travesty of parents being unable to discover data about their local schools), Newshub (a nice overview with statistics), a podcast from RNZ, and a brief overview from Education Central.
This insightful, much-talked-about article by Kevin Carey in Huffpost provides an insightful view of how universities are increasing using for-profit institutions to increase their bottom lines via online programs, without a thought for student costs and debt. As Carey describes, Georgia Tech stands virtually alone in in providing at-cost (less than $7K USD for a masters degree!), high quality online educations. At Georgia Tech, a visionary dean, Zvi Galil teamed with Sebastian Thrun to change students’ future. Why are so few other university administrators—who often tout their ostensible caring for students—willing to do the same?