Education

October 16, 2010

Healthcare For All? Not If You Are A Poor College Student

Currently, Salem CyberSpace is following 22 students at various colleges around Massachusetts.  All of these students are low-income, most live with one parent, and with few exceptions they went into college covered under their mother or father’s MassHealth medical plan.  Miguel, our first student to turn 19, currently a sophomore at Montserrat College of Art, found himself unable to register for classes because he no longer had health insurance. This prompted a phone call to me. I could not believe this to be true so I
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September 11, 2010

Gap Year Academy?

If you won the birth lottery and 18 years later find yourself holding a high school diploma but totally unprepared for college emotionally and/or academically, you have several choices.  You can get your parents to subsidize a trip to a foreign country and experience living and maybe working abroad. If you are more community-minded, you could volunteer for City Year or some other non-profit. Or, if you want to boost SAT scores or GPA’s to improve your chances at a better college, you can go to
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July 25, 2010

Restoring Creativity to the Classroom

Being creative doesn’t mean just being good in the arts. Being creative also means being a problem solver, critical thinker, or inventor. A creative person has the ability to produce something original and useful. It has always been that many of the great new ideas have emanated from the U.S. Yes, our inventions are often shipped overseas to be programmed, packaged, assembled or supported but the idea generation, the inventiveness has always been an American strength.  A recent IBM survey of CEO’s identified creativity as the
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July 5, 2010

Math Literacy – Redux

I was recently meeting with the former principal of a local Middle School, and we were discussing the difficulties our students are having with math. While the problem is greater with our immigrant students, probably due to literacy issues, it is also a problem with our low-income, native English speakers as well. He made a comment that our educational system marches forward and rarely circles back to go over old material. Therefore, if a students misses some critical building block in mathematics (e.g. negative numbers), this
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June 20, 2010

The Dream Act Must Be Passed

We have all been following the story of Eric Balderas, the Harvard student, who came to this country illegally as a 4-year old with his mother. As valedictorian of his Texan high school, he is now studying biology on a full scholarship to Harvard.  He was detained in Texas after visiting his mother and faces deportation. It gets you thinking. On May 11, Salem CyberSpace feted its own high school seniors who all graduated high school in 4 years and are all going on to college
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May 16, 2010

Community Colleges Are Filling the Gap. But Shouldn’t Others Be Helping?

At Salem CyberSpace almost of all our students live in homes where English is not spoken and over half are native speakers of languages other than English.  For the students who came to this country as teenagers, getting up to speed in English in order to succeed in college is indeed a tall task.  However, all students who do accumulate the required number of high school credits and pass MCAS will earn a ticket to the local community college. Community Colleges provide open enrollment to any
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March 28, 2010

Teaching Math Literacy Before Numeracy to ELL Students

If I were to ask you whether English Language Learners (also called LEP for Limited English Proficiency) did better in English or math on the MCAS test, what would your answer be?  Most likely you would guess math.  After all, you might argue, the language of math is universal.  Solving 5 x 5 doesn’t require any English, correct?  Well you would be wrong.  In Salem, MA 19% of the Hispanic students Failed the math MCAS vs 9% who failed English. For LEP students, 43% of students
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March 14, 2010

SAT Testing Accommodations for ELL Students

Despite much criticism over the years, the SAT 1 is still a requirement for entrance into most 4-year colleges. This test, touted as a Reasoning Test, is a 4-hour test broken into several 20 to 25-minute sections.  In each section, students race against the clock to answer all the questions.  Even for native English speakers, the time constraints on this test are a challenge.  If you have a documented learning disability you can get extended time and other accommodations (such as a reader or scribe). So
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February 10, 2010

Carrot or Stick?

Do incentives work to encourage long-term academic achievement?
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January 27, 2010

Connecting Career To High School Achievement

High school reformists incorporate the 3 R’s for student success: rigor, relevance, and relationships. Students need to be challenged academically, to understand how that challenge relates to life in the “real world,” and to know that adults in the system care about them and are invested in their success (what I have called in previous blogs, social capital).  Most urban high schools offer a range of rigor in course selections including honors and AP level courses.  However too many students lose the connectedness between their learning
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