Latest news with #AdvancedPlacement
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Making the Grade: Sauk Valley-area students obtain career endorsements, plan futures through Pathways program
May 30—STERLING — More than 40 high school graduates from across the Sauk Valley took advantage of a program this year that helped prepare them for careers in the education sector. Created under the state's 2016 Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness Act, the Illinois College & Career Pathway Endorsement Program allows students to earn a formal endorsement on their high school diploma or transcript by completing a series of structured requirements designed to prepare them for life after high school in their chosen career path. Students choose from one of seven career pathways: * Agriculture food and natural resources * Health sciences and technology * Finance and business services * Arts and communications * Information technology * Human and public services * Manufacturing, engineering, technology and trades According to the PWR Act, to qualify for the endorsement, students must complete the following requirements: * Students must complete an individualized learning plan that outlines their college pathway and relates to their career goals and plans for financial aid. They also must include a resume and a personal statement. * Complete at least two career exploration activities or one intensive experience before graduating. This can include completing a career-interest survey, attending a career fair, interviewing someone from their chosen career field, participating in a college visit and job shadowing or visiting a local business. * Complete at least two team-based projects with adult mentoring that focuses on solving a problem related to their chosen career field. * Complete 60 cumulative hours in a paid or for-credit, supervised career development experience, concluding with an evaluation of their professional skills. This can be completed at any point throughout their four years of high school, including during the summer. * Complete two years of high school coursework, or demonstrate equivalent competencies, leading toward a postsecondary credential with recognized labor market value. This includes a minimum of six hours of early college credit that can be earned by taking dual-credit classes, Advanced Placement classes or college classes. * Demonstrate college-ready proficiency in English and math by graduation. This can be done in one of several ways, including earning the required scores on the ACT, SAT, or college placement tests; achieving the required grade-point average set by their local community college, or receiving a grade of "C" or higher in transitional English and math classes. Anji Garza is the director of Professional Learning and Educational Services for Regional Office of Education No. 47 in Sterling. She said students who earn an endorsement enter college better prepared and more confident in their chosen career paths, having already explored their interests through real-world experience. "This allows students to explore their options much more intentionally, as opposed to students who go and maybe don't have that career in mind, and then they're exploring those options in college, which we know can be a very expensive career exploration endeavor," Garza said. Students with an endorsement also earn a $100 credit at Dixon's Sauk Valley Community College. In 2021, SVCC — in partnership with ROE 47 — was awarded a $249,000 grant from the Illinois State Board of Education to support career pathways for high school students. It was the first phase of a four-part grant cycle totaling $747,000. SVCC's Peer Academic Support Services Facilitator Celina Benson said the CCPE program offers students exposure to careers in their chosen field they might not have previously considered. "When you think about health sciences, the first thing you think of is a doctor or a nurse, but there's so many other careers within that sector," Benson said. "Whether it's rad tech or sonography, they might not have been exposed to some of that information. With this program, they get to see it firsthand within those careers." Additionally, students who earn their endorsement in the education pathway are advanced to the final round for the Golden Apple Scholarship, which provides the winners with four years of free college tuition and fees. In 2022, Gov. JB Pritzker signed Public Act 102-0917, which requires all Illinois high school districts to begin offering College and Career Pathway Endorsements. Starting with the Class of 2027, districts must apply to the state to offer at least one endorsement area — either on their own, through a career center, or in partnership with other districts. By 2029, they must add a second endorsement, and by 2031, districts with more than 350 high school students must offer a third. ROE 47 Digital Teaching & Learning Specialist Stacey Dinges said 18 school districts throughout the Sauk Valley currently offer at least one pathway endorsement. Participating school districts include: * Riverbend Community Unit School Dist 2 * Dixon Public Schools 170 * Rock Falls High School 301 * Morrison Community Unit School Dist 6 * Amboy Community Unit School District 272 * Ashton-Franklin Center CUSD 275 * Forrestville Valley CUSD 221 * Regional Safe School Center for Change * Prophetstown-Lyndon-Tampico 3 * Byron CUSD 226 * Rock Falls Elementary District 13 * Sterling District 5 * Whiteside Area Career Center * Ohio CCSD 17 * Rochelle Township High School * Oregon Community Unit School District 220 * Polo Community Unit School District * Chadwick-Milledgeville CUSD 399 * Eastland CUSD 308 As of July 1, 2025, all districts must either apply to offer the required number of endorsement areas or have a board-approved plan in place to meet the deadlines. Districts also have the option to opt out by passing a formal resolution through their school board. "Each school does it a little differently," Dinges said. "Some students use their community colleges, some districts use their Career Center, and some do it all in-house. It just depends on the district." For more information, call ROE 47 at 815-625-1495 or visit
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Opinion: What's the Best Way to Measure a School's Quality? 5 Factors to Consider
What's the best way to measure a school's quality? It depends on whom you ask. Parents, educators, employers and policymakers hold many different opinions about the goals of education and, therefore, about how to judge school performance. Yet virtually every educational aim rests on the same foundation: giving students a strong academic grounding and developing the knowledge and habits of mind that allow them to think critically, communicate effectively and acquire knowledge and skills over time. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter At this challenging moment in American education, with student achievement in decline, FutureEd and the Keystone Policy Center decided to approach the question of how best to measure schools from scratch. We combed the research about the features of schools that make the greatest contribution to academic achievement and identified five research-based characteristics that together provide a more complete and precise picture of school quality than is typically available. All the measures can support school improvement and provide parents and the public with a fuller understanding of school performance. But not all are suitable for high-stakes accountability decisions. Some metrics lack the reliability, validity and comparability necessary for ranking schools, replacing their staff or closing them. For decades, accountability systems judged schools based primarily on state test scores. But these correlate strongly with demographics and family income, making it difficult to gauge the real contributions of schools to improved student outcomes. A fairer, and increasingly popular, way to judge schools also considers how much they contribute to growth in students' test scores over the year. To achieve at high levels, students need access to challenging coursework. Policymakers can address this in accountability systems by measuring whether schools offer access to a broad range of course offerings, including the arts, sciences and technology, so schools don't narrow their focus to just reading and math. To help teachers deliver strong instruction, research increasingly points to the importance of using high-quality, standards-aligned instructional materials, which many states and districts are starting to emphasize. Research also has found that completion of one or more advanced math and science classes in high school predicts both college readiness and later health, job satisfaction and well-being. This can be measured by the availability of and enrollment in Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and dual-enrollment programs, for example, but only if they are made accessible to students who may have been shut out in the past. Related Student surveys also provide insight into whether schools provide a learning environment that promotes high achievement. But any use of surveys should include safeguards against adults influencing responses, and states must ensure they are valid and reliable. That's why many states and districts use surveys for school improvement rather than accountability. Accountability systems also could include reviews of student work, with a focus on instructional rigor, though doing so requires systematically collecting and evaluating work samples across schools. Research consistently shows that teacher and principal quality contribute more to student achievement than any other school-based factors. Traditionally, teacher quality has been measured by years of experience and subject-specific expertise, such as degrees earned or passing of teacher-licensure exams. But these measures often don't correlate with student achievement. A sounder strategy would be to identify the percentages of effective or highly effective teachers in a school through teacher evaluation systems that use multiple measures of quality and classroom observation, though few states have such systems at scale. States and districts can measure a principal's impact on student success using multiple measures and several years' worth of achievement data. Educator surveys of principal-teacher and teacher-to-teacher trust; principals' instructional leadership; and teachers' commitment to their school also provide an important window into a school's overall professional capacity. To prevent pressure from influencing survey results, states and districts should limit such measures to school improvement. Many states include chronic student absenteeism in their accountability systems as a proxy for student engagement and whether a school's climate is safe and conducive to learning. It is a reasonable strategy. But well-designed and well-implemented student, teacher and educator surveys — again, with sufficient validity and reliability safeguards — can provide more direct measures of school culture. Such surveys also can provide key insights into where improvement is needed. Related Test scores are proxies for long-term measures that parents value. But metrics such as whether students attend and graduate from college or career-training programs, enroll in the military, find gainful employment, and lead healthy and fulfilling lives are better gauges of readiness for adulthood. Though few states measure outcomes such as college enrollment when evaluating schools, better connecting pre-K-12 data systems to postsecondary and labor market data could help monitor a range of important post-high-school outcomes. Many high-performing countries use inspection systems that combine test scores and other quantitative measures with classroom observations and interviews conducted by teams of trained experts who visit schools to gather information on important features of success. These reviews typically include a school self-assessment followed by team site visits. They result in a comprehensive report describing a school's strengths and weaknesses and recommended steps for improvement. While such inspection systems have spread rapidly around the world, the cost and logistics of conducting valid and reliable school site reviews at scale has slowed their adoption in the U.S., particularly for high-stakes accountability decisions. Test scores matter. But by themselves, they provide an incomplete measure of school success. They also offer little guidance or support on how schools can improve. A more comprehensive set of research-based metrics would provide parents, educators and policymakers with a richer understanding of what makes schools successful and a clearer sense of how to strengthen them. Measurement systems that combine standardized test scores, access to rigorous and advanced coursework, prevalence of effective teachers and school leaders, evaluations of respectful and supportive school cultures and data on student success after high school are most likely to promote higher student achievement. Responsibility for weighting each strand and the specific metrics within them should rest with state and local education officials. But each component should play a role in evaluating school success.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Davis High School AP exam interrupted by fire alarm, needs to be retaken
More than 200 students at Davis High School thought they were nearly done with their Advanced Placement calculus exam Monday when a fire alarm sounded. With just 30 minutes left of the almost four-hour test, the piercing sound of the alarm evacuated the whole school and meant all 200 tests were declared invalid. 'All of us were so focused when that alarm went off. We jumped up and were all scared and looked around. The proctors in charge said, 'OK, we're going to walk outside.' We stood out there for 30 minutes, and by the time we came in, the test was done, and they said, 'Well, it was invalidated,'' Davis senior Luke Cadwallader said. At first, the seniors were too stunned to react. They didn't understand what had just happened. 'After that, we were all very frustrated. I was very mad. A couple of people started crying. It was just like, 'What do you do?'' he said. The culprit was a balloon. 'The cause of the alarm was due to a balloon that interfered with the connection of a beam detector,' Chris Williams, a Davis School District spokesman, said. He did not elaborate on where the balloon came from. The electronic systems are 'pretty sensitive,' Williams said. But according to state law, everyone must be evacuated when a fire alarm goes off. The high school contacted the Advanced Placement College Board to determine makeup testing. Students were told they could turn their tests in at whatever completion they had reached or retake them on one of two makeup days. The first makeup day is May 22 at noon, which happens to be during the school's graduation ceremony, or on May 28th. 'What hurt, that decision, is everyone was going to be out of town for the 28th. Everyone has their senior trip or family vacations, and who wants to take it during graduation?' he said. Out of the 205 students taking the exam, 165 were seniors. Now, they must all choose between risking a lower score, missing graduation or continuing to study for a test after graduation and potentially missing summer activities. The school said it would try to plan a special ceremony for any graduating students who choose to retake the test that day, but disappointment is prevalent. Most people Luke has talked to have decided they will just risk it and submit what they have finished. 'With 10% to 15% of the test left, and that being a pretty weighty portion of this test, I decided I'm not gonna risk it. I'm going to just take it on the 28th. Yes, I'm going to have to keep studying math, but maybe it's a blessing in a way that I have more time to study,' Luke said. The calculus exam was Luke's fourth and final AP test. 'The funny part, though, was this was my fourth one .... and it's unfortunate. It was the last one, the final one. Thought I'd be free, but apparently not,' he joked.
Chicago Tribune
15-05-2025
- General
- Chicago Tribune
Letters: As a high school student, I can confirm that school is harder now that it was for my dad
Regarding the op-ed 'Are the kids all right? They experience school very differently than we did' by Ashley A. Kannan (May 6): As a 15-year-old in my first year of high school, I've been seeking some sort of closure as of late. Closure to help me know that school is different in so many ways now than what my dad talks about. My father has always worked me hard academically to get the best grades I can and do well in everything I do. Whether a bad test or an altercation at school, I'd come home to my dad criticizing me. He'd talk about how something never happened when he was in school or he'd say, 'When I was in school, I never got less than a B-minus on a test,' which, to this day, is even harder for me to believe. I try to tell him, 'School is way different now than back then,' or 'School is harder now and more competitive than ever!' But what do I know? Maybe some of what he says is true. Taking Advanced Placement and honors courses as a freshman has pressured me more than ever before and maybe more than other kids my age. So, when I found this op-ed, it gave me the closure I needed. When I read what one student said — 'It's a lot of pressure to have every class as an A-plus' — I knew this was exactly what I've been wanting to see. It felt more validating hearing school is different from the author, a teacher, than maybe one of my friends or another student. Due to how competitive school has become in recent years, students face pressure to do well in school, as well as the pressures of social media, bullying and, most importantly, a parent or other adults saying that they did well in school. I do thank my dad for wanting me to succeed and go to a good college, but it's hard to compare the high school experience he had to mine. It's time parents, educators and adults in general acknowledge the fact that school is more different now than ever, and people must learn and adapt to the changes kids and teenagers go housing providers, we have serious concerns about Illinois House Bill 3564. This legislation would eliminate move-in fees and cap application and late fees. Our affordable housing crisis is due to a lack of housing supply, not fee structures. We need more housing units, not more regulations on the units we already have. Move-in fees cover actual costs. When tenants leave, we pay for cleaning, repairs, paperwork and marketing to find new residents. These expenses don't vanish just because a law says we can't charge for them. As a recent Tribune editorial points out ('Security deposits for renters are fairer than exploding move-in fees,' May 2), the Residential Tenant and Landlord Ordinance has made it practically impossible to use security deposits in Chicago or Cook County. Without move-in fees or security deposits, we would have to spread these costs to everyone through higher rents. This means long-term, stable residents end up subsidizing the costs of people who are moving, a policy that bizarrely penalizes housing stability. Here's what the bill ignores: Tenants may prefer move-in fees. Moving costs add up quickly. A move-in fee of a few hundred dollars is far more manageable than security deposits. Tenants deserve this option. Restricting application fees ignores practical realities. In an era of sophisticated application fraud, thorough background checks aren't optional — they're essential for protecting both property and residents, who deserve safe communities. The bill's restriction on late fees similarly ignores economic realities. Without reasonable late fees, property owners effectively provide interest-free loans to late-paying tenants. Fair housing means fair rules, in which tenants who work hard, play by the rules and pay on time don't bear the financial burden of those who fail to do so. Illinois faces real housing challenges that deserve serious, evidence-based solutions, not quick fixes that backfire. We need policies that increase supply, reduce development costs and create an attractive environment for investment. What we don't need are well-intentioned but misguided interventions that will reduce housing options and increase costs across the board. The Illinois legislature should say no to HB3564. Rather than adding more regulations that make it harder to provide housing, let's focus on the real issue — building more housing. If you don't talk to housing providers, you get bad housing policy. We're ready to collaborate on solutions that make housing more affordable without sacrificing quality or safety. Our tenants deserve nothing Brandon Johnson has really stepped in it now. As leader of one of the largest sanctuary cities in America, he has welcomed all with no questions asked. How ironic! Johnson refuses to accept the presence of the popular immigrant Christopher Columbus. The man whose voyages led to the introduction of Western European civilization and culture to a new world and who was once considered a genius and a hero is now shunned by the likes of history revisionists. It seems that Johnson is at the front of this cult. The Italian American Human Relations Foundation of Chicago has never received an explanation as to the basis for Johnson's opposition to the celebration of Columbus Day. His 2021 resolution to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day, introduced to the Cook County Board when he was a commissioner, failed, possibly due to the fact that he was unaware that the state has designated Indigenous Peoples Day to be celebrated on the last Monday in September. All three Columbus statues have been removed from public view and discussion in Chicago. A city commission then determined that they were examples and reminders of white supremacy. Not one elected official or member of the media who has spoken out against the Columbus celebration has accepted our invitation to participate in an investigative panel discussion of Columbus and his legacy, including U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth. Johnson and his Park District are loaning one of the statues to a proposed museum. That's like saying: 'Here's your car back, but keep it in the garage.' This is not an Italian American problem. This is a world history travesty. The historical fate of the great navigator is more than sad; it's tax bills have an effect on everyone, not just those who pay directly. Escrow accounts for each year are generally calculated at the beginning of November. Late bills seriously affect the calculation of mortgage escrow accounts. Late bills can cause them to be over- or under-funded, which can cause a hardship on those who are on a fixed income or earners who have to count every penny in their budgets. This is not something to take lightly as it causes people to pay more than they should have if they paid directly.I would like to propose that Springfield update our license plates to 'Land of Leo and Lincoln' and that Chicago add another red star to the city flag commemorating the birthplace of the first American pope.
Boston Globe
12-05-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
The ‘nuclear arms race' in extracurricular math
Since he didn't remember such centers existing when he was a kid, Goodman was intrigued. He says that the Kumon storefront 'sort of sat in my brain for a while. Then a decade or so later, we managed to find data on this.' That's when Goodman, who is an associate professor of education and economics at Boston University, and his colleagues Edward Kim at Bentley and Martin West at Harvard, started to track the proliferation of Kumon and two rival math-tutoring centers, Mathnasium and Sylvan, throughout the United States. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Advertisement Students in upper-middle class neighborhoods across the country have entered — as one mom put it to me — a 'math nuclear arms race,' in which disarmament often feels impossible. Many of us with kids have marveled at the surging popularity of out-of-school math: Parents ask you under their breath if your child goes to this center or that center. Young children — in the third, fourth, and fifth grades — now spend afternoons at math classes. Advertisement Massachusetts has given rise to its own incredibly successful competitor in the math-enrichment derby: the Russian School of Mathematics, where a weekly two-hour class for a fifth-grader will set you back about $2,500 for the academic year. It also has summer programs. RSM began in Newton in 1997 and now teaches, by its own accounting, more than 70,000 students in North America. What explains the skyrocketing demand? There are a number of factors, but everyone I talked to agreed on one thing: Many parents believe that getting ahead in math can give their kids an edge in college admissions. Indeed, the RSM website features alums who enrolled at Yale, Harvard, and Cornell, noting that '100K+ RSM alumni go on to attend the best universities in the world.' And if you're interested in the small pool of highly selective schools, you're going to need all the help you can get. Over just the last couple of decades, colleges in that pool have gotten much, much harder to get into. Consider Brown University, which accepted This has touched off a frantic struggle among affluent, educated parents to seek out any advantage they can for their children. A friend who works in college counseling told me that math feels like the new proxy for intelligence. Plenty of parents believe that the earlier their kids can take calculus, the better. And being good at math makes it likelier that students will earn impressive scores on the SAT and both Advanced Placement calculus exams. Advertisement Perversely, as districts like Cambridge, Goodman, who lives in Cambridge, said that all three of his kids have done extracurricular math, 'starting with our oldest, who from an early age was super into math. And the schools weren't challenging him. For us, it was a way to keep him interested in a subject. And then the same thing for his younger siblings.' He says they benefited a lot from taking outside math — even if they 'sometimes get aggravated by the extra homework.' He notes that 'this kind of outside parental investment is a way of just saying, 'OK. Screw it. If the school is not going to challenge my kid, then I'm going to provide the right track for my kid this way.'' But, he admits, 'I'm under no illusions that it fixes any inequalities in access to this stuff, right? The people who are able to take advantage of these things have money and knowledge. And, by the way, at least for the advanced learning part of this stuff, the model only works if there's a parent around to help with the homework.' Indeed, in an affluent school district that eliminates advanced math, the kids who may be most hurt are those capable of doing more but whose families can't afford Russian Math. Advertisement The centrality of math What worries me is that a feedback loop has now kicked in. As more and more kids opt in to extracurricular math, lots of families start to feel that this sort of enrichment is essential. None of this means that parents of third-graders are necessarily laser-focused on getting into Harvard, but the pressure trickles down. Parents of young kids understand that they inhabit a competitive landscape. So when your friends and neighbors tell you their kids do this math thing, you sign yours up for it too. I have wondered about the centrality of math for a long time. When I was in middle school in the 1990s, math was the only class that had an advanced section. I frequently wondered why the most motivated history students couldn't take a more advanced class. Or the kids eager — and ready — to dive into harder literature. No one I spoke with seemed to know exactly why math is treated so differently from other subjects, but several people noted that it tends to proceed in a linear way with clear right and wrong answers. Your ability to digest literature, write high-quality essays, or engage with chemistry is somewhat more subjective, making it more complicated (and perhaps more controversial) to distinguish among students. Jon Star, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a middle school math teacher, agrees that college admissions, rather than love of math, fuels a great deal of extracurricular math enrollment. And, he says, the existence of such classes can make the lives of math teachers really hard. What should a fourth-grade teacher do, for example, when some kids in their class are multiple grade levels ahead? The children have 'seen everything already,' he says. 'That's just a potentially insurmountable challenge in that classroom.' Advertisement Sometimes, says Star, 'kids are then unhappy in school, bored in school. And the parents go to the school and say: 'Oh, I want my kid to be able to go even faster or skip a grade or skip two grades.' And schools just may not be equipped to do that, especially middle schools and elementary schools.' 'A shallow understanding' One place this ratcheting up of math education is having an effect is in college. Steven Strogatz, a professor of math at Cornell, says he's seeing 'absurd levels of acceleration.' When Strogatz was in high school in Connecticut, he took calculus during his junior year. And since there were no formal courses left to take during his senior year, a few advanced kids took a course called 'Math 6.' Now he sees students who took calculus in their freshman or sophomore year of high school. By the time they get to Cornell, they've taken multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and sometimes differential equations.' You see a lot more of that. And it might be OK for some kids, but for a lot of kids, what it means is that they have a very spindly, thin knowledge of the fundamentals.' Strogatz has written books about math and penned a column on it for The New York Times. He wants people to both love and understand the subject. 'A lot of the AP students we see, they've taken AP calculus when they come into my class. That didn't do them much good. In many cases, they have such a shallow understanding.' Advertisement Strogatz too believes that the quest to get accepted to a good college often encourages students to focus on math acceleration. Because young people with special circumstances — including athletes, legacies, and the children of major donors — fill a bunch of the spots in a college class, 'the kids who are trying to get in by having done the Russian School of Math, they're fighting for the remaining slots.' Strogatz notes that his graduate students rarely end up teaching math. Instead, he points out, 'they go to work for Google. They work for Amazon or Microsoft or Apple. And get paid three times what I get paid. Or more. Or they go work for a hedge fund, and then I can't even tell you [how much they make].' I am all for enrichment, but I'd like to see it more widely distributed. Love biology? Spanish? Literature? You should feel free to take afternoon classes in those instead of math. But little will change until admissions offices realize they have created the wrong incentive structure. Colleges should make clear that students' brilliance cannot be measured by AP calculus — or by how early kids can zoom through the course. They should emphasize that learning is about understanding, rather than end points. And that kids should explore what they love, rather than feel compelled to spend Wednesday nights at their local math franchise. Follow Kara Miller
