Three from area join Teach For America
South Bay. At a time when admissions are more selective than ever, three South Bay locals have joined Teach For America, the national corps of top college graduates who commit to teach for two years in urban and rural public schools in low-income communities.
Among the 4,500 people who joined nationwide were Sherilyn Herreria, a native of Harbor City; Michael Bartha of Torrance; and Michael McField Jr. of Carson.
“Joining Teach For America just made sense – it presented a unique opportunity to couple my career aspirations with my passion for social justice,” Bartha said.
Teach For America received a record-breaking 46,000 applications this year, and admission was more selective than ever before, with an acceptance rate of 12 percent.
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Last week we read about the Colorado Virtual Academy (COVA) “mishap” that invalidated more than 6,000 CSAP test scores. This week’s release of CSAP data by the Department of Education keeps the story in the forefront. But when it comes to the whole COVA incident, I must confess to having some unanswered questions. (And I must also confess to working closely with a COVA board member, as well as having both CDE employees and COVA parents as friends.)
EdNews describes administering CSAP tests to students from different grades in the same room as “a violation of state testing protocol.” But if action is going to be taken as severe as throwing out thousands of assessment scores (resulting in failure to make AYP under federal law), it would help to know more about the origin of the protocol. It’s not
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Crowdsourcing is still an experimental, controversial system that’s nevertheless taking hold in the business world. But it’s also gaining fast traction in academia and could create new opportunities on campus, at online universities and in the field. From IT help desks to scientific research to making job connections, here are 10 awesome examples of crowdsourcing in the college classroom and beyond.
- GrouperEye: This “survival of the fittest” project was started by and for college students looking for contract gigs. Businesses post a case on GrouperEye’s website and leave it open to students to solve. The compa
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For a tiny private school in a fairly small suburban town, Marymount College has spent a surprisingly large amount of money to place its campus expansion plans before voters this fall.
The Rancho Palos Verdes college paid political consultants, lawyers, production companies and mail houses nearly $543,000 in its bid to gather signatures for a controversial initiative.
That’s about $132 for each of the 4,094 signatures that earned the measure a spot on the Nov. 2 ballot.
“It’s a huge investment,” college President Michael Brophy said. “We’re sorry to have to make it but we really had no choice.”
Campaign finance records released this week show Marymount’s expenditures from the beginning of the year through June 30, a period when the school launched a signature-gathering campaign, placed advertisements in local papers and on cable television, and sent several well-produced mailers and a DVD to city residents.
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In testimony on Capitol Hill today, government officials named the 15 for-profit schools targeted in an investigation by the Government Accountability Office, which found that many schools engaged in federal fraud and deceptive marketing practices.
Three of the schools are located in Dallas, according to a report by Trace Urdan, an analyst at Signal Hill Capital Group in San Francisco. They are Westwood College, Everest College and ATI Career Training Center.
At Westwood College, which offers four-year degrees, an admissions representative told the government’s undercover applicant to lie about having $250,000 in savings and to claim nonexistent dependents in order to qualify for federal financial aid.
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