Posts by Lisa Haidostian
Only 25% of high schoolers can write proficiently and apparently this is good news.
By Lisa Haidostian, written on Apr. 3, 2008
According to nationwide test results that came out today, about a third of middle schoolers and a quarter of high school students scored proficiently in the writing section. Yikes. And yet…we should be pleased? In a New York Times article published today, experts and educators said they were happy about the results.
Authorities in the federal government’s school testing program said they were encouraged by the results, especially since they seemed to counter other recent indicators suggesting a decline in Americans’ writing abilities.
Encouraged?? I’m confused. Isn’t 25 percent by any other standards failing?
On a slightly (but only slightly) less damning note, 88 percent of the 8th graders scored at or above the “basic” level of writing, which is defined as “partial mastery of the skills needed for proficient work.” Speaking as someone who’s sat through one too many English class workshops, though, kids need to have way more than a “partial” grasp on the English language.
Major U.S. Universities go global in Saudi Arabia
By Lisa Haidostian, written on Mar. 6, 2008
The University of California at Berkeley, the University of Texas at Austin and Stanford University have all entered into contracts with the newly developed King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, the New York Times reports.
The contracts are worth $25 a million a piece. In exchange for picking the faculty and helping to develop the curriculum, the U.S. universities will receive a $10 million gift, a $10 million research grant to be used on their home campuses and $5 million for research to be performed at the graduate-level Saudi research university.
“The agreement will allow us to improve our facilities here in California, and fund a stream of graduate students, without taxing our existing infrastructure,” said Albert Pisano, the chairman of Berkeley’s mechanical engineering department, which he said had voted 34 to 2 to proceed with the agreement. “We’re going to work on projects that are good for the Middle East and for California, like energy sources beyond petroleum, improved water desalination, and solar energy in the desert.”
Globalizing higher education seems to be the buzz-phrase recently, as President Coleman spends her spring break meeting with African colleges and universities and discussing how the University of Michigan could work with them. Though talk of possible collaboration has been swirling, no official plans have been announced. New York University and Michigan State University will soon be opening outposts in the oil-rich but higher education-lacking United Arab Emirates, and hundreds of other colleges and universities are partnering with institutions in countries like China, India and Singapore.