October 2007

Pathways to College Network Announces New Executive Director
The Pathways to College Network is pleased to announce the arrival this month of our new Executive Director, Dr. Cheryl Blanco, who will also serve as TERI’s Vice President, National College Programs. Cheryl will provide vision, leadership, and strategic direction for TERI’s national college access programs and the Pathways to College Network. She joins us from the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) in Chicago, where she served as Vice President for Lifelong Learning Policy and Research. Previously, she was the Senior Program Director for Policy and Research at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE). Prior to this, she served as the Education Policy Director for the Florida Postsecondary Education Planning Commission. Dr. Blanco received a Ph.D. in Higher Education from Florida State University and earned her MS in Higher Education and BS from Iowa State University.

PCN debuts new College Planning Resources Directory
Working with Lumina Foundation for Education staff and the KnowHow2Go campaign, the Pathways to College Network has developed an online directory of more than 80 resources for counselors, teachers, mentors, and families to use in helping middle and high school students plan and prepare for college. The College Planning Resources Directory contains links to websites and publications that students and their families can use independently, as well as those that practitioners can use to advise students. Users can search the Directory by audience, content, cost, available languages, suggested use, and training required.

Access the directory at http://www.pathwaystocollege.net/collegeplanningresources.

The Pathways to College Network will add to the College Planning Resources Directory on an ongoing basis. If your school or organization has college planning and preparation materials that you are willing to share with others through this directory, please contact us at pathways@teri.org.

How College Access Marketing Campaigns Can Utilize Social Networking Sites
The College Access Marketing (CAM) web site is currently being restructured. As part of this effort, PCN is creating several new information briefs based upon CAM campaign needs and interests. The first brief in this series is How College Access Marketing Campaigns can Utilize Social Networking Sites. This four-page brief describes Social Networking Sites, their importance as an option to consider for your campaign, and simple ways to begin using these popular online communities.
[Read the brief]
www.colllegeaccessmarketing.org

Lumina Foundation for Education Announces New President
Congratulations to PCN funder Lumina Foundation for Education on its selection of Jamie P. Merisotis as its new President and CEO. Mr. Merisotis is currently the president and founder of the Institute for Higher Education Policy and serves on the board of our Pathways’ partner, the National College Access Network.

How can student college learning be measured?
The U.S. Department of Education has awarded a $2.4 million grant to the Association of American Colleges and Universities, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges to address this complex question. A report is expected in approximately 18 months.

Schools Need Good Leaders Now
The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) continues its Learning-Centered Leadership Program with Schools Need Good Leaders Now: State Progress in Creating a Learning-Centered School Leadership System, a report that evaluates state progress relative to seven indicators of state-level support for the development of strong school leadership. Among the sixteen SREB states evaluated, Louisiana emerges as a “pacesetter.”
[Read the report]

State of College Readiness for Latino Students
ACT reports that Latino high school graduates increased their average ACT scores and improved their college readiness between 2002 and 2006, even while the numbers of Latino students taking the ACT also increased. The report, State of College Readiness for Latino Students, analyzes student performance on ACT-developed tests in the 8^th, 10^th, and 12^th grades and notes both encouraging trends and certain patterns of concern. For example, the college readiness of graduating Latino students does not seem to match these students’ promise of performance in 10^th grade, suggesting that additional attention to the learning experiences of Latino students in 11^th and 12^th grades may be warranted.
[Read the report]

More Student Success: A Systemic Solution
Programs to increase student success at different points in the educational “pipeline” are often discussed in isolation. A recently updated report from State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO), More Student Success: A Systemic Solution, draws the pieces of student success into a systemic framework for action for students from middle school through higher education. The report provides an overview of research and existing programs related to six key types of student success initiatives, ranging from early outreach through college support programs.
[Read the report]

Minorities in Higher Education 22^nd Annual Status Report: 2007 Supplement
A newly-published 2007 supplement to the American Council on Education's Minorities in Higher Education report presents tables showing the latest available data on high school completion, educational attainment, higher education enrollment, and degree earning disaggregated by race/ethnicity and gender. A brief introductory analysis highlights trends, which show growth in high school completion rates and college participation among whites, African Americans, and (to a lesser extent) Hispanics in the decade from1993-95 to 2003-05.
[Read the report]

Education at a Glance 2007
The OECD’s Education at a Glance 2007 includes updates on key international comparisons such as graduation rates, academic achievement of immigrant students, and levels of educational expenditures. The report also presents data aimed at examining the income benefits derived from higher education and finds that, even as the number of students participating in postsecondary education increases, the larger number of graduates is not weakening the economic rewards of higher degrees—higher education degrees continue to have a significant income benefit in all OECD countries.
[Read the report]

The Proficiency Illusion
The Proficiency Illusion, a new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, raises interesting questions about how “proficiency” is measured under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The report details the findings of a study of the implementation of NCLB proficiency standards in twenty-six states. Researchers compared student performance on individual state tests used to measure NCLB proficiency to performance on a standard "Measures of Academic Progress" test. The results suggest that state tests vary greatly in their difficulty and that some states may have downgraded their expectations for proficiency over time. Further, the report suggests that the proficiency bar for math may be higher than the bar set for English and that proficiency expectations jump sharply once students reach eighth grade.
[Read the report]