Thursday, June 11, 2009

Calculating Potential

Setting really far over to the side the fact that I think everyone (even the humans I don’t particularly want to hang out, drink coffee, and chat about politics with) is entitled to an affordable college education, here’s a new take on calculating students loan factors. U.S. News and World Report has a piece [...]

Setting really far over to the side the fact that I think everyone (even the humans I don’t particularly want to hang out, drink coffee, and chat about politics with) is entitled to an affordable college education, here’s a new take on calculating students loan factors. U.S. News and World Report has a piece about the different tools available for students to use for figuring out their potential future earnings and what that might mean vis-รก-vis paying back their student loans.

Included in the list of future-salary calculators is the soon-to-be-launched Human Capital Score. It’s in beta right now, and can therefore currently be accessed for free by anyone who’s interested. (Once it’s officially launched, I’m assuming it’ll cost you in some way, shape, or form). Unlike traditional FICO scores, the Human Capital Score figures out a given student’s future ability to pay back the money they borrowed for college using the student’s SAT scores, their high school GPA, their undergraduate major and their undergrad GPA.

It’s interesting in so far as HCS is utilizing a different set of variables when calculating student loan factors. However, while I do appreciate it when the system tries new and exciting approaches to measuring people’s potential, I still tend to take issue with the obsessive need to measure people in the first place, especially when it comes to deciding who deserves how much education based on test scores and possible future earnings. Again with the standardized test scores meaning more than they should and the in-it-for-the-potential-to-do-good careers getting shafted.

Sampling of Salary Calculators:

SalaryExpert.com
Salary Wizard
Glassdoor.com
PayScale.com
National Association of Colleges and Employers (usually free at college career centers)

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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The Knowledge of Educators

The Knowledge of Educators
I’m not sure why it fascinates me so entirely, but the idea that every profession seems, on the surface, to involve only X number of thought processes and actions, when, in fact, the professional in question has a collection of education and experience that’s actually pretty vast in its breadth and depth. The world [...]

I’m not sure why it fascinates me so entirely, but the idea that every profession seems, on the surface, to involve only X number of thought processes and actions, when, in fact, the professional in question has a collection of education and experience that’s actually pretty vast in its breadth and depth. The world is full of these little iceberg-tip professionals, marching around and doing their professional thing, and the majority of what they know and draw from isn’t visible to the rest of us.

Educators in particular intrigue me. Have you ever heard a teacher explain some kid’s behavior issue to a freaking out parent? The teacher, who has done a certain amount of coursework in the field of child psychology, tends to be way less addled by little Billy’s behavior than Billy’s unglued parent, who has a degree in something totally unrelated to children and the teaching of them. The teacher has gallons of information to pull from about how kids’ minds work, how they develop, how they absorb new input, how they interact with other kids and with adults, and how they deal with their inner noise in conjunction with the chaos of their surroundings. Even Sesame Street, not a show to take molding young minds lightly, has developmental psychologists on its research staff.

For the record, education junkie though I may be, I’m just as fascinated by stockbroker icebergs, plumber icebergs, architect icebergs, chemist icebergs, and stock-car driving icebergs. I think I’m wired to always think about what’s behind the curtain and what’s hidden beneath the surface. I took a film class once (and only once) in college and I was wrecked for all movie watching for months. I couldn’t just watch a damn movie after that without my brain being overrun with thoughts about camera placement, shot angles, what the director was trying to show me, what the director wanted me to know about the plot (and when, and why, and on and on and on). It was annoying and exhausting and made watching a movie suck.

I stopped watching cartoons on Saturday mornings when I was about eleven because someone explained how each frame is drawn and colored, etc. and from then on all I could think about while watching Wiley Coyote were the poor animators and all the drawing they were having to do just so I could veg out while scarfing Corn Pops twice a month at Dad’s house.

Curiosity is basically good and necessary—mankind wouldn’t have gotten very far without it. But sometimes it’s less than calming to have the draining combination of innate curiosity and an impossible-to-turn-off obsessive side to one’s thought process. I can’t not think about stuff all the damn time. This is why I will end up on a nice, quiet tropical island someday with finite levels of input like moon phases, tide tables, mango season, and which book is next on my reading list.

Further Reading for Potential Teacher Icebergs:

Teaching Career Outlook
Education Schools
Child Psychology Degree
Educational Psychology Degree
Sesame Street and the ‘Whole Child’
‘Sesame Street’: The Show That Counts

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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(Possibly) The End Of Helicopter Parenting

(Possibly) The End Of Helicopter Parenting
Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time would have a difficult time not clueing into the fact that I have negative feelings toward helicopter parents and their whacked-out Machiavellian ways. Is ‘Machiavellian’ too harsh? Then how about fu**ed-up, ruinously obsessive, and freakishly controlling? It’s possible that I may [...]

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time would have a difficult time not clueing into the fact that I have negative feelings toward helicopter parents and their whacked-out Machiavellian ways. Is ‘Machiavellian’ too harsh? Then how about fu**ed-up, ruinously obsessive, and freakishly controlling?

It’s possible that I may have issues with parents who can’t seem to allow their children to (a) be themselves, and (b) have non-goal-oriented childhoods. The parents who die with the most Ivy-League-Degreed kid don’t win. That’s not even a category. Let it go. Kids should have only the job of growing into themselves; they are not here to make their parents look good.

Thankfully (as I’m this close to chucking the last vestige of professionalism right out the window) the end of the Helicopter-Parenting Era may be drawing to a close. Amy Benfer has written a gorgeously optimistic (and, yet, humorously sarcastic) article in Salon.com about the possible founder of the overly intense parenting trend, Lisa Belkin, and the new hands-off approach to raising whippersnappers:

Now Lisa Belkin certainly isn’t the only person responsible for the shameful way in which our discussion of parenting in the past decade has shifted to focus almost exclusively on the trials, tribulations, petty competitions and anxieties of a tiny group of very privileged families with children who seem to consider their individual child’s prospects of getting into the most exclusive schools more important than, say, ensuring an equitable access to education for this entire generation of children.

…Parenting trends do come and go. But it is genuinely shameful that over this past decade, women on both sides of the Mommy Wars — often self-identified feminist women — have allowed so many definitions of “good” parenting to become inextricably tied up with “affluence.” While all children need good food, healthcare, shelter and good schools, the helicopter parents, whoever the hell they were, allowed parenting to become a competition between children, in which your child’s well-being was directly proportionate to how much advantage he or she could score over the next kid. That, to me, is frankly immoral, and those are the kids I worry about. Hopefully they will grow up to be wiser — and kinder — than their own parents. More…

Now I can’t get that damn “Ding-dong the witch is dead” tune out of my day’s humming repertoire. I have Munchkin-fear, but it’s such a snappy little tune…

Previous Posts on High-Pressure Parenting (in Varying Degrees of Professionalism):

Acceptance
Awesome Parent
“Bursting the AP Bubble”
“College Panel Calls For Less Focus On SATs”
College Student Spy Cams
Find Your Happy Place
Media Frenzy Around High-Pressure College Admissions
Perpetual Perpetration
Play Doh-Smeared Credentials
Private College Counselors
Testing Season Begins

Posted by Alexa Harrington


MCAS results released today

MCAS results released today
The Massachusetts Department of Education today released the results of the 2008 MCAS tests and the department said statewide they show impressive math gains in all grades and strong improvement in eighth grade science and gains in English language arts, math and Science, Technology/Engineering in Grade 10.