High School News

Denver’s 137 public schools overall raised their grades on the school district’s annual evaluation — with a majority meeting or exceeding expectations.

The number of Denver Public Schools receiving the highest grade — “distinguished,” or blue in the color-coded scheme — rose to 15 from 12, or 10.9 percent of all schools.

There was also an increase in schools receiving the second-highest mark — “meeting expectations,” or green — with 42.3 percent of the schools falling into the category.

“This is the first year ever that more than half of our our schools are green or blue” said DPS Superintendent Tom Boas berg.

The DPS performance framework rates each school in five categories, with an additional two categories for high schools.

It then calculates a score that is classified into one of five color-coded categories.

The largest weight in the evaluations is given to growth — measured in ways such as individual student improvement on state assessments and the rate of students taking and passing advanced-placement high school courses.

“We are not looking at just one test or one measure; we’re looking at a whole series of measures,” Boasberg said.

A smaller consideration is annual surveys of students and parents.

The new schools ranked in the blue category include two West Denver Prep charter schools, a new Denver School of Science and Technology and University Park Elementary School.

Six schools improved their overall score by more than 15 percentage points, including Hallet Elementary and Skinner Middle School.

Skinner’s increase moved it up two levels. The school is now classified as green, or “meets expectations,” after earning an orange score of “accredited on priority watch” last year.

Skinner’s improvement is credited, in part, by a push from parents that led to a series of changes, including new honors courses and additional professional support for teachers.

About 31 percent of schools fall into the yellow category just below meeting expectations — “accredited on watch.”

The smallest percentage of schools, 6.6 percent, fall into the second-lowest category: orange — “accredited on priority watch.”

The percentage of schools receiving a score of less than 34 percent — classified as red, “accredited on probation” — has fallen to 8.8 percent.

Seven schools listed as red last year moved up and out of the category. Five schools that had been rated higher fell into the red classification.

Of the 12 red schools, six are already closed or being phased out, including West High School, Ford Elementary and Rachel B. Noel Middle School.

Two others — Venture Prep, co-located in Smiley Middle School, and Northeast Academy Charter School — are charters that require a board vote for renewal within the next year.

Highs and lows

A list of the highest- and lowest-ranking performers in DPS’s annual evaluation.

2011 highest performers

• Steck Elementary

• Denver School of Science and Technology: Green Valley Ranch

• West Denver Prep: Harvey Park Campus

• West Denver Prep: Lake Campus

• Cory Elementary

• Polaris at Ebert

• West Denver Prep: Highland Campus

• Beach Court Elementary

• Slavens Elementary

• Lincoln Elementary

• West Denver Prep: Federal Campus

• University Park Elementary

• Denver School of Science and Technology

• Bromwell Elementary

• McMeen Elementary

2011 lowest performers

• West High School

• Maxwell Elementary

• Trevista ECE-8 at Horace Mann

• Smith Elementary

• Venture Prep Middle School

• Rishel Middle School

• Schenck Elementary

• Rachel B. Noel Middle School

• Ford Elementary

• Northeast Academy Charter

• PS1 Charter School

• Manny Martinez Middle School

In this weeks GMAT Tip, our instructor shows how thinking about the test as a whole can accelerate your understanding of its individual parts, and more importantly how that can help you study efficiently and effectively.

At Plymouth-Salem High School in the 1990s, a chemistry teacher by the name of Mr. Barnes was a divisive character.  He may not have been anyones absolute favorite teacher (read: he never brought in candy, showed movies, or held class outside, the three cornerstones of favorite-high-school-teacherdom) but he was most certainly some students least and a beloved figure for others.  He challenged students with rigorous standards and assertive discipline. 

If you bought into his style early, you likely realized that he was a great teacher particularly for those who planned to go on to college and beyond.  He didnt sugarcoat difficult topics or alter his test schedule or homework assignments to make  things easier for athletes or the prom-bound to keep up with extracurriculars.  His quote as it pertained to your responsibility as a student and studier was always sometimes you have to rob from Peter to pay Paul.  And thats likely your challenge as a GMAT student: sometimes as you study for the GMAT youll have to rob from Peter to pay Paul.  The trick is who is Peter and who is Paul?

What Mr. Barnes (and other great teachers) means by that quote is that time and attention are limited resources and its just a fact of life that you will need to make decisions about how to allocate them.  In his world, if you want an A in chemistry class you may need to sacrifice an extra-credit project in your English class (or just an episode of your favorite TV show).  As it pertains to the GMAT, you only have so much time and energy to devote to work, fitness, social relationships, b-school research, and GMAT study.  And breaking down the GMAT and its  topics, youll have to make some decisions on whether to rob from Peter (maybe quant) to pay Paul (maybe Critical Reasoning).  What you need to know about that decision is this: 

Most people make that decision poorly.

There are several examples of choosing the wrong subjects to study.  Often those who excel on and enjoy the quantitative section will go off in search of the hardest possible math problems they can find, enjoying the process of solving challenging number properties and data sufficiency problems while they put off that undesirable task of learning sentence correction.  Others will take practice test after practice test, monitoring their scores without ever digging deeper to determine how they can best improve those scores.

But most common among the poor uses of limited GMAT study time is the repetitive study of facts, formulas, and grammar rules (particularly idioms).  Students recall the experience of cramming for tests in high school and college (perhaps even for one of Mr. Barnes chem tests) and replicate that process, poring through flashcards and margin-notes to fill their heads with knowledge.  But in doing so they miss this crucial fact: the GMAT isnt testing your knowledge.  And we have proof.

As we posted yesterday, representatives from GMAC have explicitly said that the GMAT is a quantitative reasoning and verbal reasoning test (with their own underlines on reasoning) and have even offered the quote:  Were not testing your geometry and algebra knowledge.  If youre really lacking in that knowledge youll get some questions wrong, but were using those topics as way to test your higher order thinking.

Whats more, when you consider the role of the GMAT scoring algorithm, its job is to continue with each question to hone in on its estimate of your ability level.  The algorithm essentially:

1) Constantly updates and compiles statistics so that it knows which items can differentiate between users at different levels (say, a 640 examinee from a 660).

2) Chooses and assigns you items that will help create an estimate of your ability level (e.g. youve answered a 550 correctly, a 650 correctly, and a 700 incorrectlylets see if youre above or below 670 with the next item)

3) Continues to get more specific with its items to hone in on your ability level, obviously readjusting for false positives/negatives (if you happen to miss a 500 question early in the test, the exam will within a few questions realize that youre actually better than that and start feeding you tough questions again)

Now, what can this tell you about how you study for the test?  Quite a bit, actually.  Look at the verbal section: even if you hadnt yet heeded our warnings and those from GMAC directly that its not concerned with your ability to master idioms, you can see that the main question types are Critical Reasoning (logic); Reading Comprehension (which also employs quite a bit of logic and reading for meaning); and Sentence Correction (on which misplaced modifiers, inaccurate verb tenses, etc. all have logical bases).  Well, if most questions on the verbal section test your logical reasoning and critical reading abilities just about exclusively, it does not make sense for a small percentage of  the questions to test a completely unrelated skill like the memorization of idioms!!!!!! Those items would have very little (if any) relation to the work that the algorithm had already done to that point your answer to that question wouldnt tell the computer anything about your ability level and would actually provide some noise in the data that makes the algorithms job harder.

Weve mentioned here before that the scoring algorithm works a lot like a more sophisticated game of 20 Questions. Its essentially asking:

Are you above 500? (YES)

Are you above 600? (YES)

Are you above 650? (YES)

Are you above 700? (NO)

Are you above 670? (YES)

Are you above 690? (NO)

Are you above 680? (NO)

Are you above 660? (YES)  > Score is 670 (NOTE this is a simplificationthe GMAT takes more questions than this to do so, to account for your correct guesses and the occasional silly mistake that could skew the data, but ultimately this is what the algorithm is doing).

Well, with that 20 Questions analogy in mind, think about another game of 20 Questions in the more common sense.  Say that you were trying to guess an actress that I was thinking about (maybe Minka Kelly).  Youd ask questions like:

1) Is this person female? (YES)

2) Is this person alive? (YES)

3) Is this person famous? (YES)

4) Is this person famous for business or government? (NO)

5) Is she an entertainer? (YES)

6) Is she a musician? (NO)

7) Is she a television actress? (YES)

Now, to this point your questions have all taken one tone youre narrowing in on this persons station in lifefemale, alive, entertainer, TV actress.  Each question is relevant to the last thats how you narrow in your estimate of the person Ive selected in this game.  So theres no way  that you should ever ask an eighth question like:

Do you like Pepsi?

That question is irrelevant to your quest.  Its a wasted question, and you only get to ask 20.  So, similarly, you wouldnt at this point ask:

9) Has she ever dated someone with a barbed wire tattoo on his left bicep?

That question is far too specific and out of scope to be helpful.  And thats what an obscure-knowledge type question at this point on the GMAT would do.  To this point on the GMAT, the scoring algorithm has started to figure out an assessment of your abilities to think reasonably and logically, to think critically, to solve problems effectively.  An obscure-knowledge-based question doesnt add any value to that assessment in any way the thought process is too out-of-scope, the relevance to the previous or next question just isnt thereit wouldnt make any sense for the GMAT to so quickly change the scope of its questioning. In order for the CAT algorithm to perform to its ability remember, it only gets 41 verbal questions and some of those are unscored and experimental (for the purposes of gathering that ability-level data) so it may only get 34-35 questions to assess your ability. And on questions that are way, way above your level you still have a 1/5 probability of answering correctly in spite of yourself, so the algorithm needs to account for that.  It cannot waste questions!

So know this about the GMAT:  there has to be a common thread between questions, and that thread is logical reasoning.  And as you study, you should force yourself to emphasize that thread because its scalable logically reasoning through sentence correction sharpens that part of your brain for problem solving and critical reasoning. You should note that the misplaced modifier:

While studying for the GMAT, I think you should focus on logic more than you focus on knowledge.

Isnt so much grammatically wrongits just horrendously inaccurate.  While studying for the GMAT, YOU should do these thingsIm not studying for the GMAT.  You are.  And the GMAT will reward you for seeing that inaccurate meaning thats also present when verb tenses are tested (could those things really happen in that order?) or comparisons are made (can you really compare those two things?).  There are, indeed, grammatical rules that you should know, but remember that on a reasoning test they cant be arbitrary.  The GMAT can really only test you on the rules that have a logical basis to them.  They have no incentive and actually have a huge disincentive since a wasted question is a wasted opportunity to test you on either you know it or you dont.  The GMAT is a test of higher-order thinking, and on Blooms Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (more on that in a blog post next week) remembering is the lowest level of thinking, well below apply, analyze, and create -the objectives that the GMAT wants to reach.

Which brings us to Peter and Paul (sorry, Mary).  As you study from the GMAT you will sometimes need to steal time from Peter to pay Paul.  Youll need to allocate study time, and remember that while it might feel natural to study by memorizing obscure information, the GMAT almost by definition has to test you on logical reasoning.  So use your time that way study how you think, how you can apply logic to each rule (on the math side, too) to better master it and employ it.  Focus on how you apply that logic and knowledge and not just on knowing it.

As an homage to Mr. Barnes and excellence-demanding teachers everywhere, we wont sugarcoat this test. The GMAT is hard it has to be to serve its purpose as a sorting mechanism for graduate school.  But one of the items that makes it hardest is that people dont know how to study for it.  Well, now you know.  Think like the testmaker theyre forced to use logic in creating a test that assesses what it seeks to test.  So use that logic to your advantage; you know what theyre testing.

Getting ready to take the GMAT soon? Take a look at our GMAT prep courses and start your journey toward a great score. And, as always, be sure to find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

Writing has to reimagine what it can be in the digital age.—Kenneth Goldsmith

This week we will be featuring Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age, by Kenneth Goldsmith, and we begin with a recently published interview in Bomb. An excerpt from the official interviews is available but you can read a full raw transcript of his discussion with Marcus Boon, author of In Praise of Copying.

Kenneth Goldsmith and Marcus Boon discuss a variety of topics relating to Uncreative Writing and reading their conversation, one gets the feeling of listening in on a conversation between two friends. Among the topics they talk about include copyright, the dissemination of culture, Kenneth Goldsmiths website ubuweb, his past career as an artist, the 80s, his poetry, Andy Warhol, Christian Bok, English as a global language, subjectivity.

Heres their exchange on Goldsmiths recent appearance at the White House and how it relates to his own poetry and writing:

I feel like the books are conversation starters and in that way, it is. I actually find my writing, or this type of writing, to be populist. It’s both extremely avant-garde and populist at the same time. For example, when I read at The White House in May I read three short pieces about the Brooklyn Bridge. The first was Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”, an excerpt from that; the second one was Hart Crane’s “Brooklyn Bridge” poem; and the third one was my book Traffic, an excerpt where the Brooklyn Bridge is nothing but a bit player in a massive network of traffic jams. Well, the audience at The White House was…you know, they sat through the Whitman, the stuff that they’re supposed to like—and the Crane was treated very reverentially. But when I began reading traffic reports they all got up and started screaming, and yelling, and applauding, and laughing! The whole room lit up when the vernacular and the mundane language entered the space. Now, of course this was the most radical of the three because it was completely appropriated. It has a narrative, but it is a completely oblique and odd narrative; it is more Beckettian than anything. And here, senators and democratic party donors were actually loving it! It got a great round of applause. So I thought to myself, gee-whiz. Suddenly the avant-garde and the populist have met, it’s very strange . . .

Later in their conversation, Boon and Goldsmith discuss the impact of digital technology on writing:

Kenneth Goldsmith: Well . . . yeah. I think that the thing that’s happened is a paradigm shift that’s called . . . that is the digital. That then blows away all those other arguments, the pre-digital arguments. I actually believe that this is as much of a break—and I actually say in Uncreative Writing that painting responded to the invention of the camera, in other words, the camera did what the painting is trying to do for so long that its only chance for survival was to go abstract. I actually think that today we’re in a similar situation with writing. We have the technology that does it so much better than what we were trying to do or actually distributes it, that which has already been written, so much of what has already been written much better than we’re able to do. Writing has to then reimagine what it can be in the digital age.

Marcus Boon: But like you say in the book, writing can’t simply mimic painting, movement in time, action. So where does it go?

KG: It becomes mimetic, it becomes distributed. it’s not what we’re writing; maybe, it’s how to distribute it; maybe, it’s how we reframe and rejigger other things and get them out into the world that becomes the content of our writing We always assume writing to have a certain function even though modernism mildly challenged it very traditional forms of expression which will continue, but, you know the idea on another level then becomes . . . . anyway . . . end there with that thought.

Online Degree has brought relief to the ones who cannot afford to go to colleges or universities because of workload. There are many people around the world who cannot get the time for classes because they have to support their families or professionals who aspire to get higher education but can not attain higher degrees for employment. It can be difficult to pay for education to those parents who are divorced. In that case, grants for single mothers can do the trick. This new medium of education has brought new hopes for these individuals. You do not have leave your home or attend scheduled classes in online education. You can just sit in your homes and gain a higher degree because of this new phenomenon.

Advantages: The advantages of getting an online degree are plenty. The first advantage that comes to mind is convenience to the students. Students can arrange their schedules in whatever way they want. The online classes do not limit students to always attend the classes and the deadline of submitting assignments can also be fixed according to students’ ease. The cost is also lower than usual cost of degree programs. The most important part of online degree is that it gives the students the chance to balance their lives. They can earn money and support their families as well as get proper education. So those who gave up their hope of getting education because they do not have time can now get education.

Disadvantages: There are many institutes who are not legally authorized to provide online degree. So you need to spend some time doing market research before you admit into one. Those who prefer to study with other people or like interaction with classmates may find it hard but newer online degrees offer much interaction among the students. Also, because this type of education is still new to many, the acceptance of online degrees is not that high in many organizations. This negative perception about online education is eliminating slowly as some well-known universities are also launching online education.

In this era of information, everything is depending on internet. Why not education? It is only a matter of time when acquiring online degree will turn into a common event. So, the path of online degree has much to go.