ProPublica Launches Online Tool To Compare Public Schools (Mashable)

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Non-profit investigative newsroom ProPublica has released an interactive tool that makes it easy for people to compare schools to others in their district, state or the U.S.

To create the tool, the newsroom analyzed data from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, which tracks Advanced Placement, gifted and talented programs, and advanced math and science classes.

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It also used data from the National Center for Education Statistics to determine the percentage of students in each school who receive free or reduced-price lunches -- an indicator used to estimate poverty in schools.

"While we found some relationship between the proportion of minority students at schools and access to programs," explains an article about the project's methodology. "We found the strongest relationship with the percent of students getting free- reduced-price lunches."

In some states, an increase in the percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches actually coincided with a drop in the percentage of students taking AP courses. Many states in which this was not the case had instated programs that provide evening access to high-level courses.

You can use ProPublica's interactive tool to see how your city's schools (provided they have more than 3,000 students) stack up against others in its district and state, or against schools nearby with low and high poverty levels.

Each school's profile shows its percentage of inexperienced teachers, number of AP courses offered, percentage of students who get free or reduced-price lunch, percentage of students who take advanced math and percentage of students who take at least one AP course.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Traditional Higher Ed Opens Doors for Tuition-Free Online University (Mashable)

Online universities have earned a reputation among traditional higher education institutions as businesses that offer low-quality degrees in exchange for hefty debt. But online University of the People challenges the stereotype. The University is completely free. Its mission is not to turn out a profit, but rather to create a truly global opportunity for education. A thousand students who live in 115 different countries are taught by the university's core of 2,000 volunteers. And traditional universities are starting to open its door to their very nontraditional free counterpart.

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In May, New York University announced it would accept students from University of the People at its Abu Dhabi campus. On Tuesday, HP invited the free university's students to become virtual interns with its Catalyst Initiative -- a global consortia of 56 organizations, most of them universities, that focuses on projects related to improving STEM education.

"I think it's important to support collaboration between the formal and informal education space," says Jeannette Weisschuh, HP's director of education initiative. "We believe educators from the formal space can learn from the informal space. ... I wouldn't say it's a revolution, but its an evolution of the existing education space."

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The consortium will select qualified interns who apply through University of the People to work virtually with its partners on projects that could include setting up webinars and developing some software elements.

University of the People offers two degree programs, one in business administration and one in computer science. Working with HP's consortium partners gives students a virtual equivalent to the internships that many students at physical universities get during summer internships. But they can have the opportunity even if they're working from an Internet cafe in a remote area of the world, as many of them are.

NYU has offered a further bridge to traditional education by inviting University of the People students to apply to its Abu Dhabi campus. Even though University of the People is not accredited, NYU will use performance in its classes to assess students for admission. It will also make some of those classes eligible for credit transfer, giving the free school's curriculum something like a nod of approval, says Shai Reshef, the founder of University of the People.

“NYU Abu Dhabi has distinguished itself not only by the quality of its students and the selectivity of its admissions, but also by its broad international reach,” said John Sexton, the president of NYU, in a statement. “That diversity is part of what draws young people of such talent to NYU Abu Dhabi."

Reshef says the relationship is focused on the Abu Dhabi campus partly because that campus has more money available for scholarships. Most, if not all, of his students would need full scholarships to attend.

"People who one year ago couldn't think about higher education at all, all of the sudden can think about NYU," Reshef says.

Top image courtesy of iStockphoto user RapidEye.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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U.S. News to Collect Online Education Data (U.S. News & World Report)

Robert J. Morse Robert J. Morse – Wed Jun 29, 3:03 pm ET

As early as mid-July, U.S.News & World Report will begin a first-ever effort to collect in depth data from all online bachelor's and five master's degree level education programs in the United States. To that end, U.S. News Editor Brian Kelly reached out to college presidents to inform them about the new and exciting online education project and to urge them to help facilitate a response from their campuses. Below is the full text of the letter:

Dear ________,

I'd like to ask for your help. Later this year, U.S.News & World Report will be publishing an expanded directory of online education programs with more detailed information including rankings and other searchable data. With the rapid growth of online programs in higher education, prospective students are asking for more, and more useful, data to make informed choices. We are creating a site that will bring the same quality of information to online consumers, and the same opportunity for schools to connect with those students, that we've brought to brick and mortar institutions over the last three decades. I'd like to make sure that we're able to represent your school with the most accurate, updated information.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be sending surveys about the makeup, requirements, and quality of your online education programs. Each discipline-specific survey will be sent to the appropriate departments at private, public, and for-profit regionally accredited higher education institutions in the United States.

The questions are based on academic and industry literature reviews, as well as consultation with numerous heads of online degree programs in multiple disciplines. The questions will be categorized among six distinct program-specific surveys: the master's levels in business, computer information technology, education, engineering, and nursing, as well as an online bachelor's degree program survey. These program and degree levels were chosen because they are among the highest enrollments in online education. We'll be expanding the list of programs in coming versions. In addition, this will be the first initiative to collect program level data from all online degree programs in these disciplines. With your help, the rankings will become much more sophisticated in each succeeding year.

The data we collect will be part of a redesigned online education section at usnews.com. As with our Best Colleges and Best Graduate Schools sites, we see this as an essential starting point for students looking to find the best online programs for them. We'll be including profiles of online degree programs, advanced online program searches, and online program rankings or evaluative lists.

Our education rankings have attracted many millions of users over the years because people trust and value the information we provide. At the same time, many schools have benefited from the exposure our coverage has given them. With your help, we will maintain that same credibility and value for the online education community.

For more information about the data surveys, online program rankings or new online education site, please check our Morse Code blog for updates or contact OnlineEd-Official@usnews.com. We look forward to continued collaboration and cooperation with you in the future.

Sincerely,

Brian Kelly

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