American women not only outperform men in college enrollment and graduation, but also value education more highly than men, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. A survey of more than 2,100 Americans released this Wednesday by the Pew Research Center analyzed public attitudes toward higher education, The Chronicle reported. Of those polled, more than a third held bachelor's degrees or higher. Respondents with or without a college diploma agreed that higher education was more central to a woman's success than a man's, The Chronicle reported. Fifty-percent of females with a four-year college degree were enthusiastic about the country's higher-education system despite the financial costs involved, compared with 37 percent of men, according to The Chronicle. The American public has mixed views on the increase of female versus male enrollment, according to Kimberly Parker, co-author of the report on the survey. "[The public] are supportive of all the accomplishments of women in this regard, but they don't want to see that success come at the expense of men," Parker said.
The graduating high school class of 2011 is the largest to test with the ACT, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. The number of high school graduates who prefer the ACT and meet all four of its college-readiness benchmarks in math, science, English and reading has risen for the third year in a row, according to The Chronicle. More than 1.62 million of this year's graduating seniors took the ACT around 49 percent of seniors according to The Chronicle. Only 25 percent of students reached all four ACT benchmarks, which measure their likelihood of achieving a C or higher in their first year at college in that subject, according to The Chronicle. Among racial groups, the percentages of students meeting benchmarks varied widely: 41 percent of Asian students, 31 percent of whites, 15 percent of Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders, 11 percent of American Indians/Alaska Natives, 11 percent of Hispanics/Latinos and 4 percent of black students had the minimum scores for college readiness in all four areas, according to The Chronicle.
Educators in Minnesota are waiting for the U.S. Department of Education to accept the state's request to be relieved of No Child Left Behind sanctions, according to the Austin Daily Herald. The Minnesota Department of Education has delayed releasing Adequate Yearly Progress reports this year due to the state government's shutdown, forcing the state to wait in its creation of improvement plans for schools that fail to meet the AYP goals, the Herald reported. Additionally, the state's department of education has instructed districts to wait to act on AYP reports until the U.S. Department of Education's waiver decision, according to the Herald. If the waiver is approved by the U.S. Department of Education, Minnesota will release proficiency scores for schools without the Adequate Yearly Progress designations, according to the Herald.
