Courtesy of Education Week | Catherine Gewertz A group of researchers has kicked off a new initiative to change college admissions by focusing more on students’ projects. The new initiative, called “Reimagining College Access,” is a joint project of the Learning Policy Institute and EducationCounsel, a Washington-based consulting firm. Its aim is to help colleges use more complex gauges of …

Courtesy of Education Week | Catherine Gewertz Schools try all kinds of strategies to get students to sign up for Advanced Placement classes, but it turns out that one of the quickest and easiest has a dramatic impact. Researchers have found that students who receive short notes encouraging them to try AP classes are 49 percentage points more likely to …

Courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle | Melody Gutierrez SACRAMENTO — California’s public universities have failed to give students and their families accurate information on the cost of off-campus housing, prompting Gov. Jerry Brown to sign a bill Monday to ensure that the universities post online the true cost of attending a campus. Assemblyman Freddie Rodriguez, D-Pomona (Los Angeles County) authored …

Courtesy of Federal Student Aid In a May 3, 2017 Electronic Announcement, we informed the community that in an effort to address privacy and security concerns raised by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) related to the IRS Data Retrieval Tool (IRS DRT), the IRS and Federal Student Aid (FSA) agreed to implement a solution that will reinstate the use of …

Courtesy of EdScoop | Emily Tate The Department of Education has issued technical guidance for higher ed institutions to address security flaws in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Data Retrieval Tool, used to help students apply for federal aid. The recommended fixes, announced Monday, are aimed at getting the tool back online in time for the 2018-2019 Federal Student Aid …

Courtesy of Los Angeles Times | Rosanna Xia Cal State plans to drop placement exams in math and English as well as the noncredit remedial courses that more than 25,000 freshmen have been required to take each fall — a radical move away from the way public universities traditionally support students who come to college less prepared than their peers. …