Morning Round-Up, September 21

Optimism, but little headway so far on college readiness effort SJMercury
California's ambitious effort to better prepare high school students for college hasn't budged test scores yet, but educators say they believe it will eventually cut the percentage of freshmen who arrive at the state's public universities needing remedial classes.

Why We Need a National School Test Education News
We need to find better and more efficient ways to produce an educated population and close the achievement gaps in our education system. Americans do ultimately get themselves educated -- at work, after school, online, in adulthood -- but a lot of time and money are wasted in the process.

Intervention, Tests Suggested to Stop Inflation of Titles WPost
The National Center for Educational Accountability said that there are no easy solutions to course-label inflation but that the best remedies focus on these eight elements:

In Many Classrooms, 'Honors' in Name Only WPost
During a visit in March to an honors sophomore English class in an impoverished area of Connecticut, Robyn R. Jackson heard the teacher declare proudly that her students were reading difficult texts. But Jackson noticed that their only review of those books was a set of work sheets that required...

More Small Women’s Colleges Opening Doors to Men NYT
Small liberal arts colleges for women are increasingly struggling against financial pressures to win applicants in an era of unbounded choice.

Single-gender Schools on the Rise Stateline
The number of public schools experimenting with single–sex education is still small but has shot up in recent years –– from five to at least 241 in the last decade –– as districts in more than half the states take the chance that separating boys and girls will help students learn better.