http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/npr.php?id=135578897 "It's a time of high anxiety for high school seniors. Students across the country have been finding out where they got in to college and where they didn't. For many applying to the most selective schools, the news is not good. While the number of applications has shot up, acceptance rates have hit historic lows. It's been called, "application inflation." Michele Norris talks with Bloomberg News' higher education reporter Janet Lorin about college admissions and "application inflation."" Not sure this is any big surprise. Colleges are encouraging more and more applications, students are feeling they have to apply to more colleges as acceptance rates drop because there are more applications to each college.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/npr.php?id=135142895 Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch was once an early advocate of No Child Left Behind, school vouchers and charter schools. In 2005, she wrote, "We should thank President George W. Bush and Congress for passing the No Child Left Behind Act. ... All this attention and focus is paying off for younger students, who are reading and solving mathematics problems better than their parents' generation." But four years later, Ravitch changed her mind. One interesting quote: "Waiting for Superman is a pro-privatization propaganda film. I reviewed it in The New York Review of Books and its statistics were wrong, its charges were wrong, it made claims that were unsustainable. One of the charter schools it featured as being a miracle school has an attrition rate of 75 percent. And it made the claim that 70 percent of American eighth-graders read below grade level and that's simply false. ... And the producers of the film are very supportive of vouchers and free-market strategies and everything else. So I think that film has to be taken not just with a grain of salt, but understood to be a pro-privatization film."

If you click on a college on the list, you get a short list of possible careers and the average salary that graduates of that college get in that career. Is that all that these stats are based on? If so, this is definitely not a complete picture, as most of the careers they have data on are either engineering or health sciences. Did they just ignore everything else? If this is all the data they are using, then the differences in salary return are probably solely due to the fact that some colleges graduate a lot of students in engineering, while other schools don't even have an engineering program. Also, they should probably be using median income, not average. I would suspect that there are some schools that just happen to have a graduate who went on to become very wealthy. That would make the college average very high but say nothing about the incomes of their other graduates. The one LAC I looked at (the one I'm familiar with) only had data in there because it has a physician's assistant program. It looks like all their salary data is based on those graduates, but the majority of students at that school are not in the PA program. They had a couple other programs listed for this school, but no data. I think these others were all in business - so it must be that someone thought the college had graduates in this area. But no one had reported any salary data. It looks to me like the whole study is so skewed that it's hardly worth looking at.

My daughter refused to read it because he gave away the endings of a lot of books. Her plan was to read each book beforehand, but she never got around to it.

After having recently read The Odyssey, The Iliad, and The Aeneid (well, I'm stuck halfway on The Aeneid), I'd vote for doing just The Odyssey. The Aeneid mostly seems to be interesting for how it retells the first two. It does have some original stuff (the Dido incident in particular), and the contrast between the Greek original and the Roman retelling is somewhat intellectually interesting, but if you're trying to limit your choices, I'd pick only one of the three. (And maybe do a children's retelling of the other two to get the basic story -- Sutcliff did good ones: The Wanderings of Odysseus and Black Ships Before Troy.) Or you could do The Odyssey and then read the select chapters of The Aeneid that cover things not in the Greek ones -- the chapters on the sack of Troy (which includes the Trojan horse story which is not in the Greek ones) and the chapter on Dido. Whichever ones of these you do, though, it's worth listening to the Teaching Company lectures on all 3 (by Elizabeth Vandiver) even if you don't read them all. She tells enough of the story that you'll understand what she's talking about, but her insights into the culture and the literature are invaluable. (We got them at the library -- and through interlibrary loan -- so the cost wasn't a factor.) Definitely do Gilgamesh. It's a good contrast to other ancient literature, and it's short. (We did the Stephen Mitchell version, but I can't speak as to what's "best". That one just seemed readable and was available.) Another book that is interesting (and somewhat related) is Noah's Flood (Ryan and Pitman) about the theory that the flood was a memory from the time when the Black Sea was formed. Of the Greek plays, we did Medea, Antigone, and Oedipus Rex. We watched productions of the first two. We were most impressed with the Antigone production with Juliet Stevenson in the title role. We read a bit of The Republic. It's interesting, but we didn't have time to do the whole thing. There might be other Plato that would work well as "selections from". In the Bible we did Job, Genesis, and Exodus. You might want to try doing some excerpts rather than whole books. You could fit more in that way. Some Greek poetry might be interesting. We've always meant to do some Herodotus or Thucydides, but they're just so huge. I would have liked someone to pick out just a few bits to read that would give us the flavor. (Once again, Vandiver's lectures on Herodotus are pretty interesting.) There are also some Roman historians that it might be interesting to read selections of. For the Romans, we also watched I,Claudius. It's a bit bloody, but my kids did learn a lot. (They learned a lot from HBO Rome as well, but got a bit sick of the sex and violence. And I had a lot of trouble taking it seriously because the guy who played Octavian reminded me of Doogie Howser.)

Audio books? Sometimes if a book seems really dull on the page, a good reader can bring it to life. Start with something short. Animal Farm? Or something funny. Pride and Prejudice? (which can double as a romance novel, in addition to being "great") Or maybe you could inch toward great books by just trying something that isn't quite as candy-like as what you're currently reading. As already suggested, kids' classics might be a good start (Anne of Green Gables? Rascal? Heidi? the Narnia books?). Or maybe some more classic mystery stories? Try some Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries by Sayers. They're very engaging, and, I feel, a lot better written than Agatha Christie novels. Lord Peter is also a lot more fun to hang out with than Sherlock Holmes. Also, The Moonstone, despite being a mystery and a classic, is a really funny book. Or try something more modern that's considered to be more thought provoking. Modern literature is often easier to read. Barbara Kingsolver gets rave reviews (although I find most of her books a bit dull -- except The Poisonwood Bible. But other people I know hate that book.) I'm completely blanking out on other possibilities. Or maybe some modern non fiction would qualify as intellectual enough? Victoria's Daughters?(It's practically all gossip anyway, but, hey, it's historical! And you will actually learn something.) Next of Kin? (if you like animals, this book about chimpanzees is fascinating). My Family and Other Animals? (This autobiography by Gerald Durrell is really funny -- although I think I recall some risque bits.) The Year of Living Biblically? (I thought this was going to be totally offensive, but it actually turned out both funny and fairly respectful of religion.) I found Don Quixote to be a bit of a bore after a couple chapters too. It could be you just need to find your niche in the great books. What else have you read that you've given up on?

Why does his death upset me? Because an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. Because we're all a lot less safe now. Because he had a family and I feel for them. bin Laden was a symbol. His death at the hands of the US military, followed by rejoicing in the streets that was broadcast all over the world, is going to inflame a lot more evildoers than it ever had the potential of putting out of business. Terrorist groups will spawn more heads as this one gets cut off. I think it was a dumb move, strategically -- if one's intent were to actually stop terrorism. It was revenge and retribution. It won't make the world safer, nor does it bring back those he killed.

http://www.youtube.com/user/OnlineLessonVideos Some are good, some so-so, but if you hunt around youtube there are a lot of videos with people giving lessons at various levels.

I'd do a lot of practice tests. Statistics might be somewhat helpful, but in the end, the presentation of the material on the science ACT is somewhat peculiar to that particular test. Getting more exposure to the way that test works might be the best approach. The test itself didn't seem to have that much to do with science. It's more of a science reading comprehension test than anything. My daughter had a lot of trouble getting all the reading done on the test, and she's a pretty fast reader. The year she took it, she said there was one incomprehensible reading with a series of incomprehensible questions. So it's likely that may happen again. From looking at the practice tests, I feel like the ACT is pretty similar to the Iowa Test of Basic Standards. Neither one of them is what I would consider to be a really great indicator of science thinking ability. Although colleges do look at the overall ACT score, the ones we dealt with were more interested in the reading, English, and math subscores than the science subscore. That seems a bit telling. It's frustrating if the science score pulls the overall score down, but if it's just not *quite* up at the level of the others, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

With no questions asked (not even her age), we were able to get a third credit card on our account for our daughter. This is the most convenient for us as we don't have to worry about a separate bill, or whether she's taking care of it in her busy life. She hardly spends any money, so it's not like she's spending up to the credit limit or anything. She has absolutely no privacy on what she spends money on, but that doesn't seem to bother her. Checks are pretty inconvenient and I've never been sure if debit cards are quite as secure as credit cards (we've never gotten one ourselves). Now that she will finally be getting a job, we're going to have to rethink this. She needs a place to put her pay check where it won't be mingled with our money.

Very few will like this suggestion because of the sex scenes, innuendo, and language (not to mention the drinking), but the Canadian show Slings and Arrows did a whole season on Macbeth. Despite the inappropriateness for younger viewers, I've found this show has been great for getting teens to understand certain aspects of Shakespeare. You don't see huge sections of the play, but there is a lot of talk of the whys and wherefores of how to direct and stage the plays, and lots of theater jokes. If you have older teens who are into theater and can stand the language, they might find these shows really funny. Macbeth is the 2nd season. They did Hamlet the first season and King Lear in the last season.

The parents that live near us think our local high school is really impressive. But when I talk to the kids about what they're doing, it seems to me that they are doing a lot less than I did in high school. And I don't feel like my high school experience was all that stellar. Why do the parents think it's a good school? Because they've seen the test scores. Why are the test scores high? Probably because the parents are mostly educated, have lots of books around the house, and engage in at least some discussion with their kids. The teachers there also talk up the school a LOT. It's mostly PR without much else. The kids tell me they don't do much of anything in class. There are plenty of AP classes offered, but the classes never come anywhere close to covering what needs to be covered on the test. The kids who do well have studied a lot on their own - often with parental help. But that's only one school. There is one other school near us that no one wants to go to, but that may be because it has no theater or music programs. Then there is another school that has a lot of IB courses that everyone raves about, but I don't have any more info about that one. Most of the "bright" kids are off taking college classes in their last 2 years of high school because even the AP classes aren't very good college prep. A lot of the kids struggle the first year in college because they didn't know the sort of things that would be expected of them in terms of writing ability, study skills, and just the amount of hours they would have to put in. When there is the odd high school class here or there that the students find challenging and interesting, my kids are always amazed at what passes for rigor.

Our library also has it. Maybe a lot of people have it at their library, so they're not buying. We tried it. The kids didn't really like it. They weren't sure what they were supposed to be getting out of it. RS made more sense to them, but they didn't feel like they were getting all that much out of RS.

Cornell is not the only place where you can specialize in ornithology. The last three universities I was at all had a number of people working in this area, even though there was no ornithology dept or program. (And 3 other universities that my sister has been at also have people specializing in this area.) You probably don't want to be looking for an ornithology program, per se, in college descriptions. Colleges that have strong natural history programs will likely have someone in this area. Get a list of faculty and what their research interests are. That will tell you whether it's a likely school. One place I was at had a Natural History Survey in addition to a biology dept. Many of the ornithologists had joint appointments in both depts. One could major in a number of areas: biology, ecology, conservation biology. It mostly depends on what your particular college has named it. There are also people who graduate with things like math degrees who then go into grad school in biology. It would be helpful, in that case, to have the basic bio and chem courses, but I've known of people who had no biology whatsoever who did a PhD in biology and became, well, fairly successful - if you can count writing textbooks and putting out lots of papers and having everyone in the field know who you are.

When this happened to us, it wasn't anything we did. Some stranger put it on our bill. She called him/herself Taisha. When I called the phone company to complain, the "customer service representative" kept asking me if I was sure I wasn't Taisha. Uh, yeah, I was pretty sure. I think. We now have something on our phone acct that's supposed to block this stuff, but I still check every single month. I'm surprised the phone companies allow it as they must be spending a lot of money dealing with steamed customers, but I suppose they get some kind of kick back that makes it worth their while. My guess is eventually this will happen to enough senators and representatives that someone will think about making it illegal. In the meantime, we might want to start an email campaign to our representatives. Anybody want to take this up?

I don't know much about economics textbooks. We've used Aftershock (Robert Reich) and I'm looking at Shock Doctrine (Naomi Klein). We've also watched Capitalism: A Love Story, but that's more of a political movie. We also watched The Commanding Heights, but that tends toward the conservative bent (seeing as that was the sort of group that funded it). It isn't all that good at actually teaching economics. Once again, it's more political than scientific. I would like to find a source for learning economics that relies more on data than wild, abstract mathematical modelling that seems to have little actual support. The Commanding Heights tended to glorify the mathematical modelling and the University of Chicago school. (After watching this video, we also watched Missing for another take on the events in Chile.) But this may be getting far afield from what you're looking for. You might want to pick up a cheap college text book (an older edition that no one wants) for the basics.

The video Darwin's Dangerous Idea -- it was from a PBS series on Evolution (was it the Great Transformations series?). The other ones in the series weren't bad either. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/about_tv.html Our library has them all. I wouldn't be surprised if a place like Netflix also has them, if you can't get them at the library. It's not a book, but might do a better job than some of the suggested books at getting the basics across.

It can be difficult for a college student with a job to do as many chores as others in the house. If she does get her act together in terms of studying and working, you may want to cut her some slack with the chores.

I didn't weight any grades. If my daughter took an AP test, I reported the AP score right below the course title on the transcript. Eg: Calculus I AP test score:

Lots of people have this -- severe pain, blacking out, throwing up every half hour for 24 hours. It likely doesn't mean anything, except that she needs to learn to take ibuprofen or Aleve BEFORE the pain starts. I wouldn't make her go to the dr about it unless the pain drugs don't work. You might want to talk to a dr yourself to be sure it's normal, but I know if I made my daughters go see a gynecologist they'd probably be scarred for life. Even the IDEA that they might have to go through a gynecological exam would be too much for them. I've had severe pain like this most of my life and there's nothing wrong with me that anyone can find. It doesn't start with the first periods, for most people. It takes a couple years.

Get an offset G unless your child has monstrous hands. It makes life a lot easier and may prevent a lot of pain. After a lot of flute shopping last year, I'm not convinced new Yamahas are all they used to be. They just aren't easy to play and their tone was a disappointment. The older ones seemed better. We found that Pearl puts out some decent flutes. We found one really nice Jupiter. The rest of the Jupiters were just so-so. I have a used Armstrong. It's really pretty passable, for a student flute.

I started a yahoo group awhile back for discussing books, self-education etc. You're welcome to all meet there, if you'd like. Nothing has been posted there since last November. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/charlottemasonselfed/?yguid=333082698 I'd like to join in, but I'm planning on reading an abridged version.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/selfstudyhebrew/?yguid=333082698 This group does self study Hebrew -- so you might find a group there that meets your needs, or they might know of an online class.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/npr.php?id=134769349 Thought someone might be interested: "Charter schools may be multiplying fast across the country, but they're stalled in affluent, high-performing suburban school systems. Of the 5,300 charter schools in the U.S., only one-fifth are in suburbs."

The Squire, the Knight, and His Lady (Gerald Morris). He also wrote some other books along this line. I haven't read them, but my kids liked them. I found Ender's Game to be pretty violent and depressing. Maybe it would be better when he's older?