It is already February 17

The writing test for 4

Students attending last week’s OFYP day worked on writing the essay for the 10

The following articles have some interesting points about writing and future success. Writing is truly a key to college success.

Writing is the Key to College Success. Do Your Students Write Well Right Now?

The College Board’s National Commission on Writing: Writing: A Ticket to Work... or A Ticket Out, a survey of 120 major American corporations employing nearly 8 million people, concluded that people who cannot write and communicate clearly will not be hired and are not likely to be considered for promotion. The College Board’s National Commission on Writing: The Neglected "R", states that more than 50 percent of first-year college students are unable to produce papers relatively free of language errors.((Recent studies have suggested that as many as half of today’s college freshmen must take at least one remedial course in college and more than four in ten of these students take a remedial writing course. Further research suggests that entering college students are marginally prepared or not ready for college-level coursework because they are struggling with fundamental English skills including:((- Using punctuation to clarify meaning(- Solving basic grammatical problems such as subject-verb agreement(- Determining the clearest and most logical way to link clauses((As a result, IHEs are finding themselves engaging in more writing remediation in an effort to prepare students for college-level coursework. Criterion(SM) Online Writing Evaluation from ETS offers students online writing practice to improve essay writing skills.((Criterion Online Writing Evaluation, by ETS, is a web-based service that provides instant holistic scores and annotated diagnostic feedback to help students improve their writing skills. Using Criterion, students work independently as they write and revise essays in order to improve their grammar, usage, mechanics, style and organization and development. Professors maintain control by selecting a predetermined prompt from the Criterion library or by creating their own prompt using the Instructor Topic Function. Faculty and students gain access to all writing samples from an online portfolio. Instructors have the ability to provide their own specific personalized feedback to complement the automated feedback. In addition, faculty can create performance reports for individual students or for an entire class.

September 15, 2009 by Taylor Hannigan

Posted in: Enrollment, In this week’s e-newsletter, Latest News & Views

(It’s not standardized test scores or demographic factors, according to a new book. Instead, it’s this.

In "Crossing the Finish Line," co-authors William Bowen, Matthew Chingos and Michael McPherson analyzed the educational records of more than 200,000 students who entered four-year colleges in 1999.

Among their findings: The grades students achieve in high school are the best predictor of how well they will do in college.

The authors also say that based on their findings:

• The type of high school a student attends isn’t a great predictor of whether he’ll finish college.

• When it comes to most colleges, a student’s SAT and ACT scores don’t help predict whether he will earn a college degree.

• Students who finish high school with a grade point average of at least 3.0 are a lot more likely to graduate from college than those who don’t.

• Four-year colleges are a surer route to a degree than community colleges.

th, 2011! Time is accelerating as we enter the shadow of spring. Anxiety for teachers, administrators and students will intensify as the weeks continue to pass. Days of instruction are important and bad weather has robbed precious hours and days from our schedule and routine. It would be great if these days only consisted of time we had to replace; however, the instruction missed is highly important. th graders, the reading test for 9th graders, English test for 10th and 11th graders, will take place in just a few days, March 1st. San Saba students are ready, but there can’t be a let down. th and 11th ELA test. Students in the 9th grade wrote practice open-ended responses that they will be responsible for on the reading test. If you have a student in the 4th, 7th, 9th, 10th or 11th, ask how he/she feels about the upcoming test.