1/2 chapter left, then back to ktm!

Month of May:

• Polish Debbie's book (which is going to be a bestseller!)
• Write Introduction to "Writing Supplement" with Katie B
• Deal with annual school-board-and-budget mishegoss (we're in the 4%!)
• Either finish basal ganglia project or STOP thinking about basal ganglia
• Finish semester at Learning Center

Intense.

Speaking of the election, this year's outing features:

• a 5.7% spending increase in a 1.26%-inflation environment
• a budget that breaks the tax cap
• a 4.85% tax increase that will actually be 7 or 8% 
• multiple "She lies!" accusations flying around town
• mayoral interventions on behalf of aforementioned 5.7% spending increase
• fear mongering 
• smoke blowing 
• etc.

On the bright side, I'm thinking the best of the 4 candidates may actually get elected, which would be a big change after the last two elections. We'll see.

And the district isn't doing get-out-the-vote robo calls this year. That's fantastic.

Still. I don't want to go through another Irvington school board/budget election, ever. But I figure we've got two more to go before we can get to Riverdale. Or wherever else we decamp to.

Bonus content: subtraction is harder than addition

Early College

We just found out that someone from my son's high school will be going to Simon's Rock, which is part of Bard College. Does anyone have any comments about this college or how well early college works? Simon's Rock appears to be the only early college that's accredited.

It seems to me that a better (cheaper) way would be to take a lot of AP classes in high school and find a college that accepts those credits. Then again, don't many colleges give you only one semester credit for a full year AP class? Does anyone know of colleges where you can graduate a year early just because of AP classes? Would it be better to take classes from a local community college than to take AP classes? Do some high schools pay for college classes?

I suppose that colleges do not like accepting high school credits because that's kind of like saying that some of their courses are at a high school level. Then again, they might not like accepting credits from community colleges either. However, many state universities have specific paths that allow community college students a (no loss) transfer path after two years.

I can see that in some cases, AP classes are not as strong as those in college. However, I think that many high school students can handle very high level college classes. For my son, I see AP classes as ways to show that he is a strong college prospect, not as a way to graduate college early. But what if students take online classes provided by a college like MIT? Will MIT allow that student to graduate early or to just get advanced placement? Is a college degree all about time or some particular level of learning? A degree is based on degree requirements and number of credits, but colleges don't seem to give away those credits as easily as advanced placement.

single-sex schools

Ed was talking this morning with a neighbor who also sent her son to Hogwarts. He's been accepted by a very selective (and terrific) college, and she said he would never have gotten in if he'd stayed in the public schools here. (Per pupil spending: $28,517) 

I'm sure she's right.

Abstract
Despite the voluminous literature on the potentials of single-sex schools, there is no consensus on the effects of single-sex schools because of student selection of school types. We exploit a unique feature of schooling in Seoul—the random assignment of students into single-sex versus coeducational high schools—to assess causal effects of single-sex schools on college entrance exam scores and college attendance. Our validation of the random assignment shows comparable socio- economic backgrounds and prior academic achievement of students attending single-sex schools and coeducational schools, which increases the credibility of our causal estimates of single-sex school effects. The three-level hierarchical model shows that attending all-boys schools or all-girls schools, rather than coeducational schools, is significantly associated with higher average scores on Korean and English test scores. Applying the school district fixed-effects models, we find that single-sex schools produce a higher percentage of graduates who attended four-year colleges and a lower percentage of graduates who attended two-year junior colleges than do coeducational schools. The positive effects of single-sex schools remain substantial, even after we take into account various school-level variables, such as teacher quality, the student-teacher ratio, the proportion of students receiving lunch support, and whether the schools are public or private.

Home stretch

2 chapters left to go!

Monty and the pigeon

I remember, back when Carolyn J. & I first started writing the original Kitchen Table Math, the Monty Hall problem coming up. I had never heard of it.

I think I remember, too, saying a couple of times, on the blog, that I came away from writing Animals in Translation thinking birds might just be as smart as people, or smarter. I didn't want to think that, particularly; How smart are birds, anyway? wasn't the topic of the book, which was mostly about mammals, not birds. But every time Temple told me a bird story, I would think hmmmmm.

The crow-and-the-rifle story, about a crow repeatedly taunting a rancher, has never left me.

So naturally, when I saw "Pigeons, Humans, and the Monty Hall Dilemma," I had to look.

The Monty Hall Dilemma is a probability puzzle that is notorious for eliciting suboptimal decisions from humans. A participant is given a choice from among three doors, one of which conceals a valuable prize. After an initial selection, one of the remaining, nonwinning doors is opened, and the participant is given a chance to switch to the other unopened door. The probability of winning is higher if the participant switches. Pigeons maximize their wins by switching on virtually all trials of a Monty Hall Dilemma analogue, whereas humans utilize a suboptimal strategy involving probability matching. Possible reasons for the difference between these two species’ performance are considered.

Pigeons, Humans, and the Monty Hall Dilemma by Walter T. Herbranson Current Directions in Psychological Science 2012 21: 297

No time to read or even skim --- but looking forward.

1974 parody of college freshman writing

I'm on the home stretch! Four more chapters of Debbie's wonderful book, and we're there.

In the meantime, here's a 1974 parody of college freshman writing that contains not a single grammatical error, dangling modifier, comma splice, or sentence beginning with some variant of "In the report it stated." Apparently bad freshman writing in 1974 was quite a bit less bad than bad student writing in 2013.

For the record, I think it's rude to call student writing "intellectually vacuous trash."

[I wrote this parody of a freshman theme to preservemy sanity while struggling to read a batch of themes during one Christmas holiday. The lesson here may be that if we continue assigning themes on such impossible topics as friendship, love, or wisdom, we deserve to get the intellectually vacuous trash that students write for us.]

FRIENDSHIP
WALTER S. MINOT

Statement of Intent: My purpose in this theme is to define very specifically the real meaning of true friendship.

In today's modern world, true friendship is very rare and hard to accomplish. Webster defines friendship as the state or fact of being friends. Thus it can be easily seen that in order for friendship to have a state of existence there must be friends, because without friends there would be no friendship.

True friendship denotes more than just being friendly with someone. We are amicable with many people who are not really true friends. This is not true friendship. Truly real friendship happens only when two people are really true friends. In order to have a friend, you must be a friend first, or you won't have any friends. Everyone needs a friend, or his or her life will be very alienated.

A friend is a person who helps you up when you are down. You may have many but can have a few true friends. A friend is someone who acquaintances, you only  will continue being your friend even if you do something bad to him. He will adhere to you through thick and thin, through rain or shine. If you took your best friend's girl away from him, he would still be your friend.

On mutual respect is based true friendship. A good example of this is the friendship between Allen Whitehall and Robert Epstein. If Al needed a dime to buy flowers for his widowed mother who has arthritis and Bob had a dime, he would give it to him no matter what the cost of the personal sacrifice.

As I have shown, true friendshipis the greatest thing anyone can have. Without friends, no man can stand alone. I can only finalize my definition with these words:

True friendship is eternal and it should last a lifetime.

Gannon College Erie, Pa.

College Composition and Communication, Vol. 25, No. 2 (May, 1974), p. 154    

a palisadesk post

I don't remember now, but I think palisadesk may have been writing comments on kitchen table math from the beginning.

I do remember my first impression: WOW.

This person knows what he/she is talking about.

My first impression was right. In all these years, I don't think I've ever seen palisadesk stray from the mark.

So when Surfer got sick, and palisadesk turned out to have saved a dog with mast cell cancer^* (it would be palisadesk, wouldn't it?)......I was initially thinking 'vegan' and then palisadesk weighed in with her quasi-ketogenic^** approach to treating mast cell cancer via diet.....

.....And a few weeks into the whole business, contemplating my growing collection of resources on dog cancer, Kinvaet, mast cell cancer, obesity as a precursor and possible cause of mast cell cancer, diet, etc, etc......it occurred to me that my best best was just to do whatever palisadesk did and call it a day.

And that's pretty much what I did.

At this moment, Surfer is better than I've seen him in a long time. He's frisky; he's acting like a much younger dog. And he's turning 12.

Surfer may yet die of mast cell cancer, of course. Just a moment ago he walked past me and I spotted a new bump on his side. That's been another fun part of the mast cell adventure: Surfer sprouts lypomas on a monthly basis, and I can't tell the difference between a lypoma and a mast cell tumor. So I spend a lot of time palpating new growths (and old growths I can't remember whether I've seen before): a bad idea because palpating a mast cell tumor can cause it to "degranulate," sending the dog into an instantaneous and fatal case of anaphylactic shock. I have been specifically warned not to be palpating growths.

I'm sure palisadesk would say Don't do that.

Anyway, as I say, Surfer may yet die of mast cell cancer.

But if he does, my view of palisadesk's advice won't change. Mean survival time for surgical treatment alone, without chemo, is 18 weeks. (Mean time from diagnosis? from date of surgery? Nobody ever seems to say.) Surfer had his surgery February 4, and I'm pretty sure he developed the tumor in early January. (The vet found the tumor during a routine check-up.)

So it's 12 weeks since the surgery, a good 16 weeks since the tumor appeared, and the Kinavet didn't work out. And Surfer is not on his last legs.

I may be tempting fate, writing that.

But that's fine.

[pause]

Hmmm.

I'm listening to the YouTube discussion of Kinavet. You're supposed to wear gloves to pick up a Kinavet pill your dog has spit out.

How many Kinavet pills did Surfer spit out?

And how many did I pick up with my bare hands?^***

A lot.

Oh, well.

This may be one of the best review articles I've seen: Clinical Management of Mast Cell Tumors in Dogs

^* The dog is still alive today, 10 years later.
^**or really ketogenic - I don't want to put words into palisadesk's mouth
^*** I could not get pills down Surfer's throat wearing gloves. I tried. I didn't know the bit about "the seal being broken" once the pill has been spit out, however.

Home stretch! back soon--

Down to the last 100 pages of Debbie's book, which is fantastic.

So still no blogging, but ----- I have bullet points!

• The tuna cure: Surfer and Abby now eat tuna, lentils, and olive oil (plus, starting in the past week, a few carrots). Basically: a low-rent version of palisadesk's high-protein diet for mast cell cancer in dogs. Surfer--who, it turns out, can't tolerate chemo--appears to be fine. (But we'll see.) The younger vet told me mast cell cancer is the dog equivalent of pancreatic cancer: Surfer, with a Stage 3 diagnosis, was a goner unless the Kinavet worked. Older vet, back now from his own brush with death, says: "It's not a death sentence." (Ed says: Can we always see the older vet?) Funnily enough, we encountered the same division of labor during the two years my mother was sick. The younger doctors would waylay my siblings and me for The Talk (Your mother is dying. Let her die with dignity. If she doesn't want to die with dignity, persuade her.) Then the older docs would say things like "In intensive care we support your mother's organs until her body is strong enough to handle those functions again." The older docs were always right. And they never mentioned death with dignity, which was wise because my mother didn't give two figs for dignity.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Common Core illustrative texts v. what 7th graders read in my districtxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• 4.6% tax increase proposed (I'm voting no, thank you for asking)xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Borrowing to pay teachers: the tax-cert loopholexxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• SAT score decline (also in bullets)xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Erica Meltzer's book is out!!!xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• New high school principal for Irvington who worked for TFA

One board member told me that when the board met the new principal he must have used the word accountability in every other sentence.

Are we the first affluent district ever to hire a TFA person?

We may be. A TFA alum certainly seems out of place here in Westchester, where affluent districts are snapping up superintendents fleeing New Jersey's salary cap.

Our new super replaces the superintendent against whom a number of us waged a running battle for 5 long years (or was it 6?). He is a man in his late 30s or early 40s, trained in elementary education, whose only previous experience--in New Jersey, where his wife and son continue to live--was heading a tiny K-5 district.

We are paying him $250K per year on a 5-year contract. During a minor depression.^* (Did I mention I'm voting no on the budget?)

I think it's possible, perhaps likely, the TFA hire would not have happened without 6 years of citizens' op eds on the Irvington Parents Forum.

Ed told me, when I started the Forum, that revolutions always have writers.

I believe him, and All revolutions have writers has been my essential reason for carrying on. Well, one of the essential reasons, the other essential reason being that both sides of my family came from Ulster.

That said, I don't expect a revolution. The new superintendent has thus far been more of the same, and he was supposed to be The One; all 5 board members said so. The new principal will come into a gatekeeping culture that has been in place for many, many years.

The single best observation anyone ever made to me concerning my district's unshakeable self-regard:

...[W]e're great because 10 kids do spectacular things by senior year. The other 150 will get by and there are no glaring inadequacies.

That's not going to be easy to change.

^* Depression at historinhas

Holistic College Admissions

I'll scream if I hear the word "holistic" at a college info session again. What it really means is that the admissions people love their own sensibilities and power. This might be fine if the choice was between two applicants for one open slot, but it's now a choice between 5 or 10 applicants at some colleges. They claim that there is no merit function that they use, but they don't tell you that the intangible factor has now risen to well over 50 percent of the admissions judgment. Since so many students meet some basic level of ability to handle the rigor at the college, one application out of 5 or 10 is selected based on the judgment of admissions people. They don't even turn some of their holistic decisions over to individual departments that know about academic content. They can't tell whether an applicant is at a base camp or a mountain top.

The admissions judgments are based on essays, recommendation letters, and character intangibles rather than academic intangibles. The admissions person we saw yesterday talked about their criteria of whether you would be an interesting person to have a cup of coffee with. They claim that they can see right through all applicants to tell if they are "authentic", "genuine", and "consistent". I think it just means that you have to be less authentic and hire better admissions prep people. They tell us that the essay and letters of recommendation are critical, but do they really think that the people they select did not get professional help? Sure, they can see through some applications, but what about the difference between authentic students who get help and authentic students who do not?

The other problem is that admissions people seem so anti-math and science. I'll scream a second time if I hear another admissions person or tour student tell us that the general education requirements allows you to not have to take another real math class; that there are other classes that will fulfill the requirements (ha ha). These are Ivy League schools. So here is this engaging English major tour guide who appeals to admissions more than a bookish math student who might have qualified for the AIME test.

We talked with a professor of music who said that they don't get audio portfolios of students to evaluate unless there is a final tie-breaking issue. He was having trouble getting a chance to evaluate and comment on an applicant who was a Presidential Scholar in the Arts. The holistic intangibles are closely held by the admissions people. It's OK, however, to select applicants who are clearly at the top of their math career. Then again, the admissions people may not know the difference.

teacher humor at Pinterest

In bed it's 6am you close your eyes for 5 minutes it's 7:45.
In school it's 1:30, close your eyes for 5 minutes it's 1:31.

Making it as a Middle School Teacher

I find this joke much funnier coming from a kid, I have to say.

This one's funny, though: Should I ask the teacher my question?

thinking of Boston....

If I were a carpenter....

An "unfortunate analogy" from the first SAT, administered in 1926.

A nostalgic trip down memory lane with the SAT [SLIDESHOW]

the tragedy of histogeomegraph continues

In the news today: another botched attempt at interdisciplinarity in our public schools:

ALBANY — High school is full of hypotheticals, like “How does one solve for x?” and “What happens if I skip class?” But this week, students at Albany High School were given an alarming thought puzzle: How do I convince my teacher that I think Jews are evil?

[snip]

“Your essay must be five paragraphs long, with an introduction, three body paragraphs containing your strongest arguments, and a conclusion,” the assignment read. “You do not have a choice in your position: you must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!”

[snip]

Dr. Vanden Wyngaard, who met with Jewish leaders in Albany and made a public apology on Friday, said the assignment was apparently an attempt to link the English class with a history lesson on the Holocaust. The assignment itself seems to back up that theory, telling students to use “what you’ve learned in history class.” It also suggests using “any experiences you have.”

It echoed another recent, controversial assignment in Manhattan, where an elementary school class was given math problems featuring the whipping and killing of slaves, according to The Associated Press. That assignment was an effort to combine math and social studies lessons.

Students Told to Take Viewpoint of the Nazis
By JESSE McKINLEY
Published: April 12, 2013

I always thought the problem with teaching all subjects as one was that the results would be superficial and pointless. Like histogeomegraph.

It's always worse than you think.

checking in--and decline and fall

I'm doing a very rushed polish of Debbie S's SAT book -- which is wonderful -- and we're around-the-clock, so no blogging!

But I'm amassing beaucoup SAT factoids, so I'll put some up as I go.

For starters, here are the basics on the 16-year decline in SAT scores:

• SAT scores declined from 1963 to 1980
• Verbal mean: dropped from 475 to 425
• Math mean: dropped from 500 to 470
• By 1990, the Math mean has gone back up to 475, but Verbal mean has not budged
• By 1980 College Board perceives a “definite need” to “realign the verbal and math scales”
• SAT V and SAT M averages are 50 points apart
• “there was a clear need to repopulate the top end of the score scale, especially for SAT V”

The Recentering of SAT® Scales and Its Effects on Score Distributions and Score Interpretations

And get your SAT I Score Equivalents right here:
CONVERT INDIVIDUAL AND MEAN SCORES FROM THE ORIGINAL SCALE TO THE RECENTERED SCALE

automated essay grading

In the Times today:

Essay-Grading Software Offers Professors a Break By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: April 4, 2013 | New York Times

I'm actually in favor of essay grading software, in theory. I've been interested in automated essay scoring ever since reading Richard Hudson's paper Measuring Maturity in Writing (which I need to re-read, so nothing more on that at the moment):

Abstract
The chapter reviews the anglophone research literature on the 'formal' differences (identifiable in terms of grammatical or lexical patterns) between relatively mature and relatively immature writing (where maturity can be defined in terms of independent characteristics including the writer's age and examiners' gradings of quality). The measures involve aspects of vocabulary as well as both broad and detailed patterns of syntax. In vocabulary, maturity correlates not only with familiar measures of lexical diversity, sophistication and density, but also with 'nouniness' (not to be confused with 'nominality'), the proportion of word tokens that are nouns. In syntax, it correlates not only with broad measures such as T-unit length and subordination (versus coordination), but also with the use of more specific patterns such as apposition. At present these measures are empirically grounded but have no satisfactory theoretical explanation, but we can be sure that the eventual explanation will involve mental growth in at least two areas: working memory capacity and knowledge of language.

Maturity of writing, in this sense, can be measured by software, and I would be using automated scoring software myself if I could buy essay-scoring software on Amazon. EdX says it's giving software away free to 'institutions' (does that leave out individuals?) so I'll have to see if my department might throw its hat in the ring.

That said, a lot of this is nonsense:

Anant Agarwal, an electrical engineer who is president of EdX, predicted that the instant-grading software would be a useful pedagogical tool, enabling students to take tests and write essays over and over and improve the quality of their answers. He said the technology would offer distinct advantages over the traditional classroom system, where students often wait days or weeks for grades.

[snip]

“It allows students to get immediate feedback on their work, so that learning turns into a game, with students naturally gravitating toward resubmitting the work until they get it right,” said Daphne Koller, a computer scientist and a founder of Coursera.

[snip]

“One of our focuses is to help kids learn how to think critically,” said Victor Vuchic, a program officer at the Hewlett Foundation. “It’s probably impossible to do that with multiple-choice tests. The challenge is that this requires human graders, and so they cost a lot more and they take a lot more time.”

None of these things is going to happen. Students aren't going to write essay responses "over and over again;" if they do write essay responses over and over again it's not going to feel like a fun game; and nobody's going to learn to think critically from automated essay scoring software.

Oy.

words page

In honor of the latest bulletin from palisadesk, I've started a new Blogger page.

uh oh

A note from palisadesk:

Unfortunately, it is true that using Lucy Calkins' methods can raise test scores, due to the design of the current generation of "authentic assessments" (aka holistic assessment, standards-based assessment, performance assessment). I know several schools (including my own) where test scores rose substantially when they STOPPED doing systematic synthetic phonics and moved to a workshop model instead.

So to prove the instructivist stuff works you also need to have in place testing that assesses actual skills -- phonemic decoding, vocabulary, grammar, spelling, arithmetic, etc.

It's really not all that unbelievable, if you consider how the testing has 
changed. Schools used to use norm-referenced measures (like the IOWA, the
 CTBS, Metropolitan Achievement Test, etc.) which also have definite 
limitations, but different ones.

Once they replaced those (as many states
 have done) with "constructed-response" item tests, variously known as 
performance assessments, holistic assessments, standards-based assessments 
and so on, a more fuzzy teaching approach also yielded benefits. These 
open-response items are usually scored on a rubric basis, based on anchor 
papers or exemplars, according to certain criteria for reasoning,
 conventions of print, organization, and so forth. These are variously 
weighted, but specifics like sentence structure, spelling, grammar,
 paragraph structure etc. generally carry less weight than such things as
 "providing two details from the selection to support your argument."

The 
open responses often mimic journal writing -- it is personal in tone, 
calls for the student to express an opinion, and many elements of what we
 would call good writing (or correct reading) count for little or even 
nothing.



The same is true in math. A local very exclusive private school which is 
famous for its high academic achievement recently switched from 
traditional math to Everyday Math and saw its test scores soar on these assessments (probably not on norm-referenced measures, but they aren't
 saying).



Another school where I worked implemented good early reading instruction 
with a strong decoding base (and not minimizing good literature, either),
 but saw its scores on the tests go down almost 25%. I think the reason
 for that is that teaching children to write all this rubbish for the "holistic assessments" is very time consuming, and if you spent your 
instructional time teaching the basic skills -- which aren't of much value 
on these tests -- your kids will do poorly.



So yes, you can post [my email], not referring to me of course. You can say -- 
because I don't think I've mentioned it publicly anywhere -- that I have 
been involved in the past in field-testing these assessments so have a 
more complete picture of how they are put together and evaluated, and what 
they do and do not measure.

Different states have made up their own but 
they share many similarities.

I was surprised when I read this ..... somehow I had assumed that, basics being basic, absence of basics would make any test hard to pass.

Apparently not.

seeking Tiger Mom

At the WSJ (not sure whether it's behind a pay wall): "To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me" by Suzy Lee Weiss.

Like me, millions of high-school seniors with sour grapes are asking themselves this week how they failed to get into the colleges of their dreams. It's simple: For years, they—we—were lied to.

Colleges tell you, "Just be yourself." That is great advice, as long as yourself has nine extracurriculars, six leadership positions, three varsity sports, killer SAT scores and two moms. Then by all means, be yourself! If you work at a local pizza shop and are the slowest person on the cross-country team, consider taking your business elsewhere.

What could I have done differently over the past years?

[snip]

Having a tiger mom helps, too. As the youngest of four daughters, I noticed long ago that my parents gave up on parenting me. It has been great in certain ways: Instead of "Be home by 11," it's "Don't wake us up when you come through the door, we're trying to sleep." But my parents also left me with a dearth of hobbies that make admissions committees salivate. I've never sat down at a piano, never plucked a violin. Karate lasted about a week and the swim team didn't last past the first lap. Why couldn't Amy Chua have adopted me as one of her cubs?

This girl is a fabulous writer!

ABSTRACT

This paper shows that although the top ten percent of colleges are substantially more selective now than they were 5 decades ago, most colleges are not more selective. Moreover, at least 50 percent of colleges are substantially less selective now than they were then. This paper demonstrates that competition for space--the number of students who wish to attend college growing faster than the number of spaces available--does not explain changing selectivity. The explanation is, instead, that the elasticity of a student's preference for a college with respect to its proximity to his home has fallen substantially over time and there has been a corresponding increase in the elasticity of his preference for a college with respect to its resources and peers. In other words, students used to attend a local college regardless of their abilities and its characteristics. Now, their choices are driven far less by distance and far more by a college's resources and student body. It is the consequent re-sorting of students among colleges that has, at once, caused selectivity to rise in a small number of colleges while simultaneously causing it to fall in other colleges. I show that the integration of the market for college education has had profound implications on the peers whom college students experience, the resources invested in their education, the tuition they pay, and the subsidies they enjoy. An important finding is that, even though tuition has been rising rapidly at the most selective schools, the deal students get there has arguably improved greatly. The result is that the "stakes" associated with admission to these colleges are much higher now than in the past.

The Changing Selectivity of American Colleges Caroline M. Hoxby
NBER Working Paper No. 15446
October 2009
JEL No. H75,I2,J24

Not sure what she means by the 'deal' students get at a selective college.

Will let you know once I've skimmed the study....