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Dear John,
It is week 298 and as high school seniors start to hear back from colleges about their applications, we are thinking about how some colleges made their admissions system more unfair when they deemphasized standardized tests and elevated more subjective measures of achievement.

The New York Times, drawing on data from Raj Chetty’s Opportunity Insights initiative, created a tool ([link removed]) that lets you look at the odds of a student attending a particular college when their test scores are identical but their family incomes are different. Here is what they found: “At the most elite private colleges, like those in the Ivy League, students from rich families have an even greater advantage, getting in at much higher rates than other similarly qualified students.”
The elite schools that stand apart from the crowd in not having a bias towards wealthy families–like Carnegie Mellon and MIT–are exactly the ones that put more of a focus on standardized testing in admissions. “Students from the top 1 percent with the same test scores did not have higher academic ratings. But they had significantly higher nonacademic ratings,” the New York Times explains ([link removed]) .

In other words, the move away from standardized testing made admissions decisions more inequitable.
Private high schools, with strong sports programs and relationships with elite colleges, have thrived in an environment where a spot on a crew team and a flowery counselor recommendation carry more weight than a high SAT score. As the MIT dean of admissions put it ([link removed]) : “I think the most important thing here is talent is distributed equally but opportunity is not … It’s really incumbent upon our process to tease out the difference between talent and privilege.”

Last time ([link removed]) in the New Reality Roundup, we looked at the consequences from the University of California’s “test blind” admissions system and joined Liz Cohen on the road for her book tour. This week, we share our initial plans on addressing the country’s deepening math crisis and look at the value that colleges are providing students in building a clear path to a career.
Best,

Marc Porter Magee, PhD
50CAN Founder and CEO

@marcportermagee ([link removed])

Make 2026 the year of math
Last week, on The Ringer’s Plain English with Derek Thompson, journalists Kelsey Piper (The Argument) and Rose Horowitch (The Atlantic) and economics professor Joshua Goodman joined ([link removed]) the podcast to explore the roots of the country’s math crisis. It’s a sign that, just like America’s literacy crisis, this problem is breaking out of education circles and into the mainstream. Building on coverage of the UCSD admissions report we featured in the last edition ([link removed]) of the Roundup, the guests discussed a number of factors, beyond the pandemic, behind an increasing number of students graduating from high school with low math skills:

* Piper put the spotlight on grade inflation. When C level work gets an A, everyone from students and families to college administrators ends up misinformed. She recalled conversations she’s had with teachers who awarded As to AP students who could not pass the AP exam.
* Goodman pointed out that during the height of No Child Left Behind, when test scores were putting achievement levels front and center, math achievement rates rose.
* Horowitch noted that declines are not unique to the US, with achievement rates in decline across wealthy, industrialized countries since 2014, suggesting that the rise of smart phones and screens have played a significant role.

At the same time, the US is uniquely vulnerable to these trends because as a country our levels of math achievement have always lagged our levels of literacy, as seen in the below chart from a 2023 report ([link removed]) by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
With public awareness of the crisis broadening, momentum is building to make 2026 the year of math. Last month, we released a practical framework ([link removed]) for math reform entitled Mathways: Every Kid is a Math Kid. Drawing lessons from Utah, Maryland and Alabama, the report provides policy proposals for how states can take concrete steps in the coming year to turn this slide in math performance around.

To help power this push to put math front and center in 2026, we are also launching the 50CAN Fellowship for Math and Data Science. Earlier this month, Derrell Bradford and Liz Cohen welcomed the inaugural cohort of fellows to the program. Developed in partnership with ExcelinEd and Data Science 4 Everyone, our eight fellows ([link removed]) are both practitioners and policy leaders, and will spend the next year working to improve math policy and pathways around the country.
* The task this week is to put the spotlight on math as you make plans for 2026, both in policy goals and in raising the volume of conversations across the country.

Help students make smart choices by looking at college ROI
It wasn’t that long ago that education reformers made “college for all” the overriding mantra of the movement. But it now feels like a saying from a different era. Over the past decade, Americans’ view of the value of higher education has shifted dramatically. In fact, in a just released ([link removed]) NBC poll, the percentage of Americans who say college is worth the cost has dropped from 53% in 2013 to just 33% today.
The truth is more complicated. Drawing upon data from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, Bloomberg created a tool that can help students and their parents explore the return on investment (ROI) of a college degree by looking at the average cost of the degree in the context of the average boost in income 10 years later. It turns out some colleges have very high ROIs, many have modest ROIs and some do indeed have negative ROIs. There are also clear patterns that can help students make better choices. Bloomberg’s interactive tool ([link removed]) makes it easy to look up the colleges you are considering as well as explore some you may not have thought of. On the chart below, the higher up on the vertical axis a college appears, the larger the ROI. The colleges on the left have lower tuition and cost of living than
average while the colleges on the right have higher tuition and cost of living than average.
For most students, the best bet is to stick with public universities (yellow). These have a particularly high ROI when they have a math, science and engineering focus (like Georgia Tech, ROI: $293,000). If a student has the right preparation and gets into Georgia Tech, even with student loans, it's a good decision to say yes. That also holds true for nearly all public flagship universities (red). These are the top colleges in each state system and they usually enjoy strong research programs and heavily subsidized tuition. A good example is University of North Carolina (UNC) with its ROI of $186,000.

Private colleges (blue) are more of a mixed bag, with more than half sitting below the median ROI. This includes prominent private colleges like Sarah Lawrence (ROI: $4,000), Spelman (ROI: -$9,000) and Juilliard (ROI: -$28,000). The vast majority of colleges with negative ROIs focus on arts, theater and music education. Students considering taking out loans to attend those colleges should know they are taking on a big risk they will not be able to pay them back.

The furthest to the right on the chart are the elite private (green) and Ivy League (purple) colleges. Some elite private colleges have a very high ROI (Stanford, $360,000) and some are well below the median (Oberlin, $18,000). The Ivy League schools, with their strong alumni networks and huge endowments, are a more consistently good bet. If you are trying to maximize your return on investment and get into a school like Princeton (ROI: $340,000), you should say yes. This decision is made even easier by its generous student aid program ([link removed]) , where most families with incomes below $150,000 a year pay nothing to attend (Princeton picks up the tab for tuition, housing, food, books and personal expenses) while most families with incomes below $250,000 pay no tuition. To secure an even better ROI, you have to gain admission to the country’s most elite technical colleges. If you get
into MIT (ROI: $407,000), one thing you likely will not have to worry about is the return on investment of your degree.

* The task this week is to push back on the idea that college is never worth it if you have to take out loans by putting a spotlight on the ROI facts needed to make smarter choices.


More good news from the Pelican State: the Louisiana Department of Education released ([link removed]) results from a K-3 reading test showing that reading proficiency rates crossed above 50% for the first time after the second consecutive year of growth.

EdChoice’s Paul DiPerna is out with Part 2 of his conversation with 50CAN’s Liz Cohen on the Informed Choice substack, where the duo talk ([link removed]) about what it will require to sustain tutoring as a public investment over time and the role that ESAs can play in widening access.
HawaiiKidsCAN Executive Director David Sun-Miyashiro kicked off a media tour, alongside 50CAN 2024 FIRE Fellow Connie Epenesa, to promote the state’s 2026 School Choice Expo.
CarolinaCAN’s Marcus Brandon presented results from the Educational Opportunity Survey at the annual conference for the National Center for Families Learning.

Mike McShane notes ([link removed]) six lessons that microschools can learn from the charter sector in Education Next, including not forgetting that education policy is political.

At AEI, Rick Hess and Ashley Berner explore ([link removed]) the role standardized testing should play for school choice programs that accept taxpayer funds.

Fordham Institute discusses ([link removed]) a new study by Johns Hopkins University researchers Xue Wang, Genevieve Smith, and Angela Watson on homeschoolers’ ability to self-regulate their learning: “The biggest takeaway in the report is that perennial concerns about homeschooled students being academically deprived in some way by not experiencing a traditional education model are likely overstated.”

Chalkbeat reports ([link removed]) on the significant effect that deportations are having on New York City’s school enrollment.

At New America, Lisa Guernsey and Elise Franchino announce ([link removed]) a two-year National Commission on Learning Ecosystems, where participants will look at the wide variety of learning environments in a community, from libraries to rec centers to career centers, to explore new models that expand student opportunities to learn.

Rachel White, David DeMatthews, Jinseok Shin, and Alexandra Aylward, writing ([link removed]) at Brookings, find challenges in assessing superintendent impact on student achievement, and suggest new metrics for assessing superintendent performance, like retention of high-quality teachers.

The 74 reports ([link removed]) on a new initiative in North Carolina to help two million North Carolinians secure industry-recognized credentials, double the number of apprenticeships across the state and much more in a robust career development package.

EdWorkingPapers published ([link removed]) new research on AP exam fee-waivers, which finds significant increases in exam participation but no overall change in exam pass-rates.

Workers in careers that match with their undergraduate degree are making 5-10% more than their peers, according ([link removed]) to research from Taylor Odle and Lauren Russell at EdWorkingPapers.


A world of open and connected learning for all students in Maine? That’s the vision behind Maine Outdoor School for All, a new public-private partnership that will provide every 4-8 grader with a three-day, two-night outdoor learning experience that combines field work and exposure to outdoor career pathways. “Making this a statewide initiative, rather than something that individual schools or school districts must manage to implement on their own, reduces barriers and builds opportunity for all of our youth to reap the benefits of these amazing programs,” Executive Director Shaun Hastins told ([link removed]) the Pen Bay Pilot

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