Do students actually learn more in courses where they give teachers higher course evaluations? A study in "Meta-analysis of faculty's teaching effectiveness: Student evaluation of teaching ratings and student learning are not related" by Utll, White, and Gonzalez that was published in the just published in Studies in Educational Evaluation suggests that the answer is "no". The authors find that student teaching evaluation scores account for only 1% of the variability across courses in student learning. However, as most professors are acutely aware of, student course evaluations are very important both for getting tenure and salary increases.

The decreased costs of filing college applications due to things like the internet and the Common Application has increased the average number of college applications that high school seniors submit. This, in turn, has increased the competition between high school seniors to get into any given (mainly selective) institution. A recent NY times article "Greater Competition for College Places Means Higher Anxiety, Too" reports how this is causing more anxiety among college applicants.

The Wall Street journal blog article How Education Drives Inequality among the 99% reports on research by David Autor who looks at changes in inequality among those below the top 1% in income and the important role that education plays in explaining changes over time in inequality among those who aren't rich (the top 1% in household income in 2013 were households with incomes of $394,000 or above) .

Interesting article in NY Times Getting Out of Discount Game, Small Colleges Lower the Pricethat said some colleges are getting out of the tuition discounting game. For example, instead of having a list price tuition of $35,000 and average aid of $13,000 a college would charge everyone $22,000. While it makes the true price more transparent to students and their parents, some students are going to benefit while others may lose out. Colleges who follow this strategy could see their tuition revenue decline since they can no longer price discriminate. Students should, on average, be better off since they recapture some of the consumer surplus from the college.

The New York times article "U.S. Reading and Math Scores Show Slight Gains reports results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam which showed small gains in reading and math but differences by race and income groups still persist. Here are graphs of national averages over time for math and reading.

The recent OECD report "Education at a Glance" shows that the unemployment rates of college graduates (tertiary type A) in OECD countries are lower than those without a high school degree (lower secondary). So, a college education not only increases your wage rate but also makes it less likely that you will be unemployed.

The NY times article "Faltering Economy in China Dims Job Prospects for Graduates" reports that with 7 million new college graduates and a weakening economy its tough for a new college graduate to get a job.

Education Week came out with its 2013 rankings of states based on six categories of education policy and performance. Maryland ranked first (87.5) followed by Massachusetts (84.1) and New York (83.1). The national average was 76.9 or a grade of C+. For more information see the Education Week's Web site.

The recent article in the Huffington Post, "Education Funding Drops In More Than Half Of States" that summarizes the findings from a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that per-student/ inflation adjusted education spending has dropped since 2008 in more than half the states in the U.S. The states with the biggest drops are Arizona (21.8%) and Alabama (21.7%).