EDUCATIONAL NEWS

Early on in Math Mind: The Simple Path to Loving Math, Shalinee Sharma experiences a moment of doubt. After 13 years at Bain & Company, she cofounds Zearn, an educational nonprofit. Zearn wants to offer great math teaching free to any child. But Sharma and her cofounders immediately encounter an obstacle––one that has frustrated many an educational newcomer: there is no agreement about what great math teaching looks like. “There was no manual for what I wanted to do,” she writes. “I had to go a different way.”

This was in 2012. Since then, Zearn has evolved into a free digital mathematics curriculum and learning platform. Some teachers might pair students with a Chromebook and headphones for supplemental “Zearn time.” It can also be used as a standalone resource with self-paced videos, practice, and games. About 10 percent of elementary teachers across the country report using Zearn once or more a week, according to a 2023 RAND survey. Quite a few math problems have been solved on its platform—over 14 billion.

In the past 12 years, Sharma has visited “thousands of classes” and reached some conclusions. Chief among these is that school is badly broken. “Our math education system makes learning math a hellish experience,” she writes. “Most kids hate math.” Her experience as CEO of Zearn suggests this suffering is needless. All kids can not only learn math but also love math, if supported properly by parents and educators. “It’s time that the adults get together and make that happen.” But how?

Sharma’s first big idea comes courtesy of none other than Carol Dweck, the Stanford psychology professor whose research on the benefits of cultivating a growth mindset in students now pervades U.S. classrooms. Sharma devotes a chapter to the importance of growth mindset and the related concept of stereotype threat. When teachers get these wrong, it can be disastrous for kids. Take Mr. Rockhill, Sharma’s mathematics teacher, who on the first day of high school melodramatically placed 18 desks out for 20 students. “At least two of us, he said—but probably more—wouldn’t make it,” Sharma recalls, creating a scene I thought existed only in fiction.

Next comes her favorite recommendation, the one she mentions to a “fabulously successful investor” who asks what Zearn has divined from its database of millions of students. Sharma tells the investor that it has learned to offer pictures (“especially brightly colored ones”) to students when they’re stuck. Educators typically refer to this (minus the colors) as the “Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract” approach, with roots in Jerome Bruner’s 1960s theories of instruction, which then inspired Singapore’s influential math curriculum work in the 1980s.

What else? She’d like to see students encouraged to solve problems using their own ideas. While affirming the importance of algorithms, she takes a stand for creative calculation, what she calls “easier problems.” Why not allow kids to solve 30 × 18 by first finding 30 × 20, then subtracting 30 × 2? This would combat what Sharma considers dominant myths—that speed is all that matters in math and that there’s only a single way to solve each problem. She’d also like an end to “long worksheets with unrelated problems” and a reorientation around “meaningful practice.”

Sharma’s final idea is “trying a different way” and is illustrated by a debate with Steve Levitt, the Freakonomics economist. Zearn’s analysts had found that, after a student commits an error, it is better to offer an easier approach to the grade-level question rather than send them back to shore up foundational skills. A skeptical Levitt challenged the analytics team to prove it, leading to a quasi-experimental study supporting the Zearn approach. “We can only guess at the reason,” Sharma writes.

I don’t have to guess. What child wants to return to 4th-grade content while working on a 6th-grade question? It may not have been obvious to Levitt, Sharma, or the Zearn data analysts, but I doubt anyone who has worked with children would find this even the least bit mysterious.

Sharma herself has not worked in schools. Raised in Buffalo, New York, by refugees fleeing the Partition of India, at age eight she dreamed of joining the American Red Cross. From then it was on to Bain and Zearn, we learn, where she sometimes visits classrooms and speaks with children. Her admiration for great teachers comes through frequently in Math Mind, and I don’t doubt its sincerity.

As a teacher, I know our profession is far too quick to dismiss outsiders as unrealistic. But the issue here isn’t pie-in-the-sky pedagogy as much as conventionality. Sharma’s long journey with Zearn has brought her to some of the most common ideas circulating among math educators: growth mindset, visuals, student strategies along with meaningful practice, and supporting students with grade-level standards. Is that all it takes?

Math Mind is aimed at parents and novice educators, so conventionality per se isn’t necessarily a problem. But Sharma means these to be transformational ideas. (We are now in the second decade of Dweck in schools with not much to show from it.) Zearn itself has come out seeming decidedly non-revolutionary in research studies. A Johns Hopkins evaluation led by Jennifer Morrison found that while teachers and students enjoyed working with Zearn, its impact on achievement was not statistically significant. Other studies, such as Shirin Hashim’s, found the curriculum to offer positive but quite modest results.

The major question lurking here is whether something like a “simple path to loving math” really exists. (At one point in the book, an “Ivy League professor” voices a similar concern, to Sharma’s shock.) Educators know there’s only so much that great teaching can do. For one, math is tasked with educational gatekeeping, caught in what historian David Labaree describes as our desire to provide universal access to social advantage—an impossibility. Sharma likewise describes loving math as an “exclusive world” that every child could freely join. But given the role math plays socially, access to this sort of exclusivity is anything but simple.

An irony is that school outsiders—economists, policy wonks, CEOs, and others—are more likely to promote the magic of great teaching than teachers themselves do. School staff are confronted daily with forces that thwart even the wisest, kindest instruction. A partial list includes immense early disadvantages that only grow, an inability to learn in conventional settings, the endless demand for increased rigor at ever younger ages, and brutal competition for distinction at the top. Great teaching navigates these obstacles but can never eliminate them.

“From Sorting to Teaching,” the final chapter of Math Mind, is where Sharma comes closest to grappling with these tensions. Tracking along with testing, she writes, creates an academic hierarchy. Most students learn their place in the pecking order and lose a love for the subject. It’s a fair point. But what can be done? Many educators, facing this same dilemma, end up offering a radical solution. Following educator Jo Boaler, they sometimes call to end tracking. Others propose decoupling mathematics and high-stakes testing. Some demand significant reform of the math curriculum. These ideas are not all to my liking, but at least they’d meet the moment.

In any event, this is not where Sharma lands because Math Mind, ultimately, is a case for educational technology. Great teaching can foster a love of math, but if you get a lousy teacher, you’re stuck. That’s where Zearn comes in, able to deliver videos and practice questions that “expand what was once the domain of a sorted few.” As if we haven’t heard this one before! The promise that technology will equalize schooling is, at this point, definitively unfulfilled. “It’s time to design and build a new system to teach everyone math,” Sharma writes. You might be disappointed to learn that what she’s describing, in the end, is just an app.

A previous version of this review incorrectly identified Sharma’s former employer.

Such subcontractual partnerships – while presenting several benefits for students and higher education institutions (HEIs) alike – also present risks, according to an Office for Students (OfS) insights document published on September 3.

These include staff incentivising recruiting and retaining students over the quality of courses, students with insufficient English skills being told these are enough to join a course and not being given the extra support they might need and even reports of students paying for falsified English language tests.

A subcontractual partnership is when a lead provider – for example, a university – uses a third-party provider to deliver all or part of a course on its behalf. Students pay their fees to the lead provider, which keeps a percentage and passes the rest on to the delivery partner.

The report warned that “without appropriate oversight”, the “arms-length delivery” of such partnerships “presents significant risks to students, taxpayers and the higher education sector”.

It said these risks are worsened when:

• The lead provider has subcontractual arrangements with multiple delivery partners.

• Such arrangements involve a large number (for example, more than 1,000) of the lead provider’s students.

• The students involved are a significant proportion of those the lead provider registers.

Such agreements are a rapidly growing area in the sector, with students taught in the programs doubling since 2019/20 to over 138,000 in 2022-23 – representing over 5% of students in the sector, according to the report. And in some cases, lead providers now teach more students through subcontractual partnerships that directly on their own campuses.

But “there is evidence that [it] is not always true for students in such arrangement” that they are “treated fairly, receive a high quality education and get the outcomes they deserve”, it added.

In line with the growing number of students taught in subcontractual partnership courses, the UK‘s education watchdog the OfS is casting a beady eye over these deals. “This is to ensure that universities and colleges have robust governance and oversight of these arrangements, in the interests of ensuring positive outcomes for students and taxpayers, and the reputation of the higher education sector,” its report said.

“We invite leaders in universities and colleges that already have subcontractual arrangements, or are considering entering them, to consider the suggestions in this brief on how to ensure effective governance and oversight. While universities and colleges must contact us if any material concerns arise with a subcontractual partnership, we can also advise at an earlier stage, including before an arrangement is made.”

There are also serious risks to public money where these arrangements are not managed properly

David Smy, OfS

It continued: “Some of the more striking examples we have seen of such arrangements leading to strong positive outcomes include collaborations with performing arts and media colleges, and further education and sixth form colleges.”

“From our analysis…we can see that many benefits can be achieved through subcontractual partnerships, for both students and higher education providers…But partnerships need robust management and oversight if they are to achieve these benefits, and deliver for students and taxpayers,” said David Smy, the OfS’s deputy director for enabling regulation at the OfS.

“In these financially challenging times for higher education providers, it’s more important than ever that they recognise that business models that rely heavily on subcontractual partnerships carry additional risks, and these risks must be effectively managed.”

He continued: “There are also serious risks to public money where these arrangements are not managed properly. This can include universities and colleges receiving public funding for students who may not be genuinely studying on the course their tuition fees are funding, and students who may be receiving other payments they’re not entitled to. We continue to work closely with the Department for Education and the Student Loans Company to ensure public funding is protected.

‘We hope this Insight brief will be a useful resource for universities and colleges that are, or are contemplating, working through subcontractual partnerships, and a reminder of the importance of good management and effective governance. Lead universities should seriously consider whether they should offer courses in this way if they cannot manage partners and public money effectively while ensuring that courses are delivering positive outcomes for students.”

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Dive Brief:

• Brown University saw a drop in the racial and socioeconomic diversity of its incoming freshman class this year, the first admitted since the U.S. Supreme Court barred race-conscious admissions, the Ivy League institution announced Friday.
• Among Brown’s 3,289 new first-year students, 18% came from groups historically underrepresented in higher education, it said. That’s a decline from 27% of the 2023 cohort.
• Brown’s newest class of students “remains diverse, although to a lesser degree than previously,” Logan Powell, associate provost for enrollment and dean of undergraduate admission, said in a statement Friday. But he said Brown’s mitigation efforts were essential in avoiding a more significant decrease in racial and socioeconomic diversity.

Dive Insight:

Brown’s announcement comes as colleges release demographic data for the Class of 2028 and the sector begins assessing impacts of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling.

The decision did not directly affect a majority of higher ed institutions, which accept most or all of their applicants. But industry experts predicted that selective colleges would need to adapt their admissions policies.

One such institution, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, announced last month that its incoming cohort would be less racially and ethnically diverse than in previous years and laid blame on the high court’s ruling.

“I have no doubt that we left out many well-qualified, well-matched applicants from historically under-represented backgrounds who in the past we would have admitted — and who would have excelled,” a spokesperson for MIT said at the time.

Powell struck a similar tone Friday.

“Even with a significant number of measures in place to ensure a diverse, talented applicant pool and enrolled class, we recognized the likelihood that declines in the number of students of color at Brown and other selective universities were widely anticipated across the country,” he said.

Every racial and ethnic group Brown tracked was less represented among its incoming Class of 2028, with the exception of Asian students.

Black and African American students saw the sharpest decline, falling to just 9% of the incoming cohort, compared to 15% last year. And the proportion of incoming Hispanic and Latinx students fell to 10% this year from 14% in 2023.

Students who identified as American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander made up only 1.5% of the cohort, down from 2% last year.

White students are still the largest racial or ethnic group on Brown’s campus, but their numbers also fell — 43% this year compared to 46% last year.

The university also saw an increase in incoming students who elected not to discuss their race, up three percentage points to 7% in 2024.

Fewer freshmen qualified for financial aid year over year, according to Brown. In 2023, half of incoming freshmen received need-based scholarships or grant aid. This year, it’s down to 45%.

Brown indicated that the much-beleaguered rollout of the updated Free Application for Federal Student Aid may have stymied diversity as well.

“The FAFSA challenges may have dissuaded some prospective students — and particularly those with high financial need — from applying for admission,” the university said.

Powell said the university took several proactive steps to soften the anticipated loss of student diversity following the ban on race-conscious admissions.

The university increased the number of community organizations its admissions staff visited, focusing on groups that serve students with backgrounds that are underrepresented in higher education. It also upped recruitment travel, bringing more prospective students from rural areas to visit the campus and partnering with historically Black colleges and a military academy.

“Expanding race-neutral strategies to encourage outstanding and increasingly diverse incoming classes will remain our priority moving forward,” Powell said.

Beginning with the Class of 2029, applicants to Brown will be required to submit standardized test scores for the first time since the pandemic. The university cited internal research that suggested students from less-advantaged backgrounds may have elected not to submit scores that would have increased their admission odds. In conjunction with the return to testing, Brown will increase educational outreach to show applicants’ their score is contextualized with their overall record, background and opportunities.

PARAMUS, NEW JERSEY — Savvas Learning Company, a next-generation K-12 learning solutions leader, today announced the acquisition of Pointful Education, a provider of innovative, online career and technical education (CTE) courses that prepare students with the industry knowledge and skills needed for future careers.

Specializing in career-focused courses and certification exam preparation for middle and high school students,Pointful Educationoffers a wide range of virtual and blended learning solutions that engage students in career exploration and prepare them for the workforce. Its robust catalog features 55 courses that are aligned with nationally recognized career clusters. The courses offer engaging instructional design packed with interactives, videos, projects, language translations, and text-to-speech functionality.

The acquisition of Pointful Education follows news in February of Savvas Learning Company’s strategic acquisition ofOutlier, which offers high-quality, online college-level courses that enable high school students to earn dual credit while never having to leave their school building. Outlier by Savvas provides immersive, cinematically-produced courses in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences taught by world-class, charismatic instructors from NASA, MIT, Harvard, Yale, and other top institutions.

“There’s a growing demand in the education marketplace to provide secondary students with multiple pathways for college and career learning that ignite a passion for career exploration,” said Bethlam Forsa, CEO of Savvas Learning Company. “In addition to providing students an opportunity for college learning with our Outlier offerings, the acquisition of Pointful Education allows us to provide the millions of secondary students we serve with a broader array of high-quality technical, career-focused courses for high-demand, high-skills, and high-paying careers.”

From CTE courses to exam preparation, Pointful Education courses give students the edge they need to be successful in their field of choice and master career-readiness skills training. Its catalog of elective and career-focused digital courseware includes titles such as: Adobe InDesign; Agriscience; Career Exploration in Healthcare; Construction: Fundamentals and Careers; Cybersecurity; Drones: Remote Pilot; Early Childhood Education; Robotics: Applications & Careers; and Social Media Business Marketing. Nearly half of Pointful Education courses are directly aligned to an industry-recognized certification exam, so when students are done with the course they are prepared to take the exam.

“We built our courses to give students the tools they need to develop the job-specific knowledge and skills for success in their future careers,” said Steve Southwick, CEO and founder of Pointful Education. “We’re so excited to join Savvas and be able to accelerate the development of new, high-quality career-focused courses that help schools support and expand their CTE pathways and grow their program offerings.”

ABOUT SAVVAS LEARNING COMPANY

At Savvas, we believe learning should inspire. By combining new ideas, new ways of thinking, and new ways of interacting, we design engaging, next-generation K-12 learning solutions that give all students the best opportunity to succeed. Our award-winning, high-quality instructional materials span every grade level and discipline, from evidence-based, standards-aligned core curricula and supplemental and intervention programs to state-of-the-art assessment tools and the industry’s most well-rounded portfolio of college- and career-readiness solutions — all designed to meet the needs of every learner. Savvas products are used by millions of students and educators in more than 90 percent of the 13,000+ public school districts across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, as well as globally in more than 125 countries. To learn more, visitSavvas Learning Company. Savvas Learning Company’s products are also available for sale in Canada through its subsidiary,Rubicon.

eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.

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Additionally, candidates from various categories qualifying at the Unreserved cut-off are included in the above totals.
For Data Entry Operator (DEO) / DEO Grade ‘A’

Additional candidates qualifying at the Unreserved cut-off include those from SC, ST, OBC, EWS, ESM, and OH categories.
Results for 23 candidates are currently withheld due to various reasons, while the results of 7 candidates have not been processed due to debarment from SSC examinations or cancellation of candidature.
For further details, candidates should keep an eye on the SSC official website for updates.

Digii, India’s leading SaaS provider for higher education, recently released a first-of-its-kind survey titled ‘AI-Driven Education: Maximizing the potential of AI to aid educators and enhance educational successes.’ The survey sought to understand how faculty members in Bangalore, Delhi, and Hyderabad view the growing role of artificial intelligence in education. The findings revealed that 93% of faculty members across these regions are enthusiastic about AI and believe it will significantly enhance their teaching experience.

Based on insights from over 500 educators across 22 leading institutions nationwide, including Manipal Academy of Banking, Jain (Deemed-to-be University), Chanakya University, BITSoM, VIT Bangalore, The Apollo University, Malla Reddy University, and the Indian Institute of Art and Design, the study explored AI’s transformative potential on the overall teaching experience. It also assessed faculty readiness for training in AI tools and examined how technology can be leveraged to revolutionize teaching and learning.

According to the survey, about 41% of faculty members are actively using AI in their teaching. Among these, over 70% utilize AI for content creation, 40.1% for generating assessments, 28.4% for monitoring attendance, 24.4% for conducting evaluations, and 22.5% for generating feedback. Additionally, over 37% have experimented with AI tools but are not currently using them, while 21.6% have not used AI tools at all in their teaching.

In response to a growing interest in AI in the education sector and to assist educators in upskilling, Digii has launched DigiiAI, a new generative AI tool, in over 20 educational institutions across India. It is designed to streamline time-consuming tasks such as attendance tracking, class schedule preparation, documentation, assessment creation, and evaluation. DigiiAI harnesses the power of advanced AI models to offer a robust and scalable solution that enhances the teaching experience for faculty.

Hemant Sahal, Founder & CEO of Digii, commented on the recently revealed survey:

One of the most promising insights from our survey is the overwhelming enthusiasm among educators in Bangalore, Delhi, and Hyderabad to embrace AI-based tools. 97% of them are not only interested in leveraging AI to improve learning outcomes but are also willing to undergo the necessary training to integrate these tools effectively into their teaching practices.

About Digii:

Digii (formerly CollPoll) offers Digiicampus, a comprehensive operating system purpose-built for higher education institutions. The Bengaluru-based startup empowers institutions to streamline mission-critical operations, enhance learning outcomes, elevate student satisfaction, and ensure regulatory compliance through the utilization of Digiicampus. It is actively used by 300,000+ students spanning 140+ higher education institutions globally.

Ethereum price breaks the $2,940 support zone and started a fresh increase and thus, it has gained nearly 2.5% in the last 24 hours.There was a break above a key bearish trend line with resistance at $3,000 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD.

A new weekly high was formed at $3,089 and the price is now consolidating gains. It tested the 24.7% Fib retracement level of the recent wave from the $2,940 swing low to the $3,089 high.

If it fails to clear the $3,150 resistance, it could start a downside correction. Initial support on the downside is near the $3,000 level. The first major support is near the $2,950 zone.If there is a clear move above the $3,150 level, the price might rise and test the $3,350 resistance. Any more gains could send Ether toward the $3,500 resistance zone.

$3,050 At the time of writing this article, ETH is trading around $3,065 and has gained around 2.65% in the last 24 hours and has a market capitalization of $368.12 Billion with a increase of 2.6% in its market capitalization.

Choosing the best BBA colleges in India is crucial, as it lays the foundation for a successful career in business and management. With its diverse educational landscape, India offers numerous colleges known for their quality education, experienced faculty, and excellent placement records. But what truly makes the top BBA colleges in India stand out? Let’s explore some key factors that set these institutions apart.

1. Comprehensive Curriculum and Specializations

The best BBA colleges in India offer a comprehensive curriculum covering all fundamental aspects of business administration. This includes marketing, finance, human resources, operations, and international business. A well-rounded curriculum ensures that students gain a broad understanding of business principles and practices, preparing them for various roles in the corporate world. Moreover, top colleges offer a range of specializations, allowing students to focus on their areas of interest and gain expertise in specific fields.

2. Experienced Faculty and Industry Experts

A distinguishing feature of the top BBA colleges in India is their faculty. These institutions are home to experienced educators and industry experts who bring knowledge and practical insights to the classroom. Their expertise enriches the learning experience and helps bridge the gap between academic theories and real-world applications. Regular guest lectures, workshops, and seminars by industry leaders further enhance students’ understanding and keep them updated on the latest trends in business.

3. Strong Industry Connections and Internships

The best BBA programs in India prioritize industry connections to ensure their students gain practical experience before entering the workforce. These colleges often have tie-ups with leading companies, providing students ample internship opportunities to apply their learning in real-world settings. Internships are crucial for students to gain hands-on experience, develop professional skills, and build networks that can be valuable for future career prospects.

4. Emphasis on Skill Development and Holistic Learning

Top BBA colleges focus on holistic student development. Beyond academic knowledge, they emphasize developing essential skills such as leadership, communication, problem-solving, and teamwork. These colleges offer various extracurricular activities, including clubs, competitions, and cultural events, which help students grow personally and professionally. A strong emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation encourages students to think creatively and develop a proactive approach to business challenges.

5. Robust Placement Support and Alumni Network

A strong placement record is a hallmark of the top BBA colleges in India. These institutions have dedicated placement cells that work tirelessly to connect students with top recruiters. Regular placement training, mock interviews, and career counseling sessions ensure students are well-prepared for recruitment. Additionally, an active alumni network provides mentorship, networking opportunities, and industry insights invaluable for students starting their careers.

6. State-of-the-Art Infrastructure and Learning Environment

The best BBA colleges offer a conducive learning environment with state-of-the-art infrastructure. Modern classrooms, well-equipped libraries, computer labs, and access to online learning resources are essential for a practical educational experience. Additionally, these colleges often provide collaborative learning spaces and facilities for extracurricular activities, creating a vibrant campus life that enhances the overall student experience.

Why NIET Stands Out as a Leading BBA College in India

Noida Institute of Engineering and Technology (NIET) is a shining example of what makes a BBA college outstanding. Here’s why NIET is a top choice for BBA aspirants:

• Innovative Curriculum: NIET offers a dynamic and comprehensive BBA curriculum regularly updated to reflect the latest industry trends and practices. With a strong emphasis on practical learning, NIET ensures that students are well-prepared for the challenges of the business world.
• Expert Faculty: NIET’s faculty includes seasoned academicians and industry professionals who bring knowledge and experience to the classroom. Their guidance helps students bridge the gap between theoretical concepts and practical applications.
• Strong Industry Linkages: NIET has established strong ties with leading companies, providing students with ample internship opportunities and real-world exposure. These connections also translate into excellent placement support, with top companies recruiting annually from the campus.
• Focus on Holistic Development: At NIET, education goes beyond the classroom. The college encourages students to participate in various clubs, workshops, and events, fostering a spirit of innovation and leadership. This holistic approach ensures that NIET graduates are academically sound and well-rounded individuals ready to excel in their careers.
• Robust Placement Record: NIET has a dedicated placement cell that works relentlessly to ensure students are placed in top companies. With an impressive track record of placements, NIET students are well-equipped to start their careers with confidence and success.

Conclusion

The best BBA colleges in India stand out due to their comprehensive curriculum, experienced faculty, strong industry connections, emphasis on holistic development, robust placement support, and state-of-the-art infrastructure. NIET exemplifies these qualities, making it a top choice for students seeking a BBA degree that combines academic excellence with real-world readiness. If you want to build a solid foundation for your business career, NIET offers the perfect platform to launch your future.