In a Tough Market, Some Counseling & Tutoring Agencies Going Bankrupt

Recently we learned that College Focus ceased operations leaving many clients hanging, and no refunds available for their clients.

The College Trail's strong track record and financial backing have positioned us for success. If you were a College Focus client, please contact us at connect@thecollegetrail.com.

College Focus clients will receive special, custom tailored plans to meet student's needs.

Connecting with the Teenage Brain: Elizabeth Explains Why She Chose The College Trail

Elizabeth, a mother of three explains why she chose The College Trail tutoring services to help her children with mathematics. Click the play button below to watch and listen.

Top Five California Education Issues in 2010

In The College Trail's Home market of Orange County, California there are significant issues facing public school parents and children in 2010. These issues generally reflect nation-wide concerns. Recent data published in the Orange County Register point to five key issues.

Budget cuts, layoffs, school closures

School finances and budget cuts will continue be at the forefront of public education in Orange County in the new year. Many of the county's 28 school districts have already announced hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts for the 2010-11 school year, including proposed layoffs, cuts to programs and services, larger class sizes and school closures.

Educators say more budget cuts may be announced in coming months following a recent announcement from the state's Legislative Analyst's Office that California may face a new $21 billion deficit over the next two years.

School districts will begin announcing projected teacher layoffs and additional budget cuts by early March, ahead of the March 15 deadline to issue teacher pink slips.

Meanwhile, at least one Orange County school – Riverdale Elementary in eastern Anaheim – already has been identified for possible closure, with school officials eyeing a few others to possibly be put on the chopping block in the coming months.

Race to the Top reforms - Teacher Evaluations Tied to Student Academic Performance

The local educational community will be keeping close tabs on President Obama's competitive $4.35 billion Race to the Top grant program for schools – and the controversial education reforms that states must implement to apply for this funding.

Perhaps the most contentious reform for Orange County schools is the requirement that teachers' evaluations be based at least in part on their students' academic performance.

At least 20 of O.C.'s 28 school districts already have signed letters of intent to carry out Obama's education reform agenda and apply for the Race to the Top stimulus money, should California win a slice of the $4.35 billion pie.

State officials are rushing to meet a Jan. 19 deadline to apply for the funding, but California's application is contingent upon the Legislature passing an education reform bill that will make California competitive for the funding.

Both the Assembly and Senate have passed a version of this legislation, but the differences in these competing bills must be ironed out before the reforms can become law. Getting a bill to the governor's desk is a top priority for lawmakers right now.

If California misses the January deadline or doesn't win any money, it can apply for funding again during the program's second and final phase in June.

Federal officials have indicated California schools could receive up to $700 million.

Capistrano Unified's ballot initiative

South County voters will head to the polls this June to decide whether to change the way trustees are electedin the politically volatile Capistrano Unified School District, Orange County's second-largest. The parents' group that brought the initiative to the ballot wants Capistrano's approximately 220,000 registered voters to elect trustees by geographic districts, instead of all seven in an at-large election.

The switch is intended to give voters a chance to get to know candidates in their local area better, and would mirror the way Orange County supervisors are elected. No other O.C. school districts elect trustees in this manner, although some large districts, including Long Beach Unified, have adopted the practice.

If the ballot initiative passes, the rules would be changed in time for the November 2010 school board election, when three trustees' terms are up. The parents' group backing the initiative is seeking to unseat these incumbents, who all ran on the district's politically popular "reform" platform three years ago.

Separately, Capistrano Unified's school board has filed a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court seeking to postpone the June ballot initiative by five months, to November 2010, on the grounds that the later date would save the district nearly half a million dollars in election-related fees. The school board's tactics have rankled supporters of the initiative, who say it's a thinly veiled attempt to keep the election rules unchanged for the November 2010 race.

A judge in Santa Ana is expected to decide the fate of the lawsuit in the coming weeks.

Appeal of Christian student's lawsuit

A Mission Viejo high school student who sued his teacher over his anti-Christian classroom rhetoric is appealing his case in federal court, with oral arguments possible by the end of 2010.

Capistrano Valley High senior Chad Farnan, 17, says he's happy with a federal judge's ruling last May that found history teacher James Corbett violated his First Amendment rights when referring to Creationism as "religious, superstitious nonsense" during a 2007 classroom lecture. But Farnan – who attributed more than 20 allegedly anti-Christian comments to Corbett in his original lawsuit – is seeking a broader ruling against Corbett that would find him liable for more of his statements.

Corbett, meanwhile, has cross-appealed the case seeking to be vindicated. He has retained a new, four-person defense team that includes nationally renowned constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, dean o fUC Irvine's law school.

Farnan will continue to be represented by Advocates for Faith & Freedom, a Murrieta-based Christian legal group.

The case will be heard by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Both sides are asking the court to reconsider essentially all of the facts of the case.

Orange County, CA Register's annual school rankings

Will Irvine's Bonita Canyon Elementary School again be ranked the best public elementary campus in Orange County?

Will Pioneer Middle School in Tustin clinch the best middle school honor for the second year in a row?

Will Cypress' Oxford Academy and Fullerton's Troy High School again be the No. 1- and No. 2-ranked high schools, respectively?

All of these questions and more will be answered when the Orange County Register releases its annual school rankings – a comprehensive analysis of how O.C.'s public elementary, middle and high schools stack up against one another.

The rankings are based on a weighted mathematical formula developed by the Register's education team that incorporates a variety of age-appropriate data, from standardized test scores and physical fitness indicators to college-going rates and ethnic and socioeconomic diversity.

The elementary school rankings will be out in February, followed by middle school rankings, and high school rankings by the end of the school year in June.

The Shifting Definitions of Merit in Admissions

This dialogue recently appeared in The New York Times

Question: I realize there is no set formula for admissions at the Ivies. However, what consolation can you offer a student and his parents with the following profile and results?

Our son was a graduate of a highly regarded parochial school in Texas with 260 seniors. Graduated in the top 3 percent of class. Took twice the number of AP/honors classes required for an honors degree. Voted top male senior by faculty based on personal and academic traits. Scored 1995 on SAT and 30 on ACT.

Active member of numerous school honors and service organizations. Two-year varsity athlete who received district honors both years. Named male scholar athlete for having highest G.P.A. of any varsity athlete. Active in church and community groups. Eagle Scout. Stellar recommendations.

Applied to and denied admission at Columbia, Princeton, Boston College and Rice. Oh, and lest I forget, he’s a white middle-class male from a two-parent household. A female Hispanic classmate who did not take honors classes, who was not in the top 10 percent, who was not nationally merit recognized, and who was not in any extracurricular school activities WAS accepted to Columbia.

What’s a family to do? Tell junior that life’s not fair and that decisions affecting him are often not merit-based? Can these colleges be so intent on creating their own Utopia that they can afford to overlook highly qualified candidates who would be an obvious asset to the school simply because their acceptance would throw off the ethnic and economic percentages they so like to report?

Will the “great unwashed” ever understand the mystery that is Ivy League admissions?

Answer: I am obviously not privy to the particulars of your son’s application and that of the young woman you describe. And as Ralph Figueroa, a former admissions officer at Wesleyan and Occidental, said in response to an earlier question this week on “Talk to The Times,” it’s unlikely that the colleges you mention would — or even could — explain their decisions even if we asked.

I am confident that nothing I write here can give you the sort of consolation you’re seeking, because highly selective colleges’ definitions of “merit” — the word you invoke above — are far too complicated (and hedged) for us as outsiders to ever apply them on a case-by-case basis.

On the one hand, for all of the obviously stellar accomplishments of your son, I can tell you that each of the colleges you mention had many other candidates who presented similarly strong or even better credentials. And considering that Harvard (a school that you don’t mention) turns away many applicants who have perfect SAT scores or who are valedictorians of their classes, I am confident that your son is hardly the only excellent candidate to be rejected by the schools to which he applied.

But you also suggest that an applicant from the same high school got into Columbia, when your son did not, with grades and standardized test scores that you say were inferior to your son’s, and with no extracurricular activities. I’ll assume for the sake of this answer that the information you are providing is accurate. You also believe you have found a reason: that she is Hispanic. You might well be right.

The colleges you mention all practice affirmative action. That means they subscribe to the notion that building a freshman class that is broadly diverse — including racially and ethnically diverse — serves to give some minority applicants an opportunity to receive a world-class education that might not have been available to their parents or grandparents, and, in the bargain, to enhance the overall educational experience of their classmates.

Considering that some of these schools have 10 or more applicants for each seat in the freshman class, something has to give. And yes, an honest admissions officer would tell you that, as you suspect, they often have to “overlook highly qualified candidates that would be an obvious asset to the school” to satisfy the various other goals of the admissions process. And that sometimes means casting aside an applicant or applicants who might appear “better” by every other statistical measure than some of the applicants admitted.

As I have said in response to an earlier question on “Talk to The Times,” this process is not fair. You ask if you should “tell junior that?” I suspect he knows already, but this is probably a good time to reinforce that message.

You also ask if you should tell him that “decisions affecting him are often not merit-based?” I would respectfully argue that you’re asking the wrong question. Why not use this as an opportunity to tell him that in life, not everyone will subscribe to the same definitions of merit that might guide him (or his father), but that it’s at least worth examining their reasons. I appreciate the opportunity you have given us to do so here.

contact The College Trail for advice on your student's path on the trail to college admissions

New 'science of learning' could reinvent teaching techniques

An article in USA today pointed to Scientists who are quietly tackling education issues, offering up new tools, new approaches and even a new discipline.

The College Trail Editor's Note: select a teaching professional who is familiar with the latest research on principles of learning and teaching techniques. Contact us at www.thecollegetrail.com for more information.

Three principles are espoused in the proposal for a field of learning research:

•Learning is computational. Even infants and toddlers possess innate capabilities to see and hear patterns, something psychologists doubted decades ago. Reinforcing those capabilities by teaching patterns early might sharpen kids' brains.

•Learning is social. People, even infants, learn better through social cues. We "most readily learn and re-enact an event when it is produced by a person," scientists and colleagues write. "Social factors also play a role in life-long learning — new social technologies (for example, text messaging, Facebook, and Twitter) tap humans' drive for social communication," they add.

•Learning is driven by brain circuitry. Brain cells fired up during both perception and action overlap in people, which allows students to identify with their teachers and speeds learning.

"The young learn best from people in human social interaction. But one of the fundamental characteristics of the human mind is our flexibility and our inventiveness — our capacity to invent tools to amplify our own sensory and motor abilities," scientists said by e-mail.

Dear Admissions Officer

Reprinted from Wicked Local

The College Trail Editor's Comment: this parent typifies many who want only the best for their child, and who are always reaching for the right strategy, solution and people to talk to. The College Trail can help. Finding the right fit for your student when planning for college is important. There are many choices, but finding the right one takes time. Let us help guide you through the process.

North Andover -

Dear Admissions Officer…

Do you have room for a regular kid at your university?

With so much pressure to be the strongest, the fastest, and the smartest — or to make yourself appear so — is it okay to just be yourself, no phony vocabulary words or marketing strategies — is it enough?

I’ll bet the applicant pool is overflowing. With some kids making a big splash while others are just trying to keep their heads above water. I’d say it’s thickest in the middle — where my son likes to swim — but what if his goggles get kicked off and he stops swimming because he can’t see where he’s going?

I’m struggling with how to advise him through this college admissions process. “Be you, only better,” I tell him, but that doesn’t sound right.

Kids are on a relentless treadmill since their entrance into preschool at age 2 — parents setting expectations so high that they need tutors in everything from soccer to language — with even summer camps concentrating on college prep instead of sailing.

From noodle necklaces to college applications that look more like the resumes for mid-level executives — where’s it all going?

Competition has been brought to new heights (depths?). I cringe hearing parents reminding 10-year-olds how good this or that will look on their college applications.

Television has turned everything into a contest, from dating to adoption — in this voyeuristic world, have fame and/or notoriety become the ubiquitous career goals?

What about the kid who hides behind his hair a little but stays the course nonetheless?

How does one stand out in a world where standing out has become the rule rather than the exception?

It’s a shame you no longer offer personal interviews to prospective students –— I was hoping you’d get to look into my son’s eyes and hear the words come from his smile instead of trying to decipher his voice in all the electronically received data that is meant to tell you his story.

I know you’re looking for students with a hunger for learning — who have a drive to make a change in their community, the world. But I’m pretty sure my son hasn’t discovered these things about himself yet.

I was hoping you could help him with that.

I want so badly for him to have this opportunity. He doesn’t know yet what he wants, just that he’s supposed to want what I want for him.

Through the years of his education I’ve had to keep saying, “Your only job right now is to get on the honor roll. It doesn’t matter if you think you’ll never use French or quadratic equations — just get the grades that will open the doors. Be interested and interesting — the rest will fall into place someday.”

I’ve wondered if it counts for more if you say a thing over and over.

My son played trumpet for more years than he’d have chosen, participated on more sports teams than I can believe I got him to, volunteered at Special Olympics horse shows when it was the last thing he wanted to do all those Saturdays, runs in one road race every year with his sisters, Husky and me to raise money for Lazarus House, and climbs mountains all over this country every summer despite his own alternate big ideas.

He’s getting there, I believe. And though attending college is the culmination of his life’s work and play up until now, it is but a beginning. The very start of him getting to know who he is, what drives him — what will set him on fire so he might also want to set the world on fire. Or at least understand that it’s a possibility.

Will you be able to tell from his record that he works at a thing until it’s finished — or that if he doesn’t know an answer he will search until he finds it?

How will you know that he’s the kind of guy who shaves without being asked when he’s going to see his grandmother, mows her lawn like his Uncle Nick taught him, and that when I was out running one Sunday and got caught in a rogue lightening storm, he set out in my Tahoe to come find me?

Where in his transcript will you see his quiet affinity for all living things — that he could never hurt an animal, and that he still waters a spider plant he got at a summer class the year he was 8?

He’s traded his trumpet for an electric guitar, misses his ride to school half the time because he won’t go to bed before midnight, and spends an inordinate amount of time online searching for a Camaro, Trans Am or a Mustang he can afford (or talk us into) while cranking Atreyu so loud the candle flame on my coffee table bends in time with the beat.

But he’s also the guy who removes inadvertent recyclables from the trash to put them where they belong, and wears a tie on Thanksgiving.

Do you have a spot at your school for someone like that?

The College Trail Editor's Comment: this parent typifies many who want only the best for their child, and who are always reaching for the right strategy, solution and people to talk to. The College Trail can help. Finding the right fit for your student when planning for college is important. There are many choices, but finding the right one takes time. Let us help guide you through the process.

Back to School Benefit for College Admissions and Tutoring - Introductory Offer From The College Trail

The College Trail, a leading provider of College Admissions Coaching, Preparation and Admission Strategies, Tutoring and Standardized Test Preparation announced an introductory offer for its services through midnight pacific time September 30, 2009. 

The College Trail (www.thecollegetrail.com) is offering free introductory sessions for new clients who sign up by September 30, 2009. The introductory offer includes either:

- A free introductory Tutoring session, or
- A free College Admissions counseling session 

The company provides a full range of services including college admissions strategies, tutor services, specialized math tutoring, specialized tutors for science, languages, and other subjects, college planning, college admissions essay suggestions, test preparation and other related services.

"As students return to school parents are often looking for ideas to help give them an edge in their academic ability or to help determine the right path to college," said Rod Turner, founder and president of The College Trail. "Our track record of over 10 years enables us to help students on the trail to college whether they need math tutoring, a plan designed to help fit their unique skills and goals to the right college, or prepare for testing.

About The College Trail

The College Trail, founded in 1996 by Stanford Engineer and Cornell MBA, Rod Turner, provides students and their families all three components of academic and college admission support:

1. College Planning, Preparation, and Admission Strategies
2. Academic Coaching (tutoring)
3. Standardized Test Preparation

More about the company may be found at www.thecollegetrail.com. Success stories about The College Trail may be found at www.thecollegetrail.com/success_stories.html.

The company also manages social media sites for parents and students to collaborate, share concerns and find solutions to college admissions strategies on Facebook (http://bit.ly/2y5a4V), Twitter (http://twitter.com/thecollegetrail), and LinkedIn (http://bit.ly/pdoVN).