Solvation

What is "New"?

I recently had the shocker that many of my son's High School Freshman friends and their (well-educated and fluent) parents interpreted "New Student" to be... gosh, I still don't really know.  New to this District? Anyway, they felt "new student orientation" wasn't for them. Some argued, some were just confused by the term. A friend on the School Board relayed having the same conversations. 

So, here's the story on the word "new":

The Debate

Recently, NCES/ETS published a paper on public/private correlated data, "Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling" (Braun, Jenkins, Grigg).  It's an extremely technical paper, obviously intended for statisticians, given comments like, "And now I'll make it easier for you, here are the formula:..."

Shortly thereafter, there came along a refutation from Harvard Education Policy faculty, "On the Public-Private School Achievement Debate" (Peterson, Llaudet).

School Selection

The paper examines how it is that conscientious parents make school choices.  She uses a sample set that is deliberately constructed in a high-choice city, and the subjects all are "choosers," i.e. people relatively actively involved with their kids' education.