Boarding Schools for Girls

Eighth graders will be able to take their first College Board examination starting in 2010, according to the nonprofit College Board, which owns the SAT, PSAT, and other tests.

Most college-bound students take the Preliminary Scholastic Achievement Test (PSAT) in their junior year. PSAT scores are used to award National Merit Scholarships. During senior year, students take the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) as well as tests in individual subjects. If the students do well on their subject tests, they can qualify for college credits.

College Board's rival, the American College Test (ACT), has already introduced an eighth grade exam called "Explore," now used in California.

College Board officials said results from the "8th grade SAT" would not be given to colleges. Instead, parents and school counselors would use the grades in writing, mathematics, and reading to develop a realistic assessment of each student's abilities, and thus become better able to guide them in college choices. The test would identify academic weaknesses and strengths so that students could make better choices in planning their high school curriculums.

Labels: colleges, tests, high-school

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Once thought to be limited to drunken fraternity initiations or military rites of passage, hazing has, in recent years, been the subject of a series of high-profile incidents involving an unlikely population: girls and young women.

• In a Sept. 5, 2001, article in the New York Times, Maria Newman reported that 14 senior players from the Northern Highlands (New Jersey) Regional High School girls' field hockey team had been suspended after it was revealed that they had "forced sophomores to bark like dogs, simulate oral sex on a banana and play hockey with syrup in their pants. Some of the students had even videotaped the hazing and had been showing the tape around town."
• In May 2003, 31 students (28 of whom were girls) were expelled after a non-school-sanctioned football game devolved into a hazing incident that would eventually gain worldwide attention. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia reported that about 20 junior girls "were covered in paint, urine, feces, and animal guts. Some were shot with paintball guns, others were kicked and beaten. After it was over, at least five of the participants had injuries requiring medical attention, including one receiving stitches to her head."
• In July 2008, a group of Morton Ranch (Texas) High School cheerleaders were accused of subjecting members of the junior varsity cheerleading squad to a series of humiliating and potentially dangerous abuses, including being bound with duct tape and thrown into a swimming pool.

The advocacy group StopHazing reports that incidences of the practice at the high school level are "particularly troubling because the developmental stages of adolescence create a situation in which many students are more vulnerable to peer pressure due to the tremendous need for belonging, making friends and finding approval in one's peer group."

Labels: high-school, hazing, trends

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