Why College Applications Make Parents So Anxious

“It’s just like all of a sudden people removed their brains and went to Mars,” University of Washington director of admissions Philip A. Ballinger, told the New York Times, commenting on the Baylor program. A terrific sound bite, but unfortunately this importation of market principles to schooling is becoming far too common in American education to pin it on creatures from outer space. (Just one example: programs paying high school kids to learn are proliferating, as a “quick-fix” to improve the education of kids in economically disadvantaged communities.)