Essential question: How can a student compare education options by net price, completion probability, debt, and career value?
Instructional caution: Distinguish factual definitions, legal holdings, economic relationships, value judgments, and policy preferences. Do not grade students for political viewpoint; grade evidence, accuracy, reasoning, citation, and disciplinary method.
Compare three aid offers by cost of attendance, grants, scholarships, work, loan type, net price, four-year projection, and completion risk.
Complete a FAFSA preparation checklist and calculate loan payments under several balances and rates.
Instructional aim: Define the Week 16 problem, establish the relevant institutions or economic relationships, and construct an initial answer to the essential question.
Evidence of learning: Identify one distinction that prevents a common oversimplification of this topic.
Support: Provide a vocabulary preview, chunked text, text-to-speech, and claim/evidence sentence frames.
Extension: Identify a competing theoretical interpretation and describe what evidence could distinguish it.
Instructional aim: Evaluate a primary record, legal case, policy document, contract, or institutional source for authority, evidence, context, and limitation.
Evidence of learning: State one claim the focal record supports and one claim it cannot establish alone.
Support: Define specialized language, provide a structured annotation guide, and allow oral rehearsal before writing.
Extension: Locate a source from a different institutional or social position and explain how it confirms, complicates, or contradicts the first.
Instructional aim: Interpret a quantitative model, institutional process, financial calculation, or policy tradeoff without confusing description and causation.
Evidence of learning: Explain which conclusion remains valid after the changed assumption and which conclusion does not.
Support: Provide labeled examples, formulas or process steps, and a partially completed model.
Extension: Perform a sensitivity analysis or compare an alternative policy/institutional design.
Instructional aim: Construct and defend a precise claim using disciplinary evidence, a counterclaim, and a proportionate conclusion.
Evidence of learning: Explain why the counterclaim deserves a response rather than dismissal.
Support: Use claim-evidence-reasoning frames and permit an audio or oral draft before the final written product.
Extension: Rewrite the recommendation for an audience with a different role, jurisdiction, time horizon, or risk tolerance.
Instructional aim: Demonstrate weekly mastery, correct misconceptions, and transfer the central concept to a new case.
Evidence of learning: Apply the week’s reasoning to this mastery action: A student separates grants from loans, compares net price over the likely completion period, and uses only official FAFSA channels.
Support: Allow extended time, reduced-distraction setting, read-aloud where appropriate, and repeated attempts after documented correction.
Extension: Write one high-quality examination question and an answer key explaining why each distractor is wrong.
Each principal assignment is worth 30 points: 8 accuracy, 8 evidence or calculation, 6 reasoning, 4 counterargument/limitation, and 4 clarity/citation. Use the course rubrics for expanded descriptors.
| # | Question | Answer | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Which definition best matches “cost of attendance”? | A | Cost of attendance means an institution’s estimate of tuition, fees, housing, food, books, transportation, and other education costs. |
| 2 | Which definition best matches “net price”? | D | Net price means cost after grants and scholarships, before most loans and work earnings. |
| 3 | Which definition best matches “grant”? | B | Grant means financial aid that usually does not require repayment when conditions are met. |
| 4 | Which definition best matches “scholarship”? | D | Scholarship means aid awarded under stated criteria, usually not repaid when conditions are met. |
| 5 | Which definition best matches “subsidized loan”? | D | Subsidized loan means an eligible federal student loan on which government pays specified interest during qualifying periods. |
| 6 | Which definition best matches “unsubsidized loan”? | A | Unsubsidized loan means a loan on which interest generally accrues from disbursement. |
| 7 | Which statement is most consistent with the evidence and reasoning developed in Week 16? | C | Sticker price is not net price, and a loan is financing rather than a discount. |
| 8 | Which statement is most consistent with the evidence and reasoning developed in Week 16? | A | Completion rate, transferability, accreditation, field outcomes, and total borrowing matter alongside admission. |
| 9 | Which statement is most consistent with the evidence and reasoning developed in Week 16? | B | FAFSA information and aid offers should be verified through official channels and compared line by line. |
| 10 | Which action best demonstrates mastery of the Week 16 inquiry? | B | A student separates grants from loans, compares net price over the likely completion period, and uses only official FAFSA channels. |
What information should a school be required to disclose before a student borrows for attendance?
5 points: clear claim, accurate disciplinary reasoning, two specific pieces of evidence, meaningful qualification or counterargument, and complete explanation.