higher ed

We Should #ThankAPrincipal … and Ensure Principals Have Prep They Need

Eduflack accountability, higher ed, Teacher Education

It is National Principals Month. The good folks over at NAESP, NASSP, and AFSA have designated October the one month of the year when “we honor the hard work and dedication of America’s principals.” Over at www.principalsmonth.org, there is a virtual cornucopia of all things principal worth checking out.

Over at the Learning First Alliance, they have a blog post from Stephanie Hull, EVP and COO of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, on how we can truly celebrate principals by providing principal preparation programs that align with the needs of today’s schools and best position leaders for success. As Dr. Hull writes:

The research is equally clear, though, as to the importance of school principals. In fact, principals account for at least 25 percent of a school’s total impact on student achievement, according to research conducted by organizations such as ASCD and the Wallace Foundation. Principals create the necessary conditions for teachers to succeed—the individual support, the technology, the facilities, the interface with parents and policy leaders.

She then details the five key lessons the Woodrow Wilson Foundation has learned from its work to transform education leader preparation in states like Indiana, New Mexico, and Wisconsin. It’s well worth the read. Check it (and other many other interesting posts on the LFA blog) out.

Is the Time Right to Change Higher Ed?

Eduflack higher ed, Teacher Education, technology, Woodrow Wilson

For decades now, the media had proclaimed the “death” of higher education as we know it. Online ed was supposed to do it a generation ago. Just a few years ago, the MOOC was going to put all colleges and universities out of business. Yet the institutional model that has been around for a millennium still seems to be alive and kicking.

Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education, my colleague Arthur Levine (president emeritus of Teachers College, Columbia University and current president of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation) writes on how the time may finally be right for higher education to begin to transition from its assembly line, industrial age approach to one better suited for the information age we all current enjoy (or at least tolerate).

Levine offers three reasons why we may finally see higher education transform in the United States. Reason one: As a nation, we are transitioning from a national, analog, industrial economy to a global, digital, information one. So it only makes sense that higher ed would follow the nation. Reason two: the number of higher education providers is booming, and it such opportunities are no longer limited to the traditional, ivy-wall-covered universities we have grown used to. And reason three: research makes clear that people learn in different ways, and we may need multiple approaches to higher education to ensure all are receiving it.

Dr. Levine is a particular fan of competency-based education, which focuses on subject matter mastery rather than time spent in a classroom. At its core, CBE is about students demonstrating their knowledge, rather than being recognized for coming to X numbers of classes for X total hours. As he writes:

[Competency-based education]  experiments need to be watched, assessed, and supported so that institutions can create and expand the infrastructure for competency-based education, including an alternative to the time-based Carnegie unit. This is merely the most visible aspect of a revolution occurring in education at all levels: the shift to learning outcomes and learner-centered education.

Every institution of higher education will have to make this shift, and the time to plan for it is now. History shows that the future of institutions that fail to act will be determined for them by policy makers and by pioneering competitors — inside and outside traditional higher education.

The full commentary is worth the read. Change is coming to higher education. The only question is whether institutions and individuals will be leading that change, or just have the change happen to them.

Blowing Up Schools of Ed?

Eduflack higher ed, Teacher Education, teachers, Woodrow Wilson

Over at Education Post, I have a piece that talks about our need to transform education schools across the country. With everything we are putting on teachers today, and all we expect from them in the classroom and beyond, we just can’t expect that teacher preparation today would still look like it did 50 years ago. Yet at far too many colleges and universities, it just does. As I wrote:

We have been asking more and more from our teachers. A decade ago, the remark was delivered expecting teachers to be researchers and psychometricians. In the years since, we have looked to those same beginning teachers to also be social workers, assessment administrators, referees, moral compasses, and the ultimate criteria for whether school districts, schools and students were succeeding.

In the piece, I spotlight the work I am currently engaged in at the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, as we embark an on exciting new effort, in collaboration with MIT, to build the ed school of the future, one that is competency based and focused on outcomes. As I note, “We need a new teacher-education model focused on outcomes and one that requires recognition that learning, time and process are variables and that one size definitely does not fit all.”

You can check out the full piece here. And while you are at it, check out some of the other content at Education Post. The new platform is doing a great job spotlighting reforms and improvements across the country.

Happy reading!

Does Online Ed Lack Integrity? Seriously?

Eduflack higher ed, Hillary, Online Education, Presidential campaign, technology

I don’t want to make Eduflack an ed-policy-check blog about the Hillary Clinton campaign. After critiquing the Hillary effort earlier this week, I pledged to myself I was done with presidential campaign edu-politics for a while.

Then Carl Straumsheim, a part of the terrific reporting team over at Inside Higher Education, has to go and discover and then write up what he did today about Hillary’s edu-speech this week and its remarks about online education.

As Straumsheim reported:

In a version of the plan distributed to the media this past weekend, the campaign said, “We must restore integrity to online learning and will not tolerate programs that fall short,” as though online education has recently lost its way. The campaign reworded the sentence before Monday’s announcement, however. The published version reads, “We must bring integrity to online learning” — as though it never had any in the first place.

Unfortunately, the Clinton campaign didn’t respond to IHE’s request for comment to the report. So we are all left guessing by what they intended and why what was written was actually written (and spoken).

I want to give the Clinton campaign the benefit of the doubt. I really do. I want to believe this was just a clumsy attempt to talk about the problems facing for-profit higher education today. It was a way to voice concerns about gainful employment and the collapse of Corinthian Colleges and the hope that a college degree has meaning, regardless of who’s name is on the top of the sheepskin.

But by using the words that she did, and editing them the way that she did, Hillary simply adds fuel to a fire that is already confusing far too many. She is using online education as a synonym for for-profit education. She is confusing instructional delivery method with the administrative mission and responsibility. And she is wrong in doing so.

There are a great number of traditional, not-for-profit colleges and universities that use online education. IHE mentions Hillary’s own alma mater, Wellesley College. We could add Bill’s undergraduate school, Georgetown University, to the list of colleges playing in online ed. And institutions such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and even my own University of Virginia make the list.

Surely we aren’t suggesting that these colleges and the hundreds like them that are using online delivery to reach today’s students lack integrity, are we? Does she really mean that every institution that currently offers blended learning or online platforms or even MOOCs lacks integrity? That a program “falls short” simply because it isn’t delivered through a traditional classroom setting, with a single professor talking before a lecture hall of hundreds of desks (many of which may have students sitting in them)?

If she meant to criticize for-profit higher education providers like Corinthian (and many of them do deserve criticism) then just come right out and say it. But remember that a provider like University of Phoenix provides far more “education” through its traditional, bricks-and-mortar storefronts that Hillary seems to embrace than it does through its online offerings. And don’t forget that, until earlier this year, Bill Clinton just wrapped up five years as the “honorary chancellor” of the Laureate International Universities for-profit and online chain (and earned millions of dollars for the honor, according to the NYT.)

Since 2007 or 2008, Eduflack has waxed semi-eloquently on this blog about the value and benefits of online learning. Much of it has been focused on K-12 blended learning efforts, but some of it has also been directed toward higher education. Today’s learners are not like those of a previous generation. Online learning allows all of us to ensure that tech-savvy students don’t need to unplug or de-skill when they enter a classroom. It ensures that a student is not denied an academic path of choice because of geographic limitations. It helps students pursue postsecondary education on their terms, building programs that work with the growing demands of families, work, and life.

Done right, online education empowers the learner. It puts the decision making in the hands of the student, and not just the provider. And it can require an education provider to improve instruction, delivery, content, and overall quality as a result.

Online education has enormous power when it comes to opening doors to those previously denied and leveling the learning playing fields.

Do some providers abuse that power and offer an inferior product? Absolutely. But the same can be said of bricks-and-mortar institutions that will enroll any warm body willing to take out loans to pay rising tuition costs. Our focus should be on the quality of instruction-however it is delivered-and not exclusively on the model being used to deliver it.

Mrs. Clinton, I hope you intend to continue to push on the discussion of integrity and institutional quality in higher education. But please don’t use such a broad brush in the process. Let’s look at grad rates and employment statistics. Let’s look at institutional costs and student loan debt. Let’s even discuss the merits, or lack there of, of for-profit higher education.

But let’s not suggest online education lacks integrity. Education, whether online or delivered in any other method, depends of the quality, values, and character of the person delivering it. Whether they do it in a classroom, online, from the town square, or at the local Dunkin’ Donuts, integrity is a measure of the quality of the product, not the means for delivering it.

Hillaryland, We Have an Edu-Optics Problem

Eduflack High School, higher ed, Hillary, Presidential campaign

Typically, Eduflack tries to stay away from purely political issues here. Yes, I love to write about the intersection of education policy, politics, and communications. But there has to be a real education slant to it. Even though Eduflack is a former campaign hack and flack, and has worked to elect Democrats (and a few Republicans) to political office, and even though I am a former elected official myself, this isn’t a political platform.

So I’ve largely bitten my tongue (at least on this blog) when it comes to the rookie mistakes and amateur actions that we have seen month after month from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. I’m not going to rehash those here, but with her experience, with the experience of the best political team money can buy, let’s just say I expect much, much better.

But this morning, those problems oozed out into the edu-sphere, so I see it as fair game on Eduflack. As many news outlets are reporting, today Hillary Clinton is announcing a $350 billion college affordability plan. Bloomberg’s account of the plan is here, while The Washington Post’s is here and Politico’s can be found here.

Let me make clear. I don’t have any issue with any efforts to increase the number of college-going (and college-completing) Americans, nor do I oppose efforts to make college more affordable (even if it is by loan, rather than grant). And I don’t even take issue with a plan that, as reported, sound remarkably like the idea that Toby and Josh hatched in a bar on West Wing when they missed the campaign plane in Indiana and got stranded in a local bar and met a dad who didn’t know how he was going to pay for college for his daughter.

No, my real issue is with the optics of today’s announcement. While every major media outlet has already reported on the Clinton affordability plan, the official announcement will be made today in New Hampshire. In Exeter, New Hampshire.

For those unfamiliar, Exeter is the hometown of the Phillips Exeter Academy, one of the most elite private high schools in the nation. The uber-wealthy who send their children to this private high school pay, according to the school’s website, $46,905 a year in tuition, room, and board. They also have to pony up $180 for linen service, $365 for a student health and wellness fee, and $340 for a technology fee. For an optional $2,060, families can also buy a student accident/sickness insurance plan (for when, I’m assuming, the student health fee and mommy and daddy’s corporate insurance just won’t do).

While this may cause some sticker shock for many of us parents, don’t fret. Phillips Exeter boasts that it is able to provide financial aid to those families who suffer by earning less than $400,000 a year. (No, that isn’t a typo, that’s $400k, not $40k.)

Let that sink in for a moment. We are off to talk about the struggles of middle class parents paying for college in a town where the private high school costs more than most middle class parents’ take-home income for the entire year. We are preaching “affordability” in a community where those earning just under a half-million-dollars a year are considered needy and demanding of financial aid.

The sunny-eyed optimist in me would like to believe that Hillary is going to Exeter to proclaim that every student, even those who attend the elitist Phillips Exeter Academy, should have the opportunity and ability to attend the college of their choice. But the steely-eyed realist knows Exeter was chosen because it was in New Hampshire, with no real symbolism at all.

I hate to break it to those making campaign decisions these days, but the average American family doesn’t quite relate to a private school that charges upwards of $50,000 a year FOR HIGH SCHOOL. They bristle when one suggests $400,000 a year in income qualifies for financial aid.

Hillary’s advisors may see today as the declaration of a “mandate to act on college affordability,” as they told Politico. But for far too many families who currently don’t qualify for grants and yet can’t afford college for their kids next year, they will see it as just another example of the millionaire class just not getting it. Particularly when Hillary’s standard $275,000 speaking fee was more than adequate, with just one speech, to pay for daughter Chelsea’s four years at Stanford University.

Face. Palm. Repeat.

UPDATE: For those who want to give Hillary the benefit of the doubt, and have asked some questions, I’ll offer up a little more data. The grand unveiling of the plan will be at Exeter High School. As for the town of Exeter, New Hampshire itself. I’m sure it is lovely. It has a little more than 14,000 residents, more than 95 percent of whom are white. Two percent of the population is Asian-American. A little more than half a percent of the population is African-American. Latinos don’t even register. And the median family income falls just short of $100,000 per year. Ain’t that America?

Learning Through Student Journalism

Eduflack higher ed, Media, Students

I will often say that the most defining part of my collegiate experience was the time I spent in the basement of Newcomb Hall at the University of Virginia. That space served as the home for The Cavalier Daily, U.Va.’s independent student newspaper.

The CD has been the newspaper of record at Mr. Jefferson’s University for 125 years now. It has won countless awards and broken story after story. During my tenure there, we actually had major national newspapers trying to convince our printer to read them our front pages, as we had broken a major story regarding the Honor system and a big-dollar-donor parent trying to keep his son from being expelled. They didn’t want to be scooped by a bunch of kids.

During my time at The Cavalier Daily, I held many positions. I started off as an opinion columnist. Over time, I was a sports writer, a sports columnist, a copy editor, the founder of the nation’s first collegiate business section (serving as Marketplace editor), and then as managing editor of the newspaper.

Like me, those who work for The CD do it for the love of journalism. Reporters and editors don’t get paid. They don’t earn college credit (as Virginia doesn’t have a J- school). After being elected managing editor for the 1994-95 year, I worked on average of 80 hours a week down in that basement. Five days a week, we put out an (on average) 16-page newspaper. We had nearly 150 individuals on staff, managing an annual budget of nearly $500,000, all coming from advertising revenue.

At The Cavalier Daily, I learned to write. I learned to think critically. I learned both to work as a team and lead. I learned to appreciate deadlines (as missing deadline cost us money at the printer). And I learned a sense of pride in hard work, in the truth, and in the right thing.

I learned to embrace the words of Thomas Jefferson, found on the masthead the topped my work each and every day. “For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”

In recent years, my beloved Cavalier Daily, like so many journalistic institutions, has struggled in the transition into a digital news economy. When I was on the managing board, back in 1994, we actually launched the first web version of the daily newspaper. We were among the pioneers in collegiate journalism.

A few years back, another CD managing board made the bold decision to move from a printed newspaper every morning to a digital one. Instead of using the web to accompany a broadsheet, online and email would lead the day. And again, like others in journalism, The Cavalier Daily realized it was much harder to generate advertising revenue without a print product. And with no financial support from the University of Virginia and a shrinking bank account, the CD fell behind in its rent to the University.

After a time, The Cavalier Daily righted the ship and has been regularly paying its rent to the landlords at U.Va. But it still had $50,000 or so in unpaid rent it needed to make up. The multi-billion-dollar University of Virginia wanted its money. It threatened to evict The Cavalier Daily from its space. So generations of CD alumni acted, and acted swiftly.

The Washington Post tells the story of how those CD alums came together in a matter of hours to pay the rent bill. And Susan Svrluga tells it quite well. And I thank her and WaPo for telling this important story of how a “storied student newspaper” has been rescued (even though WaPo was one of those newspapers, 20 years ago, wanting a sneak peek of what would be on our front pages that winter.)

Yes, the tale of The CD’s rent woes could speak to the financial challenges of print journalism in a digital world. It could speak to the challenges of a fiercely independent student newspaper in an era when universities want to control any and all messaging about them. Or it could speak of the incredible impact organizations and institutions like The Cavalier Daily have on generations of individuals.

The Cavalier Daily saved me when I was at U.Va. As a first year (U.Va. version of a freshman), I was completely lost. I was miserable being in Charlottesville and terribly homesick. I missed my high school days and I didn’t know how to replicate that experience at Mr. Jefferson’s University. My mother pleaded with me to visit the newspaper’s offices. I didn’t want to, but I listened to my mother. And I’m glad I did.

My college experience was The Cavalier Daily. I majored in The CD. It gave me purpose. It helped me get my first job out of college. It is where I made life-long friends. It gave my college days meaning (even if it meant skipping the majority of my actually college classes during my four years at U.Va. – seriously).

Today, I am proud to serve on the board of the Cavalier Daily Alumni Association. And I am even prouder of all of those alumni who stepped forward in recent days to save the CD’s space. Sure, the newspaper could have moved offices. But for the past 20 years, the basement of Newcomb Hall has been The CD’s home. No one wants to be forced out of their home. Particularly when their central mission is training generations of college students to follow truth wherever it may lead.

#Studentdata and #highered

Eduflack accountability, assessment, eddata, higher ed, technology

We spend so much time talking about the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (or the replacement of NCLB, whichever term you prefer), that we can forget that reauthorization of the Higher Education Act is waiting in the wings as well.

Earlier this spring, Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate HELP Committee, issued a series of white papers on some of the top issues the Senate would consider as it began to dig into HEA reauth. One of those topics was consumer information, what many of us better know as student data.

Last week, I submitted a formal response to the Senate’s higher education student data call. In doing so, I noted: “As a nation, we have long said that information is power, using the call for greater knowledge to rally support for education. But our educational infrastructure itself has not provided the powerful information we need. Higher education has fallen short in its ability to both capture and apply data that can be used to improve how students learn, how they are taught, and how we measure it.”

This should come as no surprise. In talking about the work of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and its focus on linking student outcome data to determine the effectiveness of its own programs I stated:

All have a right to know the difference between a successful school of education and a not-so-successful one. That difference really can only be revealed through the collection, analysis, and utilization of outcome data. It is not enough to know that future teachers entering schools of education bring a certain high school class rank, GPA, or SAT/ACT score into the process. Yes, the inputs are important. But far more important is what they do with those tools. And we cannot measure that impact based simply on academic performance leading to the award of a college degree. It requires post-graduation data that can be tracked back to the degree-granting institution.

My full statement, including responses to a number of specific queries from Senator Alexander’s staff can be found here. The initial white paper from the Senate HELP Committee on consumer information (and other topics like accreditation) can be found here.

“Broad”-ening Ed Leadership Opportunities

Eduflack higher ed, reform, Teacher Education, teachers, Woodrow Wilson

As Eduflack has written previously, some research shows that a good school principal can account for 25 percent of a school’s total impact on student achievement. In the education space, we talk a great deal about the importance of having top-notch principals and superintendents and central office personnel in place, but we do so with the same, sometimes lame ed leadership programs serving as their training grounds.

We know that many of these ed leadership graduate degree programs aren’t of the highest quality. We know that many enroll in them just to move up the salary scale and get a bump in pay. And we know that few of these programs are providing aspiring leaders with the skills, knowledge, and support they need to be both the managers and instructional leaders we seek and that so many of our kids need.

It’s one of the reasons I get so excited about the work I’m involved with at the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, where we are now working in three states, and with many more universities, to provide aspiring school and district leaders with a high-impact MBA program for education leaders. I know our model works because I witness the impact. I can see how an MBA path steeped in a strong academic program, an equally robust clinical experience, and multi-year mentoring can transform a great teacher into a tremendous ed leader.

And I get equally excited when I see announcements like I did this week from the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems. For those following from home, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges’ Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities granted Initial Accreditation to the Broad Center.

This is an important announcement because it demonstrates there is more than one path toward being an effective school leader. Through its Broad Residency in Urban Education, the Broad Center provides a two-year management development program for career-switchers looking to move into top levels of K-12 urban public education systems. They come out of the Broad program with a master’s of education in educational leadership, and now, thanks to WASC, they graduate with an accredited degree, ready to take on the world and help run an urban school system.

Yes, some of the haters will continue to crow about Broad and ask how this could happen. But let’s remember, WASC isn’t a “reform organization.” It is the quasi-governmental body that oversees higher education institution in California, Hawaii, Guam, and the Pacific Basin. It is the West Coast equivalent of NEASC, which oversees the likes of Harvard and MIT. in the Northeast. It is a long-standing, established institution embedded into the very fabric of American higher education.

In granting the Broad Center this important approval, the WASC Educational Effectiveness Review Team, according to Broad, commended The Broad Residency for “a very rich data-driven program of unusual depth,” “reflecting a pervasive spirit of inquiry and a commitment to continuous improvement” and for being “painstaking and comprehensive in its assessment of its programs, residents’ learning and satisfaction during the residency period, and through the residents’ career preparation.”

I get that accreditation decisions rarely grab the headlines and public attention. But let’s not overlook the significance of Broad joining the WASC accreditation club. It is a strong acknowledgement that there are different ways to effectively prepare school leaders, and it is an even stronger nod to the need for new, innovative approaches to educational leadership preparation.

No, this isn’t your grandpa’s ed leader prep program, and that’s a good thing. As our needs continue to change, as our demands continue to grow, and as our hunger for accountability and quality continues to expand, we need better prep mousetraps that truly develop a cadre of diverse, effective ed leaders. This is another step toward that.

Building a New Principal Prep Moustrap

Eduflack higher ed, Teacher Education, teachers

Sadly, current school leader preparation programs — those that typically offer an M.Ed. to successful principal candidates — are generally poor. Admissions and graduation standards are often the lowest among programs offered by education schools, a reality detailed in my own research for the Education Schools Project. Coursework is largely unrelated to the positions prospective school leaders are preparing for, and the clinical portions of the program are often weak. These programs are thought of as the easiest route to a master’s degree, the quickest path to the salary bump they bring.

Both higher education and K-12 have known for far too long that the vast majority of school leadership preparation programs are inadequate. Yet they’ve done little about it because demand for such programs remains high.

Woodrow Wilson Foundation President Arthur Levine in Real Clear Education School Principals Should Be Trained Like MBAs

Free College, With Caveats

Eduflack 21CS, Arne Duncan, higher ed, Obama

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama announced his plans to provide all “hard working” students with two years of free community college. But such a grand promise comes with a great number of questions, questions that we just aren’t getting a lot of answers to at this point.

Over at Education World, Eduflack opines on some of the many questions that come out of a promise to free college. Impact on dual-enrollment programs and proprietary colleges? Improved quality of community college programs? Impact on Pell? Future of competency-based education? And are we putting the emphasis on the right higher ed items?

As I write at Education World:

Will this be another good idea that only gets tossed aside because it lacks the funding and the changes it calls for are too hard (or too ambiguous) for institutions and policymakers to take on? Or is it just the innovation needed to begin to shake up higher education policy and place greater power and focus on the students, and not just on the institutions?

Give it a read. And please, offer answers if you have any …