higher ed

Racin’ to the College Tops

Eduflack accountability, higher ed, Obama

When we talk about grad rates, the discussion immediately centers on high schools.  Drop-out factories and GEDs.  Dual enrollment and AP/IB.  ELLs and special needs.  For most, graduation rates are simply a K-12 game.

Two years ago, though, President Obama declared that the United States would produce the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by the year 2020.  In the course of this declaration, many uncovered U.S. education’s dirty little secret.  College grad rates are atrocious.  At many campuses, particularly our state colleges and universities, the norm is a six-year graduation rate (meaning giving students six years to graduate from a four-year program) south of 60 percent. 
Yesterday, the Obama Administration decided to take a step forward in its confrontation of postsecondary drop-outs.  Citing a need to graduate 8 million more college students by 2020, Vice President Joe Biden announced new funding to deal with college graduation issues.
The announcement included $20 million to colleges to “implement plans that can increase success and improve productivity in postsecondary schools.”  It also proposed $123 million competitive funds to “support programs that embrace innovative practices” in higher education.  A proposed College Completion Incentive Grant programs throws another $50 million in the kitty for IHEs “undertaking reforms that produce more college graduates.”  The full package is being referred, by some, as a Race to the Top for higher education.
Let there no mistake.  The mission and goals articulated by Vice President Biden are both noble and necessary.  Billions of dollars are underutilized each and every year by students who enroll for a first year of college, but never return for a second.  And that is just in grant money, not including loans or savings.  After decades of preaching the importance of a college education, it is high time we started putting our money behind a sermon on the importance of actually earning the sheepskin.
The problem with such an ambitious and well-meaning agenda, though, is data.  In that, we have very little data, and the data we have is pretty poor.  The U.S. Department of Education captures higher ed data through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System — or IPEDS — but such data is self-reported by the colleges and universities themselves (and many colleges actually disavow the very data they provide).  if a student drops out of our institution and re-enrolls in another, we have no idea.  We know college A has a dropout.  We know college B has an enrollee.  But our data systems don’t let us know that that dropout/enrollee is the same person.  Put simply, IPEDS is the best, worst, and only higher ed data system we have.
Last fall, I was fortunate to work on the development of College Measures, a website developed by American Institutes for Research and former NCES Commissioner (and thus IPEDS overseer) Mark Schneider.  Using IPEDS and other higher ed data sources, College Measures places a magnifying glass to key outcome measures for more than 1,500 four-year colleges and universities across the nation.  The results are startling.
The U.S. college graduation rate is just 57.6%, with public colleges posting a 55.1% grad rate and for-profits posting a 16.6% grad rate.  The first retention rate (meaning first-year students who return for a second year of college) is just 78.4% nationally.  That’s right.  More than four in 10 students enrolled in college won’t earn their diplomas.  And nearly a quarter of students who started college this past fall won’t return for year two this fall.  And don’t even get me started on what you see for particular IHEs.
Why are these numbers, as well as the wealth of information on state and individual institution performance found on College Measures, so important?  
Baseball philosopher Yogi Berra is famous for saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might just get there.”  While this may be true for baseball, it is the furthest thing from the truth in education, particularly higher education.  Noble goals, without the data to support them, are destined to fail.  If we are serious about improving college graduation rates, we need to be crystal clear on current numbers, current problems, and the general state of affairs.  if IHEs are going to innovate and reform, they need a clear understanding of the available data, need to determine the additional data necessary to declare mission accomplished, and then need to actually gather AND ANALYZE that subsequent data to truly determine the impact and return on investment.
Unfortunately, many of our colleges and universities just aren’t in a position to undertake such data efforts.  Initiatives like College Measures or Education Trust’s College Results Online are essential data pieces for connecting the rhetorical goals articulated by the President and Vice President with the realities happening on college campuses throughout the nation.  We know where we want to go when it comes to college grad rates.  But it’ll take us good data (and good people to analyze and interpret that data) to actually get us there.

National Skill Standards, Again??

Eduflack ACT, higher ed, Workforce
Earlier this year, ACT released its Breaking New Ground: Building a National Workforce Skills Credentialing System report.  In the paper, ACT looks at the current state of the economy, the role that community colleges in particular can play in better preparing Americans to effectively hold the jobs of the future, and the specific job and personal skills one needs to work in a given sector in the 21st century.
Sounds like a good idea, huh?  Linking postsecondary education to career paths.  Identifying the skills employers need to fill the jobs they have.  Making clear to workers what they should know and be able to do if they are to be successful in the workforce.  All terrific goals.  It is a wonder we have never thought of this before.
Funny thing is, we have.  Back in the mid- to late 1990s, Eduflack worked with a little outfit in the U.S. Department of Labor called the National Skill Standards Board.  NSSB was tasked by Congress to identify and develop the basic and advanced skill standards necessary to work in about a dozen industry sectors.  First out of the gate was manufacturing, with NSSB working with the National Council for Advanced Manufacturing, along with a slew of educators, labor unions, and industry voices.  NSSB then proceeded to develop basic standards for the education and technology sectors, before the effort was shut down by the Bush Administration and efforts to fund it outside the government couldn’t quite come together.  Almost wiped off the electronic records, NSSB is actually best described on Wikipedia these days.  
Of course, NSSB itself wasn’t even a new idea when it was created in 1994.  The National Skill Standards Board was the offspring of SCANS, or the Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills.  SCANS began in 1990, and led with its What Work Requires of Schools report, which outlined a range of skills, qualities and competencies needed to perform in the workplace of the 1990s.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to what ACT is doing.  it is important for our nation and our educational institutions to continue to look at issues of relevancy and how best to connect the classroom to the workplace.  The credentialing framework offered up by ACT looks remarkably like the frameworks that NSSB built and advocated for.  ACT mentions SCANS at the end of its report (explaining that SCANS resulted in the development of ACT’s terrific Work Keys effort), but there is no mention of NSSB (even though ACT was involved in the NSSB movement).
Why must we re-invent the wheel on this again?  NSSB had its positives and its negatives, sure.  But if we are serious about better preparing folks for work and ensuring a higher level of skills in the workforce, can’t we build on previous successes and learn from previous setbacks?  
I’ll be honest.  I lived NSSB from 1998 until it was shut down in 2002.  I’m not sure I’d want to wish that total experience on many others.  But I’d love to see someone benefit from the work a lot of good people put into NSSB, particularly in the early years.  If ACT is serious about moving Breaking New Ground forward and changing policy and behavior, it needs to take a close look at the NSSB case study.  Otherwise, we should just prepare for yet another “new” skill standards movement to surface in a decade or so.   
    

Edu-Profs: Hot or Not?

Eduflack higher ed, polls

University professors used to be held to the old adage, publish or perish.  But things may be a little different for those in the education policy space, thanks to an interesting new ranking from the always provocative Rick Hess.  Last week, Hess offered up his RHSU 2010 Edu-Scholar Public Presence Rankings.

The premise is simple.  Take a pool of university-affiliated academics and researchers, track the number of times they appear in the education media, newspapers, blogs, and the Congressional Record.  Sprinkle in extra points for the books they publish and the rankings they secure with booksellers like Amazon.  And let the fun begin.  It’s like the Roman gladiators, only with Blackberrys and standard deviations.
What does Hess find?  Stanford and Harvard Universities are the top breeding grounds for edu-scholars.  Stanford takes four of the top 10 spots, with Linda Darling-Hammond at number one and Rick Hanushek at number two (Nel Noddings and Anthony Bryk also made the top 10).  Harvard offers three in the top 10 — Paul Peterson, Dick Elmore, and Roland Fryer.  
Private institutions do much better at turning out the edu-scholars than their public brethren.  Only six of the top 20 come from public universities (Wisconsin with two, U.Va., Arizona, Michigan, and Washington). 
It is always interesting to see the civil war that is Stanford University ed policy play out in these sorts of rankings.  For every Stanford University School of Education’s Darling-Hammond, we have a Hoover Institution’s Hanushek.  Guess that means there is room for all thinkers out on the Farm.  And it is surprising to see how well many of the edu-scholars affiliated with the National Education Policy Center did on the rankings.
How do the scholars do in the individual breakdowns?  Darling-Hammond is tops on Google Scholar scores, followed closely by Hanushek.  Peterson is tops for Book Points, with Noddings on his heels.  Colorado University-Boulder’s Kevin Welner (with NEPC) gets tops for Highest Amazon Ranking, with Darling-Hammond and Elmore close by.  Darling-Hammond is queen of the Education Press Mentions, but Hanushek is close to storming the castle.  Fryer gets top marks from the Blog Mentions.  Hanushek is tops for Newspaper mentions (though Darling-Hammond is just a fraction behind).  And Darling-Hammond, Harvard’s Thomas Kane, UPENN’s Richard Ingersoll, Vanderbilt’s Camilla Benbow, and Arkansas’ Patrick Wolf win bragging rights for Congressional Record Mentions.
Of course, Hess has to be onto something when he faced some criticism out of the gate during a holiday week for his rankings.  Diane Ravitch seemed upset that she wasn’t included (since she isn’t affiliated with an academic institution).  And other “scholars” with think tanks, advocacy groups, research organizations, and the like are likely to share her frustration.  Perhaps Hess can offer up an affiliates rankings, where all the non-academic academics can square off for bragging rights.  (But can Hess put himself in the mix, or does he need to step out, as unofficial commish?)
Personally, Eduflack would like to see these edu-scholars actively campaign for higher scores in 2011.  With the change in political landscape and the focus of Congress, I think Hanushek has a chance to take the top spot, particularly with the Hoover PR machine helping his campaign.  And it would be great to see the “ivory tower” edu-scholars (measured mostly by the book numbers) separated from the “main street” edu-scholars (measured by blogs and newspaper appearances).  And, of course, it would be terrific for someone to spring for the VMS data so Hess can include radio and television appearances in the scoring.
And while I’d prefer to see the metrics work out to a nice 100-point scale instead of a system that best looks like NFL quarterback rankings, I understand you just can’t always take the research out of the researcher.  So I’ll let that go.
Kudos to Hess for the 2010 Edu-Scholar Public Presence Rankings, and congrats to this year’s winners!   

Blue Ribbons and Teacher Prep

Eduflack higher ed, HQT, Teacher Education, teachers

With all of the talk about student achievement and turning around schools, there is a larger issue lurking in the shadows.  Teachers.  For much of this year, we’ve focused discussions of teacher quality on how we measure effective instruction in the classroom.  And while Eduflack is all about the outcomes, the research shows that the inputs of teacher quality are just as important, particularly when we look at the education and clinical preparation that goes into growing a better teacher.

Today, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education releases its (much) anticipated report from its Blue Ribbon Panel on Clinical Preparation and Partnerships for Improving Student Learning.  The Panel itself is a relative who’s who of the education blob, particularly those organizations and individuals involved teacher quality issues, including AACTE, AFT, IEL, KA, NBPTS, NCTAF, NEA, and a host of IHEs and LEAs (how’s that for using your edu-alphabet?).

What did the Blue Ribbon winners offer up on their key reccs for improving teacher quality and the clinical preparation of educators?  The group offered up a Top 5 list:

1) More rigorous accountability, including calling for teacher ed programs to do a better job of monitoring their programs, ensuring they are up to par, and guaranteeing they are meeting the needs of the school districts filling teaching jobs.

2) Strengthening Candidate Selection and Placement, with a careful eye to making teacher ed programs more selective and more diverse. 

3) Revamping Curricula, Incentives, and Staffing, with a commitment to couple practice, content, theory, and pedagogy in the teacher ed process.

4) Supporting partnerships, particularly those relationships that produce college graduates “who do want to teach and are being prepared in fields where there is market demand.”

5) Expanding the knowledge base to identify what works and support continuous improvement, giving a hat tip to the unfortunate fact that “there is not a large research base on what makes clinical preparation effective.”

To help move these concepts into practice, NCATE announced that eight states — California, Colorado, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Oregon, and Tennessee — are now part of the new NCATE Alliance for Clinical Teacher Preparation (though it is interesting to note that six of those eight states now have new governors, thanks to this month’s elections).

So how does NCATE keep this report from suffering the fate of so many reports before it, being applauded at its release and then relegated to a shelf never to be read again?  Put simply, the NCATE reccs need to be moved into practice NOW.  The Alliance is a good first step.  But how are the reccs being implemented into the US Department of Education’s teacher candidate recruitment effort?  How are these priorities being funded through the Higher Education Act and Title II programs?  How are we rewarding colleges for doing right, while dealing with those leading us down the wrong paths?  And how do we ensure that federal, state, and local teaching dollars are going to employ those educators who live up to expectations and enter the classroom with the clinical preparation necessary to succeed from day one?

I realize I often throw cold water on these sorts of reports, always asking what comes next.  But informing is only the start of the battle, and all a report does is inform.  If we are to change the hearts, minds, and actions, we need to go further and dig deeper.  Changing the way we address teacher preparation is a big thing requiring a lot of work.  One report does not solve the problem, but it can get the discussion going.

Are We “Finishing the First Lap” of College Ed?

Eduflack accountability, higher ed

Last year, President Obama declared a national goal of having the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by 2020.  The thinking is simple.  With the pending Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) focusing on college readiness, new common core standards and assessments doing the same, and increased talk that a college degree is necessary for a good job, it only stands to reason that the number of Americans earning a college degree will increase over the next decade.

We’ve all seen the statistics on return on investment for a college degree.  Those holding the sheepskin will earn (by most, but not all, estimates) nearly $1 million over a lifetime than those with just a high school diploma.  That million dollars gets reinvested back into the economy.  The circle of educational/economic life continues.  It is no wonder that investment in higher education is seen as a win-win deal.

But what about those who enroll in college, but never complete a degree?  Are we getting ROI for those who drop out of college, and never earn the degree?  Are they paying back those loans that the U.S. Department of Education is so focused on these days?  And what other costs are we bearing because of those who fail to finish that first lap of college?

The latter question is one that is being addressed in a new report released today by Mark Schneider, former commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (at ED) and current vice president at American Institutes for Research (an institution, in full disclosure, that Eduflack works with).  In “Finishing the First Lap: The Cost of First-Year College Attrition in America’s Four-Year Colleges and Universities,” Dr. Schneider takes a look at the grant money (non loans) spent by the federal government, state governments, and individual institutions of higher education on first-year college students who do not return for their second year of college.  And the numbers are startling.

Looking at the data available from the U.S. Department of Ed through its federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the only real data system the feds have for higher ed statistics, we see the 30 percent of first-year college students not returning for a second year accounted for $7.6 billion in grant money from state governments over a five-year period.  Another $1.5 billion in federal grants were spent by the federal government.  That’s more than $9 billion in aid that goes to students who barely spend enough time at college to learn their way around campus.

If we look at the numbers on a state-by-state basis, we expect to see the largest states on top of this of most dollars spent on first-year students who never return to college.  And for the most part, we do.  According to the AIR report, “13 states posted more than $200 million of state funds lost to students dropping out before the second year of college.”    

The states include California ($467 million), Texas ($441 million), New York ($403 million), Illinois ($290 million), North Carolina ($285 million), Ohio ($277 million), Florida ($275 million), Indiana ($268 million), Michigan ($239 million), Georgia ($237 million); Louisiana ($213 million), Tennessee ($205 million) and Kentucky ($201 million).

What is one to do with this data?  “Finishing the First Lap” is the first volley in a larger effort to educate policymakers and higher education officials on the financial impact of struggling higher ed completion rates.  In conjunction with this report, Schneider is also launching College Measures, a new website that looks at grad rates and expenditure data for all 50 states and more than 1,500 individual IHEs.  The website “allows users to evaluate the performance of colleges and state systems on a range of measures, including student progression and graduation rates, graduates’ ability to secure gainful employment, the efficiency and productivity of education-related expenditures, the cost of student attrition, and the amount of financial aid going to students who do not graduate.”
 
Will the site or the report provide all of the answers?  Hardly.  But together, they both ask some of the hard questions we need to ask if we are serious about boosting college graduation rates and ensuring our higher ed dollars are delivering real ROI.  They also make clear that, as we focus on the need for better data systems and data usage in K-12, the same needs are even more acute in higher education. 

One may not like the data or conclusions offered by Schneider, but they jumpstart an important discussion.  The challenge before us is to take this discussion and move it to action.  How do we take the data from sites like College Measures or Education Trust’s College Results and put it to use?  What do state boards of higher education or state legislators do with the information?  What do college presidents do with the data?  And perhaps most importantly, how do consumers — students themselves — use the available data to make sure they are spending their hard-earned dollars on a higher education that is most likely to result in a degree and a well-paying job?

Continued Thoughts on Higher Ed ROI

Eduflack edReformer, higher ed

Last week, Eduflack opined on Businessweek’s efforts to put some meaning around the topic of college degrees and return on investment.  The discussion led me to wonder if we are looking at the right roadmarkers in determining ROI (and whether we are even looking at the right institutions when we do it).

So over at edReformer, I have a new post on the need to broaden our view on higher ed ROI.  You can read the full post here.  And while you are at it, check out some of the other posts over at edReformer.  There are some interesting discussions happening over there.

   

Calculating College Degree ROI

Eduflack accountability, higher ed

With the economy still lagging, jobs in short supply (particularly for recent college grads), and some private schools charging upwards of $50,000 a year to attain an undergraduate college degree, is it all worth it?  Is six figures of debt for that ol’ sheepskin a worthwhile investment, particularly in the current job market?

These are some of the questions that were recently addressed by Bloomberg Businessweek in its June 28-July 4, 2010 edition.  Using data from PayScale, Businessweek set out to calculate the true return on investment for a postsecondary education. And the results were particularly interesting.  (As an aside, it is important to note that Businessweek has really started to step up its coverage of education, both K-12 and postsec, issues.)

First off, Businessweek looked at those schools posting the best ROI.  Not surprising, they are all private institutions.  Tops was MIT, where $189,300 in costs (tuition and fees) to attain the degree nets nearly $1.7 million ROI.  For Businessweek’s purposes, ROI is defined as additional wages earned over a lifetime when compared to a typical high school graduate.  So if you are debating between settling for that high school diploma or enrolling in MIT, siding with MIT will net you $1.7 million more in your wallet in the long term.

Following MIT was CalTech ($1.64M ROI), Harvard ($1.63M), Harvey Mudd ($1.63M), Dartmouth ($1.59M), Stanford ($1.57M), Princeton ($1.52M), Yale ($1.39M), Notre Dame ($1.38M), and UPenn ($1.36M).  Boy, Eduflack is really glad that the Eduwife holds that bachelor’s and master’s from Stanford and that doctorate from UPenn.  I’m just waiting to live that lifestyle to which I could become accustomed.

Perhaps more interesting was the comparisons of types of colleges, looking at their 30-year net return on investment.  Ivies scored highest, at $1.4MROI.  Private colleges offered an ROI of $559,200, with public colleges coming in at $322,500.

And if you truly want to look at a college education as an investment, a college degree ROI offers a 9 percent return.  Compare that with 11.1 percent return investing in the S&P 500, a 4 percent return investing in 30-year Treasuries, and (despite the TV  commercials) a 2.6 percent return investing in gold.

So why is this so important?  First, there is clearly value in obtaining a college degree.  But we’ve always known that.  For years, the College Board has offered that one holding a college degree will earn $1 million more in a lifetime than one with just a high school diploma.  (Though researchers like Mark Schneider have countered that the true ROI is closer to $275,000, when you calculate the cost of attaining that college degree and the lost years of wage earning to go to college).  So yes, a college degree can be worth the time and expense.

But what Businessweek (and Payscale) clearly demonstrate is the type of college chosen is just as important as whether one goes to college.  No surprise, Ivies offer the greatest ROI.  Looking at public colleges in particular, one has to wonder what happens to ROI when you remove the so-called Public Ivies like the University of Virginia, Michigan, Berkeley, and such.  What is the ROI for attending an open-enrollment public institution?  Are there institutions out there that provide little, or no, ROI? 

Of course, all of this is just looking at the ROI for graduating from these institutions of higher education.  What about the ROI for those who complete three years of college?  Or for those who drop out after the first year?  Is there a value to encouraging all to attend college, even if they are emotionally or academically unprepared for the challenge, knowing that they may drop out that first year?  Yes, there is more to college than ROI, and some will argue the lessons learned in even one year of college are worth it, but that is a harder and harder argument to make as student loans come due and that dream job is nowhere to be found in daylight.

These Businessweek numbers raise a lot of questions that the higher education community must begin to address.  We’re all familiar with colleges who market themselves by talking about how low their acceptance rate is and how high their average SAT scores are.  Imagine those marketing efforts if IHEs are able to talk about the ROI for graduates, the percentage of recent graduates who are employed, the average salary for such grads, and other such measures?  It could truly revolutionize the process of choosing a college, while finally refocusing colleges and universities on truly serving the customer — the student.

Profits, Pell Grants, and College Degrees

Eduflack accountability, higher ed

Do for-profit businesses have a legitimate role in ensuring more Americans secure that college degree that is quickly becoming a non-negotiable in today’s economy?  With commercials for the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University on what seems like a constant loop on television, it is a question few ask.  We seem to assume, in today’s day and age, that for-profit institutions of higher education are a permanent part of the landscape, quickly becoming no different than distinguishing between public and private colleges.

Discussions of academic quality, growth, and such was left to the regional accreditation bodies.  Yes, we’ve targeted the diploma mills who exchanged checks for diplomas.  But if a for-profit could convince a team higher ed officials (most from traditional NFPs) that they had a legitimate plan, they were in business.  Some focused on a particular state or geographic region.  Others, like Phoenix, went national.  And some have focused exclusively on online education (though, interestingly, it can be more difficult to get accreditation from the online authorizing body than from a regional accreditor).

Yesterday, though, Bob Shireman — U.S. deputy undersecretary for education — changed the game.  As reported here by Inside Higher Education, Shireman took issue with growing enrollments at for-profits, increased profit margins at such institutions, and a flawed regulatory process that doesn’t necessarily protect the rights and needs of the student.  He even went so far as to suggest that higher education could be headed the way of Wall Street, with some gaming the system.

Shireman’s comments have been a long time coming.  A champion of affordable education for low-income students and a strident opponent of unnecessary college loan debt, Shireman has long been a leading advocate for the consumer — the adults or young adults who are seeking to better their lives with postsecondary degrees.  And he knows better than most that the approval systems for college approval — at the federal, regional, and state level — are seldom focused on academic quality or return on investment.  Instead, they are often the playground of lobbyists, lawyers, and consultants.  (And that is true for for-profit and not-for-profit institutions alike.)

Over the past year, Shireman and company fought hard to increase funding for Pell grants and make college generally more affordable for all.  Those outside of the system expect that these additional dollars are likely going to State U and local community colleges.  But Shireman pointed out a funny thing has happened between intent and execution.  Corinthian Colleges’ revenue from Pell grants has increased 38 percent in the first three quarters of the fiscal year.  DeVry has seen their share jump 42 percent.  Similar gains have been posted by ITT, Strayer, and others.

His remarks touched on the three legs of the higher ed stool — the feds, the states, and the regional accreditors — to work together to ensure quality and efficiency.  But after spending some time in the for-profit higher ed field years ago, Eduflack would like to add one more box to check on the ol’ forms.  That box is ROI.

With Pell grant dollars increasing even in difficult budget times, we should all be committed to ensuring that these precious dollars are actually yielding return on investment.  If the objective is to break down financial barriers and get more kids into college, then the ultimate goal should be to ensure that those kids are actually leaving school with a degree in hand.  The experience of higher ed is important, but leaving school halfway through is a lost opportunity for both the student and the Pell grant system. 

We shouldn’t have an issue with Corinthian and DeVry and the rest if they are enrolling more students and more students are thus earning an accredited college degree.  We should, though, take major issue with colleges and universities who are reaping huge financial benefits from the system, but aren’t actually educating the customers they are serving.  And at the end of the day, that education is measured by degree completion.

This is not just an issue for for-profits, it should be true for any institution operating in the postsecondary space.  Doesn’t matter if you are a NFP research university, state college, community college, private liberal arts school, or a career college, a degree is a degree.  Students enroll in college to earn a degree.  They earn a degree to secure a job.  When they secure a job, they can then pay off those student loans and generally contribute to the economy and society.  And so is the circle of college life, as those loans are repaid and the money given to the next generation of students.

Last month the American Enterprise Institute released a new report showing that just over half of Hispanic students earn a bachelor’s degree six years after enrollment.  That means nearly half of all Hispanic students who go on to college spend their money, family funds, scholarships, grants, and loans on an education that never offers the ultimate ROI.  They may finish up with some great stories, good friends, and wealth of experiences, but what does it mean without the degree?

If Shireman and company really want to change the way higher education does business and ensure that the interests of the customer — the student — are truly addressed, they would find a way for at least one of the stool’s three legs to factor in graduation rates as part of their evaluation and approval process.  Those schools that take Pell grants should make sure that Pell students are graduating with degrees.  If they aren’t, why not?  And if they aren’t, should we really allow them to increase their profit from these federal grants, if they are failing to live up to the expectation that such grants (and loans) are intended to help students earn college degrees?
 

Bracketology, through an Academic Performance Lens

Eduflack Achievement gap, higher ed

This week marks the second greatest annual sporting experience — March Madness (Eduflack is still a purist and believes nothing can hold a candle to baseball’s Opening Day).  Later this week, 65 of the supposed best Division One men’s basketball teams will square off to see which is the best (or the luckiest) basketball team of the year.  And then, on my birthday this year, we will crown a national champion.

The top four seeds are the top teams we typically expect to see — Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, and Syracuse, with Kansas designated the number one number one.  As in most years, we see lots of teams from the major conferences, and a good mix of mid-major programs that have done their institutions proud on the hardwoods.

The annual brackets often lead some to begin discussing athletics versus academics at Division One colleges and universities.  Those who follow men’s college basketball (it is very different for women’s college basketball) are no fools.  We realize that the majority of players, particularly those who start, will never earn that sheepskin from the IHE providing them with a free, four-year ride to a top college.  Many play a year or two, then seek their fortunes in either the NBA.  Those who can’t make the NBA cut will often head to overseas leagues, hoping it will provide them a pathway back to the NBA.  And many will fail to take advantage of the opportunities that scholarship can provide, particularly in the face of the realities of how few college ballers actually make it to play professionally with LeBron, Kobe, and company.

For the fifth year in a row, the good folks over at Inside Higher Education offer up their “Academic Performance Tournament,” a similarly bracketed tourney that looks at how those teams playing for that “one shining moment” on April 5 would fair if they were judged based on the NCAA’s Academic Performance Rate (that looks at academic standing and simply staying enrolled in school) instead of just the number of points one can put up during a game.  And the results are always fun to look at.

Sometimes, we do see the actual winner match up with the academic winner.  It happened last year when the University of North Carolina won.  But this year’s Academic Dance offers up some great upsets.  Ohio U over Georgetown.  Vermont over Syracuse (which has actually happened in the Tourney before).  North Texas over Kansas State.  Cornell over Temple.  Montana over New Mexico.  Siena over Purdue.

IHE offers its Final Four as Kansas, Duke, Texas, and BYU, with Kansas winning it all on April 5.  Syracuse loses its first game.  Number one seed Kentucky doesn’t make it into the round of 16.  But IHE still sides with chalk, choosing the number one number one seed to win it all, a real possibility both academically and athletically.

The folks at IHE use the NCAA Graduation Success Rate to break ties.  Eduflack wonders what the brackets would look like if we picked winners based solely on their ability to graduate the players they enroll as “student-athletes.”  The results would likely be shocking.

UPDATE: ESPN is also reporting a new report provided by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, which focuses on the graduation gap between white and black players on the 65 teams found in the bracket.  According to the Institute, 45 teams graduated 70 percent or more of their white players, but only 20 teams could hit the same mark for their black student-athletes.  The study used graduation success rates, looking at six-year grad rates for freshmen.


 

Calculating Meaning in the Latest NAEP

Eduflack Arne Duncan, higher ed, NAEP, Teacher Education, teachers

Yesterday, the National Assessment Governing Board released the latest numbers with regard to student math proficiency (at least proficiency as measured by NAEP).  The headlines seem simple, yet troublesome, enough.  Fourth grade math scores were stagnant.  Eighth grade score saw a slight uptick.  The math achievement gaps between white and black students and white and Hispanic students have remained relatively unchanged.

As to be expected with such numbers, we can wring our hands, look for conspiracy theories, and listen for things that go bump in the night.  Many a critic will likely take these latest numbers as yet the latest indictment of No Child Left Behind, pointing to all of the time and money that has been invested in elementary instruction over the last decade and the lack of return in recent years.  The continued struggles to close the achievement gap remain incredibly troublesome.  Yes, we should acknowledge that eighth grade math numbers rose slightly across the board.  But it provides little comfort when we think about all of the interventions and programs that are in place to specifically close the achievement gap, and that chasm remains as large as it has always been, with little sign of narrowing.
In the global sense, EdTrust President Kati Haycock has it right.  Mixing both optimism and concern, Haycock concludes, “It’s clear from the data at both grade levels that we still have a long way to go to effectively prepare all of our elementary and middle school students for the world that awaits them in high school and beyond.”  Yes, we have miles to go before we sleep, and we cannot be content with where the latest numbers leave us.  We also can’t assume that the common core standards, once they are developed and adopted, will immediately translate into gains in student proficiency.  Such standards are goals.  The real rub is in the interventions and assessments meant to align with such goals.
But perhaps the most interesting remarks regarding the latest NAEP scores come from David Driscoll, the new NAGB chairman and the former education commissioner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  According to Education Week, in overseeing the release of this latest batch of data, Driscoll remarked that the flatlining in fourth grade scores was the result of “shaky math content knowledge among teachers.”  Eighth graders did better because they “were taught by teachers with math majors.”  The full EdWeek article can be found here.
Driscoll’s remarks clearly play into the current debates on teacher quality, as well as EdSec Arne Duncan’s upcoming teacher recruitment campaign.  Rhetorically, all of the “cool” ed reform kids are pointing to alternative certification, mid-career transitions, Teach for America, and other such efforts as the magic bullets to fix what is ailing the American classroom.  The pendulum is swinging back to a belief that content knowledge is king, and pedagogy is overrated in the grand scheme of all things teaching. 
As part of the argument, we’ve tagged our teachers’ colleges as part of the problem.  The attacks can get tiresome.  “Ed schools are the cash cows of the higher education system.  As such, they favor quantity over quality, seeking to turn out as many education majors as possible.  They worship at the altar of process, rather than results, and thus are focused exclusively on pedagogy and not worrying about the end game of student performance.  And worse, there is little consistency in traditional teacher prep programs, particularly when some of the lower-quality ed schools are those serving the highest-need communities.”
Driscoll is probably right.  Teachers with a strong understanding of the content knowledge are more effective than the average bears.  But does that mean we scrap our ed schools and expect that math majors will give up their plans for corporate or research jobs to become middle school teachers?  Of course not.  The issue should be how we strengthen our teacher ed programs with such content knowledge, not how we work around our ed schools to get prospective teachers in through the back doors, particularly if those back doors neglect the pedagogy, clinical training, mentoring, and other efforts that go into effectively preparing a teacher for the rigors of the 21st century classroom.
We seem to forget that upwards of 90 percent of our K-12 teachers come from traditional schools of education.  We can hand Teach for America the Gates Foundation’s entire endowment, and TFA will still be unable to get to scale and serve as the primary teacher provider for our public schools.  We can make major shifts in emergency certifications and licensures to move mid-career shifters into high-need areas like math and science, and it will still be a minor ripple in a very large pool.  We can break down the barriers to get ABCTE in every state and let every mom-and-pop alternative certification program serve the local school district, and it would still be but a hiccup in the larger scheme of things.
Don’t get Eduflack wrong.  Programs like TFA can be a wonderful value-add for school districts, injecting new energy into a school and bringing a fresh take to the classroom and the faculty lounge.  But such efforts don’t get at the heart of the issue.  If the end game is to improve the quality and effectiveness of teachers and teaching, that fight begins and ends with our schools of education.  If we are to truly improve teacher quality for the long term, it requires focusing on our colleges of education and ensuring all accredited programs are of the highest quality and greatest impact.  It’s about making sure prospective teachers are trained in the latest research and understand how to use data to improve the quality and impact of their instruction.  It is about offering a strong clinical training, so new teachers understand exactly what they are in for in the classroom and have the supports and knowhow to deal with the challenges they face.  And yes, it is about calling out those schools that are not up to snuff, holding them accountable if they do not meet our expectations.
A century ago, the Carnegie Corporation rocked the medical community with its Flexner Commission, a comprehensive look at medical education in the United States.  In its report, Flexner found that the majority of medical colleges in the United States were lacking, doing a poor job preparing prospective doctors.  As a result, huge numbers of medical colleges were shut down and those remaining redoubled their efforts to focus on quality, research-based practice, and outcomes.  Since then, U.S. medical education has stood as the gold standard for the world.
If Duncan et al are truly serious about improving the quality of teaching, the time has come for a Flexner-style study of teacher preparation in the United States.  Instead of throwing all of our federal stimulus dollars at teacher incentives and alternative certification efforts, let’s actually get under the hood of good teacher preparation.  Put our traditional education colleges up against alternative programs and recent teacher recruitment interventions and really study what is working … and what is not.  What programs are producing the most effective teachers?  What institutions are responsible for the teachers who are boosting student achievement?  And what are those institutions teaching and offering that results in those outcomes?  Then we come up with the formula for the most effective teacher preparation.  What pedagogy, content knowledge, clinical training, mentoring, and ongoing support is necessary to improve teacher quality?  What is the gold standard for teacher preparation?  And most importantly, what should tea
chers know and be able to do in order to boost student learning and achievement?  
Until we have the answers to such questions, we will never be able to truly have the systemic impact on student achievement that we seek.  And we certainly shouldn’t be making decisions on this teacher prep path versus that teacher prep path without strong data analyzing both inputs and outcomes.  I’m all for following one’s gut, but this is just too important an issue to decide based on anecdotal evidence or through a buffet-style approach to simply choose whatever looks most appealing.