John T. Harvey | Forbes, Pragmatic Economics
July 20, 2011
(I’ll return to national macroeconomic issues in my next post–and there is certainly still a lot to say there!)
As promised, this is my follow-up post based on our trip to the Save Texas Schools conference in Austin this past weekend. It was a sobering experience. The long and the short of it is this: Texas has abandoned its children. The Governor and the Legislators in Austin have set the stage for a protracted crisis not only in education but in the State economy. With respect to the former, we can look forward to larger class sizes, the elimination of many important programs, and the placing of even more responsibility of the backs of overworked (and fewer) teachers. Texas already ranked an embarrassing 44th in education and these developments do not bode well for future of the Lone Star State. As far as the economy is concerned, every public education layoff means less income not only for those individuals, but for local businesses where they would have shopped. Indeed, the Legislative Budget Board forecast that almost 45% of job losses would actually be in the private sector (Center for Public Policy Priorities: CPPP Urges Rejection of HB1). Furthermore, the lack of a decent education will greatly reduce the future earning power of Texans. The only firms willing to relocate here will be those hoping to find a source of cheap, low-skilled laborers. Texas will become the alternative to outsourcing to an impoverished, third-world country. The stars at night no longer look so big and bright.
Was this fiscal crisis the inevitable outcome of the Great Recession? The answer is absolutely, unequivocally, no. In fact, it is hard to avoid the unsettling conclusion that it was deliberate, that certain State Legislators and the Governor did this on purpose. To put this into context, consider this passage from the Texas Constitution:
A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools (Article VII).
The State is thus constitutionally required to support of a public school system. In terms of the specific meaning of “efficient,” the courts have offered some guidelines:
It must be recognized that the Constitution requires an ‘efficient,’ not an ‘economical,’ ‘inexpensive,’ or ‘cheap’ system (Texas Supreme Court, Edgewood ISD vs. Kirby, 1989).
This is obviously still open to interpretation, but it seems reasonable to imagine that it would at least represent the same level of service as last year. Surely the State whose economy would make it the 15th-largest country in the world could accomplish such a goal? And, indeed, it has done so every year–until this one. Today, however, it seems that Texas can no longer afford to offer the 44th-best education in the nation (soon to be 50th, incidentally). We are faced with an $18 billion revenue shortfall, of which roughly $5 billion would have gone to education (Center for Public Policy Priorities: Statement on the State Budget for 2012-13). But, to reiterate, this was not an accident. Conscious choices were made and clear warnings were ignored.
It started in 2006, when new tax laws were enacted that supporters (including Republican Governor Rick Perry) claimed would generate sufficient revenue to continue to fund education and other programs at required levels. Almost immediately, however, State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn (also a Republican) wrote to Governor Perry to explain that this was simply not true (Strayhorn Letter). Projections by her office showed that the State would find itself roughly $23 billion short within five years. She was remarkably accurate (in fact, she underestimated). There was, indeed, no way the planned tax reductions could possibly be offset by the legislated increases. But her warnings were completely ignored.
And so, when Legislators convened for the most recent session, it came as absolutely no surprise to anyone that revenues were well short of what was needed. In fact, they had been short in previous years, too, but earlier surpluses and federal stimulus funds had provided temporary relief. No more. This time, it would hurt. Or would it?
There was actually another option. The State had the foresight in 1988 to create a pool of money for such emergencies: the Economic Stabilization Fund (aka, the Rainy Day Fund). Following on the heels of the 1980s oil-price collapse that devastated the Texas economy, the goal was to systematically accumulate savings during good times which could then be spent in bad. This had, indeed, provided relief in the past, with the Legislature sometimes willing to spend the entire balance (Center for Public Policy Priorities: Using the Rainy Day Fund). And the best news in terms of addressing our current crisis is that the fund has never been larger than it is right now. It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate time to tap into it. Yet, despite vigorous debate (largely along party lines) and a march on the Capitol by those hoping to save Texas schools, the State refused to use more than an insignificant fraction. Apparently, it is not raining–but, boy, it soon will be. In fact, if we make no attempt to address the structural deficit, the revenue shortfall “will more than double again in two years regardless of how the economy performs” (Take Back Texas Alliance: Texas Budget Crisis). Our problem isn’t going to go away on its own.
And so, here we stand today. The government of the Great State of Texas has willfully elected to disregard its constitutional duty to fund education at even the modest levels represented by previous years. They ignored clear and prescient warnings regarding future revenue streams and chose not to tap into monies set aside for precisely such purposes. It will almost certainly get worse, and they know it. They are failing our schools, our children, and our State.
I hesitate to speculate on why those in control of the State government would so blatantly ignore the warning signs and lead us into this education disaster. Others don’t, however. They believe that it is because the Governor and key Legislators are purposely setting out to destroy public education, hoping to replace our constitutionally-mandated system with one based on private schools. If that is true, it raises at least two concerns:
1) If that is your goal, then have the integrity to say it out loud. Don’t hide behind claims of fiscal crises and incompetent educators. The former is a smoke screen, one that may have been purposely manufactured for just this purpose. The revenue issues could most certainly be addressed if Legislators were willing to discuss tax reform (Take Back Texas Alliance: Texas Budget Crisis; Center for Public Policy Priorities: List of $30 Billion in Revenue Options). The latter, meanwhile, simply isn’t true. The scholarly research on the American public education system argues that it measures up very well against those of other countries. Those saying otherwise are either cherry picking statistics or simply do not understand how to interpret them (for more on this, see my previous post: Why US Education Deserves Our Praise).
2) Let’s not kid ourselves about what privatization of education would really represent. It would mean abandoning the poor, disenfranchised, and otherwise challenged children of our State. That’s not just mean-spirited, it is un-American and undemocratic. Our system of government requires an educated citizen more than any other. I’m sure I don’t need to argue this, so I’ll simply close with some relevant quotes. Hopefully, Governor (and Presidential Candidate?) Perry and certain Texas Legislators will give these a read. I hope so, as it seems they are the ones most in need of an education.
Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development.
–Kofi Annan
I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.
–Thomas Jefferson
In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity–it is a pre-requisite.
–Barack Obama
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
–Franklin D. Roosevelt
Resources for Further Reading
Center for Public Policy Priorities
The Take Back Texas Alliance
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Scott McCown of the Center for Public Policy Priorities for reviewing an earlier version of this post. Thanks, too, to my wife, Melanie, for her insights and editorial advice. All remaining errors are, of course, my own.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Austin school district likely to fail federal standards for third consecutive year
By Melissa B. Taboada | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, July 21, 2011
For the third consecutive year, the Austin school district as a whole will miss federal academic targets established by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, district officials told the American-Statesman.
The prediction is based on preliminary data from the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills that show unsatisfactory improvement by special education students on math and reading exams.
The official federal school accountability ratings will be announced in August.
District officials said they couldn't say with certainty how many of the 118 schools to be rated this year also failed to make "Adequate Yearly Progress" because the state has not yet released that data. Of 115 Austin schools evaluated last year, six failed to meet the federal standards.
The federal requirements are different from those under the state's accountability system and are based on TAKS participation and passing rates, as well as graduation and attendance rates. Austin missed targets because the district allowed too many special education students to take a modified or alternative version of the reading and math tests, based on federal standards.
Of the district's 85,697 students, 9.7 percent, were served by special education in 2010-11, including those with physical and learning disabilities, as well as emotional and behavioral disorders. Officials said of the 4,327 special education students who took the TAKS — 11.8 percent of test takers — 3,948 took a modified or alternative version of the reading and math tests. The other 379 special education students took the standard TAKS.
Though 83 percent of special education students passed the reading exams and 81 percent passed the math exams, which meets passing standards , the federal system counted about 1,000 of those students as failed. The federal system has a 3 percent cap on how many students can take a modified or alternative exam even if students qualify to take it. Modified tests include those in larger fonts or that offer fewer multiple choice options.
District officials said despite being over the limit, they are giving special education students tests consistent with their individual education plans and their disabilities.
"The bottom line is: You have to do what's right for the kids," said Bill Caritj , the district's chief performance officer. "You can't just give kids the regular TAKS test because it's convenient for you when it's not what's best for them.
"We're doing what's appropriate. We're giving them the correct instruction. We are giving them the correct tests, but we can't count them (as) successful because of the federal rule."
Despite missing the targets, district officials said they are pleased with the progress that special education students have made. Those students made gains in all areas that exceeded gains of students overall.
Graduation rates for special education students have increased for the second consecutive year, from 56.5 percent for the class of 2008 to 61.3 percent for the class of 2010. By comparison, overall graduation rates were 74.3 percent in 2008 and 78.6 percent for 2010.
Austin isn't alone in exceeding the federal special education cap. Houston data show that of 118,478 students tested this year in reading, 6 percent took a modified or alternative version of the test; of 118,610 students tested in math, 5.7 percent took a modified or alternative version .
Federal officials recognize problems with the system.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in June that if there are not changes to standards created by the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, 83 percent of all schools could be classified as failing next year because of tougher passing standards or other reasons. Still, it's unclear whether Congress will make any changes to the law.
Each time the Austin district missed the mark, students made the required progress, but the district exceeded the special education cap.
"We want to meet the needs of all kids, and a message of missing AYP gives the perception that we're not," school board President Mark Williams said. "We can't change the accountability rating for (2011), but we can say how we are going to change it to make it better going forward."
Austin serves a large number of special education students in part because the district has a reputation for having strong programs for those students, officials said.
"Our team does a really nice job. And in some ways, it attracts some people to the district to get those services," Williams said. "When that happens, you get a number higher than what the feds allow us to consider."
The goal is to prepare more of
those students to take the standard achievement exams.
The stakes are high. Districts that receive federal Title I funds and continually fail to miss the federal targets stand to come under stringent sanctions at failing schools , including firing teachers or having the Texas Education Agency or a charter operator take over the school.
mtaboada@statesman.com; 445-3620
Austin school district special education
2010-11 enrollment 85,697
Special education enrollment 8,349
Autistic 720
Orthopedically impaired 117
Other health impaired 1,045
Auditory impaired 71
Visually impaired 71
Deaf/blind 1
Mentally disabled 604
Emotionally disturbed 464
Learning disabled 3,582
Speech impaired 1,620
Traumatic brain injury 28
Noncategorical early childhood 26
Note:Students may have more than one diagnosis.
Source: Austin school district
Thursday, July 21, 2011
For the third consecutive year, the Austin school district as a whole will miss federal academic targets established by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, district officials told the American-Statesman.
The prediction is based on preliminary data from the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills that show unsatisfactory improvement by special education students on math and reading exams.
The official federal school accountability ratings will be announced in August.
District officials said they couldn't say with certainty how many of the 118 schools to be rated this year also failed to make "Adequate Yearly Progress" because the state has not yet released that data. Of 115 Austin schools evaluated last year, six failed to meet the federal standards.
The federal requirements are different from those under the state's accountability system and are based on TAKS participation and passing rates, as well as graduation and attendance rates. Austin missed targets because the district allowed too many special education students to take a modified or alternative version of the reading and math tests, based on federal standards.
Of the district's 85,697 students, 9.7 percent, were served by special education in 2010-11, including those with physical and learning disabilities, as well as emotional and behavioral disorders. Officials said of the 4,327 special education students who took the TAKS — 11.8 percent of test takers — 3,948 took a modified or alternative version of the reading and math tests. The other 379 special education students took the standard TAKS.
Though 83 percent of special education students passed the reading exams and 81 percent passed the math exams, which meets passing standards , the federal system counted about 1,000 of those students as failed. The federal system has a 3 percent cap on how many students can take a modified or alternative exam even if students qualify to take it. Modified tests include those in larger fonts or that offer fewer multiple choice options.
District officials said despite being over the limit, they are giving special education students tests consistent with their individual education plans and their disabilities.
"The bottom line is: You have to do what's right for the kids," said Bill Caritj , the district's chief performance officer. "You can't just give kids the regular TAKS test because it's convenient for you when it's not what's best for them.
"We're doing what's appropriate. We're giving them the correct instruction. We are giving them the correct tests, but we can't count them (as) successful because of the federal rule."
Despite missing the targets, district officials said they are pleased with the progress that special education students have made. Those students made gains in all areas that exceeded gains of students overall.
Graduation rates for special education students have increased for the second consecutive year, from 56.5 percent for the class of 2008 to 61.3 percent for the class of 2010. By comparison, overall graduation rates were 74.3 percent in 2008 and 78.6 percent for 2010.
Austin isn't alone in exceeding the federal special education cap. Houston data show that of 118,478 students tested this year in reading, 6 percent took a modified or alternative version of the test; of 118,610 students tested in math, 5.7 percent took a modified or alternative version .
Federal officials recognize problems with the system.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in June that if there are not changes to standards created by the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, 83 percent of all schools could be classified as failing next year because of tougher passing standards or other reasons. Still, it's unclear whether Congress will make any changes to the law.
Each time the Austin district missed the mark, students made the required progress, but the district exceeded the special education cap.
"We want to meet the needs of all kids, and a message of missing AYP gives the perception that we're not," school board President Mark Williams said. "We can't change the accountability rating for (2011), but we can say how we are going to change it to make it better going forward."
Austin serves a large number of special education students in part because the district has a reputation for having strong programs for those students, officials said.
"Our team does a really nice job. And in some ways, it attracts some people to the district to get those services," Williams said. "When that happens, you get a number higher than what the feds allow us to consider."
The goal is to prepare more of
those students to take the standard achievement exams.
The stakes are high. Districts that receive federal Title I funds and continually fail to miss the federal targets stand to come under stringent sanctions at failing schools , including firing teachers or having the Texas Education Agency or a charter operator take over the school.
mtaboada@statesman.com; 445-3620
Austin school district special education
2010-11 enrollment 85,697
Special education enrollment 8,349
Autistic 720
Orthopedically impaired 117
Other health impaired 1,045
Auditory impaired 71
Visually impaired 71
Deaf/blind 1
Mentally disabled 604
Emotionally disturbed 464
Learning disabled 3,582
Speech impaired 1,620
Traumatic brain injury 28
Noncategorical early childhood 26
Note:Students may have more than one diagnosis.
Source: Austin school district
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Obama Calls on University Research to Help Create Manufacturing Jobs
By Paul Basken | Chronicle of Higher Education
June 24, 2011
[Updated (3:45 p.m.) with coverage of the president's speech and comment from Eric E. Schmidt of Google.]
With the nation's economic concerns mounting, President Obama is again turning to its research universities for help.
In a speech Friday morning at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, the president announced a $500-million endeavor through which universities and companies will be asked to develop innovations in manufacturing with the goal of expanding domestic employment.
"American innovation has always been sparked by individual scientists and entrepreneurs, often at universities like Carnegie Mellon or Georgia Tech or Berkeley or Stanford," Mr. Obama said. "But a lot of companies don't invest in early ideas because it won't pay off right away. And that's where government can step in."
The idea is based on recommendations from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, an advisory group of scientists and engineers.
"Investing in manufacturing based on new technologies can provide high-quality, good-paying jobs for American workers," Eric S. Lander, a co-chairman of the advisory panel, said on Thursday in a briefing with reporters. Mr. Lander is director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, a biomedical research center in Cambridge, Mass., that is jointly run by Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.
Basic or Applied Research
The White House hasn't worked out all details of the effort, including the degree to which it will involve actual research versus commercialization of discoveries. Organizers have, however, identified some initial projects, including allocations of $100-million to develop new materials used in manufacturing and $70-million for robotics development.
Such work is similar to federally financed research already taking place on university campuses that is coordinated by the National Science Foundation, said Ron A. Bloom, assistant to the president for manufacturing policy. The new effort, however, is expected "to provide more focus and direction to this spending."
The total amount of money isn't guaranteed, with the $500-million coming both from money already included in the NSF budget and from future increases requested by the president, Mr. Bloom said.
The administration has invited six universities to join the effort, with more expected to participate later, he said. The initial six are Carnegie Mellon, the Georgia Institute of Technology, MIT, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
From Discovery to Commercialization
The University of Michigan's president, Mary Sue Coleman, said that while those six were probably chosen because of their expertise in manufacturing engineering, the project is especially important to her state, given the decline of its signature automotive industry.
Ms. Coleman, who joined President Obama for the announcement at Carnegie Mellon's National Robotics Engineering Center, said she hoped to emphasize to the president the importance of filling the financial gap between discovery and commercialization.
Ms. Coleman said that she planned to join President Obama for the announcement at Carnegie Mellon's National Robotics Engineering Center, and that she hoped to emphasize to the president the importance of filling the financial gap between discovery and commercialization.
In Michigan, she said, university researchers and companies already can get federal money to invent better ways of making products. The problem, she said, is in the development phase. For example, many small automotive-parts manufacturers don't have the $500,000 to $700,000 they typically need to apply an innovation on a commercial scale.
"I have talked to a number of our scientists, and they say this is a real hang-up," Ms. Coleman said.
And some economists point out the general difficulty of ensuring that greater spending on improving industrial technology will really create more jobs. Labor history in many fields, especially agriculture, has shown that innovation can often lead to machinery's replacing human workers, rather than creating new jobs, said James L. Butkiewicz, a professor of economics at the University of Delaware.
In that regard, universities could be especially important, Mr. Butkiewicz said. That's because manufacturing innovations discovered at universities often center on improving products, which can increase sales and thereby boost employment, he said. Companies, by contrast, might be more focused on improving the efficiency of their manufacturing methods. It will be difficult to judge how well President Obama's new effort will succeed in that regard until more specifics are known, he said.
Creating Jobs
Mr. Obama has repeatedly emphasized the importance he places on universities in preparing American workers for a more-competitive future, in which job success is increasingly tied to educational achievement. At separate events earlier this month, he touted business partnerships with community colleges as a means of helping American workers find new manufacturing jobs, and outlined plans to help train 10,000 new engineers a year.
The president planned the trip to Pittsburgh among growing signs—including stagnant hiring rates, high gas prices, and financial troubles in Europe—that the economic worries of the past five years will continue.
University and company officials leading the president's advisory committee said they were confident the $500-million effort would lead to substantial domestic job production, though they said they could not offer any estimates of how much.
One member of the presidential advisory panel, Eric E. Schmidt, executive chairman of the technology company Google, said some technological improvements could cost American jobs. But over all, Mr. Schmidt said, university-driven improvements in manufacturing technology would undoubtedly help employment.
"Given that the world is moving to more sophisticated and more complex products, wages and growth go to the people who master that," Mr. Schmidt said after the president's announcement. "And ultimately you have two choices: You can basically decide that you're going to invest in the way that we're describing, and build these industries in America, or you can permanently give them up to somebody else. And it's pretty obvious I think to all of us that strategically these are the jobs that America wants and here is a mechanism to get them."
The White House, as part of its announcement, said Mr. Obama would be asking his National Economic Council and his Office of Science and Technology Policy to help develop specific strategies for the endeavor.
The recommendations from the advisory panel led by Mr. Lander included an expansion of federal investment in shared facilities, such as federal and university laboratories, that small and medium-size companies could use to develop new products.
The panel's recommendations also included encouraging a new level of partnerships between industry and academe to identify emerging technologies—such as small-scale flexible electronics and advanced materials—that could be especially valuable in helping the American manufacturing sector to grow.
June 24, 2011
[Updated (3:45 p.m.) with coverage of the president's speech and comment from Eric E. Schmidt of Google.]
With the nation's economic concerns mounting, President Obama is again turning to its research universities for help.
In a speech Friday morning at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, the president announced a $500-million endeavor through which universities and companies will be asked to develop innovations in manufacturing with the goal of expanding domestic employment.
"American innovation has always been sparked by individual scientists and entrepreneurs, often at universities like Carnegie Mellon or Georgia Tech or Berkeley or Stanford," Mr. Obama said. "But a lot of companies don't invest in early ideas because it won't pay off right away. And that's where government can step in."
The idea is based on recommendations from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, an advisory group of scientists and engineers.
"Investing in manufacturing based on new technologies can provide high-quality, good-paying jobs for American workers," Eric S. Lander, a co-chairman of the advisory panel, said on Thursday in a briefing with reporters. Mr. Lander is director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, a biomedical research center in Cambridge, Mass., that is jointly run by Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.
Basic or Applied Research
The White House hasn't worked out all details of the effort, including the degree to which it will involve actual research versus commercialization of discoveries. Organizers have, however, identified some initial projects, including allocations of $100-million to develop new materials used in manufacturing and $70-million for robotics development.
Such work is similar to federally financed research already taking place on university campuses that is coordinated by the National Science Foundation, said Ron A. Bloom, assistant to the president for manufacturing policy. The new effort, however, is expected "to provide more focus and direction to this spending."
The total amount of money isn't guaranteed, with the $500-million coming both from money already included in the NSF budget and from future increases requested by the president, Mr. Bloom said.
The administration has invited six universities to join the effort, with more expected to participate later, he said. The initial six are Carnegie Mellon, the Georgia Institute of Technology, MIT, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
From Discovery to Commercialization
The University of Michigan's president, Mary Sue Coleman, said that while those six were probably chosen because of their expertise in manufacturing engineering, the project is especially important to her state, given the decline of its signature automotive industry.
Ms. Coleman, who joined President Obama for the announcement at Carnegie Mellon's National Robotics Engineering Center, said she hoped to emphasize to the president the importance of filling the financial gap between discovery and commercialization.
Ms. Coleman said that she planned to join President Obama for the announcement at Carnegie Mellon's National Robotics Engineering Center, and that she hoped to emphasize to the president the importance of filling the financial gap between discovery and commercialization.
In Michigan, she said, university researchers and companies already can get federal money to invent better ways of making products. The problem, she said, is in the development phase. For example, many small automotive-parts manufacturers don't have the $500,000 to $700,000 they typically need to apply an innovation on a commercial scale.
"I have talked to a number of our scientists, and they say this is a real hang-up," Ms. Coleman said.
And some economists point out the general difficulty of ensuring that greater spending on improving industrial technology will really create more jobs. Labor history in many fields, especially agriculture, has shown that innovation can often lead to machinery's replacing human workers, rather than creating new jobs, said James L. Butkiewicz, a professor of economics at the University of Delaware.
In that regard, universities could be especially important, Mr. Butkiewicz said. That's because manufacturing innovations discovered at universities often center on improving products, which can increase sales and thereby boost employment, he said. Companies, by contrast, might be more focused on improving the efficiency of their manufacturing methods. It will be difficult to judge how well President Obama's new effort will succeed in that regard until more specifics are known, he said.
Creating Jobs
Mr. Obama has repeatedly emphasized the importance he places on universities in preparing American workers for a more-competitive future, in which job success is increasingly tied to educational achievement. At separate events earlier this month, he touted business partnerships with community colleges as a means of helping American workers find new manufacturing jobs, and outlined plans to help train 10,000 new engineers a year.
The president planned the trip to Pittsburgh among growing signs—including stagnant hiring rates, high gas prices, and financial troubles in Europe—that the economic worries of the past five years will continue.
University and company officials leading the president's advisory committee said they were confident the $500-million effort would lead to substantial domestic job production, though they said they could not offer any estimates of how much.
One member of the presidential advisory panel, Eric E. Schmidt, executive chairman of the technology company Google, said some technological improvements could cost American jobs. But over all, Mr. Schmidt said, university-driven improvements in manufacturing technology would undoubtedly help employment.
"Given that the world is moving to more sophisticated and more complex products, wages and growth go to the people who master that," Mr. Schmidt said after the president's announcement. "And ultimately you have two choices: You can basically decide that you're going to invest in the way that we're describing, and build these industries in America, or you can permanently give them up to somebody else. And it's pretty obvious I think to all of us that strategically these are the jobs that America wants and here is a mechanism to get them."
The White House, as part of its announcement, said Mr. Obama would be asking his National Economic Council and his Office of Science and Technology Policy to help develop specific strategies for the endeavor.
The recommendations from the advisory panel led by Mr. Lander included an expansion of federal investment in shared facilities, such as federal and university laboratories, that small and medium-size companies could use to develop new products.
The panel's recommendations also included encouraging a new level of partnerships between industry and academe to identify emerging technologies—such as small-scale flexible electronics and advanced materials—that could be especially valuable in helping the American manufacturing sector to grow.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Mixed News on State Student Aid
Doug Lederman | Insider Higher Ed
July 11, 2011
State spending on financial assistance to students increased by 3.8 percent in 2009-10, even as many governments struggled with recession-driven cuts in many programs. But nearly half of all states cut back on their all-important spending on need-based financial aid, even as enrollments boomed and as many students and families struggled to keep pace with tuitions that public colleges (or their legislatures) raised sharply.
Those are among the key findings of the annual report on state financial aid spending by the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs, released today.
In all, states raised their spending on student financial assistance of various types -- need-based and non-need-based grants, and nongrant aid -- to $10.8 billion in 2009-10, up about 3.8 percent from $10.4 billion in 2008-9.
In a break from recent trends, state spending on aid based purely on students' financial need grew at a faster pace than did other kinds of aid. States spent $6.444 billion on need-based aid in 2009-10, 4.6 percent more than the $6.16 billion they awarded in 2008-9. (Aid awarded at least in part on non-need-based factors grew by 1.2 percent in 2009-10, but over a five-year period, merit-based aid has grown at a 36.7 percent clip, compared to 31.3 percent for need-based aid. The gap widens even more examined over a decade, with states raising their spending on merit-based aid by 162 percent since 1999, compared to 99.8 percent for need-based grants.)
But the 2009-10 growth in need-based aid was uneven, revealing significant differences in how states weathered the first full year of the downturn and how much they prioritized student financial aid as they allocated their constrained funds. Slightly more than half the states bolstered their need-based-grant spending -- with states such as California, New York and Pennsylvania among the 10 that did so in double digit percentages. In some of those states, though, tuition rose much more sharply; California's two public college systems raised their tuitions by more than 30 percent in 2009.
Others, however, responded to the rush of students returning to college in the downturn by curtailing their financial aid awards. Ohio slashed its spending on need-based aid by two-thirds (from $225 million in 2008-9 to $76.3 million in 2009-10), and Michigan cut its in half (as did Alaska, but from very little -- $1.97 million -- to virtually nothing).
State Spending on Student Financial Aid, 2009-10 (in millions)
[Click to view full table]
Source: National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs
Those are among the key findings of the annual report on state financial aid spending by the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs, released today.
In all, states raised their spending on student financial assistance of various types -- need-based and non-need-based grants, and nongrant aid -- to $10.8 billion in 2009-10, up about 3.8 percent from $10.4 billion in 2008-9.
In a break from recent trends, state spending on aid based purely on students' financial need grew at a faster pace than did other kinds of aid. States spent $6.444 billion on need-based aid in 2009-10, 4.6 percent more than the $6.16 billion they awarded in 2008-9. (Aid awarded at least in part on non-need-based factors grew by 1.2 percent in 2009-10, but over a five-year period, merit-based aid has grown at a 36.7 percent clip, compared to 31.3 percent for need-based aid. The gap widens even more examined over a decade, with states raising their spending on merit-based aid by 162 percent since 1999, compared to 99.8 percent for need-based grants.)
But the 2009-10 growth in need-based aid was uneven, revealing significant differences in how states weathered the first full year of the downturn and how much they prioritized student financial aid as they allocated their constrained funds. Slightly more than half the states bolstered their need-based-grant spending -- with states such as California, New York and Pennsylvania among the 10 that did so in double digit percentages. In some of those states, though, tuition rose much more sharply; California's two public college systems raised their tuitions by more than 30 percent in 2009.
Others, however, responded to the rush of students returning to college in the downturn by curtailing their financial aid awards. Ohio slashed its spending on need-based aid by two-thirds (from $225 million in 2008-9 to $76.3 million in 2009-10), and Michigan cut its in half (as did Alaska, but from very little -- $1.97 million -- to virtually nothing).
State Spending on Student Financial Aid, 2009-10 (in millions)
[Click to view full table]
Source: National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs
Plan to Restructure British Higher Ed
Here's access to the full report, Students at the Heart of the System Consulting on the future of Higher Education
-Patricia
John Morgan and Simon Baker, Times Higher Education | Inside Higher Ed
June 29, 2011
LONDON -- The British government released its long-awaited "white paper" on the future of higher education, offering a sweeping set of proposals that would produce dramatic changes in how the country would educate students and fund institutions.
Under the plan, for example, a quarter of all student places are to be open to full competition in 2012-13, in a government bid to force higher education institutions to vie for the brightest and best applicants at one end of the sector, and to compete on price at the other. And for-profit providers of higher education would be given full access to the student loan system on condition that they agree to follow the same rules on standards, quality and fair access as publicly funded institutions.
The reform plan released by British government's Department for Business Innovation and Skills says that in the first year of the new funding regime, around 65,000 high-achieving students will be able to go to whichever university will have them. This represents a change from the present strict controls on the number of students each university can accept. It raises the prospect of some elite institutions expanding their intake to vacuum up more top students.
The government’s aim is to ensure that students with very high grades -- AAB or above -- on the country's college entrance exams will have a better chance of reaching their first choice of university.
The white paper has also set out plans to make a further 20,000 student places contestable in a different way, allowing institutions that charge tuition fees of less than £7,500 to bid for them on the basis of “quality, value for money and student demand.”
These institutions could include not only further education colleges (roughly equivalent to American community and technical colleges), but also private providers, with the government taking steps to ensure that such institutions are operating on a more “level playing field” (see below).
Taken together, the government expects the changes to make a total of 85,000 student places open to competition between institutions -- around one in four of the total number. It has indicated that this proportion may increase over time.
However, this new contestability will sit within an overall cap on the total number of student places in the sector. Consequently if some elite institutions expand their intake, it will be at the expense of others, which will necessarily have to shrink.
It also means that highly selective institutions, such as those in the 1994 and Russell Groups (consortiums of elite universities), will have to compete for a large proportion of their students, many of whom already achieve AAB or above on the "A level" exams.
Speaking to Times Higher Education, David Willetts, the government's universities and science minister, said the aim was to "dynamize the [British higher education] system."
“It’s a very fine judgment we’ve had to reach," he said. "On the one hand I was very keen … not to break down the old quota system, [but] we wanted something that was more open and liberal. On the other hand, there’s quite a lot of change happening in 2012, and the last thing I want is a kind of change so disruptive that our universities can’t handle it.
“We think that these two proposals, adding up to 85,000 places, get the balance about right. And then, after we’ve seen how it works in the first year, we aim gradually to increase that.”
Willetts denied that the government’s aim was to create an elite set of institutions in which all the top-achieving students were concentrated.
“I’m not trying to plan the system. The whole point about this is we’re taking some steps back and it will be the choices of students and the reaction of institutions – I have no view on that,” he said.
He argued that with funding following the student, and universities and colleges forced to compete for those students, the quality of teaching and learning, and the student experience, would rise.
“We’ve got very strong incentives to reward research, and the intense competition through the [research excellence framework] and research councils has yielded an incredibly strong research [base]. We haven’t had comparable incentives on teaching,” he said.
Expanded Role for For-Profit Providers
In addition to changing how students compete for spaces in British universities, the White Paper would shake up the regulatory regime governing higher education in the country. All providers, including those with for-profit status, would be subject to the same oversight if they have loan-funded students.
The new regime is likely to include a transformed, but not renamed, Higher Education Funding Council for England, which would become a “consumer champion” with beefed-up powers to act on concerns raised by other bodies such as the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, which is designed to regulate institutional quality and student qualifications.
Meanwhile, the QAA would move toward a more “risk-based” approach to inspection that makes it easier for student complaints to trigger an audit, as well as reducing the burden for universities with a good track record.
Willetts, the universities and science minister, said the “conceptual shift” was that the whole framework of regulation needed to focus on “the student in receipt of the loan, rather than a group of institutions in receipt of [a government] grant.”
He said: “You have to think of a regulator protecting students as consumers, ensuring they have access to what is still a very significant amount of public money and being clear about what happens in return.”
There are no plans to create a single “super quango” to regulate the sector -- as proposed in another government review released last fall -- but Willetts envisaged that the government funding agency could ultimately have the power to stop institutions accessing the student loan system if they run foul of the rules.
“I would say that [HEFCE’s] powers will be linked ultimately to whether it will [allow money to be loaned] to students to pay the fees to go to institutions.
“Some of the conditions that are currently attached to [teaching] grants -- in a modernized, light-touch way -- will be attached to eligibility to student support,” he said.
There are also proposals to allow the Office for Fair Access to impose new fines if a university or other provider fails to keep to agreements on helping poorer students.
Meanwhile, the white paper says the government will look at the rules governing degree-awarding powers and university title, which could make it easier for companies, further education colleges and providers from overseas to enter the market. On university title, the government aims to look at the rules specifying how many students an institution must have before applying for use of the term.
With degree-awarding powers, there are proposals to remove the barriers that can prevent non-teaching institutions such as examining boards from offering degrees that can then be taught by institutions such as further education colleges.
-Patricia
John Morgan and Simon Baker, Times Higher Education | Inside Higher Ed
June 29, 2011
LONDON -- The British government released its long-awaited "white paper" on the future of higher education, offering a sweeping set of proposals that would produce dramatic changes in how the country would educate students and fund institutions.
Under the plan, for example, a quarter of all student places are to be open to full competition in 2012-13, in a government bid to force higher education institutions to vie for the brightest and best applicants at one end of the sector, and to compete on price at the other. And for-profit providers of higher education would be given full access to the student loan system on condition that they agree to follow the same rules on standards, quality and fair access as publicly funded institutions.
The reform plan released by British government's Department for Business Innovation and Skills says that in the first year of the new funding regime, around 65,000 high-achieving students will be able to go to whichever university will have them. This represents a change from the present strict controls on the number of students each university can accept. It raises the prospect of some elite institutions expanding their intake to vacuum up more top students.
The government’s aim is to ensure that students with very high grades -- AAB or above -- on the country's college entrance exams will have a better chance of reaching their first choice of university.
The white paper has also set out plans to make a further 20,000 student places contestable in a different way, allowing institutions that charge tuition fees of less than £7,500 to bid for them on the basis of “quality, value for money and student demand.”
These institutions could include not only further education colleges (roughly equivalent to American community and technical colleges), but also private providers, with the government taking steps to ensure that such institutions are operating on a more “level playing field” (see below).
Taken together, the government expects the changes to make a total of 85,000 student places open to competition between institutions -- around one in four of the total number. It has indicated that this proportion may increase over time.
However, this new contestability will sit within an overall cap on the total number of student places in the sector. Consequently if some elite institutions expand their intake, it will be at the expense of others, which will necessarily have to shrink.
It also means that highly selective institutions, such as those in the 1994 and Russell Groups (consortiums of elite universities), will have to compete for a large proportion of their students, many of whom already achieve AAB or above on the "A level" exams.
Speaking to Times Higher Education, David Willetts, the government's universities and science minister, said the aim was to "dynamize the [British higher education] system."
“It’s a very fine judgment we’ve had to reach," he said. "On the one hand I was very keen … not to break down the old quota system, [but] we wanted something that was more open and liberal. On the other hand, there’s quite a lot of change happening in 2012, and the last thing I want is a kind of change so disruptive that our universities can’t handle it.
“We think that these two proposals, adding up to 85,000 places, get the balance about right. And then, after we’ve seen how it works in the first year, we aim gradually to increase that.”
Willetts denied that the government’s aim was to create an elite set of institutions in which all the top-achieving students were concentrated.
“I’m not trying to plan the system. The whole point about this is we’re taking some steps back and it will be the choices of students and the reaction of institutions – I have no view on that,” he said.
He argued that with funding following the student, and universities and colleges forced to compete for those students, the quality of teaching and learning, and the student experience, would rise.
“We’ve got very strong incentives to reward research, and the intense competition through the [research excellence framework] and research councils has yielded an incredibly strong research [base]. We haven’t had comparable incentives on teaching,” he said.
Expanded Role for For-Profit Providers
In addition to changing how students compete for spaces in British universities, the White Paper would shake up the regulatory regime governing higher education in the country. All providers, including those with for-profit status, would be subject to the same oversight if they have loan-funded students.
The new regime is likely to include a transformed, but not renamed, Higher Education Funding Council for England, which would become a “consumer champion” with beefed-up powers to act on concerns raised by other bodies such as the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, which is designed to regulate institutional quality and student qualifications.
Meanwhile, the QAA would move toward a more “risk-based” approach to inspection that makes it easier for student complaints to trigger an audit, as well as reducing the burden for universities with a good track record.
Willetts, the universities and science minister, said the “conceptual shift” was that the whole framework of regulation needed to focus on “the student in receipt of the loan, rather than a group of institutions in receipt of [a government] grant.”
He said: “You have to think of a regulator protecting students as consumers, ensuring they have access to what is still a very significant amount of public money and being clear about what happens in return.”
There are no plans to create a single “super quango” to regulate the sector -- as proposed in another government review released last fall -- but Willetts envisaged that the government funding agency could ultimately have the power to stop institutions accessing the student loan system if they run foul of the rules.
“I would say that [HEFCE’s] powers will be linked ultimately to whether it will [allow money to be loaned] to students to pay the fees to go to institutions.
“Some of the conditions that are currently attached to [teaching] grants -- in a modernized, light-touch way -- will be attached to eligibility to student support,” he said.
There are also proposals to allow the Office for Fair Access to impose new fines if a university or other provider fails to keep to agreements on helping poorer students.
Meanwhile, the white paper says the government will look at the rules governing degree-awarding powers and university title, which could make it easier for companies, further education colleges and providers from overseas to enter the market. On university title, the government aims to look at the rules specifying how many students an institution must have before applying for use of the term.
With degree-awarding powers, there are proposals to remove the barriers that can prevent non-teaching institutions such as examining boards from offering degrees that can then be taught by institutions such as further education colleges.
The Case for More College Grads
Doug Lederman | Inside Higher Ed
June 27, 2011
Anthony P. Carnevale and his Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce have released another report aimed at making the case that the United States needs 20 million more college-educated workers by 2025.
The work of Carnevale and other economists reinforces -- and in many ways has influenced -- the Obama administration's push to have the United States return to the top of international rankings of countries with the largest proportions of citizens with college credentials.
That campaign has been threatened by the country's economic woes, which have forced the federal and state governments to impose or consider cuts in spending on higher education and student aid, and by ever-rising tuitions that have pushed college out of reach for more students and families. The administration's policy approach has also been challenged increasingly by skeptical commentators and policy analysts (many on the right, but some on the left), who cite the large numbers of unemployed bachelor's degree recipients now to question the historical assertion that education is the key to economic success, for individuals and nations.
In their new report, "The Undereducated American," Carnevale and his co-author, Stephen J. Rose, acknowledge that "with many college graduates unsuccessful in finding work in the current economic climate, the temptation to reject postsecondary education as a viable economic option grows stronger, especially among working families for whom college costs are always a stretch." But they aim to use historical data to show that the analysts (and parents of recent graduates who may feel that way) are engaged in short-term thinking.
At its simplest, their argument goes like this: Up until about 1980, the United States produced college graduates (at the bachelor's degree level, with some associate degrees mixed in) roughly in proportion to the demands of employers. But beginning around then, and accelerating around 1990 (as the number of retiring workers grew and the academic credentials of those replacing them began to ebb), the report shows, the rate of increase in the number of college-educated workers slowed, to 2.0 percent from 1990 to 2000 and 1.0 percent from 2000 to 2010.
As it did so, it failed to keep pace with employers' demand for skilled workers, which grew at a 3.6 percent clip through 2005.
The gap between supply and demand drove up what employers were willing to pay for college-educated workers, Carnevale and Rose assert, creating an ever-rising "wage premium" -- the gap between what college graduates and high school graduates earn. College graduates earn 74 percent more than do high school graduates today -- a gap that is up from 40 percent in 1980. That wage premium is one of several factors driving income inequality in the United States.
If trends stay on their current course, Carnevale and Rose argue, with the number of college-educated Americans growing by 1 percent a year, the country will produce eight million more postsecondary-educated Americans by 2025, pushing the wage premium up to 96 percent.
Instead, the scholars assert, the country needs to propel the college-going rates so that the rate of educated workers grows by 2.6 percent a year instead, which would mean adding a total of 20 million (instead of 8 million) -- 15 million with a bachelor's degree, and 5.3 million with associate degrees or certificates of various sorts. That would not only allow the wage premium to shrink to 46 percent, much closer to what it was in 1980, but increase the gross domestic product by about $500 billion over what it would be without those better-educated, higher-earning workers.
Achieving such a goal is "not beyond our capacity" -- but it will be difficult, Carnevale said in an interview about the report Sunday.
There are two main ways to increase college going rates, he said -- with additional money for students and/or institutions, or increased efficiency in the higher education system.
With states cutting back on their fiscal support for institutions, and the push for deficit reduction likely to compel limitations, if not cutbacks, in spending on Pell Grants and other student aid, significant new investment in higher education is unlikely unless or until politicians agree on some combination of increased taxes and spending reductions to reduce the deficit.
Both are probably necessary over the next several years, Carnevale said, with changes to Medicare at the core. "There is no little green pill for our budget problems."
Higher education has not historically been inclined to look for efficiency, but it is likely that "as money slims down, there will be kicking and screaming, and higher ed will move toward efficiencies," he said.
If not, he said, "individuals are going to lose massive amounts of opportunity, and the economy will lose" much-needed revenue. "There is a problem here."
Andrew Gillen of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, which has produced several critiques of Carnevale's analysis in the past, questioned the report's assertion that college attainment itself drives economic growth.
"Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann have numerous studies showing that it is not attainment that boosts growth, but [instead] increases in cognitive skills," he said via e-mail. "In other words, increasing college attainment will only boost growth if it increases cognitive skills, and recent research (such as Academically Adrift) calls into question how much college boosts cognitive skills. The main takeaway is that if you are worried about growth, the focus should be on quality rather than quantity."
June 27, 2011
Anthony P. Carnevale and his Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce have released another report aimed at making the case that the United States needs 20 million more college-educated workers by 2025.
The work of Carnevale and other economists reinforces -- and in many ways has influenced -- the Obama administration's push to have the United States return to the top of international rankings of countries with the largest proportions of citizens with college credentials.
That campaign has been threatened by the country's economic woes, which have forced the federal and state governments to impose or consider cuts in spending on higher education and student aid, and by ever-rising tuitions that have pushed college out of reach for more students and families. The administration's policy approach has also been challenged increasingly by skeptical commentators and policy analysts (many on the right, but some on the left), who cite the large numbers of unemployed bachelor's degree recipients now to question the historical assertion that education is the key to economic success, for individuals and nations.
In their new report, "The Undereducated American," Carnevale and his co-author, Stephen J. Rose, acknowledge that "with many college graduates unsuccessful in finding work in the current economic climate, the temptation to reject postsecondary education as a viable economic option grows stronger, especially among working families for whom college costs are always a stretch." But they aim to use historical data to show that the analysts (and parents of recent graduates who may feel that way) are engaged in short-term thinking.
At its simplest, their argument goes like this: Up until about 1980, the United States produced college graduates (at the bachelor's degree level, with some associate degrees mixed in) roughly in proportion to the demands of employers. But beginning around then, and accelerating around 1990 (as the number of retiring workers grew and the academic credentials of those replacing them began to ebb), the report shows, the rate of increase in the number of college-educated workers slowed, to 2.0 percent from 1990 to 2000 and 1.0 percent from 2000 to 2010.
As it did so, it failed to keep pace with employers' demand for skilled workers, which grew at a 3.6 percent clip through 2005.
The gap between supply and demand drove up what employers were willing to pay for college-educated workers, Carnevale and Rose assert, creating an ever-rising "wage premium" -- the gap between what college graduates and high school graduates earn. College graduates earn 74 percent more than do high school graduates today -- a gap that is up from 40 percent in 1980. That wage premium is one of several factors driving income inequality in the United States.
If trends stay on their current course, Carnevale and Rose argue, with the number of college-educated Americans growing by 1 percent a year, the country will produce eight million more postsecondary-educated Americans by 2025, pushing the wage premium up to 96 percent.
Instead, the scholars assert, the country needs to propel the college-going rates so that the rate of educated workers grows by 2.6 percent a year instead, which would mean adding a total of 20 million (instead of 8 million) -- 15 million with a bachelor's degree, and 5.3 million with associate degrees or certificates of various sorts. That would not only allow the wage premium to shrink to 46 percent, much closer to what it was in 1980, but increase the gross domestic product by about $500 billion over what it would be without those better-educated, higher-earning workers.
Achieving such a goal is "not beyond our capacity" -- but it will be difficult, Carnevale said in an interview about the report Sunday.
There are two main ways to increase college going rates, he said -- with additional money for students and/or institutions, or increased efficiency in the higher education system.
With states cutting back on their fiscal support for institutions, and the push for deficit reduction likely to compel limitations, if not cutbacks, in spending on Pell Grants and other student aid, significant new investment in higher education is unlikely unless or until politicians agree on some combination of increased taxes and spending reductions to reduce the deficit.
Both are probably necessary over the next several years, Carnevale said, with changes to Medicare at the core. "There is no little green pill for our budget problems."
Higher education has not historically been inclined to look for efficiency, but it is likely that "as money slims down, there will be kicking and screaming, and higher ed will move toward efficiencies," he said.
If not, he said, "individuals are going to lose massive amounts of opportunity, and the economy will lose" much-needed revenue. "There is a problem here."
Andrew Gillen of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, which has produced several critiques of Carnevale's analysis in the past, questioned the report's assertion that college attainment itself drives economic growth.
"Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann have numerous studies showing that it is not attainment that boosts growth, but [instead] increases in cognitive skills," he said via e-mail. "In other words, increasing college attainment will only boost growth if it increases cognitive skills, and recent research (such as Academically Adrift) calls into question how much college boosts cognitive skills. The main takeaway is that if you are worried about growth, the focus should be on quality rather than quantity."
Highly rated instructors go beyond teaching to the standardized test
Some Southern California teachers are finding ways to keep creativity in the lesson plan even as they prepare their students for standardized tests.
By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times
July 11, 2011
Even as the annual state testing season bore down on her this spring, fourth-grade teacher Jin Yi barely bothered with test prep materials. The Hobart Boulevard Elementary School teacher used to spend weeks with practice tests but found they bored her students.
Instead, she engages them with hands-on lessons, such as measuring their arms and comparing that data to solve above-grade-level subtraction problems.
"I used to spend time on test prep because I felt pressured to do it," said Yi, who attended Hobart in Koreatown herself and returned a decade ago to teach. "But I think it's kind of a waste of time. The students get bored and don't take it seriously and it defeats the purpose."
Yi's approach seems to work: She is rated "highly effective" in a value-added analysis by The Times based on her students' standardized test scores in English and math. She also ranks among the Los Angeles Unified School District's top 100 third-, fourth- and fifth-grade teachers in English in that analysis.
Who says students need "drill and kill" exercises to raise their test scores?
The pressure to improve student test performance in California and across the country often meets with disdain from teachers who say they are compelled to throw out creativity and "teach to the test." The phrase is usually code for teachers who are forced to abandon creativity and focus exclusively on areas tested — reading, writing and math. That, critics say, shortchanges students of such other important subjects as art, history and even science in some grades.
A.J. Duffy, former president of United Teachers Los Angeles, for instance, dismisses the weeks before spring testing as "Bubbling-In 101," a reference to class time spent teaching students how to select correct answers.
Visits with Yi and other successful teachers around Los Angeles County, however, suggest that innovative teaching and rich classroom experiences need not be sacrificed in the quest for better test scores. But it's not easy to have it all. Several teachers interviewed said they spend hours of extra planning time and hundreds of dollars to create more interesting lessons. They say they must be supremely organized and strict enforcers of classroom rules. And some quietly skirt official district schedules to run with their own approaches.
Next door to Yi, Hobart fifth-grade teacher Rafe Esquith has cut down L.A. Unified's prescribed reading program from three hours a day to 75 minutes, saying his students can work on reading comprehension, vocabulary and other skills through other subjects. That opens up time to learn physics by building model roller coasters and rockets and to grasp history with Ken Burns documentaries. His students work on long-term art projects, perform Shakespeare and learn musical instruments.
"To teach all of the lessons they want us to teach using the official district schedule is impossible — it can't be done," said Esquith, who is rated "highly effective" by the Times and has won numerous national teaching awards. "Teachers have to finagle the schedule."
Esquith and Yi also bemoaned the increasing focus on testing and sympathized with frustrated colleagues.
At Los Angeles Elementary School in the Pico-Union neighborhood, fourth-grade teacher Maria Duarte lamented the loss of time to teach science — her favorite subject and one that she said most interests her students. Over the years, the time for that subject has dropped from 2.5 days a week to 1.5 days a week in favor of language arts and math. One casualty was a popular experiment growing radishes that Duarte said taught critical thinking and research skills.
Duarte was also rated highly effective in the Times analysis. Under value-added, a student's past test performance is compared with his or her current progress to measure whether teachers added — or subtracted — value to their students' academic growth.
"Painfully, I decided I had to let that go," Duarte said of the experiment. "There's just not enough time — or we need to think of better ways to use our time."
In Monterey Park, eighth-grade teacher Janice Pirolo said she no longer has time to delve deeply into the curriculum or stray much from it. When she does, she falls behind.
When her school, Monterey Highlands, received funding to visit the Japanese American National Museum, Pirolo prepared her students by teaching them about the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. She also spent time on Martin Luther King Jr. before the national holiday named for the civil rights leader .
But none of that is part of eighth-grade social studies standards, and Pirolo fell behind. For a month before the testing in May, she abandoned the textbook entirely to focus exclusively on test prep. As a result, she got through only the textbook's fourth chapter by year's end.
"We have stopped reading the textbook, sadly … but you live and die by the test," said Pirolo, a 34-year veteran who teaches social studies and language arts.
The nation's enhanced focus on testing began under the 2001 No Child Left Behind federal education law, which attempted to hold school districts accountable for student progress through mandatory annual tests. The law, which is under review in Congress, requires that by 2014 all students meet 100% proficiency levels in math and English — a target no one expects schools to meet.
Many educators see an upside to the national focus on student achievement, as measured by test scores, and have unapologetically instilled intensive preparatory programs. Alvarado Intermediate School in Rowland Heights conducts a concentrated test-prep program before the state exams, using assessment data to identify students who need to strengthen specific skills. The sessions are held after school to preserve electives, such as computers, art and music. Attendance is mandatory, with detention for those who miss and prizes for those who participate.
Principal Ying Tsao said she supported the move toward state standards and regular assessments. In earlier times, she said, teachers might skew toward language arts, say, while ignoring math.
Bruce Clark, Los Angeles Elementary principal, said testing has robbed educators of some flexibility, but he said the benefits of higher student achievement are worth it.
Not that there's no time for fun. Clark sheepishly said he "sold out" and held pep rallies to excite his students about the tests. Duarte motivates her students with a party and movie, bringing in treats to entice them to do well. Monterey Highlands has "March Math Madness" every year to pump up students with math-related scavenger hunts and "problem of the week" contests. To kick off the testing this year, Principal Joe Cash donned an apron and chef's hat to serve pancakes at a school breakfast — while asking math questions(How many pancakes does Johnny eat if he gets two pancakes each of the three times he comes up?).
Los Angeles Elementary aims to avoid last-minute cramming by requiring 15-minute skills sessions at the start of the day throughout the year, featuring questions similar to those on the state test. Duarte prepares her students at the beginning of the year with intense work on Greek and Roman roots of words and multiple-meaning words — areas of student weakness identified by testing data.
A different model is the UCLA Community School, a pilot school launched last year by the university and L.A. Unified in Koreatown. Teachers there are free to develop their own assessments. Kate Beaudet uses an individualized reading test that she said is more sophisticated, allowing her to pinpoint a child's actual reading level and areas of weakness.
Beaudet and two colleagues, who joined the staff from other L.A. Unified schools, said district testing requirements had taken weeks of instructional time, skewed teaching toward what was tested and led many teachers to rely heavily on worksheets.
"Teachers only want to teach reading, writing and math, because that's what's assessed," said Beaudet, who teaches a second-and-third-grade class.
To prepare for state exams, Beaudet incorporated practice questions into work she did all year with literary genres, a third-grade reading standard. Using a test reading passage from an African folk tale, she read the book with her students and helped them analyze the elements and write their own test questions — which both conveyed needed skills and boosted their confidence, she said.
At Hobart, Yi figures she has spent up to $1,000 a year designing more creative lessons than those offered by L.A. Unified. The district's fourth-grade reader presents only one chapter of "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH," C so Yi bought copies of the whole book to enable her students to read the entire story. She also bought materials so students could make stuffed rats.
Meanwhile, the project helped Yi's students practice a state standard: to read a set of directions and answer questions about them. She also wrote related vocabulary and comprehension questions. And Yi said that being able to read entire books has instilled in many a love of literature.
Not all teachers are willing to go to such lengths. Some of her colleagues have simply used test prep books all year, Yi said. But that's not for her.
"I enjoy challenging myself to think of better, different and fun ways to teach," she said. "I love to see the light of learning go on."
By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times
July 11, 2011
Even as the annual state testing season bore down on her this spring, fourth-grade teacher Jin Yi barely bothered with test prep materials. The Hobart Boulevard Elementary School teacher used to spend weeks with practice tests but found they bored her students.
Instead, she engages them with hands-on lessons, such as measuring their arms and comparing that data to solve above-grade-level subtraction problems.
"I used to spend time on test prep because I felt pressured to do it," said Yi, who attended Hobart in Koreatown herself and returned a decade ago to teach. "But I think it's kind of a waste of time. The students get bored and don't take it seriously and it defeats the purpose."
Yi's approach seems to work: She is rated "highly effective" in a value-added analysis by The Times based on her students' standardized test scores in English and math. She also ranks among the Los Angeles Unified School District's top 100 third-, fourth- and fifth-grade teachers in English in that analysis.
Who says students need "drill and kill" exercises to raise their test scores?
The pressure to improve student test performance in California and across the country often meets with disdain from teachers who say they are compelled to throw out creativity and "teach to the test." The phrase is usually code for teachers who are forced to abandon creativity and focus exclusively on areas tested — reading, writing and math. That, critics say, shortchanges students of such other important subjects as art, history and even science in some grades.
A.J. Duffy, former president of United Teachers Los Angeles, for instance, dismisses the weeks before spring testing as "Bubbling-In 101," a reference to class time spent teaching students how to select correct answers.
Visits with Yi and other successful teachers around Los Angeles County, however, suggest that innovative teaching and rich classroom experiences need not be sacrificed in the quest for better test scores. But it's not easy to have it all. Several teachers interviewed said they spend hours of extra planning time and hundreds of dollars to create more interesting lessons. They say they must be supremely organized and strict enforcers of classroom rules. And some quietly skirt official district schedules to run with their own approaches.
Next door to Yi, Hobart fifth-grade teacher Rafe Esquith has cut down L.A. Unified's prescribed reading program from three hours a day to 75 minutes, saying his students can work on reading comprehension, vocabulary and other skills through other subjects. That opens up time to learn physics by building model roller coasters and rockets and to grasp history with Ken Burns documentaries. His students work on long-term art projects, perform Shakespeare and learn musical instruments.
"To teach all of the lessons they want us to teach using the official district schedule is impossible — it can't be done," said Esquith, who is rated "highly effective" by the Times and has won numerous national teaching awards. "Teachers have to finagle the schedule."
Esquith and Yi also bemoaned the increasing focus on testing and sympathized with frustrated colleagues.
At Los Angeles Elementary School in the Pico-Union neighborhood, fourth-grade teacher Maria Duarte lamented the loss of time to teach science — her favorite subject and one that she said most interests her students. Over the years, the time for that subject has dropped from 2.5 days a week to 1.5 days a week in favor of language arts and math. One casualty was a popular experiment growing radishes that Duarte said taught critical thinking and research skills.
Duarte was also rated highly effective in the Times analysis. Under value-added, a student's past test performance is compared with his or her current progress to measure whether teachers added — or subtracted — value to their students' academic growth.
"Painfully, I decided I had to let that go," Duarte said of the experiment. "There's just not enough time — or we need to think of better ways to use our time."
In Monterey Park, eighth-grade teacher Janice Pirolo said she no longer has time to delve deeply into the curriculum or stray much from it. When she does, she falls behind.
When her school, Monterey Highlands, received funding to visit the Japanese American National Museum, Pirolo prepared her students by teaching them about the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. She also spent time on Martin Luther King Jr. before the national holiday named for the civil rights leader .
But none of that is part of eighth-grade social studies standards, and Pirolo fell behind. For a month before the testing in May, she abandoned the textbook entirely to focus exclusively on test prep. As a result, she got through only the textbook's fourth chapter by year's end.
"We have stopped reading the textbook, sadly … but you live and die by the test," said Pirolo, a 34-year veteran who teaches social studies and language arts.
The nation's enhanced focus on testing began under the 2001 No Child Left Behind federal education law, which attempted to hold school districts accountable for student progress through mandatory annual tests. The law, which is under review in Congress, requires that by 2014 all students meet 100% proficiency levels in math and English — a target no one expects schools to meet.
Many educators see an upside to the national focus on student achievement, as measured by test scores, and have unapologetically instilled intensive preparatory programs. Alvarado Intermediate School in Rowland Heights conducts a concentrated test-prep program before the state exams, using assessment data to identify students who need to strengthen specific skills. The sessions are held after school to preserve electives, such as computers, art and music. Attendance is mandatory, with detention for those who miss and prizes for those who participate.
Principal Ying Tsao said she supported the move toward state standards and regular assessments. In earlier times, she said, teachers might skew toward language arts, say, while ignoring math.
Bruce Clark, Los Angeles Elementary principal, said testing has robbed educators of some flexibility, but he said the benefits of higher student achievement are worth it.
Not that there's no time for fun. Clark sheepishly said he "sold out" and held pep rallies to excite his students about the tests. Duarte motivates her students with a party and movie, bringing in treats to entice them to do well. Monterey Highlands has "March Math Madness" every year to pump up students with math-related scavenger hunts and "problem of the week" contests. To kick off the testing this year, Principal Joe Cash donned an apron and chef's hat to serve pancakes at a school breakfast — while asking math questions(How many pancakes does Johnny eat if he gets two pancakes each of the three times he comes up?).
Los Angeles Elementary aims to avoid last-minute cramming by requiring 15-minute skills sessions at the start of the day throughout the year, featuring questions similar to those on the state test. Duarte prepares her students at the beginning of the year with intense work on Greek and Roman roots of words and multiple-meaning words — areas of student weakness identified by testing data.
A different model is the UCLA Community School, a pilot school launched last year by the university and L.A. Unified in Koreatown. Teachers there are free to develop their own assessments. Kate Beaudet uses an individualized reading test that she said is more sophisticated, allowing her to pinpoint a child's actual reading level and areas of weakness.
Beaudet and two colleagues, who joined the staff from other L.A. Unified schools, said district testing requirements had taken weeks of instructional time, skewed teaching toward what was tested and led many teachers to rely heavily on worksheets.
"Teachers only want to teach reading, writing and math, because that's what's assessed," said Beaudet, who teaches a second-and-third-grade class.
To prepare for state exams, Beaudet incorporated practice questions into work she did all year with literary genres, a third-grade reading standard. Using a test reading passage from an African folk tale, she read the book with her students and helped them analyze the elements and write their own test questions — which both conveyed needed skills and boosted their confidence, she said.
At Hobart, Yi figures she has spent up to $1,000 a year designing more creative lessons than those offered by L.A. Unified. The district's fourth-grade reader presents only one chapter of "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH," C so Yi bought copies of the whole book to enable her students to read the entire story. She also bought materials so students could make stuffed rats.
Meanwhile, the project helped Yi's students practice a state standard: to read a set of directions and answer questions about them. She also wrote related vocabulary and comprehension questions. And Yi said that being able to read entire books has instilled in many a love of literature.
Not all teachers are willing to go to such lengths. Some of her colleagues have simply used test prep books all year, Yi said. But that's not for her.
"I enjoy challenging myself to think of better, different and fun ways to teach," she said. "I love to see the light of learning go on."
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Improving Latino Education to Win the Future
Check out the full report, "Winning the Future: Improving Education for the Latino Community"
-Patricia
Alejandra Campoverdi | The White House Blog
April 27, 2011
Today at a community conversation at Miami-Dade College, the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics and the U.S. Department of Education released the report Winning the Future: Improving Education for the Latino Community. The President will be delivering a commencement address at Miami-Dade College Friday evening. To view the report, click HERE.
The report shows that Hispanic success in education and in the labor market is of immediate and long‐term importance to America’s economy. It also shows that Hispanics have the lowest education attainment level overall of any group in the U.S. Hispanics are by far the largest minority group in today’s American public education system, numbering more than 12.4 million in the country’s elementary, middle and high schools. Nearly 22 percent, or slightly more than 1 in 5, of all pre‐K-12 students enrolled in America’s public schools is Hispanic, but they face persistent obstacles to educational attainment. Less than half are enrolled in any early learning program. Only about half earn their high school diploma on time; those who do complete high school are only half as likely as their peers to be prepared for college and only 4 percent have completed graduate or professional degree programs.
As part of the community conversation in Miami today, Senior Obama Administration officials met with dozens of educators and community leaders, to exchange ideas and outline strategies to meet President Obama’s goal for the nation to have the best-educated workforce in the world by 2020.
-Patricia
Alejandra Campoverdi | The White House Blog
April 27, 2011
Today at a community conversation at Miami-Dade College, the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics and the U.S. Department of Education released the report Winning the Future: Improving Education for the Latino Community. The President will be delivering a commencement address at Miami-Dade College Friday evening. To view the report, click HERE.
The report shows that Hispanic success in education and in the labor market is of immediate and long‐term importance to America’s economy. It also shows that Hispanics have the lowest education attainment level overall of any group in the U.S. Hispanics are by far the largest minority group in today’s American public education system, numbering more than 12.4 million in the country’s elementary, middle and high schools. Nearly 22 percent, or slightly more than 1 in 5, of all pre‐K-12 students enrolled in America’s public schools is Hispanic, but they face persistent obstacles to educational attainment. Less than half are enrolled in any early learning program. Only about half earn their high school diploma on time; those who do complete high school are only half as likely as their peers to be prepared for college and only 4 percent have completed graduate or professional degree programs.
As part of the community conversation in Miami today, Senior Obama Administration officials met with dozens of educators and community leaders, to exchange ideas and outline strategies to meet President Obama’s goal for the nation to have the best-educated workforce in the world by 2020.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Higher Education Coalition attack on Perry raises eyebrows
William Lutz | Lone Star Report
7/8/2011
The Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education – a group that supports higher education reform ideas offered by the state’s university presidents and chancellors and has expressed concerns with some higher education reform ideas offered from outside academia – fired a rhetorical howitzer at Gov. Rick Perry yesterday. Political observers in Texas are left wondering why the organization chose to attack Perry by name and how this will play out.
The coalition’s main communications consultants used to work for U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and former president George W. Bush, two elected officials whose political interests have not always aligned perfectly with those of Perry. A member of the coalition’s operating committee, former ambassador and Higher Education Coordinating Board Chair Pamela Willeford, said she has supported Perry, and the organization is bipartisan and is about higher education, not partisan politics. She also said that decisions about what statements to issue are made by the organization’s operating committee, not its consultants.
Wednesday, the University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts Dean Randy Diehl issued a report blasting “7 Breakthrough Solutions for Higher Education” proposed by Texas philanthropist Jeff Sandefer and supported by the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The coalition issued a statement supporting the report and calling on elected officials to distance themselves from the 7 Solutions.
Perry’s communications director Mark Miner issued a statement expressing disappointment that University of Texas administrators are so resistant to the governor’s cost control and reform ideas. "University faculty and their allies should join the reform efforts and recommend ways to innovate, improve graduation rates, and enhance accountability and efficiency at Texas colleges and universities,” Miner said. “We all have an obligation to meet the needs of Texas students, employers, taxpayers and our fast-growing economy. Resisting reform and accountability is an unsustainable recipe for mediocrity and stagnation. Texas deserves better."
Some Austin observers thought that finished that story.
But then on Thursday, the Coalition sent out a response to Miner’s statement that has grass-roots conservatives scratching their heads. The statement both attacks Perry by name and also attacks the Texas K-12 education system. This marks one of the first examples of this higher education debate, which previously centered on TPPF and comments made by University of Texas Regent Gene Powell, venturing into K-12 education. The attack on Perry and his K-12 education record comes right as conservatives nationwide are encouraging the governor to throw his hat into the presidential ring.
“It's unfortunate that the same week that the University of Texas at Austin’s President Powers announced a major initiative to improve college graduation rates, Governor Perry's spokesman chose to denigrate Texas universities rather than support their efforts to improve and reform,” read the Coalition’s statement forwarded to the press by Julie Shussler, a public relations official with the firm of Burson-Marsteller.“… If Governor Perry truly wants to reduce costs and improve productivity of higher education in Texas, he should start by focusing on improving the college readiness of Texas students. Unfortunately, Texas ranks a dismal 36th in the nation for high school graduation rates and 50th for percentage of Texans with a high school diploma. Today, Texas taxpayers are being double-charged—first to fund high school, then to fund remedial programs when students are unprepared to succeed in college.”
Willeford said the coalition worked hard to recruit a bipartisan base of support and that the group is focused on higher education. "Volunteers have come forward because they believe the discussion and the process is not what we want it to be," Willeford said. "I think that trying to throw it into a political statement; it's just not true."
When asked about the statement attacking Perry by name and why it was issued, Shussler replied, “The statement was a response from the Coalition, which includes more than 200 leading Texans, including many supporters of Governor Perry, who are concerned about the negative impact of some of his higher education proposals.”
Some grassroots conservatives are troubled. “I know that Perry’s uncompromising commitment to fiscal and social conservatism doesn’t always sit well with some of the more moderate members of the Republican Party,” said State Republican Executive Committee member Jason Moore, a talk radio talk show host on KWEL in Midland. “But I’m surprised that some of the business leaders who have joined this coalition would condone these kinds of cheap shots at Perry.”
Most of the coalition’s press releases are distributed by Jenifer Sarver, who used to work on Hutchison’s staff. Sarver is chief of staff to Karen Hughes, who used to work for Gov. and later President George W. Bush. Both currently work at the Austin office of Burson-Marsteller.
Willeford said that the Burson-Marsteller firm is a paid consultant to the coalition. “As far as what is put out by the coalition and what is posted on our website, all that goes through our operating committee,” she said. Willeford said the operating committee included herself, C. Patrick Oles, Jr., Kenneth Jastrow II, Melinda Hill Perrin, Gordon Appleman, and Charles W. Matthews. Willeford later added that “I have supported the governor [Perry] as long has he’s been running. “
But some Republican activists hope that this coalition will avoid messages that might be perceived as political attacks. “I sure hope that this coalition doesn’t allow former staffers for Hutchison and Bush to use the organization to attack Perry personally by name or harm his presidential chances in any way,” said Toby Marie Walker, a tea party activist in Waco, Texas. “Given the problems President Obama has created for our nation, the stakes are too high for that.”
When asked directly whether Perry’s presidential ambitions had anything to do with the statement the coalition issued attacking Perry by name, Willeford said, “Absolutely not. We are a group that is concerned with the debate about higher education and the direction higher education is going. We want to be sure that it’s a transparent process, as far as ideas that are being brought forward, and that is our focus.”
LSR also asked Willeford about the organization choosing to highlight the shortcomings of Texas’s K-12 education system. After all, when Hughes worked for Bush, she was one of the most passionate defenders of the state’s K-12 education system. (For example, Hughes told The New York Times Oct. 25, 2000: “indisputable independent data all show without a doubt that Texas leads the nation when it comes to improving student performance.”)
“This is a statement by the coalition. This is not a statement by Karen Hughes,” said Willeford when asked about whether a coalition whose communications consultant is Karen Hughes is in a position to highlight the shortcomings of the state’s public schools.
“We talked about K-12, because a lot of the problems that we have in higher education as far as graduation rates [are because] we’re getting kids [who] are not prepared coming into the system, and it’s taking a lot of remedial education,” added that she hoped the governor will focus on improving college preparation.
Later, LSR asked why – given that much of this debate has focused on the University of Texas at Austin – did the coalition choose to talk about the high number of students in developmental education. (State law requires students who do not achieve college-ready test scores to take developmental courses.)
Community colleges have many students in developmental education. But UT accepts only the best from Texas high school students. According to the School of Undergraduate Studies annual report, a mere 83 UT students required assistance in 2010 for failure to meet state college readiness standards.
“We’re talking about all of higher education in the state,” Willeford said, noting that Miner’s statement referenced the statewide four-year graduation rate, not the University of Texas at Austin graduation rate, which is substantially higher.
Many grass-roots conservatives, meanwhile, are praising Perry for taking on the higher education bureaucracy. “Those of us who are attending our state's universities or who have recently graduated know that our current system of higher education is morally bankrupt,” said Tony McDonald, senior vice president of the Young Conservatives of Texas. “The system puts undergraduate education on a back-burner in favor of the mass publication of largely useless scholarly articles. The system consumes large sums of tax revenue, while saddling graduates with massive student-loan debt. It is refreshing to see Governor Perry take the bold step of calling out our universities and demanding that they implement reform and accountability measures which will serve to protect both students and taxpayers.”
Here’s one thing we do know: the Coalition, and its supporters some of whom are prominent members of the Texas business community, has upped the ante by singling out Perry by name and responding to his chief spokesman in that manner.
\When asked about this issue by LSR, the governor’s office replied that the purpose of the statement was merely to underscore the governor’s priorities for Texas public colleges and universities. “[The governor’s plan] for higher education is to improve accountability, affordability, transparency, and accessibility,” said Catherine Frazier with the Governor’s Press Office. “Where we are right now is not cutting it … The governor is simply calling on university leaders to adopt these goals and work towards finding the best way to accomplish them for their respective universities. And he will continue holding those universities accountable to pursuing those goals until progress is made.”
7/8/2011
The Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education – a group that supports higher education reform ideas offered by the state’s university presidents and chancellors and has expressed concerns with some higher education reform ideas offered from outside academia – fired a rhetorical howitzer at Gov. Rick Perry yesterday. Political observers in Texas are left wondering why the organization chose to attack Perry by name and how this will play out.
The coalition’s main communications consultants used to work for U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and former president George W. Bush, two elected officials whose political interests have not always aligned perfectly with those of Perry. A member of the coalition’s operating committee, former ambassador and Higher Education Coordinating Board Chair Pamela Willeford, said she has supported Perry, and the organization is bipartisan and is about higher education, not partisan politics. She also said that decisions about what statements to issue are made by the organization’s operating committee, not its consultants.
Wednesday, the University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts Dean Randy Diehl issued a report blasting “7 Breakthrough Solutions for Higher Education” proposed by Texas philanthropist Jeff Sandefer and supported by the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The coalition issued a statement supporting the report and calling on elected officials to distance themselves from the 7 Solutions.
Perry’s communications director Mark Miner issued a statement expressing disappointment that University of Texas administrators are so resistant to the governor’s cost control and reform ideas. "University faculty and their allies should join the reform efforts and recommend ways to innovate, improve graduation rates, and enhance accountability and efficiency at Texas colleges and universities,” Miner said. “We all have an obligation to meet the needs of Texas students, employers, taxpayers and our fast-growing economy. Resisting reform and accountability is an unsustainable recipe for mediocrity and stagnation. Texas deserves better."
Some Austin observers thought that finished that story.
But then on Thursday, the Coalition sent out a response to Miner’s statement that has grass-roots conservatives scratching their heads. The statement both attacks Perry by name and also attacks the Texas K-12 education system. This marks one of the first examples of this higher education debate, which previously centered on TPPF and comments made by University of Texas Regent Gene Powell, venturing into K-12 education. The attack on Perry and his K-12 education record comes right as conservatives nationwide are encouraging the governor to throw his hat into the presidential ring.
“It's unfortunate that the same week that the University of Texas at Austin’s President Powers announced a major initiative to improve college graduation rates, Governor Perry's spokesman chose to denigrate Texas universities rather than support their efforts to improve and reform,” read the Coalition’s statement forwarded to the press by Julie Shussler, a public relations official with the firm of Burson-Marsteller.“… If Governor Perry truly wants to reduce costs and improve productivity of higher education in Texas, he should start by focusing on improving the college readiness of Texas students. Unfortunately, Texas ranks a dismal 36th in the nation for high school graduation rates and 50th for percentage of Texans with a high school diploma. Today, Texas taxpayers are being double-charged—first to fund high school, then to fund remedial programs when students are unprepared to succeed in college.”
Willeford said the coalition worked hard to recruit a bipartisan base of support and that the group is focused on higher education. "Volunteers have come forward because they believe the discussion and the process is not what we want it to be," Willeford said. "I think that trying to throw it into a political statement; it's just not true."
When asked about the statement attacking Perry by name and why it was issued, Shussler replied, “The statement was a response from the Coalition, which includes more than 200 leading Texans, including many supporters of Governor Perry, who are concerned about the negative impact of some of his higher education proposals.”
Some grassroots conservatives are troubled. “I know that Perry’s uncompromising commitment to fiscal and social conservatism doesn’t always sit well with some of the more moderate members of the Republican Party,” said State Republican Executive Committee member Jason Moore, a talk radio talk show host on KWEL in Midland. “But I’m surprised that some of the business leaders who have joined this coalition would condone these kinds of cheap shots at Perry.”
Most of the coalition’s press releases are distributed by Jenifer Sarver, who used to work on Hutchison’s staff. Sarver is chief of staff to Karen Hughes, who used to work for Gov. and later President George W. Bush. Both currently work at the Austin office of Burson-Marsteller.
Willeford said that the Burson-Marsteller firm is a paid consultant to the coalition. “As far as what is put out by the coalition and what is posted on our website, all that goes through our operating committee,” she said. Willeford said the operating committee included herself, C. Patrick Oles, Jr., Kenneth Jastrow II, Melinda Hill Perrin, Gordon Appleman, and Charles W. Matthews. Willeford later added that “I have supported the governor [Perry] as long has he’s been running. “
But some Republican activists hope that this coalition will avoid messages that might be perceived as political attacks. “I sure hope that this coalition doesn’t allow former staffers for Hutchison and Bush to use the organization to attack Perry personally by name or harm his presidential chances in any way,” said Toby Marie Walker, a tea party activist in Waco, Texas. “Given the problems President Obama has created for our nation, the stakes are too high for that.”
When asked directly whether Perry’s presidential ambitions had anything to do with the statement the coalition issued attacking Perry by name, Willeford said, “Absolutely not. We are a group that is concerned with the debate about higher education and the direction higher education is going. We want to be sure that it’s a transparent process, as far as ideas that are being brought forward, and that is our focus.”
LSR also asked Willeford about the organization choosing to highlight the shortcomings of Texas’s K-12 education system. After all, when Hughes worked for Bush, she was one of the most passionate defenders of the state’s K-12 education system. (For example, Hughes told The New York Times Oct. 25, 2000: “indisputable independent data all show without a doubt that Texas leads the nation when it comes to improving student performance.”)
“This is a statement by the coalition. This is not a statement by Karen Hughes,” said Willeford when asked about whether a coalition whose communications consultant is Karen Hughes is in a position to highlight the shortcomings of the state’s public schools.
“We talked about K-12, because a lot of the problems that we have in higher education as far as graduation rates [are because] we’re getting kids [who] are not prepared coming into the system, and it’s taking a lot of remedial education,” added that she hoped the governor will focus on improving college preparation.
Later, LSR asked why – given that much of this debate has focused on the University of Texas at Austin – did the coalition choose to talk about the high number of students in developmental education. (State law requires students who do not achieve college-ready test scores to take developmental courses.)
Community colleges have many students in developmental education. But UT accepts only the best from Texas high school students. According to the School of Undergraduate Studies annual report, a mere 83 UT students required assistance in 2010 for failure to meet state college readiness standards.
“We’re talking about all of higher education in the state,” Willeford said, noting that Miner’s statement referenced the statewide four-year graduation rate, not the University of Texas at Austin graduation rate, which is substantially higher.
Many grass-roots conservatives, meanwhile, are praising Perry for taking on the higher education bureaucracy. “Those of us who are attending our state's universities or who have recently graduated know that our current system of higher education is morally bankrupt,” said Tony McDonald, senior vice president of the Young Conservatives of Texas. “The system puts undergraduate education on a back-burner in favor of the mass publication of largely useless scholarly articles. The system consumes large sums of tax revenue, while saddling graduates with massive student-loan debt. It is refreshing to see Governor Perry take the bold step of calling out our universities and demanding that they implement reform and accountability measures which will serve to protect both students and taxpayers.”
Here’s one thing we do know: the Coalition, and its supporters some of whom are prominent members of the Texas business community, has upped the ante by singling out Perry by name and responding to his chief spokesman in that manner.
\When asked about this issue by LSR, the governor’s office replied that the purpose of the statement was merely to underscore the governor’s priorities for Texas public colleges and universities. “[The governor’s plan] for higher education is to improve accountability, affordability, transparency, and accessibility,” said Catherine Frazier with the Governor’s Press Office. “Where we are right now is not cutting it … The governor is simply calling on university leaders to adopt these goals and work towards finding the best way to accomplish them for their respective universities. And he will continue holding those universities accountable to pursuing those goals until progress is made.”
Parsing the History of Perry's Higher Ed Battles
by Reeve Hamilton | Texas Tribune
July 12, 2011
In 2003, Gov. Rick Perry signed off one of the most significant policy changes in the history of Texas higher education. With both the state and its public universities strapped for cash, the decision was made to grant universities the autonomy to set tuition rates, freeing them from government regulation that had artificially kept Texas public higher education affordable for generations.
As expected, college costs in Texas ticked upward — a trend that looks likely to persist as the state’s contribution continues to decline. Texas Tech University in Lubbock, for example, has seen the state-funded portion of its budget drop from 56 percent in 1990 to 36 percent in 2010. After taking another cut this year, the Texas Tech University System regents — all Perry appointees — just hiked the tuition at their main campus by 5.9 percent and at Angelo State University by 9.9 percent. At the state’s flagship institutions, the numbers are even worse: State contributions make up 24 percent of Texas A&M University’s budget and 14 percent of the University of Texas' budget, down from 52 percent 30 years ago
It’s not the sort of trend that Perry — who often notes in his stump speeches that he is an animal-science graduate from Texas A&M — wants to be associated with. More recently, he has ramped up a public push for lower tuition while shifting blame to the universities by urging them to reduce inefficiencies.
“There are serious improvements that need to be made to our higher education system,” Perry spokeswoman Catherine Frazier says. “We have a great higher education system, but there are steps that need to be taken to improve it, and we can’t ignore what those needs are."
In recent months, the various forces in Perry’s conflicted higher ed history have come to a head. The result: an overwrought public identity crisis in the state’s higher education community, the resolution of which will likely define the governor’s legacy on the topic and could be a factor in any potential bid for higher office.
Among the issues at hand: Can access to higher education be expanded and tuition lowered without sacrificing quality? What role should academic research play at public universities? Who should and shouldn’t be managing the state’s educational institutions — and how are the current leaders doing so far?
Even before taking the helm of the state in late 2000, Perry showed interest in higher education. In 1999, as lieutenant governor, he established a Special Commission on 21st Century Colleges and Universities “to take a long-term look at improving higher education — its mission, its role in the new economy, and its accessibility and its affordability.”
The next year, worried about the quality of Texas’ higher education system and that it was lagging too far behind the country’s leaders, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which monitors the implementation of the state’s higher ed policy, launched a 15-year initiative to bring the state up to a level of parity. Encouraged by the governor, it has seen success in some areas. But headed into the final four-year homestretch, challenges remain.
“Texas has done a much better job on access,” observes Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business. “Now we need to turn the directions toward completions.”
While Texas students are heading to college in greater number (and Texas Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes anticipates they will reach the 2015 enrollment goal), they still struggle to come out of the system with a degree or certificate. As Mark Miner, the governor’s spokesman, noted in a recent press release calling on universities to “join the reform efforts,” the statewide four-year graduation rate is about 28.6 percent compared to a national average closer to 40 percent. Degrees conferred in science, technology, engineering and math fields are particularly behind in reaching the state’s goals, as are teacher certifications.
Hammond says the long-term workforce implications of such success rates should be of more concern than rising tuition. “It’s higher than anyone would like it to be, and that’s a hindrance,” he said, “but I don’t think that’s the issue.” For one thing, Hammond points out, before the cuts made in the just-ended legislative session, funds going toward financial aid had been increasing. Also, tuition in Texas remains relatively low — in the case of community colleges, extremely so.
Average tuition at a public two-year institution in Texas is $1,796, which is 45th among all the states. With an average tuition cost of $5,623, Texas’ public four-year institutions rank 28th. According to recently released U.S. Department of Education statistics, South Texas College in McAllen and the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg are the two most affordable colleges in the country.
And not everyone is troubled by recent trends. Randy Diehl, the dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, concedes that tuition increases have outpaced inflation, but argues that the average yearly increase in tuition since deregulation is less than average yearly increases in the decade preceding it.
Also, he says, if tuition were lowered, in order to maintain access, the portion of tuition that is currently set aside for financial aid would have to be replaced with increased funding from regressive sales taxes. “So in terms of what’s fair, socially and economically,” he says, “I would trade a higher tuition for a lower state contribution any day.”
In his State of the State address this year and in subsequent public remarks, Perry called for three things for higher education: a funding system that rewards outcomes, a four-year tuition freeze and the creation of a $10,000 bachelor’s degree — books included. But the proposals that have ended up getting the most attention are “seven breakthrough solutions” for higher education that Perry has been promoting behind the scenes for the last three years.
The proposals — which focus on the widely agreed upon goals of emphasizing quality teaching, efficiency and productivity — were written by Jeff Sandefer, a wealthy oil investor and founder of a private business school in Austin. He was one of the initial members of Lt. Gov. Perry’s special commission. After Sandefer’s proposals were unveiled at a summit in 2008, Perry made it clear that regents would be judged by what they did with the suggestions, and his office later emphasized that the initiatives — which have been deeply unpopular in academic circles — should be “regent driven."
The chief source of influence the governor has at a university stems from his power to appoint the members of the boards of regents, who are charged with the oversight of university systems including matters such as tuition increases and the hiring and firing of administrators.
Perry’s appointees haven’t always voted his way, one famous example being the most recent selection of the chancellor for the University of Texas System in 2009. Perry wanted former state Sen. John Montford, but the regents went with Dr. Francisco Cigarroa, who holds the post to this day. Scott Caven, who was the chairman of the UT board at the time, said it was the only issue he ever heard from Perry about while he served in that role. And even then, Caven recalls, Perry only said he was disappointed in the outcome.
“There was never any direct retribution on me,” Caven says, though that may not be true for others. A public dressing-down of UT regent Bob Rowling, the wealthy founder of TRT Holdings, by members of the Senate Finance Committee at a 2009 hearing, ostensibly about bonuses paid to employees of the UT System’s investment management company of which Rowling was serving as chairman, was widely viewed as his comeuppance for either supporting Cigarroa, or U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, in what was then an upcoming run at Perry’s seat, or both.
Perry’s influence has been detected by many in other administrative moves, such as the ousting of Elsa Murano as Texas A&M University president in 2009 and — though the current regent leaders deny it — the recent departure of A&M System Chancellor Mike McKinney, a former chief of staff to Perry who, perhaps ironically, as chancellor played a significant role in pushing Murano out.
McKinney and the A&M board of regents were the most active in implementing Sandefer’s “solutions,” though the few steps they did make did not meet with Sandefer’s approval — or the approval of the academic community. A spreadsheet of all the system’s faculty members that illustrated which ones brought in money and which didn’t drew a rebuke from the American Association of Universities, a prestigious group of research institutions. A program that gave cash awards to professors based solely on evaluations met with disapproval, and its termination was announced earlier this month.
The Texas Tech University System, which has thus far remained largely untouched by the back-and-forth, drafted a report similar to A&M’s in response to the proposals, but it did not delve into the specifics of individual faculty. Under pressure, the UT System published a massive spreadsheet of its faculty “productivity” earlier this year. As the implementation has progressed, especially at UT, so has the controversy.
Other proposals, such as the separation of teaching and research budgets, have been called “anti-research,” though Perry staffers are quick to point out that he has encouraged the commercialization of research. Though academics point out that much research cannot and is not meant to be commercialized. In 2009, Perry signed a landmark bill by House Higher Education Chairman Dan Branch, R-Dallas, that dedicated money to the creation of more public tier-one research universities (of which Texas only has two) throughout the state.
Branch is now a co-chairman, along with Senate Higher Education Chairwoman Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, of a new Joint Oversight Committee on Higher Education Governance, Excellence, and Transparency, which was created by the legislative leadership out of concern for the direction recently appointed regents — which many view to be more proactive than the governor’s previous selections — might take with regard to the “solutions.”
Some former regents, including Caven, who was at the initial rollout of the “seven breakthrough solutions” (at the time, his impression was that they were optional), helped with the creation of a new Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education, a bipartisan group of prominent Texans who oppose Sandefer’s “solutions" (as the group's detractors point out, a number of the members also opposed the governor in during his re-election bid).
How the governor and his appointed regents handle the new legislative committee, which was created against Perry’s will, and the debate between the various outside organizations that are now focusing on the issue remains to be seen. As rising student debt becomes a national issue, the push for belt-tightening and lower tuition may strike a chord, even while the specific steps taken may be questioned.
“I certainly don’t think Rick Perry is the anti-education governor,” Caven says. “I just think that the of the proposals he and some of his appointees are suggesting seem to be overly simplistic solutions to very complex issues.”
Frazier, Perry’s spokeswoman, says that while the governor supports the goals of the “seven solutions,” he believes universities should find approaches to those goals that work best for their respective institutions. “The governor has always worked with lawmakers on all these issues. His focus right now is working with all of these respective parties to promote the goals of accessibility, affordability and transparency to bring tuition down and improve graduation rates.”
July 12, 2011
In 2003, Gov. Rick Perry signed off one of the most significant policy changes in the history of Texas higher education. With both the state and its public universities strapped for cash, the decision was made to grant universities the autonomy to set tuition rates, freeing them from government regulation that had artificially kept Texas public higher education affordable for generations.
As expected, college costs in Texas ticked upward — a trend that looks likely to persist as the state’s contribution continues to decline. Texas Tech University in Lubbock, for example, has seen the state-funded portion of its budget drop from 56 percent in 1990 to 36 percent in 2010. After taking another cut this year, the Texas Tech University System regents — all Perry appointees — just hiked the tuition at their main campus by 5.9 percent and at Angelo State University by 9.9 percent. At the state’s flagship institutions, the numbers are even worse: State contributions make up 24 percent of Texas A&M University’s budget and 14 percent of the University of Texas' budget, down from 52 percent 30 years ago
It’s not the sort of trend that Perry — who often notes in his stump speeches that he is an animal-science graduate from Texas A&M — wants to be associated with. More recently, he has ramped up a public push for lower tuition while shifting blame to the universities by urging them to reduce inefficiencies.
“There are serious improvements that need to be made to our higher education system,” Perry spokeswoman Catherine Frazier says. “We have a great higher education system, but there are steps that need to be taken to improve it, and we can’t ignore what those needs are."
In recent months, the various forces in Perry’s conflicted higher ed history have come to a head. The result: an overwrought public identity crisis in the state’s higher education community, the resolution of which will likely define the governor’s legacy on the topic and could be a factor in any potential bid for higher office.
Among the issues at hand: Can access to higher education be expanded and tuition lowered without sacrificing quality? What role should academic research play at public universities? Who should and shouldn’t be managing the state’s educational institutions — and how are the current leaders doing so far?
Even before taking the helm of the state in late 2000, Perry showed interest in higher education. In 1999, as lieutenant governor, he established a Special Commission on 21st Century Colleges and Universities “to take a long-term look at improving higher education — its mission, its role in the new economy, and its accessibility and its affordability.”
The next year, worried about the quality of Texas’ higher education system and that it was lagging too far behind the country’s leaders, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which monitors the implementation of the state’s higher ed policy, launched a 15-year initiative to bring the state up to a level of parity. Encouraged by the governor, it has seen success in some areas. But headed into the final four-year homestretch, challenges remain.
“Texas has done a much better job on access,” observes Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business. “Now we need to turn the directions toward completions.”
While Texas students are heading to college in greater number (and Texas Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes anticipates they will reach the 2015 enrollment goal), they still struggle to come out of the system with a degree or certificate. As Mark Miner, the governor’s spokesman, noted in a recent press release calling on universities to “join the reform efforts,” the statewide four-year graduation rate is about 28.6 percent compared to a national average closer to 40 percent. Degrees conferred in science, technology, engineering and math fields are particularly behind in reaching the state’s goals, as are teacher certifications.
Hammond says the long-term workforce implications of such success rates should be of more concern than rising tuition. “It’s higher than anyone would like it to be, and that’s a hindrance,” he said, “but I don’t think that’s the issue.” For one thing, Hammond points out, before the cuts made in the just-ended legislative session, funds going toward financial aid had been increasing. Also, tuition in Texas remains relatively low — in the case of community colleges, extremely so.
Average tuition at a public two-year institution in Texas is $1,796, which is 45th among all the states. With an average tuition cost of $5,623, Texas’ public four-year institutions rank 28th. According to recently released U.S. Department of Education statistics, South Texas College in McAllen and the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg are the two most affordable colleges in the country.
And not everyone is troubled by recent trends. Randy Diehl, the dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, concedes that tuition increases have outpaced inflation, but argues that the average yearly increase in tuition since deregulation is less than average yearly increases in the decade preceding it.
Also, he says, if tuition were lowered, in order to maintain access, the portion of tuition that is currently set aside for financial aid would have to be replaced with increased funding from regressive sales taxes. “So in terms of what’s fair, socially and economically,” he says, “I would trade a higher tuition for a lower state contribution any day.”
In his State of the State address this year and in subsequent public remarks, Perry called for three things for higher education: a funding system that rewards outcomes, a four-year tuition freeze and the creation of a $10,000 bachelor’s degree — books included. But the proposals that have ended up getting the most attention are “seven breakthrough solutions” for higher education that Perry has been promoting behind the scenes for the last three years.
The proposals — which focus on the widely agreed upon goals of emphasizing quality teaching, efficiency and productivity — were written by Jeff Sandefer, a wealthy oil investor and founder of a private business school in Austin. He was one of the initial members of Lt. Gov. Perry’s special commission. After Sandefer’s proposals were unveiled at a summit in 2008, Perry made it clear that regents would be judged by what they did with the suggestions, and his office later emphasized that the initiatives — which have been deeply unpopular in academic circles — should be “regent driven."
The chief source of influence the governor has at a university stems from his power to appoint the members of the boards of regents, who are charged with the oversight of university systems including matters such as tuition increases and the hiring and firing of administrators.
Perry’s appointees haven’t always voted his way, one famous example being the most recent selection of the chancellor for the University of Texas System in 2009. Perry wanted former state Sen. John Montford, but the regents went with Dr. Francisco Cigarroa, who holds the post to this day. Scott Caven, who was the chairman of the UT board at the time, said it was the only issue he ever heard from Perry about while he served in that role. And even then, Caven recalls, Perry only said he was disappointed in the outcome.
“There was never any direct retribution on me,” Caven says, though that may not be true for others. A public dressing-down of UT regent Bob Rowling, the wealthy founder of TRT Holdings, by members of the Senate Finance Committee at a 2009 hearing, ostensibly about bonuses paid to employees of the UT System’s investment management company of which Rowling was serving as chairman, was widely viewed as his comeuppance for either supporting Cigarroa, or U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, in what was then an upcoming run at Perry’s seat, or both.
Perry’s influence has been detected by many in other administrative moves, such as the ousting of Elsa Murano as Texas A&M University president in 2009 and — though the current regent leaders deny it — the recent departure of A&M System Chancellor Mike McKinney, a former chief of staff to Perry who, perhaps ironically, as chancellor played a significant role in pushing Murano out.
McKinney and the A&M board of regents were the most active in implementing Sandefer’s “solutions,” though the few steps they did make did not meet with Sandefer’s approval — or the approval of the academic community. A spreadsheet of all the system’s faculty members that illustrated which ones brought in money and which didn’t drew a rebuke from the American Association of Universities, a prestigious group of research institutions. A program that gave cash awards to professors based solely on evaluations met with disapproval, and its termination was announced earlier this month.
The Texas Tech University System, which has thus far remained largely untouched by the back-and-forth, drafted a report similar to A&M’s in response to the proposals, but it did not delve into the specifics of individual faculty. Under pressure, the UT System published a massive spreadsheet of its faculty “productivity” earlier this year. As the implementation has progressed, especially at UT, so has the controversy.
Other proposals, such as the separation of teaching and research budgets, have been called “anti-research,” though Perry staffers are quick to point out that he has encouraged the commercialization of research. Though academics point out that much research cannot and is not meant to be commercialized. In 2009, Perry signed a landmark bill by House Higher Education Chairman Dan Branch, R-Dallas, that dedicated money to the creation of more public tier-one research universities (of which Texas only has two) throughout the state.
Branch is now a co-chairman, along with Senate Higher Education Chairwoman Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, of a new Joint Oversight Committee on Higher Education Governance, Excellence, and Transparency, which was created by the legislative leadership out of concern for the direction recently appointed regents — which many view to be more proactive than the governor’s previous selections — might take with regard to the “solutions.”
Some former regents, including Caven, who was at the initial rollout of the “seven breakthrough solutions” (at the time, his impression was that they were optional), helped with the creation of a new Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education, a bipartisan group of prominent Texans who oppose Sandefer’s “solutions" (as the group's detractors point out, a number of the members also opposed the governor in during his re-election bid).
How the governor and his appointed regents handle the new legislative committee, which was created against Perry’s will, and the debate between the various outside organizations that are now focusing on the issue remains to be seen. As rising student debt becomes a national issue, the push for belt-tightening and lower tuition may strike a chord, even while the specific steps taken may be questioned.
“I certainly don’t think Rick Perry is the anti-education governor,” Caven says. “I just think that the of the proposals he and some of his appointees are suggesting seem to be overly simplistic solutions to very complex issues.”
Frazier, Perry’s spokeswoman, says that while the governor supports the goals of the “seven solutions,” he believes universities should find approaches to those goals that work best for their respective institutions. “The governor has always worked with lawmakers on all these issues. His focus right now is working with all of these respective parties to promote the goals of accessibility, affordability and transparency to bring tuition down and improve graduation rates.”
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Latino Childhood Obesity Education Summit
Please click the fliers for information on the the Latino Childhood Obesity Education Summit hosted by La Fe Policy Research and Education Center and MALDEF. The event will be on July 14, 2011 at Methodist Healthcare Ministries, 4507 Medical Drive, San Antonio, Texas.
-Patricia
-Patricia
Monday, July 11, 2011
Higher ed critics target elusive 'lazy professor'
Reformers call for more teaching and less research
By MELISSA LUDWIG | STAFF WRITER
July 10, 2011,
Lazy professor, beware.
Your time delivering droning lectures and writing overwrought articles for obscure journals draws nigh. A posse of free-market thinkers led by a conservative Austin think tank wants to hold higher education accountable by weeding out bad teachers and unproductive researchers.
But how do you corner these elusive creatures? Their peers characterize the lazy professor as a rarity, quietly culled from the herd before earning tenure.
Critics, however, believe they are far more commonplace, and can be exposed by crunching numbers on teaching loads, research grants and student evaluations.
Some would like to do away with tenure, reasoning that professors would work harder if their contract came up every few years. Others, including Gov. Rick Perry, have suggested that professors should stick to research that "delivers real dollars."
Yet academics and a new coalition of higher education boosters say critics are on the wrong track if their goal is to improve Texas universities.
Those kinds of remarks about research, coupled with the release of reams of detailed salary and workload data for thousands of professors in the Texas A&M University and University of Texas Systems, have already bruised the national reputation of two well-regarded university systems, said John Curtis, director of research and public policy at the American Association of University Professors.
"People around the country are watching that and would be leery of taking a job at A&M or UT," Curtis said. "If it continues that way, it may be a detriment for all of public higher education."
Return on investment
Those who seek greater productivity insist the scrutiny is long overdue.
"All we've ever wanted to do with this issue is just have an open discussion about 'Are the taxpayers of the state of Texas getting a good return on their investment?' " Perry has said. "To be honest with you, we can't answer that unless we have openness and transparency in higher ed, and there's some that just block that."
In addition to the governor, the roster of change-seekers includes several university regents, some conservative lawmakers and wealthy Austin entrepreneur Jeff Sandefer. Many have ties to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative Austin think tank that has acted as the movement's brain trust.
David Guenthner, a TPPF spokesman, said the cost of higher education has spiraled out of control, and many students are questioning whether it's a worthy investment.
In his view, tuition and state dollars subsidize the time professors spend writing journal articles of questionable value to society.
The system, he said, is set up to reward research with higher pay, professional kudos and a job for life, while good teaching often goes unrecognized.
As a result, Guenthner declared, students who pay top dollar for a flagship education spend a good deal of their first two years in huge lecture halls being taught by adjuncts rather than by tenured professors.
"The pendulum has probably swung more in the direction of research in recent years, to the detriment of teaching," he said. "We think there needs to be a better balance for the sake of Texas students."
Defining 'research'
Most universities break down the job of a professor as 40 percent teaching, 40 percent research, and 20 percent service.
Service is a broad category, but typically involves sitting on governance committees, which give tenured and tenure-track faculty a voice in hiring and other decision-making at the university.
Most professors will say it's dreary work and there are too many committees. But no one seems to be fighting over the 20 percent of time professors spend on service.
The debate has centered squarely on teaching and research.
The term "research" conjures images of professors in white coats playing with beakers, but for most scholars it means publishing books or articles in academic journals.
Ideally, these writings illuminate new knowledge in the field, whether a theory about the origins of hominids or consumer behavior in modern Latin America.
But in the opinion of the change-seekers — and more quietly, some within the ranks of academia - much of this scholarly output is of questionable worth.
"I would say that 90 percent of it is a waste," said J. Ronald Carey, professor emeritus of marketing at Our Lady of the Lake University. "I am hesitant to call it research."
Carey received his doctorate from UT-Austin and taught at George Washington University, which has high research activity, before taking a job at the Pentagon and later at OLLU in San Antonio. For Carey and his colleagues, "research" was issuing questionnaires to sophomores and spinning their answers into multiple publications.
"We would get the data and say, 'How many line items do you think we can get out of this?' " he said.
Playing the research game has its benefits, Carey said.
"The people producing research have lower class sizes, more favorable schedules and they get teaching assistants," he noted. "And if they are doing really well, they get offers from other schools and can lobby for higher pay. Teachers do not have that leverage."
Few would argue with the premise that research is critical for promotion, but many disagree that most of it is fireplace fodder.
"No one thought the double helix would have any practical value," said William Powers, president of UT-Austin. "The value is not always recognizable at the time. It's a little like your stock portfolio; you don't know what the winners and losers are going to be."
Defending 'soft research'
Research, especially in the sciences, is also a huge enterprise for Texas institutions, generating nearly $1.7 billion annually. A portion goes directly to the university to cover overhead, fund laboratory infrastructure, pay faculty salaries and support fellowships for graduate students.
But few are picking on research that can be measured in dollars. It's the ones that can't be measured that troubles some.
Academics defend so-called "soft research," saying it advances knowledge. The act of getting out in the field, reading new material, attending conferences and exchanging ideas helps professors keep curriculum fresh and up-to-date, to the benefit of students.
"It is very easy to teach the same thing over and over," said Renee Rubin, a professor of education who retired this year from UT- Brownsville. "I would not want to see the research component go."
However, Rubin said she would welcome more flexibility about what counts as research.
UTB is primarily a teaching institution, yet her bosses raised the bar on publications in recent years, expecting two or more a year from professors who teach four classes per semester.
"Personally, I am more of a teacher. That is why I went into it," Rubin said.
In the University of Texas System, regents require an average faculty teaching load of three classes per semester, but that doesn't mean every professor teaches exactly three.
A scientist at a Tier One research institution - especially if backed by a large grant - may not teach at all, while a professor such as Rubin may teach four courses and do a little scholarly work. However, that scientist may supervise a dozen master's degree and doctoral students in a lab, a task that's hard to separate from "teaching."
Averaged across the UT System from 2007 to 2010, faculty members exceeded the minimum, spending from 29 to 39 actual weekly clock hours on instruction, including grading papers and preparing for class, according to the system's records.
Solutions spelled out
Critics still complain, however, that tenured and tenure-track professors prefer small, upper-level seminars, leaving the grunt work of teaching broad introductory classes to instructors, adjuncts and teaching assistants.
Statewide, 65 percent of full-time equivalent faculty were tenured or tenure-track in 2010, yet they taught only 39 percent of lower division credit hours, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
That isn't how it should be, according to Naomi Schaefer Riley, a former editor at the Wall Street Journal and author of The Faculty Lounges … And Other Reasons Why You Won't Get the College Education You Pay For.
"You want the most experienced teachers in front of the introductory classes because that is where it is hardest to engage students," Riley said.
The ideas are spelled out in Seven Breakthrough Solutions, written by Sandefer, promoted by TPPF and embraced by Perry.
Emails obtained through open records laws show that Perry and Sandefer have been leaning on university regents to implement the solutions since 2008, when they were introduced at an Austin summit.
Bonuses panned, dropped
The Texas A&M University System implemented the teaching bonuses, but they were panned by faculty at the flagship campus as a popularity contest. Research has shown that evaluations correlate closely with the grade students received in the class, and most administrators also rely on peer review when evaluating a professor's teaching skills.
Last week, the new interim A&M chancellor discontinued the teaching awards.
UT-Austin has taken a more targeted approach to the problem.
To give freshmen and sophomores more contact with senior faculty, UT has created seminar classes and research opportunities for those students.
Also, many large introductory courses are being redesigned to promote more active learning and improve success rates.
"These reforms have been going on for the last five years. Our faculty are behind (them)," Powers said.
By MELISSA LUDWIG | STAFF WRITER
July 10, 2011,
Lazy professor, beware.
Your time delivering droning lectures and writing overwrought articles for obscure journals draws nigh. A posse of free-market thinkers led by a conservative Austin think tank wants to hold higher education accountable by weeding out bad teachers and unproductive researchers.
But how do you corner these elusive creatures? Their peers characterize the lazy professor as a rarity, quietly culled from the herd before earning tenure.
Critics, however, believe they are far more commonplace, and can be exposed by crunching numbers on teaching loads, research grants and student evaluations.
Some would like to do away with tenure, reasoning that professors would work harder if their contract came up every few years. Others, including Gov. Rick Perry, have suggested that professors should stick to research that "delivers real dollars."
Yet academics and a new coalition of higher education boosters say critics are on the wrong track if their goal is to improve Texas universities.
Those kinds of remarks about research, coupled with the release of reams of detailed salary and workload data for thousands of professors in the Texas A&M University and University of Texas Systems, have already bruised the national reputation of two well-regarded university systems, said John Curtis, director of research and public policy at the American Association of University Professors.
"People around the country are watching that and would be leery of taking a job at A&M or UT," Curtis said. "If it continues that way, it may be a detriment for all of public higher education."
Return on investment
Those who seek greater productivity insist the scrutiny is long overdue.
"All we've ever wanted to do with this issue is just have an open discussion about 'Are the taxpayers of the state of Texas getting a good return on their investment?' " Perry has said. "To be honest with you, we can't answer that unless we have openness and transparency in higher ed, and there's some that just block that."
In addition to the governor, the roster of change-seekers includes several university regents, some conservative lawmakers and wealthy Austin entrepreneur Jeff Sandefer. Many have ties to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative Austin think tank that has acted as the movement's brain trust.
David Guenthner, a TPPF spokesman, said the cost of higher education has spiraled out of control, and many students are questioning whether it's a worthy investment.
In his view, tuition and state dollars subsidize the time professors spend writing journal articles of questionable value to society.
The system, he said, is set up to reward research with higher pay, professional kudos and a job for life, while good teaching often goes unrecognized.
As a result, Guenthner declared, students who pay top dollar for a flagship education spend a good deal of their first two years in huge lecture halls being taught by adjuncts rather than by tenured professors.
"The pendulum has probably swung more in the direction of research in recent years, to the detriment of teaching," he said. "We think there needs to be a better balance for the sake of Texas students."
Defining 'research'
Most universities break down the job of a professor as 40 percent teaching, 40 percent research, and 20 percent service.
Service is a broad category, but typically involves sitting on governance committees, which give tenured and tenure-track faculty a voice in hiring and other decision-making at the university.
Most professors will say it's dreary work and there are too many committees. But no one seems to be fighting over the 20 percent of time professors spend on service.
The debate has centered squarely on teaching and research.
The term "research" conjures images of professors in white coats playing with beakers, but for most scholars it means publishing books or articles in academic journals.
Ideally, these writings illuminate new knowledge in the field, whether a theory about the origins of hominids or consumer behavior in modern Latin America.
But in the opinion of the change-seekers — and more quietly, some within the ranks of academia - much of this scholarly output is of questionable worth.
"I would say that 90 percent of it is a waste," said J. Ronald Carey, professor emeritus of marketing at Our Lady of the Lake University. "I am hesitant to call it research."
Carey received his doctorate from UT-Austin and taught at George Washington University, which has high research activity, before taking a job at the Pentagon and later at OLLU in San Antonio. For Carey and his colleagues, "research" was issuing questionnaires to sophomores and spinning their answers into multiple publications.
"We would get the data and say, 'How many line items do you think we can get out of this?' " he said.
Playing the research game has its benefits, Carey said.
"The people producing research have lower class sizes, more favorable schedules and they get teaching assistants," he noted. "And if they are doing really well, they get offers from other schools and can lobby for higher pay. Teachers do not have that leverage."
Few would argue with the premise that research is critical for promotion, but many disagree that most of it is fireplace fodder.
"No one thought the double helix would have any practical value," said William Powers, president of UT-Austin. "The value is not always recognizable at the time. It's a little like your stock portfolio; you don't know what the winners and losers are going to be."
Defending 'soft research'
Research, especially in the sciences, is also a huge enterprise for Texas institutions, generating nearly $1.7 billion annually. A portion goes directly to the university to cover overhead, fund laboratory infrastructure, pay faculty salaries and support fellowships for graduate students.
But few are picking on research that can be measured in dollars. It's the ones that can't be measured that troubles some.
Academics defend so-called "soft research," saying it advances knowledge. The act of getting out in the field, reading new material, attending conferences and exchanging ideas helps professors keep curriculum fresh and up-to-date, to the benefit of students.
"It is very easy to teach the same thing over and over," said Renee Rubin, a professor of education who retired this year from UT- Brownsville. "I would not want to see the research component go."
However, Rubin said she would welcome more flexibility about what counts as research.
UTB is primarily a teaching institution, yet her bosses raised the bar on publications in recent years, expecting two or more a year from professors who teach four classes per semester.
"Personally, I am more of a teacher. That is why I went into it," Rubin said.
In the University of Texas System, regents require an average faculty teaching load of three classes per semester, but that doesn't mean every professor teaches exactly three.
A scientist at a Tier One research institution - especially if backed by a large grant - may not teach at all, while a professor such as Rubin may teach four courses and do a little scholarly work. However, that scientist may supervise a dozen master's degree and doctoral students in a lab, a task that's hard to separate from "teaching."
Averaged across the UT System from 2007 to 2010, faculty members exceeded the minimum, spending from 29 to 39 actual weekly clock hours on instruction, including grading papers and preparing for class, according to the system's records.
Solutions spelled out
Critics still complain, however, that tenured and tenure-track professors prefer small, upper-level seminars, leaving the grunt work of teaching broad introductory classes to instructors, adjuncts and teaching assistants.
Statewide, 65 percent of full-time equivalent faculty were tenured or tenure-track in 2010, yet they taught only 39 percent of lower division credit hours, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
That isn't how it should be, according to Naomi Schaefer Riley, a former editor at the Wall Street Journal and author of The Faculty Lounges … And Other Reasons Why You Won't Get the College Education You Pay For.
"You want the most experienced teachers in front of the introductory classes because that is where it is hardest to engage students," Riley said.
The ideas are spelled out in Seven Breakthrough Solutions, written by Sandefer, promoted by TPPF and embraced by Perry.
Emails obtained through open records laws show that Perry and Sandefer have been leaning on university regents to implement the solutions since 2008, when they were introduced at an Austin summit.
Bonuses panned, dropped
The Texas A&M University System implemented the teaching bonuses, but they were panned by faculty at the flagship campus as a popularity contest. Research has shown that evaluations correlate closely with the grade students received in the class, and most administrators also rely on peer review when evaluating a professor's teaching skills.
Last week, the new interim A&M chancellor discontinued the teaching awards.
UT-Austin has taken a more targeted approach to the problem.
To give freshmen and sophomores more contact with senior faculty, UT has created seminar classes and research opportunities for those students.
Also, many large introductory courses are being redesigned to promote more active learning and improve success rates.
"These reforms have been going on for the last five years. Our faculty are behind (them)," Powers said.
Houston ISD's Teach for America teachers stronger in some test areas, weaker in reading, than counterparts: Study
By Lynn Walsh | Texas Watchdog
Monday, Jul 11, 2011
Teachers from the nonprofit “Teach for America” program leave the Houston Independent School District at higher rates than their non-TFA counterparts, and their students’ performance record is mixed when compared to their counterparts, a district study shows.
While TFA teachers make up twice the share of HISD’s new teachers than they did a few years ago -- nearly 1 in 3 new HISD teachers was a TFA’er in 2009-10, the study says -- the TFA teachers are also leaving at faster rates than their counterparts, the internal study found.
“Forty-four percent of the 2005−2006 non-TFA new hires returned to HISD in 2010−2011 for their sixth year of service in HISD, while only 9 percent of the 2005−2006 TFA new hires returned to the district in October 2010,” the report says.
At the same time, however, for the first time in five years, retention rates for TFA teachers was greater than non-TFA teachers for those beginning their second year of teaching in HISD.
HISD has hired more than 600 teachers from TFA, a national education nonprofit that helps urban and rural school districts meet their teaching needs, in the last five years.
The hiring of TFA teachers by HISD has increased 15% since 2005, while the overall number of new-teacher hires in the district has decreased during that same time period, the March memorandum shows.
Students taught by TFA teachers in 2009 and 2010 performed better on the state Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test in both math and writing than those taught by non-TFA members, the memo says. In 2010, students taught by TFA teachers also scored better on state tests in science and social studies.
The report goes on to say that in 2009, “the difference was not significant … Both groups had comparable passing rates on the reading and science tests.” The report says the difference between the scores of students taught by TFA teachers and non-TFA teachers earned in 2010 was “statistically significant” in math, science and social studies, with students taught by TFA teachers performing better.
However, in reading, students taught by non-TFA teachers performed better, a difference that was “significant,” the report says.
The findings of the study aren't “surprising or alarming” based on what TFA aims to do, HISD spokesman Jason Spencer said in an e-mail. He also said it is “not surprising that TFA teachers outperform non-TFA teachers in some areas and that non-TFA teachers do better in other areas. This is why HISD is committed to staffing schools with a mix of great teachers of various backgrounds and experience levels.”
This month HISD trustees approved $600,000 to be used next school year for the district’s Teach for America program.
The partnership between HISD and TFA began in 1991 and in recent years has expanded to include more teachers, including a push for math teachers to work in the schools in the district’s turnaround program, called Apollo 20.
Local and state leaders have questioned the benefits and cost of the program while others sing the organization’s praises. A recent state study on the Texas investment into the program showed similar results to HISD’s: TFA teachers leave earlier but show better student achievement results in math.
Monday, Jul 11, 2011
Teachers from the nonprofit “Teach for America” program leave the Houston Independent School District at higher rates than their non-TFA counterparts, and their students’ performance record is mixed when compared to their counterparts, a district study shows.
While TFA teachers make up twice the share of HISD’s new teachers than they did a few years ago -- nearly 1 in 3 new HISD teachers was a TFA’er in 2009-10, the study says -- the TFA teachers are also leaving at faster rates than their counterparts, the internal study found.
“Forty-four percent of the 2005−2006 non-TFA new hires returned to HISD in 2010−2011 for their sixth year of service in HISD, while only 9 percent of the 2005−2006 TFA new hires returned to the district in October 2010,” the report says.
At the same time, however, for the first time in five years, retention rates for TFA teachers was greater than non-TFA teachers for those beginning their second year of teaching in HISD.
HISD has hired more than 600 teachers from TFA, a national education nonprofit that helps urban and rural school districts meet their teaching needs, in the last five years.
The hiring of TFA teachers by HISD has increased 15% since 2005, while the overall number of new-teacher hires in the district has decreased during that same time period, the March memorandum shows.
Students taught by TFA teachers in 2009 and 2010 performed better on the state Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test in both math and writing than those taught by non-TFA members, the memo says. In 2010, students taught by TFA teachers also scored better on state tests in science and social studies.
The report goes on to say that in 2009, “the difference was not significant … Both groups had comparable passing rates on the reading and science tests.” The report says the difference between the scores of students taught by TFA teachers and non-TFA teachers earned in 2010 was “statistically significant” in math, science and social studies, with students taught by TFA teachers performing better.
However, in reading, students taught by non-TFA teachers performed better, a difference that was “significant,” the report says.
The findings of the study aren't “surprising or alarming” based on what TFA aims to do, HISD spokesman Jason Spencer said in an e-mail. He also said it is “not surprising that TFA teachers outperform non-TFA teachers in some areas and that non-TFA teachers do better in other areas. This is why HISD is committed to staffing schools with a mix of great teachers of various backgrounds and experience levels.”
This month HISD trustees approved $600,000 to be used next school year for the district’s Teach for America program.
The partnership between HISD and TFA began in 1991 and in recent years has expanded to include more teachers, including a push for math teachers to work in the schools in the district’s turnaround program, called Apollo 20.
Local and state leaders have questioned the benefits and cost of the program while others sing the organization’s praises. A recent state study on the Texas investment into the program showed similar results to HISD’s: TFA teachers leave earlier but show better student achievement results in math.
STAAR Rollout May Bring More Duties for Counselors
by Morgan Smith | Texas Tribune
July 11, 2011
In the fall, the anticipated consequences of a $4 billion reduction in state financing to school districts will begin to become apparent to Texas students and their parents: fewer teachers, bigger classes and sparse extracurricular programs.
For some, though, the most drastic change will come in the spring, when the state’s approximately 350,000 new ninth graders will be the first to take the end-of-course exams that are part of the new standardized testing system known as STARR, the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness.
The new assessment program, which is so complex that the superintendent of the Perrin-Whitt school district nicknamed it the Franken-STAAR, was established during the 2009 legislative session. Some educators welcome the program, a significant overhaul of the current system, but others view it with trepidation.
Outside the classroom, the burden of rolling out the new exams will fall primarily on counselors, who help students meet graduation requirements, and on curriculum specialists, who make sure what students are being taught matches with what they are being tested on. Some districts also employ testing coordinators, who handle scheduling and the actual administration of the exams.
But predicting reduced state aid, many districts have already eliminated many nonclassroom positions for the coming school year. That means remaining employees will have far more responsibilities, a particular concern for school counselors, who have long worked to define their role as separate from that of testing coordinators.
“With finances like they are, there’s not going to be extra people to help,” said Sherry Sunderman, the coordinator of guidance and counseling at Conroe Independent School District in Montgomery County, north of Houston.
Many counselors worry they will be given more duties on the testing side and that instead of advising students, their jobs will become “more clerical,” said Sylvia Lopez, the director of Dallas ISD’s counseling services. Resources traditionally devoted to counseling students on career and college plans may now be used to explain and administer the new testing system, which includes complicated new graduation requirements.
Counselors “are going to have to be really monitoring students’ graduation programs to make sure they are taking the right courses and passing the right exams,” said Casey McCreary, an assistant executive director at the Texas Association of School Administrators who advises districts on accountability issues.
Students adjusting to the new exams face a “triple jeopardy,” McCreary said. With STAAR, high school students will have to perform better on harder tests and take more of them. Under the current system, standardized tests do not count toward final grades, and students must pass four exit-level exams to graduate. Now, for the first time, students will have to achieve a cumulative score across 12 end-of-course exams to graduate. And their scores on the exams will count toward 15 percent of their final grade, with the option to retake the exam three times if they do not pass. (They are required to retake it if they do not achieve a certain minimum score.)
That could have students playing a game of risk with their scores — opting not to retake one test with the hope of scoring higher on a future one. Setting up a process to guide students through these decisions, one that involves parents and a “team effort” between curriculum specialists and counselors, is crucial in preparing for the new tests, said Sara McAndrew, the executive director of curriculum and instruction at Northside ISD, the state’s fourth-largest district, in San Antonio.
As the new school year draws closer, McAndrew said, schools are still missing details about how the rollout will work. Though the Texas Education Agency will unveil sample questions in August, it will not publicly release full-length primary test forms until 2014. “We are still a little in the dark about exactly what these tests are going to look like,” she said.
Lopez said she also has questions about the new system, like “who is going to keep track of the kids and where they are and how many exams they’ve taken.”
But she said that she expected growing pains. “Anytime there is a change like this, there is going to be a struggle,” Lopez said. “There is always a transitional period. STAAR is going to be a lot more rigorous, but hopefully this will help our kids.”
Monday, July 04, 2011
Attacking the Cost of College, From the Outside
In response to this article, check out this March 2011 article from the Daily Texan, "Program to redesign entry-level courses" that shows some of the teaching and curricular efforts UT is making. It parallels with what Dr. Ritter mentions below.
-Patricia
by Reeve Hamilton | Texas Tribune
July 4, 2011
If there was a theme to the just-concluded 82nd legislative session it was do more with less, and Rep. Dan Branch, Dallas Republican and chairman of the House Higher Education Committee, embraced it by attacking the cost of college from multiple angles. He pushed through legislation to try to lower what students spend on textbooks and to encourage that undergraduate students file — and stick to — degree plans.
Four miles away, on the second floor of a South Austin office building, Michael Crosno is working on the same issues by applying pressure from the outside. He is not a policy wonk. He is a businessman who has built and sold a string of successful software companies.
Not long ago, Crosno, 59, thought he would make the move into the education arena as a college instructor in business. But he did not have the influence he had hoped he would have.
“What I learned through teaching and being associated with educational institutions,” he said, “is you need more. A bunch of good teachers is wonderful, but it’s not going to solve the problems in higher ed.”
Crosno’s newest venture could make him a national player in efforts to reduce the time it takes a student to graduate — perhaps the most effective cost-savings method there is. Slightly more than half of all college students nationally graduate — if they graduate at all — in six years, not four.
“That’s one statistic that just drove me bozo,” Crosno said. “My goal is very simple: get more kids to go to college.”
In 2008, Crosno teamed with Chris Chilek and John Cunningham, two Texas A&M University graduates running Pick- a-Prof, a Web site best known for allowing students to rate their professors. The following year, the company was rebranded MyEdu, and its mission became more comprehensive.
“Just rating a professor is meaningless to me,” Crosno said. “It’s not going to help my daughter graduate. At the end of the day, what’s really important is how do you balance semester by semester, course by course, the workload over four or five years.”
The company’s revamped site still allows for professor ratings, but students can also customize a degree plan that matches their desired workload in each semester and, if they choose, can help them devise the quickest path to graduation. The company, which was recently featured in a United States Chamber of Commerce re- port on the future of higher education, claims that 70 percent of users graduate on time, nearly double the national average.
MyEdu now includes 775 colleges and universities, up from about 60 when Crosno joined. In the first five months of this year, he said, the site logged about 2.5 million users.
MyEdu also lets students compare textbook costs. Part of the money from sales made through the site comes back to the company, one revenue stream alongside contextual advertising and sponsored content. Crosno said early efforts to charge for MyEdu services fell flat.
But he is not convinced that shaving textbook costs will create the most meaningful savings for a student. For example, he said, more savings can be gained by taking advanced placement classes to reduce the courses that need to be taken on a degree plan.
The Austin office includes dozens of computer-science-minded 20-somethings engaged in constant, widespread data collection. Crosno said that of about 60 staff members, half focused on data collection — by scraping in- formation from public Web sites, submitting open-records re- quests, perusing course catalogs and gathering student comments — and the other half focused on turning that data into user- friendly applications.
“It’s a gold mine of data,” said Margaret Spellings, a former United States secretary of education, who is considering a formal business relationship with MyEdu.
“I don’t think Michael even knows what a powerful policy tool that thing can be, not only for consumers but for policy makers and for institutions themselves.” Spellings said.
About a year ago, Gretchen Ritter, a vice provost at the University of Texas at Austin, suggested to the registrar’s office that it pay attention to MyEdu with the hope of imitating some of its services. The university is currently revising its degree audit system, and Ritter hopes to include degree-planning features in the final product.
MyEdu “tells us where there is a felt need by our students for help or services,” she said.
She would not rule out using outside vendors, but said, “Most large universities tend to have a culture of ‘grow your own,’ when it comes to technology tools.”
Ritter said such technology could let advisers, swamped with students as enrollments increase and funding decreases, devote less time to paperwork and more to working with students on a developmental level.
Crosno said he anticipated that with resources likely to re- main scarce, public universities would be looking for more out- side partners. He also said he believes that the pressure from out- side private technology companies will have a more vivid impact on cost reduction than will legislation.
“Show me an industry where technology has not disrupted or made it more efficient,” he said, “and I’ll show you an archaic industry.”
-Patricia
by Reeve Hamilton | Texas Tribune
July 4, 2011
If there was a theme to the just-concluded 82nd legislative session it was do more with less, and Rep. Dan Branch, Dallas Republican and chairman of the House Higher Education Committee, embraced it by attacking the cost of college from multiple angles. He pushed through legislation to try to lower what students spend on textbooks and to encourage that undergraduate students file — and stick to — degree plans.
Four miles away, on the second floor of a South Austin office building, Michael Crosno is working on the same issues by applying pressure from the outside. He is not a policy wonk. He is a businessman who has built and sold a string of successful software companies.
Not long ago, Crosno, 59, thought he would make the move into the education arena as a college instructor in business. But he did not have the influence he had hoped he would have.
“What I learned through teaching and being associated with educational institutions,” he said, “is you need more. A bunch of good teachers is wonderful, but it’s not going to solve the problems in higher ed.”
Crosno’s newest venture could make him a national player in efforts to reduce the time it takes a student to graduate — perhaps the most effective cost-savings method there is. Slightly more than half of all college students nationally graduate — if they graduate at all — in six years, not four.
“That’s one statistic that just drove me bozo,” Crosno said. “My goal is very simple: get more kids to go to college.”
In 2008, Crosno teamed with Chris Chilek and John Cunningham, two Texas A&M University graduates running Pick- a-Prof, a Web site best known for allowing students to rate their professors. The following year, the company was rebranded MyEdu, and its mission became more comprehensive.
“Just rating a professor is meaningless to me,” Crosno said. “It’s not going to help my daughter graduate. At the end of the day, what’s really important is how do you balance semester by semester, course by course, the workload over four or five years.”
The company’s revamped site still allows for professor ratings, but students can also customize a degree plan that matches their desired workload in each semester and, if they choose, can help them devise the quickest path to graduation. The company, which was recently featured in a United States Chamber of Commerce re- port on the future of higher education, claims that 70 percent of users graduate on time, nearly double the national average.
MyEdu now includes 775 colleges and universities, up from about 60 when Crosno joined. In the first five months of this year, he said, the site logged about 2.5 million users.
MyEdu also lets students compare textbook costs. Part of the money from sales made through the site comes back to the company, one revenue stream alongside contextual advertising and sponsored content. Crosno said early efforts to charge for MyEdu services fell flat.
But he is not convinced that shaving textbook costs will create the most meaningful savings for a student. For example, he said, more savings can be gained by taking advanced placement classes to reduce the courses that need to be taken on a degree plan.
The Austin office includes dozens of computer-science-minded 20-somethings engaged in constant, widespread data collection. Crosno said that of about 60 staff members, half focused on data collection — by scraping in- formation from public Web sites, submitting open-records re- quests, perusing course catalogs and gathering student comments — and the other half focused on turning that data into user- friendly applications.
“It’s a gold mine of data,” said Margaret Spellings, a former United States secretary of education, who is considering a formal business relationship with MyEdu.
“I don’t think Michael even knows what a powerful policy tool that thing can be, not only for consumers but for policy makers and for institutions themselves.” Spellings said.
About a year ago, Gretchen Ritter, a vice provost at the University of Texas at Austin, suggested to the registrar’s office that it pay attention to MyEdu with the hope of imitating some of its services. The university is currently revising its degree audit system, and Ritter hopes to include degree-planning features in the final product.
MyEdu “tells us where there is a felt need by our students for help or services,” she said.
She would not rule out using outside vendors, but said, “Most large universities tend to have a culture of ‘grow your own,’ when it comes to technology tools.”
Ritter said such technology could let advisers, swamped with students as enrollments increase and funding decreases, devote less time to paperwork and more to working with students on a developmental level.
Crosno said he anticipated that with resources likely to re- main scarce, public universities would be looking for more out- side partners. He also said he believes that the pressure from out- side private technology companies will have a more vivid impact on cost reduction than will legislation.
“Show me an industry where technology has not disrupted or made it more efficient,” he said, “and I’ll show you an archaic industry.”
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