Electoral Victory on my Mind

Education hasn't exactly been central to this Presidential campaign. While that is disappointing for us Ed Policy wonks, it's not exactly surprising given the massive challenges the country faces right now. That said, among all the amazing changes that I am hoping for when (in all likelihood) Obama is elected, I am the least sure about where he will take NCLB and the Education Reform movement generally. I ran across the following post on Flypaper that got me thinking a couple weeks ago.

Will Obama have a mandate on education?

http://www.edexcellence.net/flypaper/index.php/2008/10/will-obama-have-a-mandate-on-education/

A couple things that give me some hope that he will at least be willing to break new ground and be open to more bold reforms: His full throated support of charter schools and performance pay (actually pretty astonishing for a Democrat). While I like him and trust his judgment, it makes me a little nervous that he has not laid out a few more specifics on how how he will seek to reauthorize NCLB. Have you all heard anything? What do the advisors he is surrounding himself with mean?

New test for 8th graders from the College Board

There's a really interesting article in the NY Times today about a test released Wednesday by the College Board for 8th grade students that's meant to determine their preparedness for high school (and college). It will be available for students next fall, and consists of multiple choice questions in critical reading, writing skills and math. The test is "intended only for assessment and instructional purposes." You can go here for more deatils.

There are, of course, two sides to this. Some people are complaining because it's pushing down testing to even younger students. On the other hand, I praise it for being a test that teachers can actually use to assess students. To me, that's one of the most frustrating aspects of all of the NCLB testing requirements; the results are not usable at the classroom level to actually improve instruction and student learning. I'd be curious to see a sample test and to know how it will actually be used. Supposedly, the results are only intended to be used at the local level and have no bearing on college admissions.

Does anyone know more?

Texas GPAs

After our class discussion regarding standardizing Texas GPAs, I think we all realized the main reason this issue was important was to ensure that schools and districts didn't inappropriately weigh courses, like choir, to give certain students within the district unfair advantages. After coming to that realization, I felt disappointed with the article we read. They really didn't make this point, or at least not explicitly. One of the arguments in the article for not allowing extra points for honors courses is the difference in rigor from district to district. This argument seems quite different when you realize the district to district comparison has nothing to do with class rank and the top ten percent rule. District to district comparison may still be important to students applying to UT or A&M who are not in the top ten percent or out of state. But I feel as though that distinction should be made.

Reminder

Just a reminder to register for the online debate between Obama and McCain's education advisers. I am not sure how important it is to register but I did, just in case. You can do so through edweek.org. I honestly don't know much about Linda Darling-Hammond but hear great things and am excited to see her in the debate.
Happy watching!

NCLB Leaving Solid Schools Behind

This article looks at the 2008 testing statistics and shows that the vast majority of states are beginning to come up short in increasing the proficiency of students as they march towards the goal of all students being on grade level by 2014 under NCLB. On top of that, NCLB is beginning to punish states whose standards and assessments are more rigorous compared to other states.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/education/13child.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&ei=5024&partner=BLACKBOARD

As a former teacher, I can definitely attest to the challenge and emotional strain that comes from trying to achieve a certain rating based on test scores.

Continuing the Conversation - Policy Levers

I thought it would be nice to continue our conversation from class yesterday about the major policy levers outlined by Kirst. As a reminder:

1) standards alignment between HS and college

2) financial support and incentives

3) data systems

4) accountability systems

We all more or less agreed that these are the important levers. I'm interested in continuing the conversation to think about what impact each of these levers might have on actual school/district-level changes. I'll start with my thoughts.

1) If we could actually get standards aligned (which, as we talked about in class, would be challenging considering all the stateholders), I first have a few questions. Would these be set at the national level? What role would individual colleges play? Would only public colleges be included like only public primary/secondary schools are included in the current standards requirements? With those thoughts in mind, I think this would be an effective strategy that would force colleges to show more accountability. A degree would have more meaning and would be based less on historical reputation of the college attended. Of course, colleges could set standards above those required, but it would set a baseline for all students so there is some level of knowledge/skill expected of a person with a degree.

2) If students know about it (and if the money's there), this could be a great way to show low-income students that college is attainable. I think a lot of students discount college on the basis of cost and a lack of long-term knowledge of how college will benefit them. Addressing this concern first might encourage low-income students to pursue college. I also think this ties in with the policy brief topic our group had that students should complete national service between high school and college because of the incentives we mentioned providing. Part of the program would provide participants with an educational award (modeled after AmeriCorps) that students can redeem after their time of service to pay for higher education.

3) With data systems comes the chicken-and-the-egg senario. Should we first create data systems to know how to fix our problems, or should we first identify our problems so we know what to include in the data systems? My reaction is that we need the data systems first. I say this based on the fact that Uri mentioned yesterday that a lot of the recent education policy decisions have been based on people's best guesses. Yes, the data system will need to be refined as the years go on, but without some empirical research it will be hard to know what people percieve as problems and what the problems actually are. 

Side note: This reminds me of a study Uri was telling me about that he completed with MSEC. They conducted a survey of military families, and two of the questions were "what do you perceive to be the biggest problems military families face" and "what problems has your family actually faced." Turns out, the families gave the same answers the majority if the time for both questions, but the answers were different for both questions. For example, most families said that they perceived the biggest problem to be changing high school graduation requirements as students moved through different schools, but families actual experiences said that the biggest problem they faced was transferring student records between schools.

Back to the point. The biggest concern would be that people would solve problems that aren't the biggest problems because the data system can only capture so much information (and might not be programmed to capture the most important issues). I say this is where common sense comes into play.

4) Accountabilty systems. Getting over my instinct to shame all accountability systems because I think they've gone over the top (and it pains me that they're not useful to a teacher in the classroom to better her instruction), I do see their importance. This lever would hopefully force colleges to be more accountable for students' actually learning, but I don't think counting graduates is a great way to do this. One, it could encourage colleges to lower their graduation requirements (unless nation-wide end-of-course exams are required like we talked about in class). Second, this could impact colleges admissions decisions because more risky students would be even less active. Finally, this reduces college graduating to a head count. It's important that measures really get at the outcome desired. If you want to improve student quality and educational attainment, counting them is not the best way. I would actually argue that end-of-course exams would get to the point more than counting graduates, but I think it would be nearly impossible to implement this.

These thoughts are, of course, not completely developed. I'm interested to hear what others think.

Chinese students to dominate world market.....

The article, China: Chinese students to dominate world market, was written in November of 2007 and identifies the top five nations with student mobility for seeking degrees at overseas university. By far, China leads the group with more than 350,000 students studying enrolled in post secondary education outside of China. India is next in number of mobile students, followed by South Korea, Morocco, and Turkey. The University World News notes that the global number of mobile students is growing, the market trend is growing at a higher rate outside of the European Union.
What implications does this have for students in the USA? The five countries listed have high unemployment rates. The numbers of students they have getting college degrees may exceed the total number of college age students in this country. We can speculate what impact this competitive global market might present when it comes to finding jobs. Thomas Friedman recently addressed clean power in Hot, Flat, and Crowded, maybe he will attend to this trend in post secondary education and the college readiness of students in the US as an issue in a future book. I wonder what the title might be?

The link is http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20071101150549773

The role of income in higher ed access/achievement

A new report from the Center for Studies in Higher Education at Berkeley uses student level data to look at the experiences of low-income and "rich" students in higher education. Generally speaking, they found that the income disparities at elite, private institutions is growing. Even significant financial aid efforts made by some wealthy institutions is not enough to improve accessibility for low-income students. Most low-income students favor in-state universities that also have a robust community college feeder system where courses are even more affordable than at most four-year institutions.

Perhaps even more interesting though, is the report's data about the differences in achievement and experiences of these two groups of students once they are enrolled in higher ed. For instance:
* Pell Grant recipients at UC had only slightly lower GPAs than their wealthy counterparts and this was true in mathematics, science and engineering, and in humanities and social science fields.

* Poor students at UC generally had the same levels of satisfaction with various aspects of their undergraduate experience (such as quality of advice received) and in their sense of belonging within a campus community as rich students.

The report also found that the correlation between students being low-income AND first-generation was not as significant as once thought. 1 out of 3 Pell grant recipients had at least one parent with a college degree. Although outreach and college-knowledge orientation would be important for these students as well, traditional strategies of outreach may be less important for these students than increasing federal aid and information about affordability, applying for aid, etc.

SO, if we know that low-income and upper-income students have very similar achievement levels once they get to college, what does this say about college readiness assessments?  I think namely, any assessments that ultimately measure income differences such as the normative model of testing that the Raise Your Hand group in Texas is advocating for, are pretty useless in impacting success in college.

Here is the link: http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20081002151932940