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.
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