The new U.S. News college rankings were released this week, to the usual amount of fanfare. Harvard and Princeton flip-flopped on the top of the national university list, with Princeton now at #1. The numbers for the two universities are almost identical so this slight shift means virtually nothing. I do note, however, that Harvard slipped a little bit in alumni giving from last year. Maybe that was enough to push them over the edge--the final legacy of the Larry Summers' contretemps?
The larger issue is that the U.S. News rankings are based almost entirely on institutional reputation, spending, and admissions selectivity. They have little or nothing to do with who actually provides the best education. Expect much more on this subject from Education Sector in coming weeks.
Friday, August 18, 2006
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Time Magazine's handy guilt-alleviation service for wealthy parents
In an article this week, Time magazine notes that colleges are giving more financial aid to the families of wealthier students (see a recent Ed Sector "Chart You Can Trust" on this topic here). But then, presumably after being reminded of the correspondence between said families and Time magazine's readership--it invents a logically tortured excuse for why this is actually okay:
I'm not sure what's more ridiculous/offensive--the nonsensical logic or the condescending assertion that wealthier students are necessarily smarter and more worthy. "Consider what happens to the students who used to get those grants. Maybe the weren't the best students, but they still belonged in college." Maybe they weren't the best students?Maybe they were. Why should we assume that low-income students aren't also good students, or the best? Many colleges don't give wealthy students financial aid because they're bright--they give them aid because they're wealthy, and still contribute more money to the bottom line than poor, equally smart students.
But that's okay, apparently, because it results in "virtuous mixing" whereby the poor (and therefore less smart) students at public universities will be granted the rare privilege of going to school with wealthier (and therefore smarter) students and the "higher academic standards" that they will "inevitably" bring. How fortunate that the plebes from public colleges will be allowed to mix with their social betters and enjoy the leftover results of the new academic standards they bring. Remember that guy from college with the new Saab who didn't have to work to pay tuition and partied at the frat house all weekend? That was really great, how he would spend his spare time sharing his knowledge with the ignorant lower classes and insisting that the administration increase the rigor of classroom teaching.
Moreover, the wealthy recipients of undeserved college scholarhships should feel not even a twinge of guilt, because "lower-income communities are finding that their gifted kids can gain entry to the most expensive schools." Translation: because a small number of phenomenally wealthy institutions like Harvard are belatedly doing the right thing by devoting more financial aid to their less privileged students, that makes it okay that a whole lot of other universities are doing the opposite by steering more financial aid away from those students. As long as a few more low-income students are admitted to a few more wealthy schools, everyone else is morally in the clear.
...for middle- and upper-middle-class families, the sticker shock at an élite university can be overwhelming. And the recent interest-rate hike of almost 2% on government-backed loans only increases the distress.
Fortunately for those families, a growing number of public colleges and less élite private schools are waiting for them with a bushel of new scholarships that used to be based on need but now are based on merit. The schools are simply following the times: these days even public colleges are obsessed with improving their rankings, which can be done in part by attracting high-scoring students with offers of an all-expenses-paid education. Although need-based grants still make up the overwhelming majority of all scholarships, the giving has been tilting slowly but surely toward the best and the brightest. A decade ago, 90% of state-college grants were need-based. Today it's barely 75%.
What's wrong with giving a bright kid a free ride? Well, consider what happens to the students who used to get those grants. Maybe they weren't the best students, but they still belonged in college. Now they may not be able to afford it, says Sandy Baum, an analyst with the College Board. "We need to have a national discussion of our priorities," she says. "Why do our state schools throw money at the highest-scoring students? What happens to the other kids?"
There is a possibility, however, that the shifting financial-aid priorities could result in a kind of virtuous mixing of the college gene pool. High-achieving kids are going to lesser-known schools and public institutions in greater numbers, drawn by the generous offers. They will inevitably bring higher academic standards with them. And lower-income communities are finding that their gifted kids can gain entry to the most expensive schools, perhaps helping pry open the austere gates of Harvard Yard a little wider in the process.
I'm not sure what's more ridiculous/offensive--the nonsensical logic or the condescending assertion that wealthier students are necessarily smarter and more worthy. "Consider what happens to the students who used to get those grants. Maybe the weren't the best students, but they still belonged in college." Maybe they weren't the best students?Maybe they were. Why should we assume that low-income students aren't also good students, or the best? Many colleges don't give wealthy students financial aid because they're bright--they give them aid because they're wealthy, and still contribute more money to the bottom line than poor, equally smart students.
But that's okay, apparently, because it results in "virtuous mixing" whereby the poor (and therefore less smart) students at public universities will be granted the rare privilege of going to school with wealthier (and therefore smarter) students and the "higher academic standards" that they will "inevitably" bring. How fortunate that the plebes from public colleges will be allowed to mix with their social betters and enjoy the leftover results of the new academic standards they bring. Remember that guy from college with the new Saab who didn't have to work to pay tuition and partied at the frat house all weekend? That was really great, how he would spend his spare time sharing his knowledge with the ignorant lower classes and insisting that the administration increase the rigor of classroom teaching.
Moreover, the wealthy recipients of undeserved college scholarhships should feel not even a twinge of guilt, because "lower-income communities are finding that their gifted kids can gain entry to the most expensive schools." Translation: because a small number of phenomenally wealthy institutions like Harvard are belatedly doing the right thing by devoting more financial aid to their less privileged students, that makes it okay that a whole lot of other universities are doing the opposite by steering more financial aid away from those students. As long as a few more low-income students are admitted to a few more wealthy schools, everyone else is morally in the clear.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Janey Calls for Moratorium
Today's Washington Post reports that D.C. Public Schools Superintendent Clifford Janey wants a moratorium on the authorization of new charter schools in the District. This is something of a blow to some members of the District's charter and school reform communities, who had high hopes for Janey and who had seen many promising signs, in his master plan for education released this spring, that charter competition was having a positive impact on efforts to improve DCPS.
In one way, Janey is right. Too many of D.C.'s charter schools haven't met their promise to improve student performance, a point many in the charter school community have made, including me last fall. But the solution isn't to stop authorizing new charters--it's to close down existing charters that are low-performing--something the Public Charter School Board has started doing--and replace them with better-performing charter schools. Given that, as Janey acknowledges in the interview, most of the DCPS schools children would be attending in the absence of charter schools are themselves low-performing, a moratorium on additional charters might actually work against improving charter school quality, by making it more difficult--politically and pragmatically--for authorizers to close down low-performing charter schools without the opportunity to charter new, better, schools to replace them.
What are the practical implications of Janey's position? That's not entirely clear. Janey has no official authority regarding charter authorizing in DC. The Board of Education, one of the District's authorizers, has been very supportive of Janey's reform efforts so far, so they might seriously consider a moratorium on their own authorizing if Janey wants one. But this is something they were already considering anyway in the wake of scandals involving the Board of Ed's charter school office (sidenote: a WaPo editorial today calls for a quick investigation of those scandals) and something that, quite honestly, might be good for the charter school movement in the District. (One might wonder if that's what Janey was really aiming for to begin with.)
But Janey most certainly has no authority regarding the District's other charter school authorizer, the D.C. Public Charter School Board, whose chairman, Tom Nida, has been quite clear that the Public Charter School Board has no intention of curtailing its authorizing in response to Janey. Leading mayoral candidates, Linda Cropp and Adrian Fenty, have also expressed opposition to the idea of a moratorium, although Cropp has supported such a notion in the past. And D.C.'s charter continue to have strong congressional support.
One might also wonder how this will affect Janey's standing in D.C. more generally. Just about everyone in the city has been rooting for him because DCPS needs positive change so desperately. But the call for the charter moratorium is going to cause a rift between Janey and some pro-charter folks in the school reform community and office in D.C., and possibly also undermine support with parents and community members among who charters are clearly popular (you don't get to have 25% of kids in the city enrolled in charters without building a decent base of public support for them). I'm still wishing him success improving DCPS, because I care about the fate of the kids in this city, but I'm concerened his inability to see the potential of charters as a tool to support this goal--by filling niches DCPS isn't currently serving well, whittling down the DCPS population to make a more manageable system, and providing potential renters to help DCPS recoup funds from its millions of square feet of excess space--may undermine his efforts.
More from Charter Blog and Mark Lerner here.
"We have not delivered on quality education here in D.C., both with respect to charter schools and to DCPS. That's why I would advocate for a moratorium," Janey said. "This is not a push back against charter schools. It's rather a reclaiming of the purposeof public education to be one of quality. It would be a mistake to continue to grow without having a handle on quality."
In one way, Janey is right. Too many of D.C.'s charter schools haven't met their promise to improve student performance, a point many in the charter school community have made, including me last fall. But the solution isn't to stop authorizing new charters--it's to close down existing charters that are low-performing--something the Public Charter School Board has started doing--and replace them with better-performing charter schools. Given that, as Janey acknowledges in the interview, most of the DCPS schools children would be attending in the absence of charter schools are themselves low-performing, a moratorium on additional charters might actually work against improving charter school quality, by making it more difficult--politically and pragmatically--for authorizers to close down low-performing charter schools without the opportunity to charter new, better, schools to replace them.
What are the practical implications of Janey's position? That's not entirely clear. Janey has no official authority regarding charter authorizing in DC. The Board of Education, one of the District's authorizers, has been very supportive of Janey's reform efforts so far, so they might seriously consider a moratorium on their own authorizing if Janey wants one. But this is something they were already considering anyway in the wake of scandals involving the Board of Ed's charter school office (sidenote: a WaPo editorial today calls for a quick investigation of those scandals) and something that, quite honestly, might be good for the charter school movement in the District. (One might wonder if that's what Janey was really aiming for to begin with.)
But Janey most certainly has no authority regarding the District's other charter school authorizer, the D.C. Public Charter School Board, whose chairman, Tom Nida, has been quite clear that the Public Charter School Board has no intention of curtailing its authorizing in response to Janey. Leading mayoral candidates, Linda Cropp and Adrian Fenty, have also expressed opposition to the idea of a moratorium, although Cropp has supported such a notion in the past. And D.C.'s charter continue to have strong congressional support.
One might also wonder how this will affect Janey's standing in D.C. more generally. Just about everyone in the city has been rooting for him because DCPS needs positive change so desperately. But the call for the charter moratorium is going to cause a rift between Janey and some pro-charter folks in the school reform community and office in D.C., and possibly also undermine support with parents and community members among who charters are clearly popular (you don't get to have 25% of kids in the city enrolled in charters without building a decent base of public support for them). I'm still wishing him success improving DCPS, because I care about the fate of the kids in this city, but I'm concerened his inability to see the potential of charters as a tool to support this goal--by filling niches DCPS isn't currently serving well, whittling down the DCPS population to make a more manageable system, and providing potential renters to help DCPS recoup funds from its millions of square feet of excess space--may undermine his efforts.
More from Charter Blog and Mark Lerner here.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Teachers Unions: Good, Bad, or???
Matt Yglesias says teachers unions get a bad rap. To a degree, I agree with him. Teachers unions have been a force for good in education policy in many ways, particularly in defending public education and maintaining or increasing funding for it. And, the availability (and abuse) of teachers unions as a scapegoat does allow too many folks, especially on the conservative side of policy debates, to slip off the hook without addressing their own responsibility for many tough problems in education.
But Yglesias is wrong to dismiss this issue or the idea of union power out of hand. Part of the problem is his DC-centric perspective. If you follow education policy and politics at the state and local level (where most of the decisions that really matter for kids are made), there's plenty of evidence of union power, as well as examples where the positions teachers unions have taken seem questionable from a social justice perspective. And drawing attention to this oughtn't to get one labeled as "anti-union," "conservative," or "anti-public education." After all, there's a reason SEIU's Andrew Stern is quoted on the back of this book.
Update: Yglesias says more here. Key quote:
Yup. That's why education policy is an incredibly intellectually interesting but often heartrendingly frustrating field to work in.
But Yglesias is wrong to dismiss this issue or the idea of union power out of hand. Part of the problem is his DC-centric perspective. If you follow education policy and politics at the state and local level (where most of the decisions that really matter for kids are made), there's plenty of evidence of union power, as well as examples where the positions teachers unions have taken seem questionable from a social justice perspective. And drawing attention to this oughtn't to get one labeled as "anti-union," "conservative," or "anti-public education." After all, there's a reason SEIU's Andrew Stern is quoted on the back of this book.
Update: Yglesias says more here. Key quote:
People sometimes talk about this as if there was a brilliant will-solve-all-our-problems school reform agenda just waiting to be implemented that's being stymied purely through the awesome might of the teachers' unions. That's just not the case. The policy questions here are genuinely different, lots of different actors have interests and priorities pulling in all sorts of directions, etc., etc., etc.
Yup. That's why education policy is an incredibly intellectually interesting but often heartrendingly frustrating field to work in.
One of these things is not like the others...
Remember that Sesame Street Segment? Well a trip to People for the American Way's (PFAW to Eduwonk) Public Education web page had that tune playing in my head again. Here are the five headlines that appeared today in their Education News section:
Can you guess which of these articles is not like the others? I've included the links to help.
It's the one about federal officials investigating D.C. Board of Education Charter School Office Director Brenda Belton, who is suspected of inappropriately guiding federal grant funds towards educational contractors with whom she had personal connections (the feds are investigating whether she also benefited financially as a result).
Why doesn't this story belong? First, it's not about church-state issues. Three of the other articles PFAW highlights are about vouchers, which PFAW opposes on, among other things, church-state grounds, and the fourth is about the evolution/intelligent design debate which is, again, a church-state issue. More significantly, while the other four stories are about broader policy, legal and political debates, the Belton story is not--its just a case of one person who may or may not have done something wrong. Even if Belton is guilty, this scandal would not be an argument against charter schools in themselves so much as another example of a public official falling prey to temptation (something that's hardly unheard of in traditional school districts), and further evidence that the Board of Education doesn't do a very good job overseeing its charter school operation or some of its employees more generally.
But what really bothers me is seeing charter schools get lumped in with vouchers and opposition to evolution. In both their public accountability and their nonsectarian nature, charter schools are fundamentally different from vouchers, even as they have the potential to offer parents even more choices than vouchers do. And when the charter movement can count folks like the late Eric Rofes, Democratic Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson, former Clinton operative Steve Barr, and the National Council of La Raza among its supporters, lumping it in with intelligent design as some kind of conservative religious plot to destroy public education and critical thinking is patently ridiculous. Almost as silly as calling Kevin Carey a "real conservative."*
*I've spent much of the past year sharing office space with Kevin and I can assure you he's no conservative. He worked at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He's more of a feminist than even my boy-hating self. He's still heartbroken over Sleater-Kinney's break-up. He's a vegetarian, for crying out loud!
Don't pay kids to flee schools
New Jersey Voucher Lawsuit Is Latest Clint Bolick Cut-and-Paste Job
State Sen. Rod Smith draws momentum from GOP opposition in Democratic bid for governor
D.C. Charter Schools Chief Investigated
Evolution backers seek to influence Ohio elections
Can you guess which of these articles is not like the others? I've included the links to help.
It's the one about federal officials investigating D.C. Board of Education Charter School Office Director Brenda Belton, who is suspected of inappropriately guiding federal grant funds towards educational contractors with whom she had personal connections (the feds are investigating whether she also benefited financially as a result).
Why doesn't this story belong? First, it's not about church-state issues. Three of the other articles PFAW highlights are about vouchers, which PFAW opposes on, among other things, church-state grounds, and the fourth is about the evolution/intelligent design debate which is, again, a church-state issue. More significantly, while the other four stories are about broader policy, legal and political debates, the Belton story is not--its just a case of one person who may or may not have done something wrong. Even if Belton is guilty, this scandal would not be an argument against charter schools in themselves so much as another example of a public official falling prey to temptation (something that's hardly unheard of in traditional school districts), and further evidence that the Board of Education doesn't do a very good job overseeing its charter school operation or some of its employees more generally.
But what really bothers me is seeing charter schools get lumped in with vouchers and opposition to evolution. In both their public accountability and their nonsectarian nature, charter schools are fundamentally different from vouchers, even as they have the potential to offer parents even more choices than vouchers do. And when the charter movement can count folks like the late Eric Rofes, Democratic Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson, former Clinton operative Steve Barr, and the National Council of La Raza among its supporters, lumping it in with intelligent design as some kind of conservative religious plot to destroy public education and critical thinking is patently ridiculous. Almost as silly as calling Kevin Carey a "real conservative."*
*I've spent much of the past year sharing office space with Kevin and I can assure you he's no conservative. He worked at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He's more of a feminist than even my boy-hating self. He's still heartbroken over Sleater-Kinney's break-up. He's a vegetarian, for crying out loud!
Good Op-Ed, Bad Numbers
William E. "Brit" Kerwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post today that hits all the right notes when it comes to gives students better odds of graduating from college. But it should be noted that some of the statistics aren't correct. Kerwan writes:
This overstates the problem. As the Post itself noted in an article published last year, an analysis of a U.S. Department of Education survey that tracked a cohort of eighth-graders for 12 years found that 34 percent had earned a college degree during that time.
34 percent isn't a great number, but the difference between that and 18 percent is huge, and most of it isn't a function of giving students an extra two years to earn a degree. It's important to draw attention to the need to increase educational attainment, but it's equally important to use accurate data to do so.
Of every 100 current eighth-graders in America, just 18 will receive a college degree during the next 10 years. Based on current participation and completion rates, the education pipeline reveals alarming holes.
This overstates the problem. As the Post itself noted in an article published last year, an analysis of a U.S. Department of Education survey that tracked a cohort of eighth-graders for 12 years found that 34 percent had earned a college degree during that time.
34 percent isn't a great number, but the difference between that and 18 percent is huge, and most of it isn't a function of giving students an extra two years to earn a degree. It's important to draw attention to the need to increase educational attainment, but it's equally important to use accurate data to do so.
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