Lions and Tigers and Bears!

Yesterday, President Bush signed into law the College Cost Reduction and Access Act—legislation that increases Pell Grants, cuts interest rates on student loans, expands loan forgiveness, and pays for it all with cuts in government subsidies to student loan companies. The headline of the Chronicle of Higher Education article about new legislation read “As President Bush Signs Bill Increasing Student Aid, Several Lenders Announce Cuts in Staff or Benefits.” The article also cites concerns that reduced subsidies to loan companies will result in a decline in the number of small lenders participating in the federal loan program.

…banks leaving the business, layoffs, and benefit cuts…oh my!

But before you shake your head that this bill is destroying the federal loan program, you have to ask: Is the purpose of the federal loan program to create a profitable banking industry or is it to provide financial aid to students?

The College Cost Reduction and Access Act answered this question, or at least it provided the Democrat’s answer: the purpose of the loan program is to give aid to students. Yes, reduced lender subsidies may mean that loan companies need to run a leaner business, but it also means that more taxpayer money for federal student aid will make it directly to the students, bypassing the loan companies as middlemen.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, the threat of reduced borrower benefits, while real, isn’t as problematic as loan companies would like you to think. First, very few students receive the full amount of these borrower benefits, and second, this money isn’t being taken away from students, it is being reallocated. The money is going to increased Pell grants and reduced interest rates, rather than given to loan companies as profit that they can then pass along to students as “benefits”.

Overall, this legislation does a good job of directing aid money where it is needed--need-based grants and relief from student debt.

Heroes or Just Hard Workers?

Matt Yglesias approvingly cites a recent post from Alex Tabbarok, in which Alex mocks the teacher-as-hero archetype (e.g. Freedom Writers etc.) as unscaleable, and recommends Direct Instruction instead. "The problem," Matt says, "is that it's just not realistic to build an entire system composed of teachers like that." This is a common refrain, particularly among critics of media-darling ed reforms like KIPP and Teach for America.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that we don't need to build an entire system composed of teachers like that. Most American schoolchildren are doing okay, and if they're not, the necessary fixes probably don't require anyone to work 80 hours a week.

What we have is a minority of children, most poor and people of color, being crushed under the twin burdens of impoverished home lives and dysfunctional schools. It may very well be the case that the only way to help them is to put them in very well-run schools full of exceptionally smart, well-trained teachers who put forth extraordinary time and effort. This seems to work, and I'm not aware of too many other models that can say the same.

And it's not at all clear to me why this isn't achievable at scale for most at-risk students. Many of them are in cities, all of which have big law firms and hospitals that absolutely depend on exactly the kind of time- and human capital-intensive model described above. If law and medicine--the two professions against which education is constantly measuring itself, and lamenting its inferior status--can build stable business models that assume a steady influx of super-motivated people in their 20s and 30s, why not education?

The Spellings Commission, One Year Later

I went to the signing ceremony for the "College Cost Reduction and Access Act" this morning, at the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House. Flanked by Pell grant recipients, Secretary Spellings, and members of Congress including Rep. George Miller, President Bush offered some fairly pro forma remarks in favor of Pell grants and going to college generally. He took the opportunity to note the recent increase in NAEP scores and twice turned to Chairman Miller, in a friendly way, while calling on Congress to speedily reauthorize NCLB.

He also congratulated the Secretary for her Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which delivered its final report one year ago. The commission was then regarded as a marginal success, at best. But I think history may judge otherwise.

At the time, most of the press attention focused on rancor within the commission, the refusal of the American Council on Education (apex of the higher education lobby) to sign on, and the fact that the commission's original, sharply-worded recommendations had been substantially watered down. It looked like one more example of higher education beating back calls for reform.

But to her credit, the Secretary stuck with the issue over the next year, sponsoring a series of meetings around the country and focusing on the foundation of the commission's recommendations: the need for greater transparency and public information. For an industry as large and important as higher education, we know remarkably little about how well it actually educates its students. Getting that information is a predicate for many other reforms--you can't help colleges become more productive, effective, and affordable if you don't have the denominator in the productivity equation.

And in just the last month, the efforts of the commission and others pushing the same issues have begun to bear fruit. One higher education association after another has announced or rolled out new initiatives focused on providing new public information. The private colleges launched a new Web site that allows institutions to voluntarily disclose information on costs, graduation rates, enrollment, and other measures. The public colleges will do the same later this year, and just today announced a new initiative, backed by a $2.4 million federal grant, to study ways to assess student skills and educational outcomes. On-line and for-profit colleges are also getting into the game. All of this puts more pressure on the big regional accreditors to do a better job of promoting transparent measures of student learning results, a big priority for the Department over the last year.

Now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand the strategy here. The Spellings Commission made a two-part argument: create and disclose more public information about institution-level outcomes, then hold institutions accountable for the results. The higher education establishment has essentially decided to concede the first element--but on its own terms, in order to preclude the second. More public information is very hard to argue against on principle--particularly if you're in the business of knowledge creation--and was going to come eventually, one way or another. Given that, higher education leaders have decided they're best off controlling that process as much as possible.

You can see elements of this in the private college Web site, the "University and College Accountability Network," or "U-CAN." In the upper-right hand corner of each college's page, there's a prominent click-through box that says "What Makes Us Special?" Putting aside the fact that this sounds like a question you'd ask a bunch of third graders, it's clear what's going on here: the private colleges are asserting their specialness as way to avoid accountability. As I wrote in this month's Change, (not on-line, sadly):

Like snowflakes, no two colleges are exactly alike. They're big, small, public, private, old, young, rich and poor. This diversity is a huge asset to the nation, a factor any effective accountability system should take into account. But just as all snowflakes are light, cold, and wet, higher education institutions are far more alike than they are different. Most organize and run themselves in the same way, with academic departments, professors, deans, tenure, and credit hours. They offer degrees with the same names that take the same amount of time to earn. The teach many of the same classes, and over half all bachelor's degrees are awarded in just five major disciplines--business, education, social science / history, psychology, and communications.

Yet rather than embracing their common purpose, colleges like to focus on their differences as a way of asserting their uniqueness. This is an anti-accountability gambit--if you're unique, you can't be compared. If you're not comparable, you can't be judged.

There's also a place at the bottom of the page where it says "For more about our students, click here:" Some colleges have chosen to post their results from the National Survey of Student Engagement, which has been cited by the Spellings Commission and many others as a promising way to compare institutions. But the wording is telling: NSSE results measure the institution, not the students, providing information about the quality of teaching practices and overall educational environment. Unsurprisingly, the U-CAN site doesn't provide ways to sort and compare the contributing institutions--a consequence of their unique specialness, no doubt.

That said, it's certainly a step in the right direction, and in the long run I don't think higher education institutions will be able to control the terms on which information about them is considered and judged. That's a good thing; for parents, students, and even the colleges themselves. A more accountable higher education system will be a more effective one, and ultimately that will lead to the resources and support the nation's colleges and universities need and deserve.

UPDATE: James Traub hits on a lot of these themes in the upcoming NYTimes Magazine, here.

Kid Politics

SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) passed in the House and is now on to the Senate where it will hopefully get more than the 60 votes needed to override the President's veto. If we care about poor kids, this political battle is one worth paying attention to.

So too is the debate over pre-k- who needs it, who pays for it, and how to design it. Education Sector is hosting an event on this with David Kirp and Joan Lombardi tomorrow evening (space limited so rsvp). Kojo Nnambi also covers the preschool issue today with Kirp, Libby Doggett of Pre-K Now and Gail Bjorklund of Fairfax County Office for Children.

States Need More Voltage

What will it take to transform our nation's low-performing schools? States are getting the message about what needs to be done, but they just don't seem to have the juice to make it happen. Are they overwhelmed and under-resourced, or just incompetent? State officials surveyed by the Center on Education Policy say their efforts at improving low-performers are limited by too few staff, not enough technical support, and yes, not enough funding. Perhaps it's not surprising to hear that from state officials but I think it's quite likely that they are overwhelmed. Still. Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum reconnects us to Marc Tucker and Tom Toch's related 2004 article.

Another Take on NAEP

As Kevin notes, the spin around the new NAEP results is really quite something. The statements about the scores (which show moderate, but not earth-shattering improvements) range from mildly over/under enthusiastic to wildly celebratory or wholly dismissive.

Senator Kennedy managed to use the occasion to condemn spending on the Iraq war, while President Bush went past just lauding positive outcomes and suggested that the results are "outstanding," and that they "confirm that No Child Left Behind is working." And predictably, many lawmakers and advocacy groups used the scores in defense of their own pet NCLB reauthorization ideas.

The media was also divided about the message with the Washington Post running the headline "'Nation's Report Card' Shows Improvement," while the New York Times proclaimed "Scores Show Mixed Results for Bush Education Law."

For me the bottom line is that it looks like scores are improving slowly but steadily in most areas. While I think the results fall significantly short of "outstanding," it seems like we are generally moving in a good direction, but not getting there as quickly as we all want and certainly haven't made enough progress on narrowing the achievement gap. But the fact that scores are moving in the right direction is important and should be recognized.

Whether the gains are directly attributable to NCLB is another question, and NCLB foes FairTest and the AFT make a reasonable point that scores rose fastest from 2000 to 2003 in most areas. It's important to remember that NAEP is a blunt measurement tool that tests discrete groups of students (as opposed to tracking individual student growth over time), and tying progress on the test directly to any specific reform is at best, educated guesswork.

NAEP plays its most important role as a national educational barometer. And the barometer is continuing to gradually rise. It's good news, but not time to put the umbrellas away yet.

By Guestblogger Margie Yeager

New NAEP results

The latest NAEP results are public, with no real surprises. Now we'll have to spend the next 24 hours or so sifting through various news stories, spin, and counter-spin focused on NCLB reauthorization. I guarantee that 99 percent of all of this -- both the stories and the warring spin -- was put together well ahead of time, and today's work is mostly just a matter of filling in the numbers in various pre-written statements supporting or denouncing the law.

As for my take, Kati Haycock sums up the two most important points well, from the Ed Trust press release:

Since 1996, the percentage of our nation’s fourth-grade students performing below the Basic achievement level in math has been cut in half, from 39 percent to 19 percent, with even stronger improvement among poor and minority students (from 73 percent to 37 percent for African Americans, 61 percent to 31 percent for Latinos, and 60 percent to 30 percent for poor students). At the same time, higher performers also posted significant gains, increasing the ranks of students at the Proficient and Advanced levels.

“Learning is not a zero-sum game,” said Haycock. “These results refute the false premise that increased attention to our lowest-performing students means that progress among higher achievers must be sacrificed.”

I've said it before and I'll say it again: NAEP results, particularly in elementary math, absolutely disprove the notion that public education is unreformable and nothing can be done for disadvantaged students. And while there's a lot of talk about how NCLB's focus on bringing up low-performing kids is pulling down the top and short-changing the gifted, I've yet to see any compelling evidence that this actually true. Our society is relentlessly focused on providing all manner of opportunity to people with an excess of talent, money, and social capital, and no federal law--particularly one narrowly focused on education--is going to change that.

Edwards on Teachers and Super Tutors

As part of Edwards' plan to Restore the Promise to America's Schools, he wants to ensure an excellent teacher in every classroom. To do this, he'll raise the pay of teachers in high-poverty schools, provide more resources and support for new teachers, train more principals to work in high-poverty schools, reduce class sizes, and require tutors be highly qualified teachers. Wait, what was that last one? That last one strikes me as pie-in-the-sky crazy, despite its good intent. But first, my dos centavos on a few others. On pay perks: Yes, $5,000 might attract some new good teachers to work in high-poverty schools. But it's not enough to get them to put down any roots there, which is really the problem. $5,000 more for national board certification, which has shown some evidence of impact, is a nice idea but not much in the way of powerful incentive to come and stay in high-need and often high-cost urban centers. More support for new teachers is a good call but the devil is in the details here- he's really talking about fewer students and fewer responsibilities for new teachers plus a veteran-novice buddy system. My concern is that this is a tall order that sounds great on the menu but doesn't really convey to the plate. Better leadership is essential for better teaching, as Education Sector proposed here.

And then there's that tutoring idea. He's talking about using Title I funds, specifically for Supplemental Educational Services (after school services aimed at enhancing academic achievement), more responsibly, which is a good thing. We can't have just anyone setting up shop to provide "out-of-school" educational services for our neediest students. But requiring that all tutors be highly qualified teachers makes no sense. First, logistically this just isn't going to happen. State education agencies can't even ensure that all SES providers are quality- is this now going to be the measure for a "quality" SES provider- having a list of "qualified" teachers who, no doubt, will not actually serve as tutors? If we can't get highly qualified teachers in these schools, what's the plan exactly to get them to tutor after school? Second, tutoring and teaching are not the same. What it takes to be a good teacher is very different from what it takes to be a good tutor, and some of the best tutoring programs employ cross-age and peer tutor models. Attention to the afterschool world deserves to be on the agenda but not so carelessly. Note that Edwards' plan also includes "emphasizing extended learning time" as a way to turn around low-performing schools (again, these same schools that need good teachers and good tutors)--more attention to this is also good but proposing highly qualified teacher-tutors in one place and longer school days (ostensibly taught by these highly qualified teachers) in the other seems devoid of strategy.