The Data Void

One of the interesting things about working on both K-12 and higher education policy is observing the differences between them. In K-12, there's a long-running and very active research and policy conversation about class size. Books have been written, studies conducted, debates organized, policies implemented, all focused on the relationship between student / teacher ratios and learning. People argue about whether there's a specific threshold class size associated with learning gains (15:1? 18:1?), whether there are differential effects for different student groups, whether marginal dollars are better spent hiring more teachers or better teachers.

All of this occurs despite the fact the class sizes in K-12 don't actually vary all that much. The vast majority are probably somewhere between 15 and 35 students. In higher education, by contrast, class sizes in similar courses can range from less than 10 to 500 or more. In theory, that should permit for even more robust inquiry into the impact of college class size on teaching and learning, particularly since student / faculty ratios are a commonly-accepted and often-used measure of institutional quality.

Yet virtually no such research exists. And this is true for lots of other basic elements of the higher education teaching enterprise. This is the subject of my new column at InsiderHigherEd. Read it here.

Beer Pong Ain't Wimbledon

This paragraph from Inside Higher Ed's article today about efforts to rid college campuses of drinking games makes me wonder if the author has a little experience with the topic...

Like many drinking games, beer pong’s beauty lies in its simplicity. Played on a ping pong table, the object is to toss a table tennis ball across a net and land it in a beer-filled cup on the other side. While the game has different rules in different circles, a successful shot often means your opponent has to chug a beer.

Not surprisingly, beer pong ain’t exactly Wimbledon.

Woeful

Sol Stern of the Manhattan Institute says:

There are some districts in [New York] state that recorded proficiency rates of close to 100% on this year's math tests. This Lake Wobegon effect is an embarrassment...

Look, if you're going to start throwing around tired cliches instead of offering actual analysis, at least get the cliches right. As everyone (except, apparently, Sol Stern) knows, the Lake Wobegon effect refers to the mathematically specious idea that, to quote Garrison Keillor, "all of the children are above average." Proficient is not average. Proficient means you've acquired a certain defined set of knowledge and skills. While the percent of students who can reasonably be expected to meet any given definition of proficiency is debatable, there's no inherent generalized reason that it can't be "close to 100%." There are lots of of important things that close to 100% of people can do.

Sharpton and Carey, together at last

I'll be on the Reverand Al Sharpton show talking about class-based school integration policies, starting in about five minutes. I think you can listen here.

Update: The muzak you hear while on hold waiting for the Reverand? Tremendously funky.

Update 2: The first segment seems to have gone well. Good questions. Keeping it real!

Update 3: On to the callers! Jack from Baltimore says the public school system gets a lot of money but wastes it; we need higher standards, AP course, hold the administrators to account. Can't argue with that.

Update 4: Very frank conversations about parental involvement.

Update 5: The last caller veers toward some kind of FCAT conspiracy theory in Florida -- the easy tests go to some communities, the hard ones to others...but then the segment ends.

Summary: Good topic, interesting mix of callers, the Reverand Al was engaged and on point. Notice to producers and bookers: contact Education Sector for smart, well-informed guests!

What We Do Cannot Be Measured

Two main camps square off in education over and over again. One side, typified by the Broader, Bolder coalition in K-12, emphasizes student demographics. They point out, justifiably, that students enter school with widely divergent skills and expectations. As such, schools can only do so much to rectify the situation. The other, reformist side, says demographics be damned, every child deserves a quality education. Children and schools should all be held to high standards, and we can account for differences on the back end.

The first camp is far less willing to measure results in any systematic way. It makes some sense too. If you believe demography is destiny, no mathematical formula, no matter how complex or inclusive, can address all the factors that go into schooling.

Let's leave the math and the standardized achievement measures alone for a bit. Surely there are other ways to measure a school's, or even an individual teacher's, value? The first crowd says no. Insidehighered published a piece today questioning learning assessments in colleges. The author, Bernard Fyrshman, argues that, because colleges educate many different types of students in many fields, we cannot encapsulate a school's contribution to learning in a number:

Do you want to know whether the school will help a student learn to think, to examine, or to innovate? And of course every one of those talents may differ depending on the discipline. Do you care about what’s happening in the fine arts department or in engineering? And even in engineering, is it civil engineering or software development? Different talents, different intellectual demands, different skills.

But wait, we didn’t ask you yet about the student you’re interested in helping. Is he bright and driven, or laid back and not particularly ambitious? Was his high school a place that turned him on to learning or to text messaging? Does he need remedial coursework or is his transcript full of AP credits? Does your daughter stand out or is she happy sitting at the back of a large lecture hall? Will she grow under pressure or shrivel up and leave? Does your child want competition or collaboration?

The problem with Fryshman's argument, and the entire first camp's in general, is that we really have no good alternatives to assess student learning. In the higher ed world, colleges and universities have successfully kept new data sources from the public (see the recently passed Higher Education Act). For colleges, the only data we really have are graduation rates, and those mask wide differences. Some schools have small or nonexistent gaps between black and white graduation rates. Some, like my alma mater, a large public Big Ten school, have wide discrepancies.

But what about other sources of information? As Fryshman says, engineering students are different than ones studying fine arts. That's a given, but incomplete. How involved are they with campus life? How many papers or projects are they asked to complete? And are they able to find jobs after graduation? Are those jobs in their field of degree? If they graduated from a public school, do they stay in-state after graduation? Do they earn salaries worthy of their credentials? Are their employers satisfied with their skills? Do they go on to pursue, and to succeed, in more education? Are they involved in civic life through voting or volunteering? Most importantly, how do the answers to these questions stack up with the school's peers?

There's more than one way to take a measurement, but instead of pursuing other avenues vigorously, schools are mostly reluctant to release data proving their merit. We're left arguing, as Fryshman does, about standardized tests. But policymakers no longer accept accountability by assurance; they want to see results.

The GI Bill Equation

Jon Oberg (of whistle-blower fame) has a guest post over at Higher Ed Watch on the new GI Bill. While he praises the recent expansion of benefits, he also points out that it will take the cooperation of college financial aid offices in order for veterans to see the full benefits of the bill. As we've shown, colleges have been increasing the institutional aid they give to higher income students over the years, which means fewer dollars for low-income students - and possibly for veterans. Colleges can lessen the impact of federal grant aid by simply using it as an excuse to take away institutional aid the student would have otherwise received. Or colleges can join the federal government in increasing access to four-year institutions by supplementing the federal aid money to ensure veterans graduate with as little debt as possible.

This Chronicle of Higher Education ($) article from last month takes an interesting look at the impact of the GI Bill and the colleges--private, for-profit--that are reaping the biggest benefits from its expansion.

The Supposedly Unfriendly Skies

USAir charged me a dollar for a cup of coffee yesterday morning. I know this is supposed to make me angry, what with the evil airline industry coming up with ever-more-nefarious schemes to suck money from my wallet even as the flying experience deteriorates to levels formerly unknown outside of various former Soviet republics. But I just can't get worked up about it. Most of the whinging is unjustified, I think.

I fly fairly often, probably twice a month on average, short flights and long, national and international, for business and pleasure. It's usually fine. Yes, there's the occasional Kafkaesque nightmare of delays, brought in part by overscheduling. But there are ways to minimize the risk of this (i.e. never, ever connect through O'Hare in the summer, particularly in the afternoon). The seats are a little cramped, but I'm 6'2" and have broad shoulders, so I imagine it's not as bad for most people. Plus, technology is making some things better -- nifty noice-cancelling headphones, for example, and they're going to have wi-fi any day now. The food and coffee they sell in the airport to bring on board is a lot better. Plus, people can't smoke anymore.

So I'd say the experience is a wash, then add on the fact that airline travel is (A) much cheaper than it used to be, and (B) phenomenally safe. Those two things are all most people really care about, and the market has reacted accordingly. It's not like USAir is Exxon/Mobil and they're reaping windfall profits by charging for soft drinks; most of the airlines either went bankrupt recently or are getting there soon. It's properlyiregulated capitalism, and in the long run things tend to work out.

For example, on my return flight, the flight attendant came down the aisle with the beverage cart. "Soft drinks? Coffee? Anyone?" There were probably 60 people on the plane and I don't think a single person bought a drink. So there you have it: for decades airlines have been spending a not-inconsiderable amount of money providing free drinks and snacks that people actually don't want very much, but overconsumed because that's what people do when things are free. And of course they weren't free; the cost just got rolled into the ticket. Now tickets will be a little less expensive, people will only drink cheap coffee or soda if they really want to, and the world will be a slightly more efficient and productive place. That's progress.

Obama on Affirmative Action

As the New York Times noted yesterday, Barack Obama sensibly believes that his daughters shouldn't benefit from affirmative action when they apply to college, particularly if it comes at the expense of less-privileged white applicants. Applying a much stronger economic lens to college admissions is a good idea and I'm glad Obama agrees. Because college admissions is zero-sum, that might mean trading some racial diversity for income diversity. But if that means the children of two wealthy, powerful, and socially-prominent Ivy League-educated lawyers don't get into Princeton, it's a trade off worth making.

Some affirmative action proponents, however, are worried that introducing this kind of nuance to the debate will hurt the larger cause (hat-tip: Russo):

The Supreme Court has...said that universities could consider race as they worked to diversify their campuses. Proponents of such programs point out that blacks continue to face discrimination regardless of class or income. Some fear that Mr. Obama’s focus on the socioeconomic status of his daughters — as opposed to the diversity of experience and perspective they might bring to predominantly white campuses — may help conservatives in their battle to eliminate race from university admissions and government hiring.

This just shows the how screwed-up the affirmative action debate has become. I'm in favor of racial preferences in college admissions as long as the goal is to help minority students who come from substandard K-12 schools and have to live with legacy of historical racism along with discrimination that still exists today. But somehow affirmative action has gotten turned around so that the primary justification is now that it's good for white people. This is partially the legacy of Sandra Day O'Connor's somewhat tortured logic in the Michigan case, and partially because diversity has been diluted into a kind of all-purpose social good that's handy for any rhetorical occasion. It's also a way to be pro-affirmative action without being intellectually honest about the hard tradeoffs that position entails, and leads to absurd conclusions like the idea that some other Senator's daughter would learn more from hanging out with Senator Obama's daughters at Princeton than she would from a white first-generation college student from a low-income family.

Elsewhere in the article there's also this:

Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a professor at Harvard Law School and an adviser on black issues to Mr. Obama...and civil rights lawyers like Mr. Payton say Mr. Obama’s daughters should not be barred from affirmative action programs because they may well encounter racial discrimination, unlike their white peers. Studies suggest that employers often favor white job seekers over black applicants, even when their educational backgrounds and work experiences are nearly identical. Mr. Obama’s “daughters are not going to be judged in a colorblind way throughout their lives,” Mr. Ogletree said.

I'm pretty sure that the single biggest thing affecting the way people judge Barack Obama's children throughout their lives will be the fact that their dad was a world-famous Senator and possibly the President of the United States of America, not their race, gender, or anything else. And while this is somewhat of an extreme example, many students at the relatively small number of elite colleges where affirmative action is an issue have social capital that dwarfs that of ordinary students.

Affirmative action is meant to help students who were, say, raised by a single parent who struggled to earn enough to put food on the table, students of promising intellect who bounced around from different schools in their younger years. Students, in other words, like Senator Obama himself (the article suggests that Obama "chose not to mention his race in his application to Harvard Law School to avoid benefiting from affirmative action," although this is unconfirmed.) But once it works, it shouldn't become an intergenerational inheritance, particularly when there are far more worthy lower-income students out there than elite institutions currently choose to serve.

How to Know Your "Merit" Financial Aid Is Out of Whack

Last night my wife and I were sipping adult beverages at a swanky Georgetown pizza and beer joint. This is Georgetown, not exactly your local Pizza Hut. I overheard the couple next to us talking about Harvard's financial aid plan. He was describing how it works:

He: Students under $60,000 pay no tuition.
He (whispering): And they give need-based aid for families making up to $180,000.
She (incredulous): $180,000? That's a lot.

My sentiments exactly.