Sec. Duncan has put pressure on several states to either change their charter school cap policy or pass a charter school law. For example, Duncan has pushed Tennessee to increase the number of students that could attend a charter school. He discouraged Indiana from imposing a stricter cap on charter schools. There are still 10 states that do not allow charter schools. The Secretary called out one of these states a while ago as the state’s legislature was considering a charter school law – Maine.
Charter schools in Maine, really? This is a state where the largest city Portland, Maine has a total population of 63,000. Most communities in the state are too small to support a charter school even if they were allowed. Portland has a total of 14 regular schools including 8 elementary schools and these are all relatively small schools by national standards. So, maybe it could support one or two charter schools. In addition, the state’s population is decreasing. So, how many other communities in Maine would have a large enough student population to support multiple elementary schools? Is this one of the places to wage a war to expand charter schools?
I spent a chunk of last summer doing some work in Montana, another rural state without charter schools. I can’t imagine more than a few cities in that state even having enough students to support a new school let alone a new charter school. Perhaps Missoula Billing or Helena, but not likely anywhere else. To my knowledge there are only a couple private schools in the whole state. Perhaps there may be some reason to create distant learning charter schools to support home schoolers in these rural states, but site based programs would be limited in many of these states.
There are some states where the Secretary has not made enough noise about the lack of charter schools. At the top of my list is my home state of Washington. Washington has over 1 million students, the 15th largest student population in the country. The largest city has almost 600,000 people, and most of the state’s population is centralized along the west coast of the state within a couple of hours of Seattle. In the largest school district in Seattle – Seattle school district – almost a quarter of students attend private school. So this is not a state that is opposed to school choice. It is the home of Bill Gates, one of the most important charter school supporters. It is also home to the Center for Reinventing Public Education, one of the leading charter school research groups that could help design an effective charter approval and oversight process. So, here is a state where charter schools could really make an impact, but the state is not stepping up.
The state’s teacher union has been able to keep the charter school advocates at bay including a $3 million state initiative effort funded by Paul Allen around 2000. And in 2004, when the legislature finally acted to approve a charter school law, WEA and NEA will able to go to the voters and have it repealed.
This is a state where an Obama support for charter schools would likely make a difference. This state loves Obama. In the fall election he received 58 percent of the vote. But, perhaps more important in this Democrat controlled state, 68 percent supported Obama against Clinton in the primary. So encouragement to Sec. Duncan, put Washington state on the top of your list of states that need a charter school scolding. Based on a quick look at demographics add Kentucky, Alabama, and Nebraska to the states that need a little harassing on charter school law. You can likely leave the rest of the non-charter school states alone including Maine.
Basic Demographics of Non-Charter school states.
Washington
1,033,000 students, 97.2 people per sq mile, largest city Seattle (593,000),
Cities with greater than 100,000 people – 6 cities
Alabama
749,000 students, 91.3 people per sq mile, largest city Birmingham/Hoover (229,000),
Cities with greater than 100,000 people – 4 cities
Kentucky
683,000 students, 106.8 people per sq mile, largest city Louisville (558,000),
Cities with greater than 100,000 people – 2 cities
Nebraska
288,000 students, 23.1 people per sq mile, largest city Omaha (433,000),
Cities with greater than 100,000 people – 2 cities
West Virginia
279,000 students, 75.3 people per sq mile, largest city Charleston (53,000),
Cities with greater than 100,000 people – 0 cities
Maine 189,000 students, 42.7 people per sq mile, largest city Portland (63,000),
Cities with greater than 100,000 people – 0 cities
Montana – 143,000 students, 6.5 people per sq mile, largest city Billings (102,000),
Cities with greater than 100,000 people – 1 city
South Dakota – 121,000 students, 10.5 people per sq mile, largest city Sioux Falls (152,000), Cities with greater than 100,000 people – 1 cities
North Dakota – 95,000 students, 9.3 people per sq mile, largest city Fargo (93,000),
Cities with greater than 100,000 people – 0 cities
Vermont – 92,000 students, 67.2 people per sq mile, largest city Burlington (38,000),
Cities with greater than 100,000 people – 0 cities
Friday, July 10, 2009
The State of Our Nation's Children
The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics released its annual report on the well-being of America's children today. It tracks measures in eight key areas ranging from demographics and family background to health care, behavior, and education. The report is worth checking out in full, but I've chosen to highlight some selected findings below.
The chart below shows child poverty rates over time. As the middle line indicates, the percentage of children in poverty has hovered near 20 percent since 1980 and is notable for its lack of variation. The most notable positive finding is that the percentage of children living in poverty has declined for families with females as heads-of-households.
This next chart shows the percentage of youth living in various household structures, by whether or not the adult(s) were employed. All of the categories have risen over time, suggesting that more adults have more secure employment than they did in 1980 (this is of course a general trend upward and current unemployment numbers suggest at least a temporary downturn on this measure). Household with two married parents have consistently been more economically stable than other family structures.
Part of the reason children are increasingly living with working adults is the next graph, which shows the percentage of children born to unmarried mothers by age group. Children born out of wedlock has risen for every age group except 15-17 year-olds. Births from eighteen and nineteen year-olds has risen slightly in the last few years, but remain well off the modern high in the early 1990s.
The next graph shows the percentage of children aged 6-17 who qualify as overweight according to body mass index calculations from the Center for Disease Control. It shows a steady increase in overweight children, male and female, between 1976-80 and 1999-00. The percentage of overweight adolescents has increased from six percent to 17 over the graph's time frame, numbers which seemed low to me. 
If anyone needs further evidence of how a housing bubble developed, look no further. The chart below shows the percentage of children living in households where the cost of housing was greater than 30 percent of the family's income. It rose from 15 to 37 percent, suggesting that more families are spending more money on housing. The percentage of children living in households spending more than 50 percent of their monthly income on housing costs alone has gone from six to 16. These numbers include both renters and owners.
Find all the indicators here.
The chart below shows child poverty rates over time. As the middle line indicates, the percentage of children in poverty has hovered near 20 percent since 1980 and is notable for its lack of variation. The most notable positive finding is that the percentage of children living in poverty has declined for families with females as heads-of-households.
This next chart shows the percentage of youth living in various household structures, by whether or not the adult(s) were employed. All of the categories have risen over time, suggesting that more adults have more secure employment than they did in 1980 (this is of course a general trend upward and current unemployment numbers suggest at least a temporary downturn on this measure). Household with two married parents have consistently been more economically stable than other family structures.
Part of the reason children are increasingly living with working adults is the next graph, which shows the percentage of children born to unmarried mothers by age group. Children born out of wedlock has risen for every age group except 15-17 year-olds. Births from eighteen and nineteen year-olds has risen slightly in the last few years, but remain well off the modern high in the early 1990s.
The next graph shows the percentage of children aged 6-17 who qualify as overweight according to body mass index calculations from the Center for Disease Control. It shows a steady increase in overweight children, male and female, between 1976-80 and 1999-00. The percentage of overweight adolescents has increased from six percent to 17 over the graph's time frame, numbers which seemed low to me. 
If anyone needs further evidence of how a housing bubble developed, look no further. The chart below shows the percentage of children living in households where the cost of housing was greater than 30 percent of the family's income. It rose from 15 to 37 percent, suggesting that more families are spending more money on housing. The percentage of children living in households spending more than 50 percent of their monthly income on housing costs alone has gone from six to 16. These numbers include both renters and owners.
Find all the indicators here.
School Districts Without Schools
This is a pretty incredible story. Among the 285 school districts in this country that don't actually operate a single school is this one:
According to Wikipedia, the town of Tavistock was formed to allow the members of the Tavistock Country Club the ability to play golf on Sundays.
Hat tip Gadfly.
Tavistock, for example, is a golf course with some big homes on it - and a total of 20 residents. But it has its own local government and school board. In the coming year, the little town with seven homes will send one student to school in neighboring Haddonfield, paying a total tuition of $14,805.
According to Wikipedia, the town of Tavistock was formed to allow the members of the Tavistock Country Club the ability to play golf on Sundays.
Hat tip Gadfly.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Free
Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail, has a new book out called Free: The Future of a Radical Price. His basic hypothesis is that businesses need to adapt to a new world where the price of Free (Anderson always gives it the capital "F") is the Future. Anderson, while providing some really interesting and compelling examples, overstates the case for Free. Malcolm Gladwell's review reads as if it was written by a person who gets paid to write for a living. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but both views are slightly off.
First, it's admirable that Anderson is taking Free seriously. Not only does he write a book explaining how others need to adapt to Free, he has made his entire book available on Google for Free for the next month. It's an engaging read, and I strongly encourage it if for no other reason than to learn about lots of interesting businesses. But, while Anderson's examples of Free are interesting, note that none of them are actually Free in every sense of the word:
The list goes on: strip clubs let you see the show for Free but charge you for drinks. Casinos charge you for the shows but let you drink for Free. Etcetera, etcetera.
These are all interesting examples, but they're not all Free in the sense that they cost $0.00. They're free in that users can sample a version, but to get the full experience (or repeat it) they must pay, somehow or other. This is different than free.
Gladwell, while opposing Free intellectually, actually embodies it in his work. He works for a magazine with paid subcribers, but he makes a lot of those available on his Web site, and he makes his real money on his books and speaking engagements. Even his employer, The New Yorker, embodies some Free principles. It makes a significant portion of its magazine freely available online, including Gladwell's semi-regular columns (and book reviews!).
What's most interesting about Free is that it's not new at all. Information has always been passed by word of mouth. Businesses have always promoted themselves with sample products and free give-aways. Technology has sped all this up, but it's not new.
Some industries have adapted better than others. Newspapers, by and large, have not done it smoothly. Free shares the story of a Portuguese newspaper that used Free to boost its sales 36 percent over three months when it began offering Free silverware with every newspaper purchase. If you bought Monday's paper you'd get a free spoon, Tuesday a fork, and so on. Weekend edititons, the best selling and highest priced days, earned readers serving utensils. If you bought the paper every day for three months, you'd accumulate a full set.
Music, comparatively, has adapted much better than newspapers. It had to figure out how to survive on the radio, then on television, and now on the Internet. Record companies have struggled to block the spread of music file sharing, and their bottom line has suffered. But musicians themselves are doing quite well. Easier access spreads their music to more audiences, building larger fan bases for concerts, licensed music in movies and advertisements, and merchandise in general.
Free gives two good examples to support this. The band Radiohead opted to release their most recent album, In Rainbows, online in digital format and let anyone download the tracks for whatever they chose to pay. The band made more money on this digital release, before the album actually hit stores, than they made on their entire previous album. This could be an anamoly because of Radiohead's already-large fan base, but Free also gives an example of a musician named Derek Webb. He had a new record out called Mockingbird, but his label was financially unable to promote it. Webb decided to give it away free, so long as people provided him with their name, email address, and zip code. 80,000 people downloaded it in three months, and Webb is now able to use the information he collected to build a fan base. When he tours, he sells out his shows. Free made it possible.
But, you might argue, giving out personal information carries some cost, so it can't be Free. That's entirely true, and it's what makes Free little more than a marketing gimmick. This is what both Anderson misses and Gladwell scorns. Free is powerful and lucrative, but it's pretty much a sales gimmick nonetheless.
First, it's admirable that Anderson is taking Free seriously. Not only does he write a book explaining how others need to adapt to Free, he has made his entire book available on Google for Free for the next month. It's an engaging read, and I strongly encourage it if for no other reason than to learn about lots of interesting businesses. But, while Anderson's examples of Free are interesting, note that none of them are actually Free in every sense of the word:
- Gillette gives away razors Free but charges for the blades.
- Google gives away searches, a blogging service, a news feed, email, chat, and other products Free. But it collects your information and targets you for ads.
- Zecco gives away 10 Free stock trades a month if you have at least $25,000 in your account. It charges if you have less money than that or if you make more trades. It also makes interest when you leave money sitting in cash.
- Craigslist charges for job listings in seven cities only and for apartment listings in only one city (New York). Everything else is Free.
- SecondLife lets everyone have an avatar and explore the game for Free. It charges half a million paid users between $5 and $195 a month to rent virtual real estate.
- Webkinz has been the number one toy in America for two years. You have to buy a real stuffed animal, but then you have access to a Free web site, where you can also upgrade by paying more money.
- Runescape lets 5 million users play on its site for Free, but these are subsidized by the one million paid subscribers that generate $60 million in revenue a year (more than the most profitable online news content site, The Wall Street Journal, which is partially Free and partially not).
- Disney's Club Penguin is a Free website where users can have their own penguin and igloo. Users can upgrade their igloo or buy a virtual pet for their virtual penguin for $6 a month. It generates $40 million in revenue annually, and Disney paid $700 million to acquire it in 2007.
The list goes on: strip clubs let you see the show for Free but charge you for drinks. Casinos charge you for the shows but let you drink for Free. Etcetera, etcetera.
These are all interesting examples, but they're not all Free in the sense that they cost $0.00. They're free in that users can sample a version, but to get the full experience (or repeat it) they must pay, somehow or other. This is different than free.
Gladwell, while opposing Free intellectually, actually embodies it in his work. He works for a magazine with paid subcribers, but he makes a lot of those available on his Web site, and he makes his real money on his books and speaking engagements. Even his employer, The New Yorker, embodies some Free principles. It makes a significant portion of its magazine freely available online, including Gladwell's semi-regular columns (and book reviews!).
What's most interesting about Free is that it's not new at all. Information has always been passed by word of mouth. Businesses have always promoted themselves with sample products and free give-aways. Technology has sped all this up, but it's not new.
Some industries have adapted better than others. Newspapers, by and large, have not done it smoothly. Free shares the story of a Portuguese newspaper that used Free to boost its sales 36 percent over three months when it began offering Free silverware with every newspaper purchase. If you bought Monday's paper you'd get a free spoon, Tuesday a fork, and so on. Weekend edititons, the best selling and highest priced days, earned readers serving utensils. If you bought the paper every day for three months, you'd accumulate a full set.
Music, comparatively, has adapted much better than newspapers. It had to figure out how to survive on the radio, then on television, and now on the Internet. Record companies have struggled to block the spread of music file sharing, and their bottom line has suffered. But musicians themselves are doing quite well. Easier access spreads their music to more audiences, building larger fan bases for concerts, licensed music in movies and advertisements, and merchandise in general.
Free gives two good examples to support this. The band Radiohead opted to release their most recent album, In Rainbows, online in digital format and let anyone download the tracks for whatever they chose to pay. The band made more money on this digital release, before the album actually hit stores, than they made on their entire previous album. This could be an anamoly because of Radiohead's already-large fan base, but Free also gives an example of a musician named Derek Webb. He had a new record out called Mockingbird, but his label was financially unable to promote it. Webb decided to give it away free, so long as people provided him with their name, email address, and zip code. 80,000 people downloaded it in three months, and Webb is now able to use the information he collected to build a fan base. When he tours, he sells out his shows. Free made it possible.
But, you might argue, giving out personal information carries some cost, so it can't be Free. That's entirely true, and it's what makes Free little more than a marketing gimmick. This is what both Anderson misses and Gladwell scorns. Free is powerful and lucrative, but it's pretty much a sales gimmick nonetheless.
Death! Destruction! Student Loans!
Education Sector released a super-sized Charts You Can Trust today looking at the past 15 years of financial aid, and the constant growth in student borrowing. Below is Chart 1 from the report, and the trend line is pretty clear. From 1992-93 through the latest NPSAS in 2007-08, the percent of students borrowing has increased nearly every year for every type of institution. In 2007-08, 53 percent--more than half--of full-time students borrowed for their education.
Today's Inside Higher Ed covers the report - and provides some push back to our assertion that this rising tide of debt is a BIG problem. Are we just joining the bandwagon of hype around the issue of student debt?
If we are on that bandwagon (we, after all, did use the word catastrophic...), I think the wagon is headed in the right direction. Let's just say that the fact that more than half of full-time students borrow for college actually isn't such a big problem and that it focuses on the wrong end--nearly half of students, after all, don't borrow. So great, we're just fine today.
But that doesn't address the very clear trend line - which continually ticks upward and, given growing tuition and the current economic situation, isn't likely to stop anytime soon. So at what point is there too much borrowing? And isn't it good to sound the alarm before we get to that point, rather than wait until we have a generation of college graduates so far in debt that they can't contribute to the economy through spending, buying houses, and starting families?
Borrowing is also higher among the most vulnerable students - the ones that are supposed to be helped the most by financial aid. We didn't include this in the report, but low-income students borrow at slightly higher than average rates - 56 percent, compared with 42 percent for higher income students. So, is 56 percent of low-income students borrowing too high?
These are, after all, the students who can least afford to take on substantial debt to finance college. And that means that 56 percent of those students will pay more for college in the end. Just like that pair of shoes costs more when you add in interest from your credit card, college costs more when you include interest payments over 10 years--even subsidized interest.
Borrowing is really just one symptom of the larger problem - that higher education is becoming increasingly unaffordable. The 44 percent of low-income students who are not borrowing may be using other methods of paying for college that have their own costs, like holding a full-time job, which reduces a student's chance of graduating.
So maybe it's not death and destruction, but growing student debt and the underlying problem of college affordability could actually be catastrophic - and not just for student borrowers, but for the health of our entire economy.
Today's Inside Higher Ed covers the report - and provides some push back to our assertion that this rising tide of debt is a BIG problem. Are we just joining the bandwagon of hype around the issue of student debt?If we are on that bandwagon (we, after all, did use the word catastrophic...), I think the wagon is headed in the right direction. Let's just say that the fact that more than half of full-time students borrow for college actually isn't such a big problem and that it focuses on the wrong end--nearly half of students, after all, don't borrow. So great, we're just fine today.
But that doesn't address the very clear trend line - which continually ticks upward and, given growing tuition and the current economic situation, isn't likely to stop anytime soon. So at what point is there too much borrowing? And isn't it good to sound the alarm before we get to that point, rather than wait until we have a generation of college graduates so far in debt that they can't contribute to the economy through spending, buying houses, and starting families?
Borrowing is also higher among the most vulnerable students - the ones that are supposed to be helped the most by financial aid. We didn't include this in the report, but low-income students borrow at slightly higher than average rates - 56 percent, compared with 42 percent for higher income students. So, is 56 percent of low-income students borrowing too high?
These are, after all, the students who can least afford to take on substantial debt to finance college. And that means that 56 percent of those students will pay more for college in the end. Just like that pair of shoes costs more when you add in interest from your credit card, college costs more when you include interest payments over 10 years--even subsidized interest.
Borrowing is really just one symptom of the larger problem - that higher education is becoming increasingly unaffordable. The 44 percent of low-income students who are not borrowing may be using other methods of paying for college that have their own costs, like holding a full-time job, which reduces a student's chance of graduating.
So maybe it's not death and destruction, but growing student debt and the underlying problem of college affordability could actually be catastrophic - and not just for student borrowers, but for the health of our entire economy.
Duncan Data
There's renewed scrutiny around what Secretary of Education Arne Duncan accomplished in his previous position as head of the Chicago Public Schools. Andrew Coulson writes over at Cato about what his sleuthing has uncovered:
This would be all well and good, and we could trust Coulson's excellent analytical skills. Or we could trust the analysis that the National Center for Education Statistics has already done on the same data. Back in December, when Duncan was only a candidate for his new job, I wrote about what they found:
These achievements, while not dramatically amazing, are pretty solid, and Duncan deserves credit for more than adequately steering the nation's third largest school district.
So to get a reliable measure of Duncan’s impact, I pulled up the 4th and 8th grade math and reading scores for Chicago on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — a test that is much less susceptible to massaging by states and districts. I then compared the score changes in Chicago to those for all students in Large Central Cities around the nation, and tested if the small differences between them were statistically significant. Not one of them is even remotely significant at even the loosest accepted measure of significance (the p <>Chicago students did no better than those in similar districts around the nation between 2002/2003 and 2007, a period covering virtually all of Duncan’s tenure in Chicago.
This would be all well and good, and we could trust Coulson's excellent analytical skills. Or we could trust the analysis that the National Center for Education Statistics has already done on the same data. Back in December, when Duncan was only a candidate for his new job, I wrote about what they found:
Since Duncan took over in 2001, Chicago has made statistically significant progress in fourth and eighth grade math and fourth grade reading scores. They're up across all subjects and grades for low-income students, students with disabilities, and English Language Learners (ELL). Low-income students narrowed achievement gaps in all but fourth grade math, while students enrolled in special education and ELL students closed gaps in both eighth grade subjects....The racial achievement gaps have not narrowed as much as we'd like, but blacks are scoring higher in 3/4 categories and Hispanics on all four.
These achievements, while not dramatically amazing, are pretty solid, and Duncan deserves credit for more than adequately steering the nation's third largest school district.
Monday, July 06, 2009
Dear Bill Gates...
Hi! You don't know me, but I have an idea about how you should spend your hard-earned money. I'll bet you get a lot of that these days.
It's an old idea, a 19th-century idea. But I think its time has come again. Two words: Gates University.
What does that mean? Just what it sounds like! You should build a brand-new university, a great 21st-century institution of higher learning. A university unlike anything the world has ever seen.
Read the rest in my new column in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
It's an old idea, a 19th-century idea. But I think its time has come again. Two words: Gates University.
What does that mean? Just what it sounds like! You should build a brand-new university, a great 21st-century institution of higher learning. A university unlike anything the world has ever seen.
Read the rest in my new column in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The 2 + 2 Myth
The Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) has recently been airing radio ads touting their guaranteed admissions program, whereby students who complete an associate's degree at NOVA are guaranteed admission to 39 institutions, public and private, ranging from the University of Virginia to the University of Phoenix.
This type of program is called 2 + 2, because students can, theoretically at least, complete their associate's degree in two years, transfer their credits to a four-year school and enter as a junior, and then complete the final two years at the baccalaureate institution. NOVA's ads ask, "Seeking a bachelor's degree? Start with NOVA...finish at a university of your choice - GUARANTEED!" Those are powerful and misleading ellipses, because 2 + 2 programs are little more than tantalizing mirages.
It's a shame that 2 + 2 programs don't work better, because they offer a lot of promise both for individuals and state policymakers. An individual who successfully completes the program has gained a lot. They've saved money for their first two years, because community colleges cost less than four-year ones. And, since community colleges are often more convenient to beginning students, it might mean the student can live at home or continue at the same job for their first two years of school. They actually earn two credentials along the way, an associate's degree and a bachelor's degree, with all the attendant extra earnings potential that implies. The state benefits because it's cheaper for them to pay for an additional student at a community college than for an additional one at a four-year school. They maximize their resources.
The reality is it takes an incredibly special student to navigate this process as intended. They take the wrong classes or not enough. They must take remedial courses before being eligible for college-level coursework. Their original hopes of an associate degree fizzle and they drop out, or they finish the associate's and decide that's enough. They earn low grades. They don't realize they're eligible for financial aid, or, because financial aid covers only tuition and not fees, textbooks, or living expenses, they find the financial burden unmanageable. If and when they transfer, the four-year institutions don't accept all their credits. Or they do, but only as generic credit, not for grade, and not to be applied to any major or minor. The four-years also impose arbitrary rules on the number of credits transferred, saying that the student must complete the last x credits at their school.
While we know the obstacles are substantial, in general, there are just enough snippets of information out there to show us the chances of success at NOVA:
Researchers have found sizable "penalties" for students who try the 2 + 2 route to a bachelor's degree compared to those who entered a four-year institution from the outset. That doesn't mean we should push all students into four-year institutions, but it does mean we need to work at making the promise of 2 + 2 into a reality. Students need better information on their chances of success, but we also need more responsible and honest advertisements.
This type of program is called 2 + 2, because students can, theoretically at least, complete their associate's degree in two years, transfer their credits to a four-year school and enter as a junior, and then complete the final two years at the baccalaureate institution. NOVA's ads ask, "Seeking a bachelor's degree? Start with NOVA...finish at a university of your choice - GUARANTEED!" Those are powerful and misleading ellipses, because 2 + 2 programs are little more than tantalizing mirages.
It's a shame that 2 + 2 programs don't work better, because they offer a lot of promise both for individuals and state policymakers. An individual who successfully completes the program has gained a lot. They've saved money for their first two years, because community colleges cost less than four-year ones. And, since community colleges are often more convenient to beginning students, it might mean the student can live at home or continue at the same job for their first two years of school. They actually earn two credentials along the way, an associate's degree and a bachelor's degree, with all the attendant extra earnings potential that implies. The state benefits because it's cheaper for them to pay for an additional student at a community college than for an additional one at a four-year school. They maximize their resources.
The reality is it takes an incredibly special student to navigate this process as intended. They take the wrong classes or not enough. They must take remedial courses before being eligible for college-level coursework. Their original hopes of an associate degree fizzle and they drop out, or they finish the associate's and decide that's enough. They earn low grades. They don't realize they're eligible for financial aid, or, because financial aid covers only tuition and not fees, textbooks, or living expenses, they find the financial burden unmanageable. If and when they transfer, the four-year institutions don't accept all their credits. Or they do, but only as generic credit, not for grade, and not to be applied to any major or minor. The four-years also impose arbitrary rules on the number of credits transferred, saying that the student must complete the last x credits at their school.
While we know the obstacles are substantial, in general, there are just enough snippets of information out there to show us the chances of success at NOVA:
- NOVA's graduation rates are very low, at 10 percent for men and 16 percent for women. These are for first-time, full-time students only, and we know that graduation rates for part-time students tend to be even lower.
- Of the students who do finish, it takes them much longer than two years. Statewide, of the small fraction of students who are able to complete an associate's degree at all, it takes them an average of 3.9 years. They accumulate far more credits than the minimum.
- NOVA reports that only 14 percent of students transfer to another institution.
Researchers have found sizable "penalties" for students who try the 2 + 2 route to a bachelor's degree compared to those who entered a four-year institution from the outset. That doesn't mean we should push all students into four-year institutions, but it does mean we need to work at making the promise of 2 + 2 into a reality. Students need better information on their chances of success, but we also need more responsible and honest advertisements.
Charter Schools in the Old Dominion State
The Washington Post editorial board wonders what the next governor of Virginia will do to help grow the number of charter schools operating in the state, and which of the gubernatorial candidates is most likely to support charter schools.
The Virginian-Pilot reports on the graduating class of one of only four charter schools currently operating in the state, and summarizes the current state of charter schools in Virginia.
As someone who grew up attending Richmond Public Schools and who benefited from having public school choice, I write about my own perspective on charter schools in Virginia in Sunday's Richmond Times-Dispatch.
The Virginian-Pilot reports on the graduating class of one of only four charter schools currently operating in the state, and summarizes the current state of charter schools in Virginia.
As someone who grew up attending Richmond Public Schools and who benefited from having public school choice, I write about my own perspective on charter schools in Virginia in Sunday's Richmond Times-Dispatch.
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