College Rankings Fiesta

I'm back from Costa Rica after 10 blissfully email / Internet / news-of-the-outside-world-free days, and while I'd still much rather be there than here, it's nice to be here.

Right to business: the annual U.S. News & World Report college rankings were released in my absence. The news cycle around this is funny, because there's never really any news -- as long as the way the rankings are calculated stays the same, the top schools never, ever change. Yet again, Princeton and Harvard are #1 and #2 -- yawn.

That forces the news outlets to search for different stories, and the Times went with the straightforward "dodgy practices designed to juice the rankings" angle. But in focusing on things colleges do to drive down acceptance rates (mostly by increasing applicants), the Times is looking in the wrong place. Acceptance rates make up only 1.5% of a college's rankings (see our paper on the subject here), so even you used every trick in the book to knock your rate down by five or 10 points, it wouldn't make much difference.

The biggest factor driving rankings that a college can realistically change (reputations being difficult to budge) is money. 30 percent of each college's rankings is based on either direct measures like spending per student or measures of things that cost money to buy, like higher faculty salaries and smaller class sizes. And that's one of the big reasons the rankings never change; our increasingly-winner-takes-all-society is reflected in the higher education sector, where a few elite colleges accumulate Scrooge McDuck-like mountains of cash in their endowments and pick among the brightest students, while everyone else scrambles for the leftovers. They more they have, the more they get, and so on.

InsiderHigherEd notes that U.S. News made a small change in the methodology, incorporating the percent of students on Pell grants for the first time into the "expected graduation" rate component, which rates colleges based on the difference between their actual and statistically predicted graduation rate. It's a nice gesture, but that's all it is. The expected grad rate measure is only 5% of the rankings, and based on some analyses I've done of graduation rates, the Pell percentage is probably only about 10% of that -- in other words, one half of one percent of the total. This won't make anyone redouble their efforts recruit more low-income students. They'd be better off recruiting rich students who pay full tuition and whose parents will donate to the endowment.

The Washington Monthly, by contrast, makes the Pell percentage a much more prominent part of their newly-released annual college rankings. That's the difference between rankings focused on what colleges do for society at large and the U.S. News rankings that are, in the end, mostly about what colleges do for themselves.

College Knowledge

Here's a funny and frightening list of what today's college students know (and don't know). It's also startling to learn that most first-year college students this year were born in 1989. Which explains why they think that leg warmers and spandex are hot new trends in fashion. Bi-level hair-dos coming to a campus near you- see Ice Cube's poodle cut, The Human League hair, and the gender neutral Ziggy Cut.

Pre-K in Virginia and Beyond

Washington Post reports on Virginia's pre-k debate: targeted or universal, which is better? Virginia's only the latest of a string of states trying and testing different pre-K models. Education Sector's solution here.

A Quality Teacher In Every Classroom

A California-based coalition of parents and community members is suing the USDOE for violating teacher quality provisions. Press release from Public Advocates, which is representing the coalition, provides details about the lawsuit, which is supported by AACTE (pdf statement).

Meanwhile, UFT leader Randi Weingarten guest-blogs at length on Eduwonk about the teacher role in data-driven accountability.

Business Schools

British journalist Peter Curran hosts a series of half-hour videos on American public schools. In this one, "Education USA- Profiting from School", he examines the corporate role in public education, visiting an Edison school in Las Vegas, talking with Lowell Milken in Los Angeles, and visiting D.C. to meet with ES's own Tom Toch.

Baby Achievement

Newsweek reports on a Journal of Pediatrics study that says babies shouldn't watch too much TV. Apparently, television doesn't improve babies' vocabulary but talking to them does. Was anyone under the impression that TV (even those Baby Einstein videos that are marketed as baby brain food to gullible and guilt-ridden new parents) actually helps babies' vocabulary? According to the study, TV Baby may gain eight to ten fewer words than No TV Baby. Uh-oh. If we had a "baby achievement" measure I guess that would be it. But I don't really think we need one.

US News' College Rankings

NYTimes reports on the college rankings frenzy. Inside Higher Ed weighs in. And, don't worry, Kevin will be back mid-week with plenty more to say about higher education and the whole rankings game.

Then Again, What Do They Know?

Zip Zilch Nada (what students know about preparing for college) posters and student brochure by KnowHow2Go , a national college access campaign supported by Lumina Foundation* and American Council on Education.

*so is Education Sector

Hispanic Students Are Smarter

Miami Herald reports that Latino students are more likely to choose colleges based on sticker price and convenience, according to a study by Excelencia in Education. They care a lot about how they're going to pay for college, they want to stay closer to home and avoid debt. OK, I added the smarter part but seriously that just seems smarter.

Dual Immersion in Texas

English language learner (ELL) students are not doing well. Last month a federal judge ruled that Texas's bilingual education programs are not to blame. Indeed, there are plenty of other reasons for ELLs' poor performance but in fairness to LULAC, MALDEF and the GI Forum who argued that ELL education is not being well monitored or evaluated, our education programs for ELLs need a lot of work.

The judge's ruling has prompted a renewed debate over what type of programming is best for ELLs. For educators of ELLS, this is a fair debate. It's hard to figure out the best way to teach these kids, mostly because there isn't one best way (ELLs are a diverse group-a recent immigrant with few years of formal schooling is very different from a U.S.-born student who is struggling with English). But there are some things we do know. For instance, there's ample evidence from research that shows that language-minority students who are instructed in both languages (native and English) perform better on average in English reading proficiency than those taught in English-only, for early grades and secondary school levels, as was reported by The National Literacy Panel in their study of language-minority children last year.

There are many philosophical and political arguments for why we support English-only instruction and remove all native language from U.S. public school curricula, but none is supported by research. So it's promising to read that Texas educators are looking into dual immersion.

Rest in Peace, Dr. Hilliard

Very sad to report that Asa G. Hilliard died earlier this week while traveling on a study tour in Egypt. Dr. Hilliard was the Fuller E. Calloway Professor of Urban Education at Georgia State University, with joint appointments in the Department of Educational Policy Studies and the Department of Educational Psychology/Special Education. Prior to that, he taught psychology, math and history in the Denver Public Schools, worked as a superintendent of schools and school psychologist in Monrovia, Liberia, and served as a professor and then dean of education at San Francisco State University.

More recently, Dr. Hilliard has been speaking out with other scholars about the problems facing black male youth. He has openly questioned the promise of single sex schools to improve the education of black male students. Single sex schools, he argued, can be high-performing or low-performing just like any other schools.

Folks in Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, North Carolina, pay attention. You too, USDOE. If you're really interested in helping the kids who need it the most, single sex is a distraction not an answer.

Tonight! PBS Merrow Report #2

Airing tonight on the NewsHour, the second in a series of reports on NCLB. This one takes us to San Diego, where two schools- Keiller and Gompers Middle Schools-broke off from the school system and converted to charters. How'd they do it? Did it work?

At the same site, you can also get podcasts featuring school leader Patricia Ladd, parent Michelle Evans and former S.D. Superintendent Alan Bersin (disc: Bersin chairs ES board) to learn more details. And see our 2006 ES report , "Extreme Makeover", for more analysis and lessons on Gompers and Keiller.

The Hottest Schools

Jay Mathews profiles the "25 Hottest Schools" in Newsweek. Some picks seem related to learning: Hottest for Science and Engineering (Cal Inst of Tech), Hottest for Liberal Arts (Princeton U), Hottest for Business (Babson), Hottest for International Studies (Univ of Richmond). Some are mostly about demographics and special pops: Hottest Mega University (UCLA), Hottest for First Gen Students (Queens College, also alma mater of Ugly Betty, which no doubt gives it extra points on the hot scale), and Hottest Women's College (chance to take a cheap shot at the gender imbalance in college-going rates by picking any college but stuck to the spirit and picked Smith College).

Some are ridiculous: Hottest Liberal Arts School You Never Heard Of (Centenary College of Louisiana). How can it be hot if we've never heard of it? or Hottest for Sports Fans (UFlorida- too obvious, Ohio State would be better- get the sparks flying again) or Hottest for Loving the Great Outdoors (St. Mary's College of MD- the sailing/crabbing/fishing/beach thing, sure, but otherwise, Maryland? I was outside more in my eight years in NM and CA than the rest of my life here in MD but hey, shout out for Maryland can't be a bad thing).

Others are just downright scary- Hottest in the War on Terror (New Mex Tech).

And my favorite? Drumroll.....
Hottest Catholic School. Can a Catholic school be hot? Fortunately my family doesn't read this blog so they won't see me referencing "hot" and "Catholic" together. But I guess Fordham's got something good going on there b/c it wins this prize.

PBS Merrow Report on NCLB

Last night, PBS aired the first of three special reports on NCLB. John Merrow interviewed Education Secretary Spellings, Chester Finn of Fordham and ES's own Kevin Carey on how some school districts are getting around NCLB requirements. Read the transcript or download audio file here. More from Kevin on this in his Hot Air report.

School Time Update

Massachusetts is still leading the way with extended school time plans. Governor Patrick recently doubled funding for Massachusetts' Expanded Learning Time (ELT) Initiative in the state budget. And Mass2020 and the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy have created a joint national venture to support extending learning time in schools across the country. They're also looking for someone excellent to help lead this effort as their National Network Director- contact if you're interested.

Oklahoma State Superintendent Sandy Garrett just called for a longer Oklahoma school year in her State of Education speech. The Sooner state only has 175 days a year of public schooling,five days less than the 180 national average so they really are playing catch up in this case. Still, it's enough to spark debate. There are folks who can't stand the idea of school in the summertime (i'm guessing they either had really great times at Camp White Pine or really bad times in summer school). So despite moves to extend learning, there are still plenty of legislative moves to "save summer".

Dare To Compare

I was on the NCES website recently and found myself lured away from the "what's new" research links to the bright colorful bubbly font of the NCES Kids Zone. It's full of educational games and graph-making capabilities that I'm pretty sure no kids are actually using. Are they? Let me know if you know kids or classrooms that are using this site.

Anyway, there's a "dare to compare" tab that lets you try out questions from international tests to see if you really are smarter than 4th graders. You can try out NAEP questions, CivEd questions, or TIMSS- trends in math and science study- questions, the latter of which I find funny since getting kids to try out the TIMSS questions in the Kids Zone is the closest we'll get this time around to actually participating in the next TIMSS. Evidently, participation is expensive (and all the other cool countries aren't doing it either) so we dropped out this time. I find that amusing too- in a depressing sort of way- since we don't have a problem with testing and are otherwise so committed to Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science.

Don't get me wrong- I really enjoyed "daring to compare" in the Kids Zone. But if competing is so important now, as it was then and then, we should spend more time collecting and analyzing comparative data.

Happy August!

I'm leaving for vacation on Sunday, so if you see a post from me here in the 10 days after that, it means that (A) Wi-fi access in the jungles of Costa Rica is suprisingly good, and (B) I need to get a life.

Not-So-Brainy Babies

A study out of the University of Washington indicates that Baby Einstein videos—despite Presidential accolades—might actually hurt children’s language development. Researchers found that the more videos infants watched, the fewer vocabulary words they knew.

Former Senior Policy Analyst Sara Mead was on this story back in April - check out her report on what the evidence does—and does not—say about brain development from ages zero to three.

That Can't Be a Good Thing

Washington insiders will doubtless be chatting for days about Matthew Scully's tell-all takedown($) of his former colleague, lionized Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, in the new Atlantic Monthly. Seriously, you'd have to be saint or one of the 2.6% of Americans who still approve of the President to not a least kind of enjoy it. But I found this to be disquieting:

Even on the dreariest days—slogging through a tax, education, or Chamber of Commerce speech—Mike and John and I endlessly entertained one another, with all the running jokes and gags you’d expect three guys in a room to develop. Education speeches in particular—with their endlessly complicated programs and slightly puffed-up theories, none of which we could ever explain quite to the satisfaction of our policy people—were always good for a laugh. As John observed in late 2003, around draft 20 in the typically chaotic revising of an education speech, “We’ve taken the country to war with less hassle than this.”

Education is really so boring and complicated that it can't be made interesting by the spin-meisters and wordsmiths in the Bush Administration?!! I think that's really depressing.

Pre-K Notes

Wall Street Journal online covers pre-k, just as Harvard Press releases a new book on the same subject by Berkeley professor and Education Sector nonresident senior fellow David Kirp. Check out Sara Mead's review of The Sandbox Investment in last month's American Prospect. Sara, we miss you here in the policy pod.