Saturday, September 02, 2006
Orwellian? Not Really
My take on higher education data systems, student privacy, and yesterday's article in the NYTimes about the F.B.I. accessing federal student loan records, over at Washington Monthly.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Colleges Giving Even More Financial Aid to Wealthy Students
Way back in the earliest history of Education Sector--I believe it was January 2006--we published our first "Chart You Can Trust." It described how colleges are increasingly funneling scholarship money away from lower-income students and instead giving it to wealthy applicants who are more useful for boosting both colleges' standing in the U.S. News college rankings and their financial bottom line.
That chart used data from the federal National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey, gathered in 1992, 1995, and 1999. Yesterday, the Education Trust (my former employer) released an excellent new report titled "Promise Abandoned: How Policy Choices and Practices Restrict College Opportunities." It contains a similar analysis, but uses newer data from the 2003 NPSAS survey.
Their conclusion: things have gotten even worse.
From 1999 to 2003, private colleges increased the average aid to students from families making less than $20,000 per year from $4,027 to $5,240, an increase of $1,213, or 30%.
During the same time period, private colleges increased the average aid to students from families making more than $100,000 per year from $3,321 to $4,806, an increase of $1,485, or 45%.
This is on top of even larger disparities in earlier years. Over the last decade, both public and private institutions have devoted a hugely disproportionate share of new scholarships to the most privileged students. The whole principle of awarding financial aid according to financial need appears to be rapidly disappearing from our colleges and universities.
Higher education institutions enjoy a wealth of benefits in our society, ranging from social standing to direct and indirect financial support from the government. Those benefits are based on the notion that these institutions serve a higher social purpose than a typical private enterprise. Colleges are supposed to be more than businesses, they're supposed to represent the best of what our society is, and aspires to be.
But when those institutions start to put their own interests of status and money ahead of the pressing need to help lower-income students earn a college degree, it calls those basic assumptions into question.
Addendum #1: Welcome, Talking Points Memo readers. For those of you reading the Quick and the Ed for the first time--and I'm guessing that's more or less all of you--this blog is published by Education Sector, an independent, nonpartisan education policy think tank located in Washington, DC. If you're looking for a smart, fresh perspective on education that's not tied down by predictable orthodoxies, give us a try.
Addendum #2: A few readers have emailed to point out that institutions like Harvard and Yale have taken steps in recent years to cut tuition for low- and middle-income students. True enough. But that's just another example of how the national sense of what's going on higher education is warped by the actions of a few elite, high-profile institutions that educate only a tiny percentage of all students.
It's great if universities with multi-billion dollar endowments finally do the right thing and stop charging the families of the few low-income students they enroll (75% of all students at elite colleges and universities come from the top income quartile, only 3% from the bottom quartile) tens of thousands of dollars of tuition. But if those actions don't alter the overall averages -- and the new data clearly indicate that they don't -- then the basic problem is unchanged.
That chart used data from the federal National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey, gathered in 1992, 1995, and 1999. Yesterday, the Education Trust (my former employer) released an excellent new report titled "Promise Abandoned: How Policy Choices and Practices Restrict College Opportunities." It contains a similar analysis, but uses newer data from the 2003 NPSAS survey.
Their conclusion: things have gotten even worse.
From 1999 to 2003, private colleges increased the average aid to students from families making less than $20,000 per year from $4,027 to $5,240, an increase of $1,213, or 30%.
During the same time period, private colleges increased the average aid to students from families making more than $100,000 per year from $3,321 to $4,806, an increase of $1,485, or 45%.
This is on top of even larger disparities in earlier years. Over the last decade, both public and private institutions have devoted a hugely disproportionate share of new scholarships to the most privileged students. The whole principle of awarding financial aid according to financial need appears to be rapidly disappearing from our colleges and universities.
Higher education institutions enjoy a wealth of benefits in our society, ranging from social standing to direct and indirect financial support from the government. Those benefits are based on the notion that these institutions serve a higher social purpose than a typical private enterprise. Colleges are supposed to be more than businesses, they're supposed to represent the best of what our society is, and aspires to be.
But when those institutions start to put their own interests of status and money ahead of the pressing need to help lower-income students earn a college degree, it calls those basic assumptions into question.
Addendum #1: Welcome, Talking Points Memo readers. For those of you reading the Quick and the Ed for the first time--and I'm guessing that's more or less all of you--this blog is published by Education Sector, an independent, nonpartisan education policy think tank located in Washington, DC. If you're looking for a smart, fresh perspective on education that's not tied down by predictable orthodoxies, give us a try.
Addendum #2: A few readers have emailed to point out that institutions like Harvard and Yale have taken steps in recent years to cut tuition for low- and middle-income students. True enough. But that's just another example of how the national sense of what's going on higher education is warped by the actions of a few elite, high-profile institutions that educate only a tiny percentage of all students.
It's great if universities with multi-billion dollar endowments finally do the right thing and stop charging the families of the few low-income students they enroll (75% of all students at elite colleges and universities come from the top income quartile, only 3% from the bottom quartile) tens of thousands of dollars of tuition. But if those actions don't alter the overall averages -- and the new data clearly indicate that they don't -- then the basic problem is unchanged.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Wah, Wah, Good One
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings in today's Washington Post:
It's an arguable position on an issue of central importance to the coming reauthorization of NCLB. A lot of NCLB criticisms boil down to the same basic complaint: because the law is designed to increase focus on the things that federal policymakers believe are most important--reading and math, defined proficiency levels, the performance of traditionally disadvantaged students--it inevitably decreases the focus on every other thing, like other academic subjects, performance levels, and student groups.
While this is a real concern, most critics don't like to grapple with one obvious response--let's test those things too--since they tend to also be unhappy about the current amount of testing, or testing generally. Too much testing is obviously problematic, but you also can't hold schools accountable for things without objective information about them. It's a tremendously tricky problem.
That said, it's hard not to like a member of the Cabinet--particularly in this administration--who's willing to go on the record and talk like a real person.
for people who say, 'Wah, wah, we can't have spelling bees because we have to focus on math and reading' -- let's measure the spelling"
It's an arguable position on an issue of central importance to the coming reauthorization of NCLB. A lot of NCLB criticisms boil down to the same basic complaint: because the law is designed to increase focus on the things that federal policymakers believe are most important--reading and math, defined proficiency levels, the performance of traditionally disadvantaged students--it inevitably decreases the focus on every other thing, like other academic subjects, performance levels, and student groups.
While this is a real concern, most critics don't like to grapple with one obvious response--let's test those things too--since they tend to also be unhappy about the current amount of testing, or testing generally. Too much testing is obviously problematic, but you also can't hold schools accountable for things without objective information about them. It's a tremendously tricky problem.
That said, it's hard not to like a member of the Cabinet--particularly in this administration--who's willing to go on the record and talk like a real person.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Gender, Race and the SAT
The College Board just released its report on national and state average results from the first-ever cohort of college students (the high-school class of 2006) to take the new SAT, first offered in March 2005, which ditched the old "verbal" section for "critical reading," added more advanced math content, and added an essay-based writing section.
Most media reports seem to be focusing on the state horserace or the fact that this year's critical reading subtest averages are somewhat lower than last year's verbal score averages. I'm not sure either of these is very informative, since the population of kids taking the SAT differs from state to state, and the new SAT the college board started administering in March 2005 is a different test from that administered in previous years.
Also gaining attention is the impact of the new writing section on average male-female SAT score differences. Historically, men have had higher average scores than women, not just on the SAT overall but also on both its verbal and math subsections--a departure from other assessments where men tend to do better than women on math (with a few caveats), but women tend to do better on verbal skills. But women did do better than men, on average, on the new writing section, lowering the the male-female score gap from 42 points in 2005 to 26 points this year. In addition to the writing section, the new critical reading section, which eliminated the infamous verbal analogies, probably also made the test more female-friendly, since verbal analogies are one of the few areas of verbal skills in which men typically outperform women, and the difference between men's critical reading scores this year and their verbal skills last year is larger than that for women.
Because women's improved SAT performance relative to men reflects changes in the assessment and not simply changes in students' skills, it shouldn't be taken as evidence of a boy crisis. But is men's continued higher average SAT performance--in both reading and math--evidence against a boy crisis? The answer is no. First, the difference between male and female reading scores on the SAT is tiny. More significant, the populations of men and women taking the test are different. More females than males take the SAT--54% of SAT-takers in the 2006 college-bound cohort were girls--and, because students in the highest segments of the achievement distribution for each gender are already pretty likely to take the SAT, the larger pool of women taking it probably means more women from lower on the achievement are taking the test--and a look at the gender breakdowns of students by score distribution backs this up.
Finally, it's worth pointing out that, once again, gender gaps are much smaller on the SAT than are racial and ethnic gaps. And the SAT results seem to buttress the notion that we should be particularly concerned about African-American males, who are the lowest-performing racial/gender subgroup, trailing their sisters in math and, unlike males from other racial/ethnic groups, reading, even as males make up a smaller percentage of African-American SAT-takers than they do any other racial/ethnic group.
By the Way...If you want to hear and talk more about gender gaps in education from K-12 through higher ed, please join Education Sector on Tuesday, September 12 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, for a discussion with USA Today's Richard Whitmire, Georgetown and the Urban Institute's Harry Holzer, and yours truly. It's free, but space is limited, so RSVP quickly!
Most media reports seem to be focusing on the state horserace or the fact that this year's critical reading subtest averages are somewhat lower than last year's verbal score averages. I'm not sure either of these is very informative, since the population of kids taking the SAT differs from state to state, and the new SAT the college board started administering in March 2005 is a different test from that administered in previous years.
Also gaining attention is the impact of the new writing section on average male-female SAT score differences. Historically, men have had higher average scores than women, not just on the SAT overall but also on both its verbal and math subsections--a departure from other assessments where men tend to do better than women on math (with a few caveats), but women tend to do better on verbal skills. But women did do better than men, on average, on the new writing section, lowering the the male-female score gap from 42 points in 2005 to 26 points this year. In addition to the writing section, the new critical reading section, which eliminated the infamous verbal analogies, probably also made the test more female-friendly, since verbal analogies are one of the few areas of verbal skills in which men typically outperform women, and the difference between men's critical reading scores this year and their verbal skills last year is larger than that for women.
Because women's improved SAT performance relative to men reflects changes in the assessment and not simply changes in students' skills, it shouldn't be taken as evidence of a boy crisis. But is men's continued higher average SAT performance--in both reading and math--evidence against a boy crisis? The answer is no. First, the difference between male and female reading scores on the SAT is tiny. More significant, the populations of men and women taking the test are different. More females than males take the SAT--54% of SAT-takers in the 2006 college-bound cohort were girls--and, because students in the highest segments of the achievement distribution for each gender are already pretty likely to take the SAT, the larger pool of women taking it probably means more women from lower on the achievement are taking the test--and a look at the gender breakdowns of students by score distribution backs this up.
Finally, it's worth pointing out that, once again, gender gaps are much smaller on the SAT than are racial and ethnic gaps. And the SAT results seem to buttress the notion that we should be particularly concerned about African-American males, who are the lowest-performing racial/gender subgroup, trailing their sisters in math and, unlike males from other racial/ethnic groups, reading, even as males make up a smaller percentage of African-American SAT-takers than they do any other racial/ethnic group.
By the Way...If you want to hear and talk more about gender gaps in education from K-12 through higher ed, please join Education Sector on Tuesday, September 12 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, for a discussion with USA Today's Richard Whitmire, Georgetown and the Urban Institute's Harry Holzer, and yours truly. It's free, but space is limited, so RSVP quickly!
College Presidents for Transparency and Accountability
Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that one of my somewhat obsessive hobbyhorse issues areas of signficant interest is the ongoing debate about establishing a national "unit record" higher education data system.
Put simply, the federal government wants to improve the ways it collects information about college performance, using privacy protected data about individual students. The associations of private colleges have fought a scorched-earth P.R. campaign against the system, basically calling it the precursor to an Orwellian police state.
That tactic has been pretty successful--the House of Representatives passes legislation banning the system earlier this year--partly because supporters of the system from within higher education, of which there are many, haven't been as focal in presenting the opposing view.
That's why its was great to open up the Washington Post this morning and read an excellent, well-reasoned Op-ed supporting the system written by Thomas Hochstettler, President of Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. It's definitely worth reading in its entirety, but here's his case in a nutshell:
Why would the president of a private college like Lewis and Clark--along with most of the major associations of public institutions--support the new data system? I'm guessing because they know that they're ill-served by the current higher education market, which is starved for real information about quality. When the public has no good data about which institutions are actually serving students best, it naturally falls back on the long-established, written-in-stone higher education pecking order, which favors elite private institutions. Getting more good information into the hands of the public--precisely the goal of the data system in question--would allow all the other institutions to be judged more fairly on their merits.
Put simply, the federal government wants to improve the ways it collects information about college performance, using privacy protected data about individual students. The associations of private colleges have fought a scorched-earth P.R. campaign against the system, basically calling it the precursor to an Orwellian police state.
That tactic has been pretty successful--the House of Representatives passes legislation banning the system earlier this year--partly because supporters of the system from within higher education, of which there are many, haven't been as focal in presenting the opposing view.
That's why its was great to open up the Washington Post this morning and read an excellent, well-reasoned Op-ed supporting the system written by Thomas Hochstettler, President of Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. It's definitely worth reading in its entirety, but here's his case in a nutshell:
Where some see the specter of Big Brother looking over colleges' and students' shoulders, I see a potential for a robust (and privacy-protected) set of metrics that would yield essential data with tremendous potential for advancing our individual institutions and for identifying with greater precision those areas where our national education policy needs to be strengthened. Where some see the specter of government intrusion, I see the possibility of transforming our current separate data-reporting schemes into a streamlined system that is beneficial to students and useful to faculty and administrators.
Contrary to what critics of the database plan might have the public believe, we in academia know remarkably little about what emerges from the vast and diverse system of higher education. Why do students drop out? Where do they go when they do? What factors in primary and secondary school, beyond grade-point averages, class rankings and standardized test scores, best predict their success or failure in college? What impact does their educational experience have on our students' success or failure after graduation?
We are ill-equipped to answer these questions. Without comprehensive information, both individual institutions and society lack the tools to assess how the system is working, how it is failing and how it might be improved.
Why would the president of a private college like Lewis and Clark--along with most of the major associations of public institutions--support the new data system? I'm guessing because they know that they're ill-served by the current higher education market, which is starved for real information about quality. When the public has no good data about which institutions are actually serving students best, it naturally falls back on the long-established, written-in-stone higher education pecking order, which favors elite private institutions. Getting more good information into the hands of the public--precisely the goal of the data system in question--would allow all the other institutions to be judged more fairly on their merits.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
$200,000 bonuses, it's a start
Martin O’Malley has a new plan for improving
Monday, August 28, 2006
A Bit Too Much Editorial Freedom
I couldn't help read the The New York Times and Wall Street Journal editorials on charter schools over the last couple of days without injecting into the conversation a publication on the status of big-city charters issued recently by the Seattle-based Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE).
The two newspaper editorial pages squared off over a new study of charter school performance conducted for the U.S. Department of Education by researchers at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton. The study found that students in traditional public schools outperformed their counterparts in charter schools in reading and math. The Times declared the study to be evidence that charter schools are not a "cure-all" for what ails American public education. The Journal cried foul, declared the study unreliabled, and insisted that other studies "have repeatedly shown charter school students outperforming their counterparts in traditional public schools."
Both papers "marshalled" evidence on charters aggressively. But there's another assessment of charter schools out from a far more credible source, CRPE, a University of Washington think tank headed by the respected researcher Paul Hill. Hill and his colleagues recently published a summary of a symposium on the state of the charter school movement involving 22 charter advocates and researchers.
The gathering, organized by CRPE, was a who's who of the national charter school movement. And their take on the charter movement was sobering. "I think the issue of attaining academic quality was highly underestimated by all of us," said Ted Mitchell, head of the NewSchools Venture fund, a non-profit organization that invests in charter school management organizations. "We can only grow as fast as we can find good people, and we are not able to find all the people we need," said Mike Feinberg, co-founder of KIPP Academies, which has opened over 50 charter schools nationwide. "This isn't McDonalds," added Nelson Smith, the head of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, an advocacy organization. "The process of replicating a good school isn't easy or predictable." The report on the symposium concluded that "all agreed that the road to scale is much rockier than anyone imagined."
There are some truly inspiring charter schools run by smart, committed people who would probably shun education rather than put up with the stifling bureaucracy of many traditional public schools. But creating good schools of any sort is hard work, these earnest educational entrepreneurs have discovered. Admitting that reality, and that many charters have not emerged as high-quality alternatives to traditional public schools, as Paul Hill's conferees have done in a public report, is a gutsy step for charter leaders to take, and a step towards increasing the supply of stronger charters. Someone call the polemicists that the Journal and the Times and tell them to take the rest of the day off.
The two newspaper editorial pages squared off over a new study of charter school performance conducted for the U.S. Department of Education by researchers at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton. The study found that students in traditional public schools outperformed their counterparts in charter schools in reading and math. The Times declared the study to be evidence that charter schools are not a "cure-all" for what ails American public education. The Journal cried foul, declared the study unreliabled, and insisted that other studies "have repeatedly shown charter school students outperforming their counterparts in traditional public schools."
Both papers "marshalled" evidence on charters aggressively. But there's another assessment of charter schools out from a far more credible source, CRPE, a University of Washington think tank headed by the respected researcher Paul Hill. Hill and his colleagues recently published a summary of a symposium on the state of the charter school movement involving 22 charter advocates and researchers.
The gathering, organized by CRPE, was a who's who of the national charter school movement. And their take on the charter movement was sobering. "I think the issue of attaining academic quality was highly underestimated by all of us," said Ted Mitchell, head of the NewSchools Venture fund, a non-profit organization that invests in charter school management organizations. "We can only grow as fast as we can find good people, and we are not able to find all the people we need," said Mike Feinberg, co-founder of KIPP Academies, which has opened over 50 charter schools nationwide. "This isn't McDonalds," added Nelson Smith, the head of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, an advocacy organization. "The process of replicating a good school isn't easy or predictable." The report on the symposium concluded that "all agreed that the road to scale is much rockier than anyone imagined."
There are some truly inspiring charter schools run by smart, committed people who would probably shun education rather than put up with the stifling bureaucracy of many traditional public schools. But creating good schools of any sort is hard work, these earnest educational entrepreneurs have discovered. Admitting that reality, and that many charters have not emerged as high-quality alternatives to traditional public schools, as Paul Hill's conferees have done in a public report, is a gutsy step for charter leaders to take, and a step towards increasing the supply of stronger charters. Someone call the polemicists that the Journal and the Times and tell them to take the rest of the day off.
See This Movie
Saw a very, very good movie over the weekend--Half Nelson, about an 8th grade history teacher with a drug problem and his friendship with one of his students. No real policy takeaways, just an unusually smart, honest, and well-acted film about real people struggling to make sense of a world damaged by the illegal drug trade in countless ways.
Friday, August 25, 2006
Teacher Certification Slug-Fest, Final Rounds
Days 4&5 of my back-and-forth on the merits of teacher certification are now posted at Edspresso. In all seriousness, less of a fight than an interesting conversation, for which my fellow debater deserves much credit. There are also some worthwhile extra perspectives in the comments section.
SMART Snags
There have been a lot of stories this week about the no-so-smart federal SMART grants. The National Science and Mathematics Access to Retaining Talent (SMART) grant program offers $4,000 to eligible students who are majoring in an eligible field of study. It's these devilish "eligibility" details that have caused the recent problems.
First, as detailed by InsideHigherEd.com, more than a hundred students at Utah State University were told they were eligible for the $4,000 grants only to hear a week later that they were not. Apparently they are ineligible because they had taken too many credit hours to qualify (seniors are eligible only if they've taken between 90-120 credits). So it seems seniors are only seniors if they've taken just the required number of credits. The Utah State U website now clarifies this for prospective SMART grantees.
And in other SMART grant mishaps, you'll be happy to know that evolutionary biology is back! The Chronicle's articles on Tuesday and then today provide the full story, which is basically that the list of eligible majors for the SMART grant managed somehow to leave out evolutionary biology. Tough one to miss considering how hot the topic of evolution has been lately. But all's well that end's well. The Dept of Ed has released a statement explaining the oversight and evo-bio is now happily sandwiched between marine biology and environmental biology on the revised list.
First, as detailed by InsideHigherEd.com, more than a hundred students at Utah State University were told they were eligible for the $4,000 grants only to hear a week later that they were not. Apparently they are ineligible because they had taken too many credit hours to qualify (seniors are eligible only if they've taken between 90-120 credits). So it seems seniors are only seniors if they've taken just the required number of credits. The Utah State U website now clarifies this for prospective SMART grantees.
And in other SMART grant mishaps, you'll be happy to know that evolutionary biology is back! The Chronicle's articles on Tuesday and then today provide the full story, which is basically that the list of eligible majors for the SMART grant managed somehow to leave out evolutionary biology. Tough one to miss considering how hot the topic of evolution has been lately. But all's well that end's well. The Dept of Ed has released a statement explaining the oversight and evo-bio is now happily sandwiched between marine biology and environmental biology on the revised list.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
New Quick-and-Edster
Note: the post below is the first on the Quick and the Ed from Erin Dillon, a newly-arrived policy analyst at Education Sector. Erin comes to the organization from New York, NY, where she worked as a research associate at the Beginning with Children Foundation, helping with a college preparatory program for high school students and managing a research project examining charter school students' academic achievement. Prior to that, she received her master's in Social Sciences in Education at Stanford University. Look for more posts from Erin in the future.
Help for High Performing Schools
The Washington Post ran an article today on how students in
College Is Not a Dating Service
Andy tries to lure me into commenting on this U.S. News story (in the much-critiqued "America's Best Colleges") about the increasing female dominance on college campuses. Ok, I'll take the bait. Here's how the story kicks off:
For starters, let's just point out that this school is an anomaly. Across all colleges and universities in the U.S., the average male-female breakdown for traditional-age undergraduates is about 55% female to 45% male. (Women strongly outnumber men among older, non-traditional students, which is part of why the CUNY system, to which the author refers in the piece and which has 35% of students over 25, is about 2/3 female.) That's still not parity, and the 60/40 female/male ratio among black students is concerning to many people. Butthis school is clearly an extreme.
The article trots through all the typical statistics and explanations about why women outnumber men in college, but it's main focus is on how (and why) some colleges are now going out of their way to recruit more men, and, in some instances, appear to be using pro-male affirmative action to do so.
Why are colleges trying to recruit more men?
You see, college isn't really about getting an education. It's about the social life. And that means dating. And, potentially, finding a future mate. (As U.S. News so helpfully points out, "already researchers are thinking ahead to the long-term implications of a shortage of suitably educated peers for women to marry.") Leave aside that most college students today don't actually "date." They hook up. And, while I certainly knew girls in college who were really there to get the MRS. degree (I went to Vanderbilt), that's not why most people go to college (after all, no one ever argued that the Citadell or VMI should go co-ed because the crappy dating scene and lousy chances of finding a wife there were hurting male recruitment). People do still talk about college as if it's a place to find a future mate, but that's not the reality for most people: The median age at first marriage in the U.S. is 25 for women and 27 for men, and it's older than that for those who completed college.
Of course, as Kevin and others have pointed out, since prospective college students don't currently have access to information to tell them which college they might learn the most at, or which has the best record placing people in good jobs in their desired field, they've got to rely on other information, such as reputation, wealth and selectivity (what U.S. News measures), how nice the dorms or rec center are; and, yeah, the potential dating scene.
But the real meat of the story (to the extent there is any) is in the discussion of whether colleges are accepting less-impressive male applicants over more qualified women in an effort to maintain gender parity. For obvious reasons, no college wants to admit that they're doing this, but the differential acceptance rates for males and females that the author trots out from several schools are quite striking. There are reasons, though, to proceed with some caution here. For starters, the competitive colleges the article cites represent only a tiny share of the college market. Top-ranked schools like the Ivies have near-parity in applicants and admissions rates for the genders. And the vast majority of college students in the U.S. go to noncompetitive schools that accept pretty much everyone who applies. Its also possible that some of these colleges are rejecting more women because more women from lower on the academic achievement distribution are applying to them.
But I wonder if articles like this contribute to something of a vicious cycle. Although there's no evidence, a persistent theme--on both sides--in debates about why women are outstripping men on some academic indicators seems to be that at least some groups of women are more determined and are working harder because they've gotten a message that they need to do so in order to compete economically, provide for their future families, etc. It would be ironic if, as a result, prestige colleges really did start requiring women to be much better than men to be admitted.
The University of La Verne sits on 26 acres of suburbia between the city of Los Angeles and the mountains. It's a small place, with just over 1,600 students, most of whom live in three drab and boxy-looking dormitories. A decade ago, one was exclusively male, one was female, and one was coed. But faced with a surge in women students (who made up 65 percent of the student body last year, up from 58 percent a decade ago), the school had to convert two thirds of the male facility for women's use. "Everyone knows guys are scarce on this campus," says Nick Solis, a sophomore, who adds that the women in his coed dorm have taken to using the men's room out of convenience.
For starters, let's just point out that this school is an anomaly. Across all colleges and universities in the U.S., the average male-female breakdown for traditional-age undergraduates is about 55% female to 45% male. (Women strongly outnumber men among older, non-traditional students, which is part of why the CUNY system, to which the author refers in the piece and which has 35% of students over 25, is about 2/3 female.) That's still not parity, and the 60/40 female/male ratio among black students is concerning to many people. Butthis school is clearly an extreme.
The article trots through all the typical statistics and explanations about why women outnumber men in college, but it's main focus is on how (and why) some colleges are now going out of their way to recruit more men, and, in some instances, appear to be using pro-male affirmative action to do so.
Why are colleges trying to recruit more men?
The university experience, after all, is only partially about academics, and students strongly consider campus climate when choosing where to apply. Anecdotal evidence suggests that once a campus reaches a certain ratio, say 60-40 women to men, both females and males are less likely to apply. "Frankly, students care about the dating scene on campus and no one wants to be outnumbered," says Bari Norman, a former admissions counselor at Barnard College who now runs mycollegecounselor.com.
You see, college isn't really about getting an education. It's about the social life. And that means dating. And, potentially, finding a future mate. (As U.S. News so helpfully points out, "already researchers are thinking ahead to the long-term implications of a shortage of suitably educated peers for women to marry.") Leave aside that most college students today don't actually "date." They hook up. And, while I certainly knew girls in college who were really there to get the MRS. degree (I went to Vanderbilt), that's not why most people go to college (after all, no one ever argued that the Citadell or VMI should go co-ed because the crappy dating scene and lousy chances of finding a wife there were hurting male recruitment). People do still talk about college as if it's a place to find a future mate, but that's not the reality for most people: The median age at first marriage in the U.S. is 25 for women and 27 for men, and it's older than that for those who completed college.
Of course, as Kevin and others have pointed out, since prospective college students don't currently have access to information to tell them which college they might learn the most at, or which has the best record placing people in good jobs in their desired field, they've got to rely on other information, such as reputation, wealth and selectivity (what U.S. News measures), how nice the dorms or rec center are; and, yeah, the potential dating scene.
But the real meat of the story (to the extent there is any) is in the discussion of whether colleges are accepting less-impressive male applicants over more qualified women in an effort to maintain gender parity. For obvious reasons, no college wants to admit that they're doing this, but the differential acceptance rates for males and females that the author trots out from several schools are quite striking. There are reasons, though, to proceed with some caution here. For starters, the competitive colleges the article cites represent only a tiny share of the college market. Top-ranked schools like the Ivies have near-parity in applicants and admissions rates for the genders. And the vast majority of college students in the U.S. go to noncompetitive schools that accept pretty much everyone who applies. Its also possible that some of these colleges are rejecting more women because more women from lower on the academic achievement distribution are applying to them.
But I wonder if articles like this contribute to something of a vicious cycle. Although there's no evidence, a persistent theme--on both sides--in debates about why women are outstripping men on some academic indicators seems to be that at least some groups of women are more determined and are working harder because they've gotten a message that they need to do so in order to compete economically, provide for their future families, etc. It would be ironic if, as a result, prestige colleges really did start requiring women to be much better than men to be admitted.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Teacher Certification Brouhaha
Day 3, at Edspresso. Ritchey and Carey duel over Teach For America, whether or not teacher certification has entered the 21st--or even 20th--Century. Carey lays down an evidentiary challenge.
Teacher Certification Ultimate Fighting Championship
Round 2 between me and David Ritchey, in the eight-sided ring.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
NCLB Makes Children Fat
Or so says Cnn.com, which as of 3:00PM EST today is leading with a story titled "P.E. shrinks, waistlines bulge," complete with this picture of President Bush:Just to make sure the point is clear, the teaser paragraph is as follows:
School-age children are growing fatter, but most states are failing to provide them with enough physical education, according to a report by the American Heart Association and the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. Critics contend the legislation meant to bolster academic standards -- President Bush's No Child Left Behind program -- may be a culprit.The article recites the standard-issue "narrowing" critique of NCLB: because it focuses more attention on the core skills of math and reading, it focuses less attention on everything else, like, for example, phys-ed. It's a reasonable problem to worry about, and on some level probably an unavoidable consequence of working harder on basic skills. But as is often the case, there's less here than meets the eye.
The article quotes the report's citation of this statistic: "The percentage of students who attend a daily physical education class has dropped from 42 percent in 1991 to 28 percent in 2003." But this isn't an original finding, the report cites a previous study published by the Centers for Disease Control in 2004. You can see that study here. It found the following:
1) the proportion of students attending PE class daily declined significantly during 1991--1995 and did not change during 1995--2003 and 2) the proportion of students exercising or playing sports for >20 minutes during PE class 3--5 days per week did not change significantly during 1991--2003.
In other words, the decline in daily PE class attendance that Cnn.com is prominently hanging on NCLB concluded seven years before NCLB was enacted. And by another measure PE hasn't declined at all.
Charter Schools Rising
Big front-page WaPo story today about charter schools in the District of Columbia--which enrolled about 25 percent of the District's public school students in 2005-06 and will likely increase their share with the opening of 6 new schools this fall. For the most part, this was a pretty good article about the growth of charter schools in the past decade (D.C.'s charter movement turns 10 this year) and the impacts, positive, negative and minimal on DCPS.
I was a bit annoyed, though, by the amount of traction the Post gave Save our Schools, a DC-area anti-charter group. The article presented three of SOS's major arguments: First, that charter schools are hurting public schools by taking away funds; second, that charters are resegregating DC schools; and finally, as SOS leader Gina Arlotto so eloquently expressed it in the Post, "the charters stink, too."
Let's look at these arguments one by one. D.C.'s per-pupil weighted funding formula means that, yes, when a child switches from a DCPS school to a charter, the funding follows. But, DCPS also no longer has to bear the costs of educating that child. Certainly from the perspective of an invididual school, which may lose only a few students and has fixed costs, this is cold comfort. But it's important not to forget that spending on DCPS has also increased substantially since the charter law was passed, meaning that most DCPS schools are getting more per pupil now even though they serve fewer pupils. Not to mention analysis showing that, SOS rhetoric about pro-charter favoritism aside, charters actually receive less public funds per pupil than DCPS. (For various reasons, it may not seem like that at the individual school level within DCPS, but that's a DCPS system problem, not a charter school problem).
Then there's the resegregation issue. I find the claim inherently bizarre, since it would be pretty darn hard for DCPS to get more segregated than it already is. The real criticism isn't that charter schools are resegregating DCPS so much as that a few charter schools are attracting some white students. Both charter critics and the Post article ignored the vast majority of DC charters that serve a higher percentage of minority kids than the District at large to focus on two--Two Rivers and Capital City--that, at least in part because of where they are located, serve a much higher percentage of white students than the District's schools overall. But it's not like either of these schools is a lily-white enclave: Two Rivers, on Capitol Hill, is more than half black and 7 percent Hispanic, and Capital City, which is located in Columbia Heights, is about one-third each white, black, and Hispanic. And given that DCPS's nearly 85 percent African American enrollment and housing patterns mean most black kids in DCPS will be attending nearly all-black schools, attracting more white kids into the system seems like a way to reduce segregation for at least some DCPS students, not increase it.
Not to mention that for a lot of more affluent families choosing charter schools, the alternative wouldn't be to attend a DCPS school, unless they're among the fortunate few that can get into highly-regarded programs like the Capitol Hill Cluster School (where, by the way, Arlotto and other SOS activists send their kids--they wouldn't send them to a run of the mill D.C. school either, for all they want to deny parents who can't afford to live in their school boundaries better options) or the schools west of Rock Creek Park--instead it's sending their kids to an expensive private school or moving to Virginia or Maryland.
It's worth noting a major point the Post's analysis of declining DCPS enrollments overlooked: DCPS enrollment was falling long before charters came on the scene, and when you combine charter and DCPS enrollment, the decline in D.C.'s public school enrollment has actually slowed since charters came on the scene, suggesting that charters are helping D.C. keep more of the young families it needs to grow and thrive. This is why, as long as there's no definitive evidence that charters are discriminating in admissions or counseling out some kids, I don't have a problem with charter schools seeking to attract middle-class families of any race back into the city's public schools. Building more of the kind of public schools those families want to send their kids to also expands opportunities for less advantaged kids in D.C., and keeping those families in the District is important for long-term economic development, civic life, and stability. And, I have to admit, I have a bit of a personal interest here: I love this city, I love living here, and, if I'm ever so fortunate as to have children of my own, I'd really like to be able to send them to a public school in D.C.--and NOT one that's west of Rock Creek Park.
The strongest criticism folks can level against charter schools in D.C. right now is on quality--like DCPS the District's charter schools, on average, are performing far less well than they need to be. But the most recent data shows that charters are outperforming DCPS across the board; the District's authorizers are making progress closing down the lowest-performing schools, which should also improve quality; and some of D.C.'s charter schools are very good schools. But it's still not good enough, and everyone involved in the District's charter school community needs to keep working to improve quality and performance, because our kids and our city depend on it.
I was a bit annoyed, though, by the amount of traction the Post gave Save our Schools, a DC-area anti-charter group. The article presented three of SOS's major arguments: First, that charter schools are hurting public schools by taking away funds; second, that charters are resegregating DC schools; and finally, as SOS leader Gina Arlotto so eloquently expressed it in the Post, "the charters stink, too."
Let's look at these arguments one by one. D.C.'s per-pupil weighted funding formula means that, yes, when a child switches from a DCPS school to a charter, the funding follows. But, DCPS also no longer has to bear the costs of educating that child. Certainly from the perspective of an invididual school, which may lose only a few students and has fixed costs, this is cold comfort. But it's important not to forget that spending on DCPS has also increased substantially since the charter law was passed, meaning that most DCPS schools are getting more per pupil now even though they serve fewer pupils. Not to mention analysis showing that, SOS rhetoric about pro-charter favoritism aside, charters actually receive less public funds per pupil than DCPS. (For various reasons, it may not seem like that at the individual school level within DCPS, but that's a DCPS system problem, not a charter school problem).
Then there's the resegregation issue. I find the claim inherently bizarre, since it would be pretty darn hard for DCPS to get more segregated than it already is. The real criticism isn't that charter schools are resegregating DCPS so much as that a few charter schools are attracting some white students. Both charter critics and the Post article ignored the vast majority of DC charters that serve a higher percentage of minority kids than the District at large to focus on two--Two Rivers and Capital City--that, at least in part because of where they are located, serve a much higher percentage of white students than the District's schools overall. But it's not like either of these schools is a lily-white enclave: Two Rivers, on Capitol Hill, is more than half black and 7 percent Hispanic, and Capital City, which is located in Columbia Heights, is about one-third each white, black, and Hispanic. And given that DCPS's nearly 85 percent African American enrollment and housing patterns mean most black kids in DCPS will be attending nearly all-black schools, attracting more white kids into the system seems like a way to reduce segregation for at least some DCPS students, not increase it.
Not to mention that for a lot of more affluent families choosing charter schools, the alternative wouldn't be to attend a DCPS school, unless they're among the fortunate few that can get into highly-regarded programs like the Capitol Hill Cluster School (where, by the way, Arlotto and other SOS activists send their kids--they wouldn't send them to a run of the mill D.C. school either, for all they want to deny parents who can't afford to live in their school boundaries better options) or the schools west of Rock Creek Park--instead it's sending their kids to an expensive private school or moving to Virginia or Maryland.
It's worth noting a major point the Post's analysis of declining DCPS enrollments overlooked: DCPS enrollment was falling long before charters came on the scene, and when you combine charter and DCPS enrollment, the decline in D.C.'s public school enrollment has actually slowed since charters came on the scene, suggesting that charters are helping D.C. keep more of the young families it needs to grow and thrive. This is why, as long as there's no definitive evidence that charters are discriminating in admissions or counseling out some kids, I don't have a problem with charter schools seeking to attract middle-class families of any race back into the city's public schools. Building more of the kind of public schools those families want to send their kids to also expands opportunities for less advantaged kids in D.C., and keeping those families in the District is important for long-term economic development, civic life, and stability. And, I have to admit, I have a bit of a personal interest here: I love this city, I love living here, and, if I'm ever so fortunate as to have children of my own, I'd really like to be able to send them to a public school in D.C.--and NOT one that's west of Rock Creek Park.
The strongest criticism folks can level against charter schools in D.C. right now is on quality--like DCPS the District's charter schools, on average, are performing far less well than they need to be. But the most recent data shows that charters are outperforming DCPS across the board; the District's authorizers are making progress closing down the lowest-performing schools, which should also improve quality; and some of D.C.'s charter schools are very good schools. But it's still not good enough, and everyone involved in the District's charter school community needs to keep working to improve quality and performance, because our kids and our city depend on it.
Monday, August 21, 2006
Teacher Certification Smack-Down
I'm debating David Ritchie, Executive Director of the Association of Teacher Educators, over at Edspresso this week. The topic is teacher certification--he's for, I'm against, although I think the debate will end up being a little more nuanced than that. Come have a look.
Mathews Gets It Right
Don't miss Jay Mathews' terrific op-ed in the Post this morning, which comprehensively debunks the "academically over-stressed teenager" meme as expressed in Alexandra Robbins' new book, "The Overachievers." Mathews notes that the allegedly typical high schooler consumed by homework, academics, and other activities focused on admission to an Ivy League school is largely a mirage, confined to the small fraction of the overall population, and that many of the statistics used to support that idea are mistaken or overblown. "The real national problem," Mathews says, "is not that we ask most teens to do too much, but too little."
Friday, August 18, 2006
Harvard slips in new U.S. News college rankings - Larry Summers' revenge?
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.
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.
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