Posts published in 2009

College Completion Pathways Are Obscure

March 16, 2009 8:17 am

One of the best writers on transition to broad access postsecondary education is James Rosenbaum, Professor of Sociology at Northwestern. His new paper is a must read.

Permeability and Transparency in the High School-College Transition

Jennifer Stephan, Doctoral Student, Human Development and Social Policy, Northwestern University; and James Rosenbaum, Human Development and Social Policy and Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University.

Dramatic changes have taken place in the who, where, and how of higher education. Colleges are no longer dominated by traditional undergraduates attending traditional colleges. Now there is great variety in the types of students who attend college, the institutions they attend, and their attendance patterns. This working paper proposes a conceptual framework for thinking about how higher education policies shape students’ pathways through higher education. The authors present evidence about the operation of American higher education in terms of this framework and then use the framework and then use the framework to consider three policy areas: high school counseling policies; community college policies, including open-admissions; and financial aid policies. Stephen and Rosenbaum argue that while the current policies have increased accessibility and choice in higher education, they also obscure the pathway to completion.

Note: Put IRB Working Papers, 2006-2008 in Google, then go to WP-08-07. Rosenbaum’s book, College for All is a major influence on my thinking about college transition.

Achieve Report Shows Progress and Problems

March 14, 2009 8:00 am

Achieve launched the American Diploma Project (ADP) in 1996 to encourage states to increase secondary school standards to the level of college and workforce readiness. Each year Achieve surveys all states on their K-12 progress. The 2009 report displays the pattern of prior years — states are moving ahead on setting higher standards but not on measuring whether schools are meeting them. Nor are states embedding college ready standards in their accountability or professional development policies. Only 10 states have assessments rigorous enough to measure whether students are college ready.

So the easy part of proclaiming high standards for college is complete in twenty states, but the hard part is still ahead. (www.achieve.org )

Assessment Is Not Coherent For College Transition From High School

March 11, 2009 7:43 pm

Admissions literature focuses upon what is most beneficial to postsecondary education without contemplating the impact of admissions tests upon secondary schools, K-12 students, and teachers. Admissions tests send powerful and clear signals to all K-12 groups about what knowledge is most worth knowing and how it should be taught.

Probably the biggest issue is the proliferation of tests in grades 9 through 11 that occurs because of the postsecondary assessments for admission, and the new statewide tests created by the K-12 standards movement. For example, California tests all students grades 9 through 11 with a cross-cutting mathematics and language arts assessment, and has stat-mandated end-of-course exams in most academic subjects, such as biology, U.S. history, and English literature. As of 2007, none of these K-12 tests are used as an admissions factor by the University of California or California State University. The California State University placement exam includes more advanced mathematics than SAT I . During the Spring of the 11^th grade, there is a particularly onerous amount of testing for UC applicants that includes: the SAT I, SAT II, Advanced Placement tests, and at least six state K-12 tests that have no admissions or placement stakes for students.

Education standards and tests are set in different K-12 and postsecondary orbits that only intersect for students in Advanced Placement courses. How else could 49 states (all but Iowa) set K-12 standards and assessments in the 1990″s without talking with higher education institutions and state boards for higher education? The huge disjuncture between K-12 and postsecondary school standards results in a lack of K-16 understanding, collaborative design, and knowledge about the assessments used by each education level. Higher education is concerned with the upward trajectory of pupils, for example, admissions test’s purported ability to predict student performance in the first year of college. Secondary education is concerned with high school graduation and the attainment of annual state and federal growth goals for K-12 state assessments. Secondary educators rarely discuss or consider the impact upon postsecondary education that new and expanding assessment policies might create. Moreover, there is no K-16 accountability system that might cause the two levels to work together on common assessment goals or reduce postsecondary remediation. [1]

Universities provide some good arguments to explain why they pay little attention to K–12 standards or assessments. First, the universities emphasize that they are not involved in the creation or refinement of the K–12 standards. Second, the universities observe that both politics and technical problems effect frequent changes in state K–12 standards. Third, they note that the K–12 assessments have not been evaluated to see how well they predict freshman grades (although such evaluations are not difficult to conduct). The result is a K-16 babble of education standards that leads to unclear signals for students (particularly those from low-SES families), high remediation rates, and much misdirected energy by students caught between conflicting standards.

For 80% of students who do not go to selective four-year schools, a crucial standard is an institutionally administered placement exam which is not very well aligned with the ACT or SAT I. Yet placement exams are essential for channeling students into non-credit postsecondary remedial courses.

[1] See Andrea Venezia, Michael W. Kirst, and Anthony Antonio, Betraying the College Dream: How Disconnected K-12 and Postsecondary Education Systems Undermine Student Aspirations, (Stanford, CA: Stanford Institute for Higher Education Reserch, 2003).

Obamas New Plan For Higher Education Is Aggressive

March 11, 2009 9:10 am

Restoring America’s Leadership in Higher Education

Our competitiveness abroad depends on opening the doors of higher education for more of America’s students. The U.S. ranks seventh in terms of the percentage of 18-24 year olds enrolled in college, but only 15^th in terms of the number of certificates and degrees awarded. A lack of financial resources should never obstruct the promise of college opportunity. And it’s America’s shared responsibility to ensure that more of our students not only reach the doors of college, but also persist, succeed, and obtain their degree.

· President Obama’s FY 2010 budget makes a historic commitment to increasing college access and success by restructuring and dramatically expanding financial aid, while making federal programs simpler, more reliable, and more efficient.

· The President will restore the buying power of the Pell Grant for America’s neediest students and guarantee an annual increase tied to inflation. His plan will end wasteful subsidies to banks under the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program, and re-direct billions in savings toward student aid.

· And it will dramatically simplify the Federal Application for Student Aid (FAFSA), making it easier to complete and more effective for students.

· The President supports strengthening the higher education pipeline to ensure that more students succeed and complete their college education. His plan will invest in community colleges to conduct an analysis of high-demand skills and technical education, and shape new degree programs for emerging industries.

Many Colleges Will Be Easier For Admission

March 10, 2009 9:35 am

Declining high school enrollment in many states over the next decade will lower admission standards. This will be especially true for second and third tier private schools. But regional 4 year public colleges in the midwest and mid Atlantic will be scrambling to maintain enrollment. This will send a signal to high school students that they do not need to work hard to get into 4 year colleges. Consequently, we will need stronger messages and signals that the hard part is to complete college, not admission. I have written a lot about clear signals to students, so check out my biography at the top of this blog.

Webinar On College Retention From Noted Expert

March 9, 2009 9:42 am

An Introduction to Student Success & Retention

Thursday, March 24, 1:00 – 2:30 pm EST

Hosted by Dr. Watson Scott Swail, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute

Attend this webinar and learn the ins and outs of postsecondary Student Retention 101. Host Dr. Watson Scott Swail will present a core overview of retention at the secondary and postsecondary levels and will present a short exploration into contemporary issues related to student success. In doing so, he will introduce his framework for student retention, which illustrates how institutions must consider student background and attributes in order to create effective success strateg ies for students. Dr. Swail will detail the most common barriers to Student Retention as well as successful strategies to overcome these barriers.

Dr. Watson Scott Swail is President and CEO of the Educational Policy Institute and is a well-known expert in the area of Student Retention. He is author of the Jossey-Bass publication Retaining Minority Students in Higher Education and is a frequent keynote speaker and strategic planning consultant to colleges and universities across the US and Canada. Institutions and organizations that have utilized his services include Collin College (TX), Palm Beach Community College (FL), Red River College (Winnipeg, MB), the Ohio Association for Student Financial Aid Administrators (OASFAA), Innovative Educators, NelNet, TG, Canada Student Loans Programs, Northwest Educational Loan Association (NELA), Sallie Mae, ASPIRA, and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB).

College And High School Standards Are Very Different

March 8, 2009 11:49 am

Schoolinfosystem.org

Madison, Wisconsin

Degree of Difficulty

Will Fitzhugh

The Concord Review

8 March 2009

In gymnastics, performances are judged not just on execution but also on the degree of difficulty. The same system is used in diving and in ice skating. An athlete is of course judged on how well they do something, but their score also includes how hard it was to do that particular exercise.

One of the reasons, in my view, that more than a million of our high school graduates each year are in remedial courses after they have been accepted at colleges is that the degree of difficulty set for them in their high school courses has been too low, by college standards.

Surveys comparing the standards of high school teachers and college professors routinely discover that students who their teachers judge to be very well prepared, for instance in reading, research and writing, are seen as not very well prepared by college professors.

According to the Diploma to Nowhere report issued last summer by the Strong American Schools project, tens of thousands of students are surprised, embarrassed and depressed to find that, after getting As and Bs in their high school courses, even in the “hard” ones, they are judged to be not ready for college work and must take non-credit remedial courses to make up for the academic deficiencies that they naturally assumed they did not have.

If we could imagine a ten point degree-of-difficulty scale for high school courses, surely arithmetic would rank near the bottom, say at a one, and calculus would rank at the top, near a ten. Courses in Chinese and Physics, and perhaps AP European History, would be near the top of the scale as well.

When it comes to academic writing, however, and the English departments only ask their students for personal and creative writing, and the five-paragraph essay, they are setting the degree of difficulty at or near the bottom of the academic writing scale. The standard kind of writing might be the equivalent of having math students being blocked from moving beyond fractions and decimals.

Naturally, students who have achieved high grades on their high school writing, but at a very low level of difficulty, are likely to be shocked when they are asked to write a 10-20-page research paper when they enter college. They have never encountered that degree of difficulty in their high school careers.

It would be as if math students were taking only decimals and fractions, and then being asked to solve elementary calculus problems when they start their higher education.

I was shocked to discover that even the most famous program for gifted students in the United States, the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, which began as a search for mathematically precocious youth, and has very challenging programs for bright students in the summer, when it comes to writing, has sponsored a contest for “Creative Minds” to have students do “Creative Nonfiction.” This genre turns out to be like a diary entry about some event or circumstance in the author’s life, together with their feelings about it.

This may fit very well with the degree of difficulty in many if not most high school English classes, but, even if it is done well (and wins the contest, for example) it falls very short of the expectations for academic writing at the college level.

My main experience for the last thirty years or so, has been with high school writing in the social studies, principally history. I started The Concord Review in 1987, as the only journal in the world for the academic papers of high school students. My expectation was that students might send me their 4,000-word history research papers, of the sort which the International Baccalaureate requires of its Diploma students.

I did receive some excellent IB Extended Essays, and I have now published 846 papers by secondary students from 44 states and 35 other countries, but as time went by, the level-of-difficulty in submissions went up, as did the excellence in their execution.

These students who sent me longer and better essays, did so on their own initiative, inspired, by the chance for recognition, and the example of their peers, to raise the degree of difficulty themselves, even as each set of gymnasts, divers, and ice skaters do for the Olympics ever four years. I began receiving first-class 8,000-word papers, then 13,000-word papers from high school history scholars. The longest I have published was 21,000 words, on the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah in 1857, by a girl who had also taken time to be a nationally-ranked equestrian, an activity which also features a degree-of-difficulty measure. Students like the ones I publish find themselves mobbed when they get to college, by their peers who have never had to write a research paper before.

We now require too few of our high school students to read nonfiction books—another failure in setting an appropriate degree of difficulty—and we set the degree-of-difficulty level far too low when it comes to academic writing. We should consider giving up this destructive practice of holding the performance of our students to such a low standard, and one that disables too many of them for early success in higher education. Lots of our high school students can and will meet a higher standard, if we just offer it to them.

“Teach by Example”

Will Fitzhugh [founder]

Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]

The Concord Review [1987]

Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]

National Writing Board [1998]

TCR Institute [2002]

730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24

Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776 USA

978-443-0022; 800-331-5007

www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org

Varsity Academics®

Community College Stdents Do Not Take Remedial Courses They Need

March 6, 2009 9:56 am

Although over 60% of community college students who enter from high school need remediation, large numbers shun these courses, and end up dropping out. Data from Columbia Teachers College Center for Community College Research show 36% in math and 27% in English took other courses ,but never enrolled in a remedial course after placement. We need to know more about why this happens, but students cannot complete their programs without passing a developmental sequence.

I visited a Ca community college last week where students complained they could not take a vocational course they wanted until they passed out of remediation. But if colleges let students take what they want, students may never enroll in developmental education. Perhps you have some ideas on how to solve this dilema.

What Is College Readiness??

March 5, 2009 10:38 am

There is no consensus on this term so confusion abounds when it is mentioned. On a recent NAEP panel we distinguished readiness from academic prepardness which means can be measured by some types of tests or assessments.

College readiness is an elusive and multi-faceted concept that has no standard definition. Consequently, there is confusion among terms like “college readiness”, “college culture”, “college preparedness”, etc. This blog will provide some arbitrary definitions based on my judgments from the most appropriate literature. The overall design starts with secondary school student readiness attributes and then moves to cultures in secondary schools that build readiness. It ends with analysis of measuring dimensions of readiness. My themes are how complex readiness is and how many dimensions need to come together in order to embody and help produce readiness.

David T. Conley has the broadest view of college readiness, so it is the best starting point (Conley, 2007- see www.epiconline.org paper on College readiness). He breaks readiness down to four integrated components:

Habits of Mind – patterns of intellectual behavior that lead to the development of cognitive strategies and capabilities necessary for college work. Among these are: intellectual openness, inquisitiveness, analysis, reasoning, interpretation, precision and problem solving. Multiple choice tests cannot measure all these elements.
Overarching Academic Skills – writing, research, English, math, science, social studies, world languages, etc. These include skills such as: evaluate source material, synthesize, access information from a variety of locations, and written argumentation.
Academic Behavior – metacognition, mastery of study skills, time management, note taking, communication with teacher and advisers.
Conceptual Skills and Awareness – this is sometimes called “college knowledge” and encompasses teamwork, communication with others, understanding of college admission/placement, college options, financial aid applications, testing, college cultures, and expectations of postsecondary education.

Education Secretary Duncan Highlights Budget Proposals For College

February 28, 2009 12:01 pm

This is long but worth reading because of so much new policy. Note the last section includes a new 2.5 billion program for state incentives to improve college completion rates for low income students.

EDUCATION SECRETARY DUNCAN HIGHLIGHTS BUDGET PROPOSALS TO INCREASE COLLEGE ACCESS AND AFFORDABILITY

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today highlighted provisions of the Department of Education’s proposed FY 2010 budget overview that would dramatically expand student financial aid while making it simpler, more reliable and more efficient.

“We need to invest in our economic future and enable our kids to compete in today’s global environment. America’s students and workers need a higher level of education and training,” Duncan said. “President Obama’s proposed budget calls for a historic investment to make college more affordable and accessible and to help more students succeed once they get there.”

“The new funding announced today represents a significant expansion of our federal student aid programs, providing more dollars to allow more students to attend more schools,” he said.

The secretary noted that the proposed budget for the U.S. Department of Education builds on the historic increases in the recently enacted American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) by taking additional steps to advance education reform and restore the nation’s economy. The ARRA would provide an additional $17 billion for Pell Grants in Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010; the current year funding is $16.2 billion, with 6.1 million students participating. The stimulus package is also providing nearly $14 billion in tuition tax credits for middle class families, raising the credit to $2,500 from $1,800.

Details of the FY 2010 budget proposal will be released in late April. The budget overview issued today contains provisions that would:

. Guarantee funding for the Federal Pell Grant program and ensure that
grant amounts would keep pace with inflation. By making funding mandatory, the Pell Grant program would no longer be subject to the discretionary budget process, would eliminate uncertainty in funding from year to year, and would ensure that the grants reflect cost of living increases.
Beginning with academic year 2010-2011, the Pell grant maximum would be indexed to the consumer price index plus one percent, thus ensuring that Pell grant awards would meet their original objective to cover a substantial percentage of college costs. The maximum for the 2010-11 academic year would be $5,550.

. Make college loans reliable, stable and efficient, thus eliminating
uncertainty families have experienced due to the turmoil of the financial markets. All new student and parent loans would be provided directly from the federal government through the same electronic system that colleges use for Pell Grants. Taxpayers would save more than $4 billion a year in reduced entitlement subsidies, and those funds could be reinvested in more aid to students seeking a higher education. Private sector companies would continue to perform loan collection and related services through performance-based contracts with the Department of Education.

. Restructure and expand the Federal Perkins Loan Program to ensure
that all colleges and universities can take part in the program. The revamped Perkins program would provide $6 billion in loans every year, a significant increase from the current $1 billion in funding. Funds would be distributed to reward schools that provide more need-based aid to students and that maintain reasonable student costs relative to other schools in their sector. As now structured, the formula for distributing Perkins loans is weighted by a decades-old formula that favors particular schools, as well as schools that increase college tuition, rather than to those that keep
costs down. Colleges and universities participating would increase from
1,800 to 4,400.

Secretary Duncan also noted that the budget overview includes a $500 million grant program for a new federal-state-local partnership to improve retention and graduation rates, particularly for low-income college students. Funds would support research into what works to help increase college completion.

“Currently, our young people face too many financial and other hurdles to obtaining a college education,” Duncan said. “With the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the proposals announced today, we are taking several major steps to clear those hurdles.”

“By ensuring that higher education is affordable and accessible for all our young people, we will make certain that our nation is prepared to compete in an information-age economy,” he said.

Information on the U.S. Department of Education budget overview is available at:
www.ed.gov.

***

Note to editors: Below is a fact sheet on the Education Department budget overview.

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION FISCAL YEAR 2010 BUDGET REQUEST

President Obama’s fiscal year 2010 request for the Department of Education will build on the historic investment in education provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to leverage significant improvements in early childhood education, more effective reform of elementary and secondary education, and expanded opportunities for students to enter and complete a college education. The request is focused on the following areas:

EARLY CHILDHOOD PROGRAMS

The 2010 request will provide additional resources, on top of those provided in the Recovery Act, to help States build high-quality “Zero to Five” early childhood programs. These resources will leverage state and local investment in early childhood education, support coordination at all levels of government to ensure seamless delivery of services, and help give parents the information they need to choose a high-quality program that meets the needs of their children.

STRONGER STANDARDS AND ASSESSMENTS

The department’s 2010 budget also will help states develop and implement rigorous, college-ready academic achievement standards along with improved assessments, including assessments for students with disabilities and English language learners, to accurately measure students’ knowledge and skills.

MORE EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND SCHOOL LEADERSHIP

The 2010 request will support a wide range of efforts to strengthen the education workforce, including greater accountability for teacher and principal preparation programs; improved systems and strategies for recruiting, evaluating and supporting teachers; and incentives for rewarding effective teachers and encouraging them to teach where they are most needed.

SCALING UP SUCCESS

The department will continue to use the Innovation Fund to identify and replicate successful models and strategies that raise student achievement, including comprehensive approaches such as Promise Neighborhoods that aim to improve college-going rates by combining a rigorous K-12 education with a full network of neighborhood-based social services. In addition, the 2010 budget will help turn around high-need, low-performing schools by giving states additional resources to diagnose and address the root causes of low performance. Finally, the request will increase funding for education research on both promising practices and the effectiveness of Federal education programs.

A STRONGER, MORE RELIABLE PELL GRANT PROGRAM

For decades, the Pell Grant program, the foundation of federal postsecondary financial assistance for students from low-income families, has failed to keep pace with the rising costs of a college education.
Moreover, the program has been plagued by funding shortfalls that complicate the federal appropriations process and threaten the funding of other federal education programs. To address these problems once and for all, the 2010 request not only would increase the maximum Pell Grant award to $5,550, but also would index the Pell Grant maximum award to the Consumer Price Index plus 1 percent and eliminate discretionary shortfalls by moving Pell Grants to the mandatory side of the budget.

A LESS COSTLY, MORE RELIABLE STUDENT LOAN PROGRAM

The department’s guaranteed student loan program (Federal Family Education Loans) includes subsidies for private lenders that have needlessly cost taxpayers billions of dollars over the past 30 years, while also subjecting students and families to uncertainty because of turmoil in the financial markets. The 2010 request would stabilize the postsecondary student loan programs and save taxpayers $4 billion annually by originating all new loans in the direct lending program (Direct Loans).

HELPING MORE STUDENTS ENTER AND COMPLETE COLLEGE

The administration also will simplify the student aid application process, but it is not enough to simply enroll more students in college; we must do a better job of giving all students, especially students from low-income families, the support they need to complete school. This is why the 2010 request includes a new, five-year $2.5 billion Access and Completion Incentive Fund that will support innovative state efforts to improve college completion rates for low-income students.