Lumping African Americans And Hispanics Leads To Misleading Analyses

Not one and the same
In an article in USA TODAY, Richard Whitmire writes that data indicate we should stop lumping blacks and Hispanics together as “students of color,” both in terms of how we measure progress and in terms of policy, since the groups have different education needs. Whitmire cites several sets of college-readiness data: Between 2002 and 2011, the percentage of black students taking the ACT who met all readiness benchmarks rose from 3 percent to 4 percent. Among Hispanic students, it rose from 8 percent to 11 percent. In 2010, black students made up 14.6 percent of high school graduates, but only 8.6 percent of AP test-takers. By contrast, Hispanics made up 17 percent of graduates and 16 percent of test-takers. This Hispanic-black separation can be seen within individual school districts; whether on state reading and math tests or district “exit” exams, Hispanic students have been making faster progress. Why? According to Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust, African-American students are more socially and economically isolated, less likely to get strong teachers, and less likely to go to better-funded majority-white schools. Recent research also shows that many successful all-black schools build school culture based on social justice, and employ highly structured curricula that emphasize verbal instruction. Successful Hispanic schools more often base school culture on connections to family, with an unstructured curriculum emphasizing visual instruction. For these and other reasons, Whitmire would dispense with the monolithic “students of color” category.
Source PEN Newsblast

States Cut Back On Lottery Based Student Aid

States Seek Ways to Trim Scholarships
The majority of states that followed Georgia’s lead in creating lottery-funded state scholarships now are coming up with policies to deal with increasing demand and declining revenues. Over the last several years, all the states have implemented some limit on years or credit hours to address the revenue-versus-demand problem. (Chattanooga Times Free Press, 05/01/12)

Colleges Report Much Better Results In Access Compared To Success

GAINS IN ACCESS, LESS IN SUCCESS
In 2007 — long before President Obama pushed to make college attainment a national priority and three years before the phrase “completion agenda” first appeared in these pages — a group of public university systems put themselves on the spot. Working with (and to some extent prodded by) Education Trust, which promotes the educational success of low-income and minority students, the 22 systems of two-year and four-year colleges and universities committed to increasing their attainment levels, in large part by closing the gaps in performance between underrepresented students and their peers within a decade. And they committed, too, to documenting their progress by collecting and publicly reporting detailed (and in some cases, previously unreported) data on student access and success. A report, released this week, provides a look mid-point.  The article is in Inside Higher Ed and circulated by Carnegie Foundation

USA Drops Again In International Rankings Of College Completion

A new report from the Center for Postsecondary and Economic Success finds that as other countries have increased their postsecondary attainment, the United States has fallen to 15th place among 34 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries in the percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds with an Associate’s level college degree or higher. Today, over half of young adults in leading OECD countries — Canada, South Korea, and Japan — have college degrees, compared to 41 percent in the United States. At current rates of attainment, the United States will fall short of its goals by tens of millions of postsecondary credentials over the next couple of decades. Despite this, federal policymakers continue to trim grants awarded to students. The proportion of state budgets devoted to postsecondary education has fallen by more than 13 percent since 1990. A 60-percent credential attainment would produce significant economic returns to individuals, states, and the nation by 2025. Average annual per-capita income would increase by approximately $1,400 by 2025. Federal revenue of $67 billion in 2025 would be about six times higher than the estimated postsecondary costs of $9.8 billion, and state revenue of $64 billion would be triple the estimated state postsecondary costs of $21 billion.
Read more: http://www.clasp.org/postsecondary/pages?type=postsecondary_and_economic_success&id=0025

Source:PEN Newsblat

A New Defense Of The 3 Year College Degree.

by Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, President Emeritis, The George Washington University, and Gerald B. Kauvar, Research Professor of public policy and public administration, The George Washington University

Because of increased financial constraints on all State supported and most independent colleges and universities one reads and hears more and more about the wisdom of fully utilizing existing facilities in order to lower costs and expand access. Legislators and institutional leaders are climbing on the bandwagon. More and more institutions are exploring ways or exploiting existing ways to encourage students to complete their degrees rapidly. Opportunities for earning a degree in three years are being publicized and encouraged by college counselors and publicists, and media pundits.

A couple of years ago, we published an op-ed piece in the New York Times which argued for better utilization of our post-secondary institutions by using facilities on a year around basis. For many students, so doing would enlarge the possibilities to earn a degree in three years – not all students, but many students. And they would save a bit of money by foregoing any tuition increase that would become effective in the fourth year.

The op-ed piece we wrote was widely criticized, though rarely for anything we stated or implied in the article. READ MORE….

Community College Reports Worth Reading

• Learning Communities for Students in Developmental English: Impact Studies at Merced College and The Community College of Baltimore County (National Center for Postsecondary Research)

• Remediation: Higher Education’s Bridge to Nowhere (Complete College America)  Source:ECS

Big Business Recognizes Importance Of Access Postsecondary, And Its Low Performance

Yesterday,  the Committee for Economic Development (CED) began a national campaign to get business leaders involved in postsecondary education reform. CED released Boosting Postsecondary Education Performance, a report with data that underscore this urgency. The CED report concentrates on those “broad-access” institutions that will bear much of the burden when it comes to providing postsecondary education to most Americans. CED’s goal is to help build stronger connections between postsecondary education and the American business community in order to drive the needed structural reforms throughout this vital sector of American education.

Source:Carnegie Foundation

Pre- College Outreach That Work

WASHINGTON, DC —April 12, 2012 — The Educational Policy Institute, with special support from TG, released the second of two new reports today on student success. A Blueprint for Success: Case Studies of Successful Pre-College Outreach Programs, provides an indepth look at how 10 programs from around the United States became and remain successful in helping youth prepare and go to college.

The case studies evolved from the companion volume, 2012 National Directory of Pre-College Programs, also funded by TG. Based on analysis of the national survey of 374 programs in support of this project, the 10 programs were selected using a filtering process. The programs include:

Bottom Line, Boston, MA
Breakthrough Saint Paul, St. Paul, MN
Bridges to a Brighter Future, Greenville, SC
College Bound St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
The Boys Hope Girls Hope – The College Road, Bridgeton, MO
College Track, Oakland, CA
Education is Freedom, Dallas, TX
Foundation for a College Education, East Palo Alto, CA
Hispanic Youth Institute, Washington, DC
The Partners Program, Oakland, CA

High School Student Career Maps May Help College Readiness

Career Mapping Eyed to Prepare Students for College
About half of all states mandate that schools help create individual or student learning plans, and most others have optional programs. The practice is picking up momentum with the increased emphasis on college completion, which research shows is more likely when students take rigorous courses and have a career goal. But these career maps take an investment in technology and training.

Effective College Readiness Strategies: A Summary Report

A new report from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform examines the burgeoning field of college readiness, with models to help districts, schools, and other interested stakeholders prepare students for college success. The report is part of the College Readiness Indicator System initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The report defines college-readiness through three dimensions — academic preparedness, academic tenacity, and college knowledge. The report finds that common strategies to help students gain content-area knowledge and key cognitive skills for success in college include aligning standards, curricula, and assessments to college-ready expectations; using data to drive college-readiness policies; and intervening early to keep students on a college-ready track. Successful programs also promote academic tenacity by exposing students to tenacity-building activities; providing accelerated and extended learning opportunities that promote persistence and attainment; restructuring schools into personalized learning communities; and providing additional supports for at-risk students. Finally, successful programs create a college-going culture in the school and community; support students through the college-planning process; and engage families in learning about and supporting college-going. The guide includes references to the Postsecondary Success Initiative, a project of Public Education Network, taking place in local education funds in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Miami.
See the report: http://annenberginstitute.org/publication/college-readiness-guide-field   Source:PEN Newsblast