President Obama’s Proposal on Lowering College Costs!

Dear Commons Community,

President Obama yesterday gave his long-awaited proposal on lowering college costs.  No doubt that college costs and student debt are important issues that need attention but my opinion is that the President’s proposal will not resolve the problems.  The federal government has only modest control over the most prestigious private universities that tend to set the bar for a quality higher education.  They will continue to attract the best students regardless of any federal oversight.  For the past decade, the states have reduced funding to public higher education and have passed the costs on to students.  States have to decide whether they want a quality higher education system that provides access to the masses.  Those that do will fund their public colleges and universities;  those that don’t will not but do so at their own economic peril.  The idea that a federal program to review student employment outcomes looks good on paper or on a website but is difficult to maintain.  It is a bit like No Child Left Behind comes to our colleges.  NCLB has been a failure for K-12 and a similar approach will not work for higher education.   Lastly, the President’s proposal needs Congressional approval which is not likely.  The New York Times editorial today reviews several of these issues well (see text below).

Tony

New York Times Editorial

8/23/13

A Federal Prod to Lower College Costs

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

President Obama has been accused of promoting small-ball ideas in his second term, but the proposal he unveiled on Thursday is a big one: using sharp federal pressure to make college more affordable, potentially opening the gates of higher education to more families scared off by rising tuitions. While there are questions to be answered about his plan, his approach — tying federal student aid to the value of individual colleges — is a bold and important way to leverage the government’s power and get Washington off the sidelines.

The basic idea is to give more student aid to colleges that admit more disadvantaged students, that show progress in lowering costs and raising scholarships, and that shepherd students to earn a degree. To measure that performance, the government would create a rating system to compare similar colleges, a potentially useful consumer tool that would also serve to shame institutions that do not measure up.

The rating system would examine a college’s accessibility, looking at the percentage of students receiving Pell Grants; its affordability, tied to tuition, scholarships and financial aid; and its outcomes, based on graduation rates, advanced degrees and the salaries earned by graduates. Students would be required to show progress toward a degree before receiving continued aid, and schools would be rewarded for developing innovative programs to serve more students at lower costs. All student borrowers would have a cap on their loan payments of 10 percent of their monthly income, expanding the current system.

It’s increasingly clear that the higher education system cannot control costs or debt on its own. In 2010, graduates who took out loans left college owing an average of more than $26,000, the White House said. The actual price of private, nonprofit four-year colleges, after financial aid, has gone up an average of 4 percent a year for 20 years. For public institutions, which educate most students, the increase has been an average of 5 percent a year, with particularly sharp increases during the recession as states have cut back on their support. (Fortunately, those reductions are starting to be reversed.)

Many states let tuition jump even as they were cutting taxes. To provide incentives for states to do better, Mr. Obama proposed spending $1 billion on a race-to-the-top program that would reward states for keeping up their financing, and for demanding better performances from their colleges.

The proposal could have unfortunate unintended consequences. Would a needy student be punished who, for personal or travel reasons, has no choice but to attend a college that is low in the government rankings? The education secretary, Arne Duncan, said that such a student would still get some aid, but expressed only the hope that the incentive system would push the college up in the ratings.

The rating system could also become a blunt instrument, pushing universities into narrow molds. A liberal arts college should not be penalized simply because a history degree doesn’t lead to the same earnings as a computer science degree. As the Education Department develops the ratings criteria over the next two years, it also needs to be careful not to build perverse incentives into the system — for example, lowering education standards simply to raise graduation rates, which don’t show whether students are actually learning. (Universities long ago learned to game the ratings systems used by magazines.)

Many of these ideas — in particular, tying financial aid to performance — need Congressional approval, meaning instant opposition from Republicans who reject anything Mr. Obama wants. Already, several prominent Republicans were expressing predictable complaints about government meddling and even the slippery slope toward “federal price controls.” But Mr. Obama is absolutely right to make increased college access a high administration priority.

“We can’t price the middle class and everybody working to get into the middle class out of a college education,” he said Thursday at SUNY Buffalo. “We’re going to have to do things differently.”

Charles Blow and the Common Core: It was the Implementation Not the Standards!

Dear Commons Community,

Charles Blow in his New York Times column today, reviews the recent outrage regarding the Common Core and testing.  Only 31% of New York state students in grades 3-8 passed the 2013 math and reading tests, down from 65% in math and 55% in English in 2012 on different tests. And just under 30% of New York City students were proficient in math and 26% in reading – a drop by more than half of city students making the grade in each subject compared to 2012.

Blow makes the case that the Common Core is needed because our standards have become too lax compared to other countries.  He also rightly states that many organizations including the U.S. Department of Education and the American Federation of Teachers support it.

The problem is not with the Common Core.  The problem is the fact that its implementation was rushed.  Teachers were not trained and curriculum materials not revised.  As a result, our students and teachers were victimized by our education policy makers.

Furthermore, even if teachers are trained and materials are developed, if we continue to adopt strategies that simply teach to the test, the benefits of the Common Core will not be realized.  In adopting the Common Core, we need imaginative, creative pedagogy, not drill and kill, the test is the only thing that matters approaches.

Charles Blow properly concludes:

“And we need a national standard for what the kind of education that we want our children to receive. Our educational system has become so tangled in experiments and exams and excuses that we’ve drifted away from the basis of what makes education great: learning to think critically and solve problems.

We have drifted away from the fundamentals of what makes a great teacher: the ability to light a fire in a child, to develop in him or her a level of intellectual curiosity, the grit to persevere and the capacity to expand. Great teachers help to activate a small thing that breeds great minds: thirst.

The Common Core is meant to help bolster those forms of learning and teaching.

The Common Core is for the common good, if only we can get our act together and properly implement it.”

Tony

 

 

Maureen Dowd Compares NYC Mayoral Candidates Bill de Blasio and Christine Quinn!

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd compares the two leading NYC Democratic mayoral candidates (Bill de Blasio and Christine Quinn) in her New York Times column today.  Based on an interview with de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, she has several provocative things to say about both candidates.  She examines their spouses, their lifestyles both past and present taking time to discuss gay issues and the fact that de Blasio is a diehard Boston Red Sox fan (ouch!).   Here is an excerpt:

“Last spring, McCray did an interview with Essence magazine about her feelings about being a black lesbian who fell in love with a white heterosexual, back in 1991, when she worked for the New York Commission on Human Rights and wore African clothing and a nose ring and he was an aide to then-Mayor David Dinkins. With her husband, she was also interviewed by the press in December and was asked if she was no longer a lesbian, and she answered ambiguously: “I am married. I have two children. Sexuality is a fluid thing, and it’s personal. I don’t even understand the question, quite frankly…”

…de Blasio has spent the last few days surrounded by the liberal glitterati of New York: Cynthia Nixon and her wife; “Boardwalk Empire” king Steve Buscemi; and ping-pong queen Susan Sarandon, who said she decided not to support Quinn because “you can’t just vote your vagina.”

And on Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

“Quinn’s message has been anodyne and poll-tested; the speaker of the City Council has somehow managed to reap the downside of her partnership with Bloomberg but not capitalize on the upside; she has left many people confused about where she stands and irritated with her role as lackey to Bloomberg’s nanny.

“What she did giving Bloomberg a third term in a back-room deal was morally and politically unacceptable,” de Blasio said.

De Blasio, in contrast to Quinn, has a consistent and strong, if hard left, message: If you didn’t like the last 12 years of New York as a luxury product, elect me.”

He has presented himself as a strong candidate and right now (putting aside the Boston Red Sox) is in a good position to win the Democratic primary.

Tony

 

The Chronicle of Higher Education Releases Its Annual State of Academe Almanac!

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education just published its 2013 Almanac, an annual compendium of data on American colleges and universities. This year’s Almanac features a plethora of data, tables and charts on institutions, faculty, students, technology, etc. (subscription required).  Here are a few interesting figures.

  • Seventeen of the twenty fastest growing public research institutions were in the South with eight in Texas.  CUNY’s own CCNY was the 13th fastest growing campus among public masters level institutions.
  • Three of the ten four-year, large public institutions with the highest graduation rates are part of the University of California system.  The University of Virginia at 93.9 was the highest ranked.
  • Nine of the twenty-five private colleges charging more than $50,000. for tuition were in New York with Sarah Lawrence topping the list at $61,236.
  • Among chief information officers, approximately 50% thought MOOCs offered a viable academic model for delivering online instruction  while about 30% thought they provided a viable business model for colleges to accrue new revenue from online instruction.

Lots of information to digest.  If interested in higher education, well worth acquiring a copy of the Almanac.

Tony

 

Head Start Services Eliminated for 57,265 Children!

Dear Commons Community,

Head Start, the federal pre-K education service for low-income families, has r eliminated services for more than 57,000 children in the coming school year as a result of the federal budget reductions known as sequestration.  As reported in The Huffington Post:

“The cuts include a shorter school year and shorter school days, as well as laying off or reducing the pay for more than 18,000 employees nationwide. Others eliminated medical and dental screenings and bus routes.”

The latest numbers, first reported by the Washington Post, come from “reduction plans” Head Start grantees submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Head Start had to absorb a 5.27 percent reduction to its $8 billion in funding.

All told, 57,265 children (nearly 6,000 of whom attend Early Head Start) saw their services eliminated, according to data provided to The Huffington Post by HHS. The state to take the biggest hit was California, where 5,611 Head Start kids were denied a spot in the program. In Texas, that number was 4,410. In New York it was 3,847. But underscoring just how widespread the effects of sequestration have been felt, even smaller states were impacted. In North Dakota, Head Start eliminated 194 slots in its program. In Rhode Island, it cut 450 positions. Even in far-flung Hawaii, 72 Head Starts slots were slashed.

We can thank our non-functioning federal government especially the U.S. Congress for this state of affairs.

Tony

 

George Will: The Sequester’s Public Health Hazard!

Dear Commons Community,

George Will, the conservative columnist for the Washington Post on Friday, blasted our political leadership for its short-sightedness in how it has administered the sequestration of federal funds.  Specifically he commented that the sequestration is depleting basic science research especially in the area of health.

“…the Clinical Center, the NIH’s beating heart, is inspiriting and depressing: Public health is being enhanced — rapidly, yet unnecessarily slowly — by NIH-supported research here, and in hundreds of institutions across the country, into new drugs, devices and treatments. Yet much research proposed by extraordinarily talented physicians and scientists cannot proceed because the required funding is prevented by the intentional irrationality by which the sequester is administered.

A 2  percent reduction of federal spending would be easily manageable. It has, however, been made deliberately dumb by mandatory administrative rigidities intended to maximize pain in order to weaken resistance to any spending restraint. Spending on basic medical research is being starved as the river of agriculture subsidies rolls on…

…For Francis Collins, being the NIH’s director is a daily experience of exhilaration and dismay. In the past 40 years, he says, heart attacks and strokes have declined 60 percent and 70 percent, respectively. Cancer deaths are down 15 percent in 15 years. An AIDS diagnosis is no longer a death sentence. Researchers are on the trail of a universal flu vaccine, based on new understandings of the influenza virus and the human immune system. Chemotherapy was invented here — and it is being replaced by treatments developed here. Yet the pace of public health advances, Collins says, is being slowed by the sequester.

Collins is haunted by knowledge that the flow of scientific talent cannot be turned on and off like a faucet. Unfortunately, recent government behavior has damaged the cause of basic science. It has blurred the distinction between fundamental research and technical refinements (often of 19th-century technologies — faster trains, better batteries, longer-lasting light bulbs). It has sown confusion about the difference between supporting scientific research and practicing industrial policy with subsidies — often incompetently and sometimes corruptly dispensed — for private corporations oriented to existing markets rather than unimagined applications. And beginning with the indiscriminate and ineffective 2009 stimulus, government has incited indiscriminate hostility to public spending.”

We can thank both Republicans and Democrats for the sequester with much of the blame resting with the Congress.

Tony

 

New York Times Hypes Georgia Tech’s Online Master’s Degree!

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has its fourth article in a series that is examining free online college-level classes and how they are transforming higher education.  This article focuses on Georgia Tech’s offering of a master’s degree in computer science via a MOOC online model developed by Udacity.

“But the courses [MOOCs} have not yet produced profound change, partly because they offer no credit and do not lead to a degree. The disruption may be approaching, though, as Georgia Tech, which has one of the country’s top computer science programs, plans to offer a MOOC-based online master’s degree in computer science for $6,600 — far less than the $45,000 on-campus price.

Zvi Galil, the dean of the university’s College of Computing, expects that in the coming years, the program could attract up to 10,000 students annually, many from outside the United States and some who would not complete the full master’s degree. “Online, there’s no visa problem,” he said.

The program rests on an unusual partnership forged by Dr. Galil and Sebastian Thrun, a founder of Udacity, a Silicon Valley provider of the open online courses.

Although it is just one degree at one university, the prospect of a prestigious low-cost degree program has generated great interest. Some educators think the leap from individual noncredit courses to full degree programs could signal the next phase in the evolution of MOOCs — and bring real change to higher education. “

The disruption is not happening.  Online learning in colleges and universities will continue on the evolutionary path that started in the early 1990s.  Millions of students (at least a third of all higher education enrollments) were enrolled in online courses before the MOOC phenomenon.  MOOCs have been more of a distraction to this evolution embraced by Wall Street investors, the media, cost-cutting politicians,  and technology companies and their foundations.  As stated recently by Sebastian Thrun, founder of Undacity,  in an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“A medium [MOOCs] where only self-motivated, Web-savvy people sign up, and the success rate is 10 percent, doesn’t strike me quite yet as a solution to the problems of higher education.”

Thank you for your honesty!

Tony

 

New York Times Poll Rates Mayor Michael Bloomberg as Mayor!

Bloomberg Poll I

Dear Commons Community,

The latest New York Times poll asked New Yorkers to take a look back at Michael R. Bloomberg’s twelve years as mayor of New York City.  The message from the respondents is at best mixed.  As summarized in the New York Times:

“Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s crusades to restrict smoking, encourage biking, expose calorie counts and sideline automobiles are now overwhelmingly embraced by New York City residents, according to a New York Times poll, making his experiments in behavioral modification an unexpectedly popular hallmark of his legacy.

In a stinging assessment of the mayor’s priorities and effectiveness, however, two-thirds of New Yorkers say they believe that the quality of the city’s long-troubled school system has stayed the same or become worse since he took office in 2002, despite his vigorous pledges to improve it.

Most New Yorkers say Mr. Bloomberg’s policies have favored the rich over the middle class and the poor. And 70 percent say that as mayor, he has paid too much attention to Manhattan, rather than its surrounding, less well-off boroughs.

Over all, the Times poll offers a portrait of a long-term relationship between mayor and city that remains deeply conflicted and contradictory, marked by almost loveless admiration and an unmistakable yearning for change as Mr. Bloomberg’s third and final term winds to a close.”

On the subject that is important to many readers of this blog – public education:

“There is strong opposition to the mayor’s dismantling of the city’s Board of Education in 2002. Fifty-seven percent now disapprove — a sign of dissatisfaction with the mayor’s handling of education since the State Legislature granted him much greater authority over the system.

The poll shows a profound sense of unease over the state of the public schools, whose reinvention Mr. Bloomberg had put at the center of his mayoralty and his legacy. He has raised teacher pay, closed failing schools, rolled out a letter-grade system for evaluating schools and made it harder for instructors to gain tenure.

Yet of those surveyed, 32 percent say public education has not changed during Mr. Bloomberg’s three terms; the same percentage say it has grown worse; and 26 percent say it has improved.

Phyllis Rudnick, a 77-year-old former teacher who lives in the Far Rockaway section of Queens, recalled the difficulty of watching families learn that their local schools would be shut down.

“Parents were so unhappy. They fight so hard to keep schools open,” Ms. Rudnick said. “After 12 years of being mayor, the best thing you can do is shut down a school and start over?”

It is my opinion that his greatest failing in public education was his choice of Joel Klein as chancellor.  Mr. Klein had no experience and took an adversarial position with teachers and parents alike.  The current chancellor, Dennis Walcott, has done a better job but came to the system too late in Mayor Bloomberg’s tenure.

Tony

Bloomberg Poll II

Bloomberg Poll III

NYC to Open Three More P-TECH Type Schools!

Dear Commons Community,

NYC Department of Education Chancellor Dennis M Walcott announced yesterday that three new early college and career technical education high schools, modeled after the Pathways in Early Technology High School (P-TECH) will open in 2014.

The original P-TECH was launched in 2011 and quickly earned local praise for its six-year program in which students start in ninth grade and stay until they’ve earned associate’s degrees in a partnership with IBM and the City University of New York.  P-TECH received a good deal of national recognition when President Obama gave a shout-out to P-TECH in his 2013 February State of the Union address as a model for new schools across the nation.  Two weeks later, Gov. Cuomo announced his plans to open 10 P-TECH style schools across the state — and in April, Obama set aside $300 million for similar schools nationwide.

As reported in the Daily News:

“It’s been a real game-changer for education,” city schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott told a group of reporters Thursday at the midtown offices of Microsoft, which will team with the city and CUNY to run one of the new schools.  “These schools are a cornerstone of our work to prepare every single student for college and a career,” Walcott said. “It’s a partnership that changes lives.”

Like P-TECH, the new schools will deliver a six-year, career-focused program that ends with an associate’s degree and first dibs on a job at the school’s partner company.

One of the schools is planned for Manhattan and will be based on a city partnership with Microsoft and New York-Presbyterian Hospital, with a specialty in technology targeted for the health-care industry.

A second school will open in Queens, with a computer science and business tech theme created by city educators working with SAP, the global business technology giant.

The third school, set to open in Manhattan, will partner with the American Association of Advertising Agencies to give students an education in marketing, design and technology through classroom training and internships.

The trio of new programs will join the existing P-TECH in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and two other grade 9-14 schools opening in September, creating about 2,000 seats for city students when they’re all complete.”

Congratulations to Mr. Walcott for his efforts in opening these schools.

Tony

Philadelphia Public Schools in Deep Financial Trouble!

Dear Commons Community,

The financial problems in Philadelphia are so severe that the city agreed yesterday to borrow $50 million just to be able to open schools on time. Even with that money, schools will open Sept. 9 with a minimum of staffing and sharply curtailed extracurricular activities and other programs.

As reported in the New York Times:

Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. had been threatening to delay opening schools if the city did not come through with the $50 million, which he said was necessary to provide the minimum staffing needed for the basic safety of the district’s 136,000 students. In June, the district closed 24 schools and laid off 3,783 employees, including 127 assistant principals, 646 teachers and more than 1,200 aides, leaving no one even to answer phones.

For a number of years, Mayor Michael A. Nutter and the City Council have been working, with some success and a fair amount of taxpayer pain, to shore up the city’s finances, which have been troubled by mounting debt, a shrinking tax base and unfunded pension and health care obligations to retirees. But the school district, supported by the same weary municipal taxpayers, though under the control of a state reform commission for more than a decade, had been largely ignored.

While the city’s own bond rating has been raised, to its highest level in 30 years, the school district’s credit has been downgraded to junk, with warnings that more downgrades may come…

Even after the June staff cuts, the district had an estimated $304 million deficit for the coming year — at a time when it is already paying nearly that amount, $280 million, to service its existing debt each year.  Mayor Nutter that he would take out general obligation bonds to come up with the $50 million for the schools risks the city’s own hard-won credit rating by taking on medium-term debt to pay for day-to-day operations — a practice that is widely seen by municipal analysts as a sign of desperation.

The unusual situation stems from a combination of politics and long-term structural problems. Decades of dwindling population and resources had already greatly weakened the schools, but now the Republican-controlled state government has drastically cut aid to the district. This move struck some in the Democratic-controlled city as punitive, though Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, has said the statewide cuts in education had nothing to do with party politics but with the simple need to do something about the state’s own poor finances. Federal aid to the district has also been chopped.”

The Philadelphia School District is an anomaly — unlike many school districts across the country, it has no elected board of education, and never has, at least in modern memory. That means the normal political dynamics found in other places with troubled schools cannot play out there.  The School District of Philadelphia is governed by a five-member School Reform Commission (SRC), established in December 2001, when oversight of the School District shifted to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Governor of Pennsylvania appoints three of the SRC members, while the Mayor of Philadelphia appoints two members of the commission.

Tony