Dear Commons Community,

Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, has an op-ed in today’s New York Times examining the issue of admissions into New York City’s elite high schools.  Kahlenberg reviews the policy of using only qualifying test scores and recommends a new approach based on a system he helped develop in Chicago. Here is an excerpt:

“NEW YORK CITY’S elite public high schools were always meant to provide a quintessentially American blend of academic excellence and democratic accessibility. Unlike the city’s expensive private schools, they would be free and open to all who were academically qualified, irrespective of pedigree.

“You pass the test, you get the highest score, you get into the school — no matter what your ethnicity, no matter what your economic background is,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in 2012. But this year, only 5 percent of seats at those eight schools were offered to black students and 7 percent to Latinos, in a city where the public schools are 70 percent black and Latino. At Stuyvesant High School, just 3 percent of offered seats this year went to black and Latino students.

When the number of black and Latino students admitted to a public school is a tiny fraction of their share of the general population, it raises red flags about the fairness of the admissions system.

New York City’s eight selective public high schools base admissions on a single two-and-a-half-hour assessment — the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test — a practice that is unusual among other large public school systems in the nation. The N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Education Fund, along with other groups, has filed a federal civil rights complaint against this arrangement…

Five years ago I worked with Chicago public school officials to create a program for their selective and magnet schools. Chicago had previously been under a racial desegregation consent decree that employed racial quotas, but when the consent decree ended, the city sought a new way to promote fairness and diversity without relying on race.

Under the policy we developed, 30 percent of students are admitted to Chicago’s highly selective high schools (such as Walter Payton College Prep) based strictly on the traditional criteria of grades and test scores. The remaining seats are allocated to the highest-scoring students from four different socioeconomic tiers, under the premise that students in the poorest parts of the city who score modestly lower on standardized tests have a lot to offer, given the obstacles they’ve had to overcome.

Demographers rank Chicago’s census tracts from most to least advantaged by six criteria: median family income, average level of education attained by parents, percentage of single-family homes, percentage of homes where English is not the first language, percentage of homeowner-occupied residences, and school achievement scores by attendance area.

The policy has resulted in far more racial and ethnic diversity than in New York City’s elite public schools. At Walter Payton, 21 percent of students are black and 25 percent are Latino. Some critics worry that these numbers are still inadequate in a public school system where 41 percent of students are black and 45 percent Latino. But compared with Stuyvesant, Payton is a multicultural paradise.”

Something has to be done to create greater diversity in NYC’s elite high schools. What Mr. Kahlenberg is suggesting should be considered.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The for-profit industry is making steep inroads in higher education in Brazil.    Over the last five years, mergers and acquisitions have made some of the biggest chains bigger, concentrating power in giant for-profit groups. The 10 largest chains of colleges in Brazil now educate nearly 35 percent of the country’s students. As reported in the New York Times:

“Although for-profit colleges have faced scrutiny in the United States, the industry is finding a warm welcome here as the government tries to meet the demand for affordable higher education.

From 2002 to 2012, the number of students attending college in Brazil doubled to seven million. Still, with only 17 percent of Brazilians aged 18 to 24 in college, there is a gap that needs to be served. The government has pledged to raise that percentage to 33 percent by 2020.

To serve that lucrative and growing market, American and Brazilian private equity funds, corporations and investment banks are buying and merging educational institutions at a rapid pace.

Education experts caution that the emphasis on the business aspect of education does not always put students first. Despite such concerns, the for-profit system has proved appealing for a government with limited resources…

Private sector investment in technical, primary and high school education in Brazil is growing. The British firm Pearson last December bought Multi, a chain of foreign-language schools, in a deal worth more than $880 million in cash and debt assumption. Avenues, a New York private school whose investors include the private equity firms Liberty Partners and LLR Partners, has announced plans to open campuses in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro…

The International Finance Corporation, a branch of the World Bank that invests in projects that reduce poverty and encourage development, is also backing the industry. The I.F.C. is invested in Laureate and several other for-profit college chains in Brazil.

Patrick Leahy, an I.F.C. senior manager for Latin America, said that even if these chains did not always offer the most prestigious degrees, they did give students skills and qualifications at an affordable price that permits them to move up the employment ladder. College graduates in Brazil earn on average 2.6 times as much as high school graduates.

“The system is not perfect, but it is unquestionably a success,” Mr. Leahy said.

This scenario is playing itself out in a number of other countries. In my visit last month to South Africa, the exact same situation was evolving with for-profit colleges expanding and growing in enrollments. The International Finance Corporation was again an important catalyst.  Many countries have little choice mainly because they lack the resources to make major expansions of their public higher education systems.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Corinthian Colleges, one of the more successful for-profit college companies, may have to close for failure to disclose documentation on student data to the U.S. Department of Education. According to the Associated Press:

“Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit education company with about 75,000 students nationwide, warned Thursday that it may fail as it clashes with U.S. regulators over student data.

Corinthian, which owns the Everest College, Heald College and WyoTech schools, said that the U.S. Department of Education has limited its access to federal funds after it failed to provide documents and other information to the agency.

That follows allegations that the company altered grades, student attendance records and falsified job placement data used in advertisements for its schools.

Shares in the company plunged more than 64 percent Thursday.

The Education Department said that it heightened its oversight of the company after requesting data “multiple times” over the past five months. Regulators have grown increasingly concerned about inconsistencies in its job placement claims for graduates.

Corinthian’s problems come as student enrollment at schools run by for-profit education companies have been dropping amid heightened government scrutiny of the industry’s practices. Earlier this year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed suit against another company, ITT Educational Services Inc., alleging that it pushed students into high-cost private loans knowing they would likely default. The company denied the charges. Several state attorneys general are also investigating various for-profit education companies.”

It is unfortunate that Corinthian is in this situation because for-profit colleges have a role to play in providing higher education opportunities for segments of the U.S. population. However, Corinthian along with several other for-profit institutions such as the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University brought federal government oversight upon themselves by taking advantage of students who would have little chance to graduate and who would be saddled with crushing student loan debt.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Steve Nelson, Head of the Calhoun School in Manhattan, in a blog posting this morning, referred to the school reform efforts of the past dozen years as a “national delusion”.   Here is an excerpt:

“As I watch the education “debate” in America I wonder if we have simply lost our minds. In the cacophony of reform chatter — online programs, charter schools, vouchers, testing, more testing, accountability, Common Core, value-added assessments, blaming teachers, blaming tenure, blaming unions, blaming parents — one can barely hear the children crying out: “Pay attention to us!”

None of the things on the partial list above will have the slightest effect on the so-called achievement gap or the supposed decline in America’s international education rankings. Every bit of education reform — every think tank remedy proposed by wet-behind-the-ears MBAs, every piece of legislation, every one of these things — is an excuse to continue the unconscionable neglect of our children.

As Pogo wisely noted, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” We did this to our children and our schools.

We did this by choosing to see schools as instructional factories, beginning in the early 20th century.

We did this by swallowing the obscene notion that schools and colleges are businesses and children are consumers.

We did this by believing in the infallibility of free enterprise, by pretending America is a meritocracy, and by ignoring the pernicious effects of unrelenting racism.

We did this by believing that children are widgets and economy of scale is both possible and desirable.

We did this by acting as though reality and the digital representation of reality are the same thing.

We did this by demeaning the teaching profession.

We did this by allowing poverty and despair to shatter families.

We did this by blaming these families for the poverty and despair we inflicted on them.

We did this by allowing school buildings to deteriorate, by removing the most enlivening parts of the school day, by feeding our children junk food.

We did this by failing to properly fund schools, making them dependent on shrinking property taxes and by shifting the costs of federal mandates to resource-strapped states and local communities.

We did this by handcuffing teachers with idiotic policies, constant test preparation and professional insecurity.

America’s children need our attention, not Pearson’s lousy tests or charter schools’ colorful banners and cute little uniforms that make kids look like management trainees.”

I hope that Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, and the rest of our “education reformers” have a chance to read Nelson’s piece.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday saw two positive developments affecting the Common Core curriculum that are steps in the right direction for American public education.

First, the District of Columbia public school system announced yesterday that it would suspend the practice of using test scores to evaluate teachers while students adjust to new tests based on Common Core standards.

Chancellor Kaya Henderson announced the decision, saying officials are concerned it wouldn’t be fair to use the new tests until a baseline is established and any complications are worked out.

The District has fired hundreds of teachers under the system, which was put in place by Henderson’s predecessor, Michelle Rhee. Test scores make up 35 percent of evaluations for those who teach students in the tested grades and subjects.

Last week, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation joined the two largest teachers’ unions in calling for a temporary halt to evaluating teachers based on Common Core tests. The foundation has spent more than $200 million implementing the Common Core standards nationwide.

The chutzpah of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is appalling. With its influence peddling “grants” to the tune of $200 million, it rush the Common Core  through the U.S. Department of Education and state education departments and now it joins the AFT and NEA in a call for a moratorium.

Second, on the heels of saying he would not be “bullied by the federal government” any longer, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) announced Wednesday that he plans to pull his state out of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Jindal issued a series of executive orders calling for the state to come up with “Louisiana standards and a Louisiana test” in place of the “one size fits all” Common Core standards.

“We won’t let the federal government take over Louisiana’s education standards,” Jindal read from a prepared statement at a Baton Rouge press conference. “We’re very alarmed about choice and local control over curriculum being taken away from parents and educators. Common Core has not been fully implemented yet in Louisiana, and we need to start the process over. It was rushed in the beginning and done without public input.”

Basically good news!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A new bill working its way in Albany would raise the state’s minimum wage to $10.10 per hour by 2015.   It would also allow independent municipalities like New York City to set their own minimum wage up to 30 percent higher than the state minimum wage. That means if the state minimum wage were $10.10 per hour, New York City could have a minimum wage of $13.13 per hour.  As reported in The Huffington Post this bill:

“…would help a lot of New Yorkers. In fact, according to a report prepared by New York City Comptroller, Scott Stringer, the new bill could put an extra $100 in the pockets of 1.2 million New Yorkers each week.

“New York City deserves the ability to set its own minimum wage,” Stringer said in a press release. “We are falling behind other states and cities when it comes to the minimum wage, despite the fact that this is the most expensive city in which to live in the nation. There is no one size fits all when it comes to the minimum wage; raising it to $13.13 would make an enormous difference for more than one million New York City residents.”

The report doesn’t attempt to measure whether such a higher wage would cause employers to cut jobs. Instead, Stringer points to research that businesses will adjust to higher wages through a “combination of higher prices, lower profits and increased efficiency,” rather than reduced employment. He also cites research showing that higher wages cause an increase in spending by low-income households, which then benefits local businesses.

The bill’s future is uncertain. The legislative session ends today and while Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo has expressed support for the bill, Republicans in the state Senate have come out against it. “

We hope that the state legislature does the right thing and passes this measure.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist Charles Blow calls out former Vice President Dick Cheney for chiding President Obama on his handling of the latest Iraq insurgent problem.

Here is an excerpt from his column:

 
“The situation in Iraq is truly worrisome, as militants threaten to tear the country asunder and disrupt the fragile, short-lived period absent all-out war there. We have strategic interests in preventing Iraq from unraveling, not least of which is that we don’t need the country to become a haven for terrorists, particularly those who might see America as a target.And of course, there is the uneasy subject of oil: Volatility in the region has already sent global oil prices soaring. On Wednesday, militants were said to have taken control of Iraq’s largest oil refinery.
We have to tread carefully here. There are no saints to be seen in this situation. Everyone’s hands are bloody. And, we don’t want to again get mired in a conflict in a country from which we have only recently extricated ourselves. As we weigh our response, one of the last people who should say anything on the subject is a man who is partly responsible for the problem.But former Vice President Dick Cheney, who was in the administration that deceived us into a nine-year war in Iraq, just can’t seem to keep his peace.

In an Op-Ed published with his daughter, Liz, in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, the Cheneys write:

 
“Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.” This, from the man who helped lead us into this trumped-up war, searching for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, a war in which some 4,500 members of the American military were killed, many thousands more injured, and that is running a tab of trillions of dollars.

During the lead-up to the war, Mr. Cheney said to Tim Russert: “I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.” Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Even if it were indeed rare to be “so wrong,” as Mr. Cheney puts it, he was vice president in an administration that was much more tragically wrong. His whole legacy is wrapped in wrong.”
Blow’s conclusion:
“Mr. Cheney is still trying to bend history toward an exoneration of his guilt and an expunging of his record. But history, on this, is stiff, and his record is written in blood.”

As Colin Powell is famously quoted as advising President George W. Bush on invading Iraq: “If you break it, you own it.” Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their Neocon cohorts set the stage for this never ending saga in Iraq.  The blood of this situation is indeed on their hands .

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Earlier this week, Starbucks announced that it was offering its employees the chance for a college degree by partnering with Arizona State University. Starbucks rightfully received due praise for its initiative in this area. That was the ecstasy. Yesterday we got the agony as AT&T and Sebastian Thrun of Udacity announced a new $200. a month “NanoDegree” designed to be completed in 6-12 months. Thrun who famously announced that his company’s MOOCs were lousy products now has now developed another questionable product. As described in a New York Times article:

“This week, AT&T and Udacity, the online education company founded by the Stanford professor and former Google engineering whiz Sebastian Thrun, announced something meant to be very small: the “NanoDegree.”

 
At first blush, it doesn’t appear like much. For $200 a month, it is intended to teach anyone with a mastery of high school math the kind of basic programming skills needed to qualify for an entry-level position at AT&T as a data analyst, iOS applications designer or the like.

 
Yet this most basic of efforts may offer more than simply adding an online twist to vocational training. It may finally offer a reasonable shot at harnessing the web to provide effective schooling to the many young Americans for whom college has become a distant, unaffordable dream.

 
Intriguingly, it suggests that the best route to democratizing higher education may require taking it out of college.

 
“We are trying to widen the pipeline,” said Charlene Lake, an AT&T spokeswoman. “This is designed by business for the specific skills that are needed in business.”

 
This sounds like more snake oil from Udacity and Sebastian Thrun.  Call this new venture with AT&T  a certificate program  but a who in their right mind would call such a narrow program a “degree” nano or otherwise.

 
Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education in January 2014, conducted a survey of college presidents (N=349). The survey questions focused on innovations in higher education, including the role various constituencies play in advancing ideas, as well as their opinions on online learning, blended/hybrid courses, and competency-based degrees.  It contains some interesting insights. The report is available as a free download. Below is an excerpt from the Executive Summary.

Tony

—————————-

Executive Summary
World ranking:
Presidents of both public and private institutions agree by an overwhelming majority that for now, higher education in the United States is either the best or one of the best in the world. Nonetheless, both groups believe that number one ranking will decline slightly over the next ten years.

Disruption:
Well over half of all presidents believe that at least a moderate amount of disruption is needed in higher education. Years ago disruption to higher-education’s business model was not something a college president was likely to promote. These days, disruption is sometimes a rallying cry from the president’s office.

New ideas:
An overwhelming majority of presidents—three quarters at private institutions and even more at public campuses—think that hybrid courses that contain both face-to-face and online components will have a positive impact on higher education. They are more skeptical, however, about massive open online courses (MOOCs), at least in their current form. Half of the presidents surveyed suspect that MOOCs will have a negative impact on higher education.

Value:
More than half of presidents of public institutions believe they
and their peers are providing either excellent or very good value
for the money spent by students and their parents. Their private
campus counterparts are a little less persuaded about the value they
are giving. Slightly under half rate themselves excellent or very good on value, although an additional third give themselves a grade of good.

Direction:
Two-thirds of presidents of public institutions think that higher education is headed in the right direction, as do well over half of their private campus peers. In contrast, a survey by The Chronicle last fall concluded that faculty are significantly more pessimistic. Only a third think that higher education is headed in the right direction.

Focus:
Presidents say that when it comes to innovation in higher education, reformers pay too much attention to cutting costs and not enough to changing the model of teaching and learning.

Change drivers:
Two-thirds of public-institution presidents think that politicians are the most influential drivers of change in higher education and half of private-campus presidents agree with that assessment. The presidents on both types of campuses believe strongly that faculty should be the number one drivers of change.

Dear Commons Community,

Starbucks and Arizona State University will be announcing a new program, the Starbucks College Achievement Plan, today that provides tuition assistance to more than 100,000 of its employees. As reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education:
“Starbucks is teaming up with Arizona State University on an exclusive program that could send thousands of its baristas, store managers, and other employees to ASU Online for their undergraduate degrees, with the coffee company picking up about three-quarters of the tuition tab.

The unusual program, the Starbucks College Achievement Plan, will be available to more than 100,000 of its employees, as long as they enroll as full-time students. The partnership, which could cost Starbucks hundreds of millions of dollars a year, is likely to add luster to the company’s reputation for corporate social responsibility. It could also be a welcome enrollment jolt to ASU Online, which has about 10,000 distance-education students and aspires to enroll 10 times that many.

Howard Schultz, chairman and chief executive of Starbucks, and President Michael M. Crow of Arizona State, are scheduled to announce the new program on Monday in New York…

…Mr. Schultz said providing educational benefits “with no strings attached” was an extension of the company’s culture and values. Employees will not have to commit to remain at the company past graduation, he said, but he expects the new benefit will actually lower attrition and attract new people. He said it would also demonstrate “the role and responsibility of a public company” at a time when education matters and “so many people are being left behind.”

Congratulations Mr. Schultz and Starbucks!

Tony