Dear Commons Community,

U.S. students are graduating from high school at a higher rate according to new data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. The nation’s high school graduation rate hit 81 percent in 2012-13, the highest level since states adopted a new uniform way of calculating graduation rates five years ago.

“America’s students have achieved another record-setting milestone,” said Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in the statement. “We can take pride as a nation in knowing that we’re seeing promising gains. This is a vital step toward readiness for success in college and careers for every student in this country.”

The data provided by NCES indicated that graduation rates varied from state to state as illustrated by the map above. Iowa had the highest graduation rate — 90 percent — while the District of Columbia had the lowest rate at 62 percent.

The Education Department’s data does not show how the rates may have varied among subgroups of students. The department’s statement says this data should be released in the coming weeks.  As reported in The Huffington Post:

During the 2011-2012 school year, 84 percent of girls graduated high school in four years, compared to 77 percent of boys. Sixty-nine percent of black students graduated in that year, compared to 86 percent of white students.

On Wednesday, The Schott Foundation for Public Education released a report estimating that 59 percent of black males graduated from high school in the 2012-2013 school year, although the group itself notes that these are just estimates. The foundation arrived at these figures by compiling previous Department of Education data and previous data from its own reports and applying a moving average.”

Congratulations to our teachers, principals, and students!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

David Cillay, a colleague from the Online Learning Consortium,  first alerted me that advocates for the deaf filed federal lawsuits against Harvard and M.I.T. yesterday, saying both universities violated antidiscrimination laws by failing to provide closed captioning in their online lectures, courses, podcasts and other educational materials.  The New York Times reported:

“Much of Harvard’s online content is either not captioned or is inaccurately or unintelligibly captioned, making it inaccessible for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing,” the complaint said, echoing language used in the M.I.T. complaint. “Just as buildings without ramps bar people who use wheelchairs, online content without captions excludes individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing.”

Jeff Neal, a spokesman for Harvard, said that while he could not comment on the litigation, Harvard expected the Justice Department to propose rules this year “to provide much-needed guidance in this area,” and that the university would follow whatever rules were adopted.

A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said the university was committed to making its materials accessible to its students and online learners who are hearing-impaired, and included captioning in all new course videos and its most popular online courses.

The case highlights the increasingly important role of online materials in higher education. M.I.T. and Harvard have extensive materials available free online, on platforms like YouTube, iTunesU, Harvard@Home and MIT OpenCourseWare. In addition, the two universities are the founding partners of edX, a nonprofit that offers dozens of MOOCs, or massive open online courses, free to students around the world.

The complaints say Harvard and M.I.T. violated both the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and seek a permanent injunction requiring them to include closed captioning, which provides a text version of the words being spoken, in their online materials. Despite repeated requests by the association, the complaints say, the two universities provide captioning in only a fraction of the materials, “and even then, inadequately.”

The lawsuits, filed by the National Association of the Deaf, which is seeking class-action status, say the universities have “largely denied access to this content to the approximately 48 million — nearly one out of five — Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing.”

The ramifications from this lawsuit can be quite significant and will be watched closely by colleges and schools that develop and provide online course materials.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The achievement gap between students of different races has been well-documented, and the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) has an initiative to hire more black teachers in an effort to address the disparities.  Swen Ervin, a SFUSD human capital specialist tasked with recruiting more teachers of color to the district, told The Huffington Post that a black teacher recruitment event last week was a success, drawing about 45 attendees and giving them the chance to meet with district educators, participate in informational interviews and submit their resumes. The effort, Ervin says, revolves around a single finding: Students perform better when they can identify with their teachers.  The Huffington Post article goes on to comment:

“…research shows that students of color do better on standardized tests and have a stronger sense of self-efficacy when they have adults in their schools who look like them,” Ervin said. “And I think teachers, more than anyone, provide an image of success for students.”

Just as important, Ervin argues, is putting more black teachers in front of students who are not of color.

“For white students, having more teachers of color in their schools provides them with an image of what people of color are that can go a long way to dispelling a lot of stereotypes that they might pick up,” Ervin said.

“This is part of an overall strategy to provide equitable outcomes for all SFUSD students,” he noted.

According to data from the 2013-2014 school year, SFUSD’s black students are among the lowest performers on standardized tests and have one of the highest dropout rates. They make up 8 percent of SFUSD, but only 5.5 percent of the district’s teachers are black, local public media outlet KQED reported. It’s not a huge disparity, but Ervin says hiring more black teachers is a priority because they have the lowest retention rate in the district and often feel overwhelmed helping students of color work through issues the students are facing in their community.”

This is a good policy that other school districts should try to emulate.  I am also concerned that recent new teacher certification policies such as the edTPA (education Teacher Performance Assessment) implemented here in New York may have the exact opposite effect on the employment of minority teachers.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Frank Bruni,  comments on the recent controversy that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker ignited when he sought to change the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin.  Drawing on other famous American political leaders including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, he challenges those who see college as strictly a path to a job.  He shares his own story at the University of North Carolina when he was introduced to Shakespeare.  Here is an excerpt:

“And it’s dangerous to forget that in a democracy, college isn’t just about making better engineers but about making better citizens, ones whose eyes have been opened to the sweep of history and the spectrum of civilizations.

It’s also foolish to belittle what those of us in Hall’s class got from Shakespeare and from her illumination of his work.

“Stay a little.” She showed how that simple request harbored such grand anguish, capturing a fallen king’s hunger for connection and his tenuous hold on sanity and contentment. And thus she taught us how much weight a few syllables can carry, how powerful the muscle of language can be.

She demonstrated the rewards of close attention. And the way she did this — her eyes wild with fervor, her body aquiver with delight — was an encouragement of passion and a validation of the pleasure to be wrung from art. It informed all my reading from then on. It colored the way I listened to people and even watched TV.

It transformed me.

Was this a luxury? Sure. But it was also the steppingstone to a more aware, thoughtful existence. College was the quarry where I found it.”

Bruni’s words are poetic and right!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Eric Fredericksen, Associate Professor at the Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester and a long-time colleague of mine from the Online Learning Consortium, had an article in  The Conversation.  Entitled, “Is online education good or bad? And is this really the right question?”, Eric reminds us that both face-to-face and online modalities have something to offer in the way of learning benefits depending upon how well instructional activities are designed and delivered. Poor design or delivery results in poor instructional activity  and vice versa. His conclusion:

“So what’s the future for online classes? My hope is that we continue to evolve different models of online learning. The spirit of “blended” or “hybrid” online courses strives to capture the best of online with the best of traditional classroom experiences.

Ultimately, I believe we will progress and develop instruction to the point where these historically based distinctions and categorical terms will blur and become less meaningful, and we will simply just focus on learning.”

Eric’s assessment is on target.   We are rapidly moving to an “its all just learning” view of instruction regardless of modality.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I spent a full day attending the EDUCAUSE ELI Annual Meeting yesterday.  In addition to spending time with colleagues from around the country, one of the main highlights for me was the morning invitation session organized by Tanya Joosten, Co-Project Director, National Research Center for Distance Education and Technology Advancement (DETA), University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.  The three hour session examined research issues related to online learning outcomes and practices.  A major result of this session was that attendees concluded gathering more data from students on their individual  goals and aspirations for enrolling in an online program was most critical and one that has not received enough attention in the scholarship.

I also attended the afternoon plenary session presented by Peter E. Doolittle, Assistant Provost for Teaching and Learning, and Executive Director of the Center for Instructional Development and Educational Research at Virginia Tech.  Peter’s talk From Silver Bullets to First Principles: Effectively Leveraging Technology in Higher Education, was well received as he reminded the audience of how instructional technology needs to be evaluated.  He used MOOCs and electronic portfolios as examples of applications that while receiving a good deal of attention and hype, have not been embraced in practice by the higher education community.

A most informative day!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I arrived in Anaheim last night to attend the EDUCAUSE Education Learning Initiative (ELI) Annual Meeting. The featured speakers this year include:  Eric Grimson, Chancellor of MIT;  Peter E. Doolittle, Assistant Provost for Teaching and Learning, and Executive Director of the Center for Instructional Development and Educational Research at Virginia Tech; and Diane Oblinger, CEO and President of EDUCAUSE.

I will be attending a three-hour invitation session this morning organized by Tanya Joosten, Co-Project Director, National Research Center for Distance Education and Technology Advancement (DETA), University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.  DETA has just received a major grant from the U.S. Department of Education to:

• understand and determine distance education outcomes;
•  identify practices (instructional and institutional) that influence those outcomes; and
• conduct rigorous, interdisciplinary, and standardized research to identify outcomes and key factors for all students.

I look forward to seeing colleagues from around the country as we discuss issues related to the prioritization of desired outcomes, research questions, variables, measures, and a framework of inquiry for distance education research.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a lead article today evaluating Carmen Fariña’s first year as the NYC schools chancellor.  It comments on a number of education issues including the qualifications of principles, charter schools, data-driven decision making, and her relationship with teachers.  The theme of the article is how Ms. Fariña has dismantled a number of the Michael Bloomberg/Joel Klein policies.  Here is an example:

“In the little more than a year since Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed her to lead the city’s Education Department, Ms. Fariña has presided over a methodical dismantling of the policies of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s first and last chancellors, Joel I. Klein and Dennis M. Walcott.

She inherited a department that tracked data closely and used it to decide schools’ fates, rating schools annually from A to F. Principals, many of whom during Mr. Bloomberg’s tenure were drawn from the ranks of novice teachers and given managerial training, were given as much freedom as possible.

If their schools did not score high enough on an array of data points — graduation rates, attendance, the number of students passing classes and going to college — they were subject to being closed. In 12 years, the Bloomberg administration either shut down or began to phase out 157 schools and opened 656 new, smaller schools. It was also supportive of charter schools, which are privately operated with public money; 173 of them opened in the city under Mr. Bloomberg.

Ms. Fariña, in contrast, believes that principals need both more experience and more supervision than they had during the Bloomberg years. She increased the requirements for new principals’ teaching experience to seven years from three. (One former aide reported hearing Ms. Fariña, 71, say that it was “ridiculous to think that you can be a principal under the age of 35,” though the policy is age-neutral.) And last month she re-established the importance of the system’s superintendents, whose role in overseeing principals had diminished during the Bloomberg years. Rather than closing struggling schools, she has said she will support them with more guidance and an infusion of social services, from family counseling to optometry. Shutting schools is to be a last resort.”

The article clearly presents Ms. Fariña as the seasoned educator who has taken over a struggling urban school system that was subjected to twelve years of reform made mostly by individuals committed to a business approach to K-12 education.  Anyone who has followed the NYC schools knows that the many of the Bloomberg/Klein policies were problematic.  It remains to be seen whether Ms. Fariña can right the ship. Her wealth of experience and knowledge of public education is something that the NYC public schools very much needed.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Governor Scott Walker was caught in a sly attempt to change the century old mission statement of the University of Wisconsin. Inserted into a budget bill was a change of the mission “to search for truth…to educate people and improve the human condition…to serve and stimulate society”.  The language he substituted was to meet “the state’s workforce needs”.  In a sense, Walker would reduce a great public university system to little more than a trade school.  Walker, who has been elected and re-elected governor and is also seeking the Republican nomination for president, has been rebuked by just about everyone, Republicans and Democrats. His chances for the Republican nomination have just been undermined by his own deceit. Below is today’s New York Times editorial on the issue.

Tony

=====================

New York Times

Gov. Walker’s ‘Drafting Error”

The Editorial Board

February 7, 2015

It was not enough for Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin suddenly to propose a destructive 13 percent cut in state support for the University of Wisconsin’s widely respected system. His biennial budget plan, released Tuesday, reached gratuitously into the university’s hallowed 111-year-old mission statement to delete a bedrock principle: “Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.”

The budget — patently tailored for the governor’s conservative campaign for the Republican presidential nomination — inserted language that the university should be more narrowly concerned with meeting “the state’s work force needs.”

Brazenly deleted as well from the mission statement, which is nationally appreciated in education circles as the Wisconsin Idea, were the far from controversial goals “to educate people and improve the human condition” and “serve and stimulate society.” It was as if a trade school agenda were substituted for the idea of a university.

But Mr. Walker badly miscalculated — in the state at least, and perhaps even with the national constituency he is furiously courting in campaign trips and in his fund-raising. The citizens of Wisconsin, clearly more appreciative of the state university than is their governor, erupted through social media and news outlets, sending Mr. Walker into retreat a day later. His office attempted the ridiculous excuse that the pernicious editing of the university’s mission was simply “a drafting error” in the budget text and that the Wisconsin Idea would be left intact after all. But a December email showed clear instructions from the administration to make the deletions.

Mr. Walker came to national prominence four years ago with his attacks on collective bargaining rights and attempts to curtail the benefits of state workers. His new budget doubles down on his recent complaints that university faculty and staff do not work hard enough, insisting that the 26-campus, 180,000-student system could absorb the $300 million state cut he proposed.

Even fellow Republican legislative leaders quickly shied away from the governor’s ideologically driven thrust at the university ethos. Even without the ridiculous changes to the mission statement, the Legislature must firmly resist Mr. Walker’s regressive budget, because it includes the university cut and a vaguely detailed plan to transfer university control to a “quasi-governmental” authority.

The budget also offers virtually no significant increase in public school funding while increasing voucher support for private and religious schools at taxpayers’ expense. It includes another shibboleth of the hard-right agenda — a requirement for drug testing of those seeking a variety of public benefits.

All of that may be red meat for conservative zealots in the caucus and on the presidential primary circuit. Yet it is hard to see such a clumsy attack on education going far with a general electorate concerned about their children’s chances in life. If nothing else, Mr. Walker is sharpening the debate within the Republican Party about whether it can win despite its own extremists.

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a page one article today highlighting the fact that the number of top applicants to Teach for America (TFA) is down significantly for two years in a row. This is not surprising given the improvement in the general economy and the availability of better paying positions for college graduates. The article does go on to comment that the TFA may be losing its luster and has being no more than a “band aid” for the complexity of issues facing American K-12 education. Here is an excerpt:

“Some say the decline in applicants could point to a loss of luster for the program, which rose to prominence through the idea that teaching the nation’s poorest, most needy students could be a crusade, like the Peace Corps. Teach for America has sent hundreds of graduates to Capitol Hill, school superintendents’ offices and education reform groups, seeding a movement that has supported testing and standards, teacher evaluations tethered to student test scores, and a weakening of teacher tenure…

Teaching in general has been losing favor. From 2010 to 2013, the number of student candidates enrolled in teacher training programs fell 12.5 percent, according to federal data.

But Teach for America’s belief that new college graduates can jump into teaching without much training, as well as its ties through prominent alumni to the testing and standards movement, may also be taking a toll, driving away the kind of students the program once attracted.

When Haleigh Duncan, a junior at Macalester College in St. Paul, first came across Teach for America recruiters on campus during her freshman year in 2012, she was captivated by the group’s mission to address educational inequality.

Ms. Duncan, an English major, went back to her dormitory room and pinned the group’s pamphlet on a bulletin board. She was also attracted by the fact that it would be a fast route into teaching. “I felt like I didn’t want to waste time and wanted to jump into the field,” she said.

But as she learned more about the organization, Ms. Duncan lost faith in its short training and grew skeptical of its ties to certain donors, including the Walton Family Foundation, a philanthropic group governed by the family that founded Walmart. She decided she needed to go to a teachers’ college after graduation. “I had a little too much confidence in my ability to override my lack of experience through sheer good will,” she said.”..

..on some campuses, students have started campaigning against the group.

“Teacher turnover really destabilizes a learning environment,” said Hannah Nguyen, a University of Southern California junior who aspires to be a teacher but has helped organize protests against Teach for America. “So having a model that perpetuates that inequity in and of itself was also very confusing for me.”

TFA had good intentions initially but its leadership has aligned itself with the corporate, neo liberal reformers who opt to ignore deep social and economic issues affecting public education in favor of simplistic privatization, assessment, and testing approaches.

Tony