Dear Commons Community,

The U.S. Department of Education, for the first time, named 560 colleges whose federal aid it has restricted because of concerns about their finances or compliance with federal requirements.  The department released a partial list of the 560 institutions that, as of March 1, were subject to the financial restrictions known as heightened cash monitoring. The charts a the end of this posting  show the breakdown of the colleges on the list by sector. The first chart for what the U.S.DOE terms “Heightened Cash Monitoring 1 and the second chart for “Heightened Cash Monitoring 2”.  The latter is the more restrictive.  Most of the colleges — 487 institutions — were on the level 1 of scrutiny, and 69 were subject to the level  2 higher, more stringent restrictions.   As reported in Inside Higher Ed:

“We feel that by issuing this list we’re doing what’s right for good government and transparency’s sake,” said Ted Mitchell, the undersecretary of education.

The department continued to kept secret the identities of 21 of the 69 colleges that it placed on the highest level of monitoring, which means that department employees manually approve every dollar that flows to an institution. Nearly all of those unidentified colleges were on that status because a federal audit of the institution resulted in “severe findings.”

“We have ongoing investigations at each of those institutions and we fear that, at this point, releasing those names would impede the progress of our investigation,” Mitchell said in an interview. He said the names of those colleges would eventually be released as the investigations are completed.

Mitchell said that colleges may be placed on either form of cash monitoring for a range of reasons, some of which are more serious than others.

The department, for example, may impose the sanction on a college for submitting its financial statements late. That appears to have been the case for 43 public colleges and universities in Minnesota, all of which were on cash monitoring with the designation of “audit late/missing.”

At the other extreme, a college may land on cash monitoring because of serious concerns about its financial viability. Roxbury Community College, in Massachusetts, for instance, is on cash monitoring because of concerns about its “administrative capacity.” The college released a report in 2013 that showed, among other things, that administrators had lost track of significant amounts of money.

A college being on the list “is not necessarily a red flag to students and taxpayers, but it can serve as a caution light,” Mitchell wrote in a blog post. “It means we are watching these institutions more closely to ensure that institutions are using federal student aid in a way that is accountable to both students and taxpayers.”

Before releasing the names of the institutions on cash monitoring Tuesday, the department had fought to keep the information secret. As recently as last week, the departmentsaid that disclosing the list was likely to result in a “substantial competitive injury” for colleges operating in a competitive marketplace.

The department reversed its position late last week afterInside Higher Ed reported that the cash monitoring information was largely being kept hidden from public view.

When Inside Higher Ed first requested the cash monitoring list last summer, the department denied the request and claimed that it did not keep such a list.

Going forward the department plans to publish the cash monitoring list online and update it on an ongoing basis, but it hasn’t yet decided how frequently, Mitchell said.

Many of the colleges on the lower level of monitoring, which typically places a several-day delay on colleges’ federal funding, are placed there automatically because they fail the department’s standards of financial responsibility.

For-profit colleges made up more than half of the institutions on each level of heightened cash monitoring.  Of the 487 colleges facing the lower level of scrutiny, mostly for failing the department’s financial responsibility test, 290 were for-profit institutions including Corinthian Colleges and ITT Educational Services. Similarly, for-profit institutions represented 39 of 69 colleges facing the more stringent restrictions.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

While details are still sketchy, it appears that Governor Andrew Cuomo and the NYS Legislature have reached an agreement on the new state budget and a number of education reforms!  As reported in the New York Times:

“In the final days of budget talks, Mr. Cuomo worked to overcome disagreements over two particularly contentious policy areas he wanted to address in his budget: education and government ethics.

The governor had dangled a $1.1 billion increase in education aid in exchange for the Legislature agreeing to pass a series of reforms, including tying teacher evaluations more closely to students’ state test scores, making it more difficult for teachers to receive tenure and allowing the state to take over low-performing schools.

Teachers’ unions energetically opposed the governor’s proposals. School administrators and parents objected to the proposal on teacher evaluations, saying that it would increase the focus on testing. Lawmakers criticized his effort to tie school funding with the approval of policy changes.

In the end, the budget will include an even larger increase in education aid – about $1.6 billion, according to Assembly Democrats. Cuomo administration officials said the budget would establish parameters for teacher evaluations that would result in a more rigorous evaluation system; the changes would be left to the State Education Department to work out.

The budget agreement would lengthen the time before teachers are eligible for tenure to four years, from the current three; Mr. Cuomo had proposed a five-year wait.

A compromise was also struck on school takeovers: Chronically low-performing schools will be given one, or in some cases, two years to improve; if they do not, local districts will have to appoint new management.”

On the surface, this appears to be a good compromise although some details are still to be worked out.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

On Saturday, Spelman College named Mary Schmidt Campbell, an art historian who is a former leader of the Studio Art Museum in Harlem and was dean of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University for nearly a quarter-century, as its new president.

Campbell transformed the Studio Museum in Harlem from a rented loft over a liquor store into the country’s first accredited black fine arts museum. She ran the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts at New York University for more than two decades. She currently serves as vice chair of a U.S. presidential committee seeking to elevate the importance of art in public schools. As reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Spelman, as a prominent historically black women’s college, is very different from New York University, Ms. Campbell said she understands the issues the college faces through her experiences at Swarthmore College — as a student and later as a member of the Board of Managers for a dozen years. Swarthmore, she said, is “very attentive to academic issues and attracting and retaining the best students and faculty.”

Good luck President Campbell!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Ellen Pao may have lost her lawsuit last week against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, however, it is becoming a flashpoint in the ongoing discussion about gender inequity at elite technology and venture capital firms.  As reported in various media including The Huffington Post:

“The jury of six men and six women rejected all of Pao’s claims against Kleiner Perkins on Friday, determining the firm did not discriminate against her because she is a woman and did not retaliate against her by failing to promote her and firing her after she filed a sex discrimination complaint.

“This case has been a real wake-up call for the technology industry in general and the venture capital community in particular,” said Deborah Rhode, a law professor at Stanford University who teaches gender equity law.

Rhode and other experts say Kleiner Perkins and the venture capital industry in general did not come out looking good, even though they won the case.

“Venture capital firms recognize it’s not appropriate to be out in the streets celebrating,” said Freada Kapor Klein, founder of the Level Playing Field Institute, a nonprofit that aims to boost minority representation in science, technology, engineering and math fields.

Women hold just 15 percent to 20 percent of the technology jobs at Google, Apple, Facebook and Yahoo, according to company disclosures. The data were embarrassing for an industry that has positioned itself as a meritocracy where intelligence and ingenuity are supposed to be more important than appearances or connections.

The venture capital industry is even more male-dominated, with a study released last year by Babson College in Massachusetts finding that women filled just 6 percent of partner-level positions at 139 venture capital firms in 2013, down from 10 percent in 1999.

Klein said before the verdict she was contacted by more than a dozen venture capital and technology companies asking how they could improve the environment as a result of the Pao case.

The attention surrounding the case makes it more likely other women who believe they have been discriminated against will go to court, said David Lewis, CEO of OperationsInc., a human resources consulting and contracting firm. Two women who formerly worked at Facebook and Twitter filed gender discrimination cases against the companies during the Pao trial. One of Pao’s attorneys, Therese Lawless, is representing the plaintiff in the Facebook lawsuit.”

The Pao case exposes an embarrassing aspect of high tech and venture capital companies operations.  Data suggest clearly that they are male bastions and have a serious problem in the hiring and promotion of women.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New figures, released by the U.S. Education Department last week, indicate that roughly 33 percent of borrowers were late on one of their federal student loans as of Dec. 31. Previous measures had put the delinquency rate much lower at about 20 percent, masking the true amount of distress among borrowers trying to make good on their taxpayer-backed debts.

Some 41 million Americans collectively carry more than $1.1 trillion in education loans owned or guaranteed by the U.S. Education Department, a total that surpasses every form of consumer credit in the U.S. except home mortgages. The figures reflect more than two-thirds of the $1.1 trillion total. The remainder is owned by the private sector as part of a bank-based federal loan program that has since been discontinued.

The new measure of borrower distress comes as the White House urges the Education Department to improve its management of the growing federal student loan program and to give borrowers more protections against unmanageable debt loads.

As reported in The Huffington Post:

“We know that the rising cost of higher education and growing levels of student debt hit home for millions of Americans,” said Denise Horn, an Education Department spokeswoman. She added that the department enables borrowers to keep current on their loans by making payments based on their earnings, and said it is also trying to keep costs low for future borrowers by rating schools and helping students evaluate college costs before they enroll.

But the data released Thursday suggest that those efforts aren’t having much effect on former students struggling to manage their federal debt burdens.

“Anyone looking at these numbers would have to say that the needs of borrowers aren’t being met,” said Chris Hicks, who leads the Debt-Free Future campaign at the advocacy group Jobs With Justice.”

It is a travesty that in one generation, our country has completely altered the nature of higher education funding by transferring the costs of obtaining a college degree squarely on the backs of students and their parents. The states share much of the blame for this situation after decades of squeezing funding for their public colleges and universities. The federal government is also to blame for the ineptitude of the Department of Education personnel in managing its loan programs.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Thousands protested on Wednesday against the decision on the part of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees not to renew the contract of the Chancellor of the University of Mississippi, Daniel Jones.  As reported in the New York Times:

“In what officials here described as one of the largest protests in the university’s history, students, employees and other supporters of Dr. Jones criticized the plan to change leaders as wrapped in secrecy and threatening to the future of a place that has often been central to the image of this state.

Dr. Jones, who became the school’s chief executive in 2009, had won acclaim for his work to move the university away from the shadow of the racial unrest that tarnished the campus in 1962. The university, on a campus studded with magnolia trees and Georgian buildings known as Ole Miss, posted a record enrollment of nearly 23,100 students last fall, and Dr. Jones has been praised for helping to upgrade its academic and cultural credentials.

But Mississippi’s higher education commissioner, Jim Borsig, announced Friday that the university’s governing board had decided not to renew Dr. Jones’s contract before its September expiration. The panel later said that Dr. Jones, 66, who returned to work at the university’s main campus on March 16 after months of treatment for cancer, had failed to eliminate violations of contracting policies.

Dr. Jones’s removal has since swelled into a storm that has seen students become protest organizers and incited legislative efforts to remake the state’s approach to overseeing its public universities.

“There’s been some basic disagreement for some time between the chancellor and some members of the board, but I’m still just bewildered that the board would take such drastic, radical action without more justification,” said William Winter, a former governor who this week tried unsuccessfully to broker a compromise. “It seemed to be a matter that could have been worked out, that could have been avoided, and the result, I think, is detrimental, not just to the University of Mississippi but to all of higher education in Mississippi.”

The resistance has been wide ranging. The alumni association’s leadership said Dr. Jones’s ouster was “unexpected and distressing,” and the Faculty Senate unanimously declared that it was “shocked and extremely disappointed.” On Monday, the student newspaper, The Daily Mississippian, published a front-page editorial supporting Dr. Jones. The Gertrude C. Ford Foundation, which had agreed to spend $20 million for a new science building, said it would withdraw its contribution unless Dr. Jones remained chancellor, the foundation’s president, Anthony T. Papa, said Wednesday.”

As published in the student newspaper:  “The actions of the IHL Board of Trustees attempt, unforgivably, to waylay the trajectory of progress and burgeoning improvement our university has seen under a talented chancellor, mentor and friend. Jones is a gift to the university. We stand with our chancellor.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Wall Street Journal has an article (subscription required) today describing the woes of the University of Phoenix and its parent company, Apollo.  While the once-soaring for-profit education giant isn’t in ashes, its business has shriveled. For example, enrollment in degree programs was most recently 227,400 students. While that is far more than at the largest traditional U.S. university, it is less than half Apollo’s own peak five years ago and down 13.5% from the first quarter of fiscal 2014.

“A magical rebirth isn’t in the cards. Recruiting and keeping students is the lifeblood of Apollo’s main University of Phoenix unit. Glitches in its online software led to disappointing retention last year…

With the stock down 17% in the year to date, a financial result better than the anticipated loss of 18 cents a share, or just an improved enrollment trend, could produce at least a brief fillip in Apollo’s stock. Postearnings pops and drops have been commonplace over the past seven years.”

The long-term trend for Apollo is not very bright.  The University of Phoenix is a tainted brand and it only has itself to blame for the fraudulent ways it mislead prospective students including returning veterans into signing up for federal financial aid.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times editorial today is urging Governor Cuomo and state legislators to resolve their differences especially with regard to education issues.  The full editorial is at the bottom of this posting but items of particular interest are:

“The State Legislature ended decades of feudalism, corruption and chaos in the New York City school system when it gave Mayor Michael Bloomberg direct control in 2002. The law allowed the mayor to bring stability to a system where chancellors once flew in and out the door and to clear away the bureaucratic underbrush that had defeated his predecessors.

The mayoral control statute ranks among the most successful contributions the Legislature has made to education in New York City in recent history. And the question of whether it will be extended — or, ideally, made permanent — is one of the most important decisions facing lawmakers as they approach the April 1 deadline for the $150 billion budget. This needs to be settled now, while the budget pressure is on, and not put off for another day.

The state’s $60 billion in overall education financing may be the trickiest part of the budget, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders have other sticking points — all being negotiated, as ever, behind closed doors.

Here are spending issues that should be resolved before the month’s end:

■ An educational tax credit for donations to schools, including parochial ones, would be a political giveaway of at least $100 million of state revenue per year. That money could be better spent on public schools and universities. The City University of New York, for example, could use an additional $50 million for basics.

■ The Dream Act, which would allow undocumented students to obtain state financial aid and scholarships, is a badly needed investment in New York’s future. This should be an easy, humane item to adopt.”

Other news media are reporting that education tax credits and The Dream Act are off the negotiating table and will not be enacted this coming year.

Tony

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

Schools Need Albany’s Help, Now

New York Times Editorial

March 25, 2105.

The State Legislature ended decades of feudalism, corruption and chaos in the New York City school system when it gave Mayor Michael Bloomberg direct control in 2002. The law allowed the mayor to bring stability to a system where chancellors once flew in and out the door and to clear away the bureaucratic underbrush that had defeated his predecessors.

The mayoral control statute ranks among the most successful contributions the Legislature has made to education in New York City in recent history. And the question of whether it will be extended — or, ideally, made permanent — is one of the most important decisions facing lawmakers as they approach the April 1 deadline for the $150 billion budget. This needs to be settled now, while the budget pressure is on, and not put off for another day.

The state’s $60 billion in overall education financing may be the trickiest part of the budget, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders have other sticking points — all being negotiated, as ever, behind closed doors.

Here are spending issues that should be resolved before the month’s end:

■ An educational tax credit for donations to schools, including parochial ones, would be a political giveaway of at least $100 million of state revenue per year. That money could be better spent on public schools and universities. The City University of New York, for example, could use an additional $50 million for basics.

■ The Dream Act, which would allow undocumented students to obtain state financial aid and scholarships, is a badly needed investment in New York’s future. This should be an easy, humane item to adopt.

■ A $5.4 billion windfall — fines paid by banks and other institutions for past transgressions — should be directed to crumbling infrastructure. That means mass transit downstate, and roads and bridges statewide. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is in desperate need of revival, as thousands of late and inconvenienced riders know. It is time for Mr. Cuomo to help finance the M.T.A. and find revenues for a five-year capital plan that is $15 billion short.

■ New York needs an ethics makeover, meaning real disclosure of outside income for lawmakers and an accounting of every dollar of expenses that count toward their per diem reimbursements. Mr. Cuomo has promised to see extensive reforms passed before he will approve the budget, and the clock is ticking. Lawmakers cannot get credit for what Attorney General Eric Schneiderman calls tinkering around the edges.

■ Public financing of campaigns is a must. The state needs to close damaging loopholes that allow unlimited donations for party slush funds or that allow the creation of multiple limited liability corporations to evade contribution limits.

■ The farsighted budget would finally raise the age of criminal responsibility to 18 and remove people under 18 from adult jails and prisons. Only in New York and North Carolina are 16-year-olds automatically tried as adults.

■ The governor’s promise to raise the minimum wage should be easy — only $10.50 in the state and $11.50 in New York City. Increases should be indexed to rise with the cost of living. That is the least Albany can do.

■ Mr. Cuomo’s pension reform of a few years ago should be protected. State leaders should block an effort to increase pensions of New York City’s younger uniformed officers. The pension change would cost the city an estimated $5 billion over 30 years. If they unravel the reform for this group, others will soon be at their door.

State lawmakers are threatening to drop some of these items from negotiations as too difficult. They should be able to do their hard work now. It won’t get any easier.

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has an article on Hillary Clinton’s dilemma on education.  Essentially it posits that she is caught between the teachers (AFT/NEA) and the Wall Street financial community.

“…Hillary is being pulled in opposite directions on education. The pressure is from not only the teachers who supported her once and are widely expected to back her again, but also from a group of wealthy and influential Democratic financiers who staunchly support many of the same policies — charter schools and changes to teacher tenure and testing — that the teachers’ unions have resisted throughout President Obama’s two terms in office.

And the financiers say they want Mrs. Clinton to declare herself.

“This is an issue that’s important to a lot of Democratic donors,” said John Petry, a hedge fund manager who was a founder of the Harlem Success Academy, a New York charter school. “Donors want to hear where she stands.”

The growing pressure on education points out a deeper problem that Mrs. Clinton will have to contend with repeatedly, at least until the Iowa caucuses: On a number of divisive domestic issues that flared up during the Obama administration — trade pacts, regulation of Wall Street, tax policy — she will face dueling demands from centrists and the liberal base of the Democratic Party.

Her allies believe that with no strong primary opponent to force her into the open, Mrs. Clinton has plenty of time to maneuver before taking sides. But advocates will be using what leverage they possess to draw her out sooner.”

The article concludes with insights provided by AFT President Randi Weingarten:

“Mrs. Clinton will at least not have to establish credibility on the subject.

Her involvement with efforts to overhaul education dates back at least to the early 1980s, when her husband named her co-chairwoman of an Arkansas committee that called for a teacher-competency test, smaller classes and a higher dropout age. As a senator, she voted for No Child Left Behind in 2001, but later attacked the law, saying it was failing children.

Her association with Ms. Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers began when Ms. Weingarten was a local union leader in New York and Mrs. Clinton was the state’s junior senator. Yet her incoming campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, has been a charter school supporter.

In an interview, Ms. Weingarten suggested that those she termed “the so-called education reformers” were most worried that the agenda they have pushed for with the Obama administration, and in places like Chicago, “does not work.”

But she rejected the idea that Mrs. Clinton would set policy based on anything other than “her experience and the evidence.”

“She has been versed in these issues for a long time, and will give everyone a fair hearing and a fair shot, but she will look at it through the lens of what’s good for kids. Period,” Ms. Weingarten said. “Anybody who thinks otherwise just doesn’t know her.”

This is an important issue for Mrs. Clinton.  She will take her time making any decision and will likely take a middle road strategy.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times is reporting that Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona urged state education officials yesterday to re-evaluate the Common Core standards adopted by the state and meant to guide what students learn from kindergarten through graduation. He said he saw them as an example of the federal government overstepping its bounds.  In a speech outlining his agenda to the State Board of Education, the governor did not call for repealing the Common Core, but instead asked the board to review the language and mathematics standards “in their entirety” and tailor the curriculum in ways to meet the needs of students in Arizona.

“We can learn from others, but at the end of the day the standards need to come from Arizona, and they need to help us achieve our objectives,” Mr. Ducey told the board.

Governor Ducey joins a number of other state officials questioning the Common Core on grounds of federal government overreach.

The Times article commented:

“Lisa Graham Keegan, a former superintendent of public instruction in Arizona, said that for some, opposition to the Common Core was driven not by the standards themselves but by a centralized process that made it harder for parents and educators to contribute to the discussion. She said there was little disagreement on the fundamentals that students should learn.

“I don’t think that’s a shallow thing,” Ms. Keegan, now an education policy consultant, said of the public’s desire to have its say. “I think it’s incredibly important. I don’t know if other states need it. I know we do.”

During his speech, Governor Ducey asked the board to include parents, teachers, administrators and other experts in its evaluation of the Common Core.

“This review should include input from people at all levels of education from every corner of our state,” he said. “And in any instance during your review, you find situations where Arizona standards can outperform the ones already adopted, I ask you to replace them.”

Ms. Graham and Governor Ducey are correct.  The Common Core has a lot to offer but it was force upon many states by the U.S. Department of Education in return for Race to the Top funds.  There absolutely needs to be an evaluation process that includes all constituents down to the local level.  Let us also keep in mind that it is the localities that provide the majority of funds for public education not the federal government.

Tony