Monthly Archives: April 2010

Recent Report Suggests Putting Brakes on Teacher Reform

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This week the Committee on the Study of Teacher Preparation Programs in the United States released a report urging the U.S. Department of Education and states to collect more data on teachers and their routes to becoming teachers before initiating widespread reform of education schools and alternative route programs.

The report, Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence and Sound Policy, was published by the National Research Council and funded by the Education Department’s Institute for Education Sciences.

The Committee essentially responded with a “none-of-the-above” statement to the congressional charge to collect and analyze data and research on undergraduate and graduate teacher preparation programs, as well as alternative routes to certification; and determine whether teachers of reading, math, and science were well-prepared for their jobs.

The Committee concluded that “because of the paucity of systematic research as well as the enormous variation in virtually all aspects of teacher education programs and pathways we cannot draw any specific conclusions about the characteristics of current teacher preparation programs.”

According to Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, the Committee Chair, “at a time that people care a lot about education and want to improve it, there is so little known about teacher preparation at a national level. Strong policy has to be built on strong evidence and we don’t have strong evidence.”

The Committee, in the report, calls for research that would compare programs’ selectivity, timing, and characteristics, as well as various means of teaching classroom management skills and how to teach a wide range of students, to help determine essential components of teacher preparation programs.

Higher Education Advocates Express Concern with Proposed Changes to Tax Credits

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This week the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), the American Council on Education (ACE) and other higher education advocates shared concerns with the U.S. Department of Treasury’s proposal to institute a community service requirement as a condition for receiving a tax credit for tuition and related expenses.

In a letter to the Department more than 20 higher education organizations expressed several concerns about requiring mandatory community service as a condition for receipt of federal higher education tax credits.

The letter argues that this proposal, if implemented, could:

  • Detrimentally impact a number of students, particularly low-income and nontraditional students,
  • Be extremely difficult and costly to implement and administer, and
  • Inadvertently harm the thriving community service and service-learning efforts already occurring on campuses across the higher education community.

Financial Literacy Commission Launches New Website

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On Tuesday, the Financial Literacy and Education Commission (FLEC) launched a redesigned financial literacy education website, My Money.

The new website includes enhanced interactive features and utility to provide more resources to Americans seeking information that can inform their personal financial decisions. The website creates an online point of access to financial information from the twenty-one federal agencies, departments and bureaus that comprise the Financial Literacy and Education Commission.

Through the website users will be able to:

  • Find information about how to plan for a host of life events that have financial implications, including having children, home ownership, and retirement,
  • Find information targeted to their personal or professional situation, and
  • Access money management tools including a financial savings calculator and a college preparation checklist.

The website is one of the steps the Obama Administration is taking to expand financial education and access for the future. President Obama recently proclaimed April to be National Financial Literacy Month.

California Governor Threatens Veto if No Additional Funding for Higher Education is Realized

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Yesterday, California Governor Schwarzenegger promised the state’s colleges and universities that he will veto any state budget that does not include additional funding for higher education and the financial aid awards known as Cal Grants.

The Governor made this promise at a meeting with a dozen top administrators and student leaders from the University of California, California State University, and California’s Community Colleges systems.

Schwarzenegger proposed a $224 million increase in general fund spending for higher education for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Many in Sacramento argue that the Governor’s veto is premature, since the Governor has not yet released his revised budget which is expected in May.

New Rules to be Proposed on Student Privacy

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On Monday, the U.S. Department of Education announced that they would propose new regulations governing student privacy rights in the next several weeks.

In the announcement, the Department stated that they would revise rules to implement the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) with two goals in mind.

  • Strengthen enforcement, and
  • Clarify how states can use information from the statewide longitudinal data systems to inform policy decisions without running afoul of the student privacy law.

Academics Not Sole Focus of ESEA Renewal

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Last week the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee held a hearing focused on the renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

The focus of much of the discussion centered on the need to emphasize the health and other needs of children in addition to academic accomplishments.

Advocates who support the focus of the “whole child” in the rewrite of the ESEA were acknowledged by lawmakers who agreed that the idea of educating children encompasses a wide range of support services.

These services include, but are not limited to, dental and mental health, prekindergarten, library services, after-school enrichment, mentoring, college counseling, and increased parent and community involvement.

Despite the acknowledgment that non-academics should be encompassed in the new ESEA, lawmakers were all too aware of the additional resources this will likely require to be successful.  As Senator Harkin stated, “as you add all this stuff on, you’re going to have to add more people, mentors, librarians…How do we do that?”

Still advocates for the “whole child” concept argued that without such a holistic approach to elementary and secondary education boosting student achievement will be very difficult.

Prepaid Tuition Unit Price Increases in Washington

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Early this week the Guaranteed Education Tuition (GET) committee met to deter unit costs of Washington’s prepaid tuition program.

As of May 1, the price of one GET unit will increase from $101 to $117. 

The Committee is increasing the unit price beyond the 14 percent Washington universities and colleges are expected to raise tuition to reflect future investment and tuition expectations.

In addition, the Committee also recognized that enrollment this academic year (09-10) is the second largest in the program’s 12 year history and investment returns have picked up during the last quarter.

National Debate on Higher Education Deems Current Model Broken

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This week the University of Virginia’s Miller Center for Public Affairs sponsored a public debate of higher education leaders from across the country in Washington D.C.

The debate focused on the current higher education business model, defined within the context of the debate as:

Since the mid-1980s, the costs of higher education in America have steadily shifted from the taxpayer to the student and family. As state funding has dwindled, colleges and universities have sought to fill these gaps through a variety of avenues, including philanthropy and research support, but the area of highest growth has been tuition. The share of institutional budgets provided by tuition increased from 22% in 1985 to 36% in 2005. As state budgets slip further into structural deficit, there is no reason to think this trend will reverse itself.

These costs are rapidly outstripping the ability to pay. Residential students are now looking at an annual cost of roughly $20,000 per year for a public institution, and nearly $40,000 per year for a private institution. While median family income between 1982 and 2006 rose by 147%, college tuition and fees soared by 439%. Even with financial aid, the concern is that these trends will discourage many low and middle income young people from considering college a realistic option, thereby lowering our national educational level, reducing future economic growth, and undermining the promise of equal educational opportunity. Is this the natural evolution of the educational marketplace, or is the business model of higher education broken?

Proponents of this statement, including Gail Mellow, President of LaGuardia Community College and William Kirwan, Chancellor of the University System of Maryland, argued that higher education financing is indeed fractured.  Higher education institutions, in other words, though technically solvent, are not meeting the public purposes of access, opportunity, affordability, completion, and international competitiveness required of them.

According to Chancellor Kirwan, “…state budget cuts are harming many colleges and universities…that the nation’s production of college graduates will remain flat without an extensive re-engineering across higher education.”

Those who oppose this statement, including Richard Levin, President of Yale University and Daniel Hamburger, President and Chief Executive of DeVry Inc., strongly suggested that the existing higher education business model is working. Both higher education leaders cited current enrollment levels.

Both leaders noted that China and India look at the U.S. with envy with regard to the diversity and flexibility of the nation’s higher education system. “The strength of our system is its diversity and its flexibility,” stated Hamburger.

The debate was followed by a question and answer period. The questions ranged in scope from college costs to the achievement gap.

Higher Education Presidents of the Western U.S. Meet to Discuss Business Model

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This week the University of Washington hosted a regional meeting of the Association of Public Land-Grant Universities to discuss future funding for public universities nationally.

The Presidents and other top leaders from approximately 30 colleges and universities in the Western United States discussed their common experiences and strategized about how to “reset” their finances.

Common among the discussion was the concern that higher education continues to be the first area to get cut by states facing lower revenues and paying more for other public services/programs.

Strategies proposed incorporated a wide range of ideas including increased federal funding for institutions to make-up for the gap in reduced state funds and a model in which each state could have one univesity funded by the federal government, eliminating the need for out-of-state tuition surcharges at those institutions.

At the state level several strategies were also proposed inlcuding asking state lawmakers to set aside a fixed percentage of the budget for higher educaiton, emphasizing the job-creation record of universities, promoting achievements such as green technology, and telling people what is at risk.

The meeting is one of five taking place across the nation in hopes of developing a national strategy for securing the future of higher education institutions.