Thinking and Linking by Joanne Jacobs
Associate degree students at for-profit colleges raise their earnings as much as community college students — or more — concludes a new study. Students who choose the more costly for-profit option are nearly twice as likely to earn a degree as community college students, even though the for-profit students are more likely to be poor, black, single parents and GED holders.
College affordability was the theme of President Obama’s speech at the University of Michigan yesterday. He called for spending more on Perkins loans and work-study programs — going from $3 billion now to $10 billion – but only at colleges and universities that provide “value.” Students at colleges that raise tuition could lose access to loans and work-study jobs.
In addition, the president’s plan (pdf) includes a $1 billion “Race to the Top for college affordability” and a $55 million “First in the World” competition to encourage productivity innovations, reports the Washington Post.
Higher education — including community colleges and lifelong learning for workers — is “an economic imperative,” Obama said. While he proposed increasing tuition tax credits and keeping interest rates low on student loans, he said that’s not enough. “Look, we can’t just keep on subsidizing skyrocketing tuition.”
So from now on, I’m telling Congress we should steer federal campus-based aid to those colleges that keep tuition affordable, provide good value, serve their students well. (Applause.) . . . If you can’t stop tuition from going up, then the funding you get from taxpayers each year will go down.
If “provide good value” and “serve their students well” means anything, it means the federal government will monitor graduation rates and employment outcomes, as well as tuition, for the entire higher education sector. Currently, “gainful employment” rules, which monitor former students’ earnings and ability to pay back loans, cover only for-profit colleges and community college vocational programs.
Following the speech, Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, issued a statement saying there’s concern that the proposal would “move decision-making in higher education from college campuses to Washington, D.C.”Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., a former education secretary, said the autonomy of U.S. higher education is what makes it the best in the world, and he’s questioned whether Obama can enforce any plan that shifts federal aid away from colleges and universities without hurting students.
“It’s hard to do without hurting students, and it’s not appropriate to do,” Alexander said. “The federal government has no business doing this.”
President Obama also touted college “report cards” showing college costs and how well graduates do in the job market.
The U.S. Education Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are working on Know Before You Owe, a financial aid shopping sheet that will let future students estimate their debt, monthly payment and likely ability to repay loans. Parents and students also have requested a breakdown of college costs and information on repayment rates for graduates at each college.
To raise the community college graduation rate, require more math in high school and redesign remedial math instruction in college, concludes an Illinois report.
Colleges must focus on productivity and affordability to keep open the path to the American Dream.
Students who pass exams at the end of 10th grade could take college-level technical or academic classes under an ambitious pilot program called Excellence for All. High schools are having trouble preparing students for college by the end of 12th grade.
Also on Community College Spotlight: As North Carolina high schools raised graduation rates, remediation rates rose at community colleges.
Don’t mess with Texas’ schools. Education Secretary Arne Duncan claimed Texas schools have “really struggled” under Gov. Rick Perry, now a GOP candidate for president. “Far too few of their high school graduates are actually prepared to go on to college,” Duncan said in a TV interview, adding he feels “very, very badly for the children there.”
Texas’ fourth- and eighth-graders “substantially outperformed” students in Chicago, the district Duncan ran before going to Washington, notes Andrew Rotherham in Time. The Texas high school graduation rate of 73 percent is slightly below the national average, but way above Chicago’s 56 percent graduation rate.
Overall, Texas scores are “right around the national averages” in reading and math on NAEP, despite educating many immigrant students with poorly educated, non-English-speaking parents. ACT reports Texas high school graduates only narrowly trail national averages for college readiness.
Duncan’s response to Rotherham:
“Texas has challenges. The record speaks for itself. Lots of other states have challenges too. But there is a lot of hard work that needs to be done in Texas and a lot of children who need a chance to get a great education.”
Duncan’s claim of “massive increases in class size in Texas” is untrue, responds the Dallas Morning News. Primary classes, capped at 22 students, have remained stable. Secondary classes in core subjects are getting smaller.
. . . secondary math classes averaged 20.3 students in 2000-01 and dropped to 18.5 by last year. Average size of secondary English/language arts classes fell from 20.2 students in 2000-01 to 17.8 by last year.
In an e-mail to Duncan, TEA Commissioner Robert Scott added:
– Texas is ranked 13th in Ed Week’s Quality Counts report. Quality Counts gave Texas an “A” in “Standards, Assessment and Accountability,” and an “A” in “Transitions and Alignment” of the Texas system with college and career readiness. . .
– The Texas class of 2011 posted a record-high math score on the ACT college entrance exam. The Texas average math score was 21.5 and was higher than the national average of 21.1. ACT scores from 2007 to 2011 showed increases in all four subjects.
Texas fourth- and eighth-graders aced the 2009 NAEP science exam, Scott wrote. In eighth grade, black Texans were first in the nation compared to other blacks, white Texans tied with whites in high-scoring Massachusetts and Hispanics ranked eighth.
Perry has resisted Race To the Top, so perhaps Duncan’s antipathy is all about education policy. But it looks as though the education secretary is playing presidential politics. That’s not the way to build bipartisan consensus.
For the first time ever, California is reporting the eighth-grade dropout rate, reports the Los Angeles Times. Statewide, about 3.5% of eighth-graders didn’t return to school for ninth grade.
California now gives each public school student an identification numbers, so it’s possible to know whether vanished students enrolled in a different school or passed the GED.
Overall, 74.4% of California high school students graduated in four years, according to state data; 18.2% dropped out. The remainder were still in school (6.6%), were in non-diploma programs for disabled students (0.5%) or left high school by taking the General Educational Development (GED) Test (0.4%).
The graduation rate is 68% for Latinos, 59% for blacks, 83.4% for whites and 89.4% for Asians.
“The latest numbers could still underestimate the number of dropouts, because, for example, they depend on school clerks verifying whether a student dropped out, moved or transferred to a private school,” the Times notes.
Transfer students are treated as second-class citizens at many large universities, college leaders admit. However, some colleges are reaching out to potential transfer students while they’re in community college — or even high school — to help smooth the path to a low-cost four-year degree.
Also on Community College Spotlight: Community college transfers are as likely to complete a bachelor’s degree as similar students who started at a four-year college, a new study finds.
The nation’s high school graduation rose to 71.7 percent in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, according to the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center. Over the decade, the graduation rate rose by 6.1 percentage points.
Asian-Americans have the highest graduation rate, 83 percent, and whites are next at 78 percent. Fifty-eight percent of Latinos, 57 percent of African-Americans and 54 percent of Native Americans earned a diploma.
On average, 68 percent of male students earn a diploma compared with 75 percent of female students, a 7-percentage-point gender gap that has remained virtually unchanged for years. High school completion rates for minority males consistently fall near or below the 50 percent mark.
On Community College Spotlight, I’ve got one post after another about high school graduates with B averages ending up in remedial classes at community colleges in California, Pennsylvania and Chicago. It’s depressing to be reminded that nearly a third of students — half of black and Latino males — never earn a diploma. They are doomed in the workforce. Even with a GED, they’re doomed.
The number of “dropout factories” — schools with graduation rates under 60 percent — declined by 6.4 percent from 2008 to 2009, according to a report released today for the kick-of of the Building a Grad Nation Summit in Washington.
Since 2002, there’s been a 20 percent drop in the number of students attending dropout factories, concludes the report by the Johns Hopkins University Everyone Graduates Center, America’s Promise Alliance, and Civic Enterprises, which are hosting the summit with the Alliance for Excellent Education.
California, South Carolina, Illinois and North Carolina showed the most improvement, while the number of high-dropout schools increased in Georgia, New York and Ohio. State data is here.
At the summit today, reports College Bound, Robert Balfanz, co-director of the Everyone Graduates Center, suggested districts use “new comparison data on graduation rates to shape targeted efforts, follow students over time with longitudinal data to see how their high school success is linked to their postsecondary success, and look at case studies of schools that have turned around their graduation rates using enhanced student supports and early-warning systems.”
The goal of a 90 percent high school graduation rate is achievable, said John Bridgeland, president of Civic Enterprises.
“We will focus in like a laser on dropout-factory high schools and look at the feeder middle schools and elementary schools,” said Bridgeland.
. . . Bridgeland said many schools have early-warning systems in place in 9th grade, but that’s too late. They should be as early as the 4th or 5th grade. Mentors can also help off-track students, and states should raise the compulsory age that students are allowed to drop out, suggested Bridgeland.
Also at the summit, Vice President Joe Biden pitched President Obama’s college-completion goals, suggesting governors link funding to performance, align high school standards with college entrance and placement standards, simplify transfers, use data to drive decisions and target adults with “some college” but no degree.
Obama’s goal — a 60 percent college graduation rate by 2020 — ignores many students, Harvard Education Professor Robert Schwartz told the Washington Post.
Schwartz heads the Pathways to Prosperity Project, which released a study in February concluding that the U.S. education system should offer greater emphasis on occupational instruction.
“What’s the strategy for the other 40 percent of people?” he said. “We can’t keep saying, ‘College for all, college for all’ and yet set targets that even if you could meet them are going to leave out very large proportions of young people.”
In Massachusetts, the highest performing state, only 54 percent of adults have earned an associate or bachelor’s degree. In Arkansas, Nevada and New Mexico, the college graduation rate is 28 percent.
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