Category Archives: Education

Do needy students merit more scholarships?

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Let’s jump straight into the facts. According to a new report, “Closing the Gap,” by the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, 94 percent of Arkansas’ state-funded college scholarships are based solely on merit – ACT scores, etc. – while 6 percent also are based on need. Only two states and the District of Columbia are weighted more toward merit. The national average, on the other hand, is 75 percent need-based.

The fact that Arkansas is doing things differently than the rest of the nation should matter, considering it has the second lowest percentage of residents with a college degree. (Thank goodness for West Virginia!) About 14 percent of us have a bachelor’s degree, while 7 percent of us also have a master’s degree or higher. Another 7 percent have an associate’s degree.

The 94-6 percent ratio is the result of the growth of Academic Challenge Scholarships awards, which are largely funded through the lottery and are entirely merit based. In the past, the scholarships went to students who scored a 19 on the ACT or earned a 2.5 grade point average in high school. A law passed this year by the Legislature makes the 19 on the ACT the only requirement, which may have been a mistake because grade point average supposedly is a better predictor of college success than standardized test scores.

The problem with basing scholarships on merit alone is that it makes them harder to attain for students who grew up in tougher circumstances with fewer advantages. Those are the very students who need the money more – as long as they can put it to good use.

Let’s also be blunt about what’s really happening. People of all income levels buy lottery tickets, of course, but a certain percentage of those ticket-buyers are poor people looking for a little hope. That’s their choice, but state resources are encouraging them to “invest” in this pipe dream. Then their money pays for scholarships for bankers’ kids. I’ve got a banker friend who’s outraged by this.

The report says 25 percent of Arkansas scholarships should have a need-based component. If that’s the case, then what should those scholarships pay for?

According to the report, more than half of Arkansans – 57 percent, actually – have a high school diploma or less.

Of course, that describes a lot of smart, successful people. But moving forward, most of the good jobs of the future will require something more, though not necessarily a bachelor’s degree or even an associate’s degree. The report says that, by 2020, Arkansas needs to produce an additional 99,000 people with career and technical certificates, which often can be earned fairly quickly and at low cost to fill existing workforce needs. Arkansas actually will need 786 fewer people with master’s degrees than it has now, the report estimates.

The Academic Challenge Scholarship goes to students attending college, not earning a technical certificate, which is the better choice for many people. And it’s really targeted toward 18-year-old high school graduates, rather than adults who need to retool their skills to be more employable.

So however the state rebalances its state-funded scholarships so that they’re based more on need, it should remember that what people really need is the ability to earn a good-paying job, and preferably in the near future.

***

If you have 30 minutes when you’re washing the dishes or something, listen to Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse’s maiden speech on the U.S. Senate floor.

Sasse waited a year after being elected to make his first speech, which once was a Senate tradition. When he finally spoke, it was a bold call to action. He said the Senate is failing to address the nation’s big issues, allowing the executive branch to take too much power. Senators from opposite parties are privately friendly, even affectionate. But when the cameras roll, they talk in shallow sound bytes using politi-speech that sounds nothing like the way real Americans talk. The Senate doesn’t need less debating, he said. It needs actual debating about important issues in a respectful manner. Senators are elected to six-year terms so they can think long-term in what once was called the world’s greatest deliberative body. If they’re not going to fulfill their role, he asked, does the United States even need a Senate at all?

Good stuff. Last I checked, it had 3,837 views on YouTube. Here it is.

Is college worth it?

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Is college worth the cost, is the current model sustainable, and how can colleges and universities more effectively meet state and student needs?

Those are questions that policymakers, along with colleges and universities, must answer in a world that can change a lot in four years.

On Monday, Clint Vogus, an Arkansas State University business instructor, and Dr. Thomas Lindsay, director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Higher Education, told legislators that college doesn’t provide the same value it once did. Tuition costs have increased, and so has student debt, to $1.2 trillion nationally, making it the second largest source of consumer debt after home mortgages.

How big is the student debt problem? Americans, including the many who did not graduate, owe more in student debt than they do in credit card debt. Lindsay said giving students more scholarships won’t solve the problem. In fact, it will make it worse because the more government dollars that come into the system, the more colleges and universities raise the price.

The two were testifying before the Legislative Task Force to Study the Realignment of Higher Education, one of many groups appointed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson and legislators. Those groups exist to guide policy changes, to respond to changes that are already occurring, or just to ride the wave in education, health care, highways and prisons.

Vogus and Lindsay argued that despite the rising costs, a college education isn’t worth what it used to be for students or the state. Too many degree plans don’t lead to good jobs, and too many needs in the workforce aren’t being filled. Surveys indicate that students are studying less but earning a lot more A’s, and it’s not because they’ve become smarter. We’re told that, even if the world changes, college is supposed to make students more well-rounded and teach lifelong critical thinking and reasoning skills. But a 2011 report, “Academically Adrift,” found that’s often not the case. As measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment, 36 percent of college grads didn’t show any improvement in those areas after four years of college.

Dr. Chuck Welch, president of the Arkansas State University System, defended the value of a college education as “still the greatest investment I’ve ever made in my entire life or ever will make in my entire life.” He pointed out that college graduates as a group make much higher incomes, are less likely to be incarcerated or be dependent on food stamps, and even live longer than those whose education stopped after high school.

In that respect, the numbers are clear, but the cause and effect relationship is not. Do college graduates earn more money because they have a degree? Or is it because they’re more likely to come from wealthier, educated families? In other words, did college put them on second base, or were they born there?

Progress will come slowly in this area, but it may actually come. A consensus has developed that college is too expensive and that it’s not meeting workforce needs. Vogus proposed a 90-hour degree that could be completed in three years. His employer, Arkansas State University, recently announced a three-year plan, though it relies on summer school and doesn’t reduce the required hours. Lindsay said that Texas A&M – Commerce responded to a challenge by former Gov. Rick Perry to offer a $10,000 degree by creating one that costs not much more, in part by offering most of the first two years of classes online.

If workforce needs don’t change colleges and universities, then economics might. State dollars are flat. Bain and Company, a management consulting firm, says that 43 percent of colleges and universities nationwide spend more than they can afford. The 14-17-year-old demographic that feeds colleges and universities isn’t growing. And the word is out that a college degree is not a guaranteed route to a better job.

Meanwhile, students have other choices. For $12,000, they can learn computer coding in 12 weeks of intensive training at The Iron Yard, a chain of private schools with a location in Little Rock.

In less than three months, they’ll be qualified for a very good job. They won’t have the college experiences that are meant to make them more well-rounded. But then, they can do that on their own time, independent of taxpayers, using the money they’re making.

The real Common Core conflict

Common Core cover cutoutBy Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The Governor’s Council on Common Core Review didn’t drop any bombshells when it announced its recommendations July 30. It had already made its mark when it pre-recommended in June that Arkansas join the many states exiting the year-end PARCC exam, which Arkansas has since done.

But while the Council may have calmed the waters, which was part of its purpose, the conflict will continue. That’s because the Common Core debate isn’t just about what schools teach, which would be important enough. It also reflects the country’s fundamental divisions.

The Common Core is a set of math and language standards adopted by most states – standards meaning “what students should know” but supposedly not “how teachers should teach.” It was originally proposed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers as a way to create consistency and comparability among the nation’s schools. The State Board of Education adopted the standards in Arkansas in 2010 without much public discussion, which is part of the problem.

The Common Core partly was a reaction to No Child Left Behind, signed by President George W. Bush in 2002. That law gave the federal government the ability to punish schools if their students weren’t proficient but then let states create their own definitions of proficiency – and their own tests. Because states had a financial interest in their students being “proficient,” the result was a wide variety of standards that often weren’t very rigorous.

The 17-member Council, chaired by Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin, commendably held more than 40 hours of hearings and also hosted public meetings in nine cities. It eventually produced six pages of findings and recommendations. Among the council’s assertions is that “a significant majority of educators generally approve” of the Common Core and that educators “are almost unanimous” in the belief that the Common Core is better than Arkansas’ previous standards.

So what are the problems? Among them are a lack of communication between policymakers and the public, and uneven implementation among the state’s school districts. The Council reported that common criticisms of the standards ranged from “well-founded to completely baseless” and often pertained to issues not actually mandated by the Common Core. For example, those weird math problems that have frustrated so many parents are part of a teaching method that complies with Common Core but isn’t required by it.

Among the Council’s recommendations is that the Department of Education continue studying the issue, which it was already doing, that the standards remain under Arkansas’ control, and that they be fluid and changeable.

Will 40 hours of hearings, nine public meetings, and the slaying of PARCC turn down the heat on this issue? Probably some. A public discussion finally has been had. The longer these are the standards, the more entrenched they will become.

On the other hand, the Common Core controversy isn’t just about the Common Core. Instead, the controversy is really about the country’s division, dysfunction and distrust. These days, any national policy effort, even one originating outside the federal government, will be treated skeptically by many. That’s understandable because power tends to centralize. What begins as a voluntary effort by states could become a federal government mandate.

So the divide over Common Core is about educational standards, but it’s also about Obamacare and President Obama, who had little to do with the Common Core until he expressed support for it and his Department of Education unfortunately started handing out grants to encourage it. It’s about the Confederate flag and Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner and all the other things we’re fighting about. Really, if there’s been a federal school takeover, it happened when Bush signed No Child Left Behind. But that occurred early in his administration, a few months after the September 11 attacks, when the country was relatively unified and its attention focused on external enemies.

The Council has finished its work. We still have the Common Core standards, which are probably better than what we had. We have a less intrusive year-end test. We still have a lot of distrust.

And we still have educators trying to do their jobs in the midst of an ongoing education controversy that’s about a lot more than education. School starts this month.

A marvelous day in a Marvell school

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

My wife would NOT stop talking Monday night.

She’d just returned from Marvell, a Delta farming community where she was writing a story for an education magazine I publish. The elementary school has an all-day summer program for students in danger of falling behind, which, in a school where 97 percent receive free and reduced price lunches, is a lot of them.

She wanted to tell us about all she’d seen. Enthusiastic teachers and college interns were going to war alongside these kids to fight for their futures. A teacher gave a student a high-five after he correctly identified the preposition and object of the preposition in a sentence. Kids were reading because they wanted to. The youngest students were being tutored – by third graders, who seemed to know what they were doing.

The program clearly is improving student performance and test scores. Under the leadership of its stick-of-dynamite principal, Sylvia Moore, the school had gone from occupying a permanent place on the state’s school improvement list to scoring an “A” on the state’s report card.

My wife saw a lot of smiles and laughter during her marvelous day in Marvell. Her heart melted when a kindergarten student told her she loved her. She laughed as she recounted the young male students’ antics. If she’d been offered a job, I think we would have at least had a discussion about moving to Marvell.

Marvell is not the only school district worth talking about. Flippin has made addressing dyslexia a school priority. As a result, previously struggling students now are excelling, and discipline problems are way down. In Greenbrier, students are earning two-year associate’s degrees along with their high school diplomas, saving their families a bundle on college tuition costs. The chancellor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock actually handed them their degrees during the high school’s graduation ceremonies this spring. In Warren, grade levels are being blurred so that students advance whenever they’ve learned the material, not because they’re waiting for a page on the calendar to turn (or because the page has already turned). At Maumelle High, students declare what amounts to a major so their schooling can be tailored to their strengths and interests.

The point is not that all schools are excelling. On objective measurements, American students are not as prepared as many of their foreign counterparts to compete in a global economy. On the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment, American students ranked 27th among 34 developed countries in math and 17th in reading. That’s happening despite the fact that American taxpayers spent more per student than many other countries – actually, $621 billion in 2011-12, or $12,401 per student in 2013-14 dollars, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

But there are helpful takeaways from what Marvell and other school districts are doing. One is that many students might do better with a shorter summer break. In Marvell, there’s a dramatic difference in learning readiness at the beginning of the fall semester between students who attended summer school and those who spent the summer watching TV. Students are tracked regarding their progress in literacy. Few things are more discouraging than seeing that a student has regressed when he or she returns in the fall.

The second takeaway is that schools can do some great things when given a chance to experiment. They should be given that chance, even though experiments sometimes fail.

The third is that more is happening in education than the ongoing debate about Common Core, or whatever everybody is arguing about this week. Some things actually are positive, or at least hopeful, and if we’d all click off Facebook, turn off cable news, and go visit one of these schools (without listening to a screaming radio talk show host along the way), we might at least get a balanced view of things.

Skepticism is the ally of a free society; cynicism is an enemy of it. When we sit safely behind our computer screens and coffee mugs and murmur with people who agree with us, we see only problems – and people to blame. It’s only when we emerge from those hiding places that we see that good things are actually happening. That’s when we have hope, and when we have hope, we might act.

At the very least, we might have something positive to talk about.

The Common Core conundrum

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

A lot’s been happening with Common Core this past couple of weeks.

It started June 8, when a panel appointed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson and led by Lt. Governor Tim Griffin recommended that the state dump the end-of-the-year PARCC exam, meant to compare Arkansas with a dwindling number of other states, and instead use one offered by the more familiar ACT. Hutchinson accepted the recommendation, and Education Commissioner Johnny Key and his Department of Education began moving in that direction. After a legislative session in which Hutchinson got almost everything he wanted, it seemed like a done deal.

Only it wasn’t. The actual decision maker, the State Board of Education, which five years ago approved Arkansas’ inclusion in the movement, said no on June 11. Board members said they needed more time and more data before they could approve such a change.

So was that it? No. Legislators, many of whom don’t like PARCC, can use the power of the purse to block future testing contracts. Then on June 22, Hutchinson directed the Department of Education to dump PARCC because Key had found a provision in a five-year-old memorandum which seemed to give him the ability to do that.

So now, we’re back where we started, which is stuck in the middle of a major societal change a lot of people oppose or at least like to complain about.

How did we get here? The Common Core is not a curriculum. It’s a set of common standards in math and English adopted by all but a handful of states – Texas, of course, being one of them. The thinking is that, in a mobile society competing in a global economy, students across America ought to know roughly the same things at roughly the same times.

Birthed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Common Core partly was a reaction to No Child Left Behind. That’s the law signed by President George W. Bush in 2002 requiring every single American student – regardless of mental ability or English fluency – to be at least average by now, with the federal government empowered to financially punish schools who don’t meet that goal.

Sounds crazy? There’s more. No Child Left Behind let states define their own standards, which resulted, not surprisingly, in a lot of easy ones. In Arkansas, 83 percent of fourth-graders in 2014 tested at least “proficient” on the state’s Benchmark exam, which PARCC replaced this year. But the National Assessment of Educational Progress, another test given to a sample of students nationwide and generally considered trustworthy, found that only 32 percent of Arkansas fourth-graders were proficient.

That’s a 51-point swing. When we test and grade ourselves knowing we have a financial interest at stake, we give ourselves high marks. When an outside source tests and grades us, we do poorly. That’s why we might need some form of common goals measured by an objective assessment.

The conundrum, of course, is how to do that while still maintaining local school district autonomy and independence. Common Core was supposed to be the answer, but people still distrusted it, and then of course the Obama administration started handing out grants, and with grants come rules, and with rules comes control. And that, understandably, concerns a lot of people.

Part of the problem is the way Common Core was adopted – by a little-noticed vote of the State Board of Education in 2010. This was a major change in the way students are educated, and yet few Arkansans had heard much about it until kids started bringing home math problems their parents couldn’t figure out. Some people got concerned and others got plain mad, and political leaders reacted accordingly. The PARCC test became a target, and ending Arkansas’ participation in it might help let off a little steam.

This country is such a mess right now that it can be a little discouraging, can’t it? Many problems are so obvious that we can hardly argue about their existence. We know our schools aren’t good enough. We know our immigration system is a failure. Our health care system has been on an unsustainable path for decades. We know it’s wrong to keep adding to the national debt. And yet we can’t ever seem to decide where we are going, make a plan and get the car in gear.

What gear is Arkansas in regarding Common Core? Stuck in PARCC, for now.