Transcript Goadings for Education Policy, Cliff Adelman, Institute for Higher

Goadings for Education Policy
Cliff Adelman
Institute for Higher Education Policy
October 8, 2008
Topics for a Minnesota Morning
• Language and policy
• Data and policy
• MapQuest directions when you get in
your car (Elementary-Secondary)
• The fallacy of getting-it-over-with fast
(Postsecondary)
The language we use
•
•
•
•
Creates reality
Expands or limits what we see
Liberates us or traps us
Influences student behavior (it’s called
‘behavioral economics,’ i.e. what you are
called influences the way you behave)
Potent Example #1: “Pipelines”
versus “Paths”
• Liquids move in pipelines, in a uniform
direction, in a closed space, and as passive
substances.
• People don’t do any of the above.
• The more you talk “pipelines,” the less reality
you see, and the more limited your options.
• Under “pipelines,” we look for easy causalities
along a single line of explanation. “Paths”
allow for multiple analyses and discoveries of
tools that suggest productive routes to
educational goals.
Potent Example #2: “Attrition”
versus “Persistence”
• When “attrition” is the governing term, we
turn to negativity at the first sign of exit from
school or college----even though the student
may return. We witness a cycle of blame that
does not begin to solve the problem.
• When “persistence” is the governing term, we
take our directions from students. What did
they do that resulted in attainment? What
structures of opportunity do we need to offer so
that future students can follow the same paths?
Potent Example #3: “Retention”
versus “Persistence”
• This is more a higher education issue: institutions
“retain,” students “persist”
• Under a language of “retention,” all we see are
institutions keeping students in places that may be
unproductive, at all costs, and for the sake of their
public ratings. The student is a passive participant.
• Under a language of “persistence,” we see students
making a series of rational choices that take advantage
of the opportunities offered by a system to discover
true interests and reach productive ends. The student
is an active participant.
So, I want you to dispose of
• “Pipelines”
• “Attrition”
• “At Risk”—the behavioral economics label
• “Retention”
And embrace “pathways,” “persistence,” and
“potential.”
The language of leadership is a “can do”
language, not a punitive rhetoric!
The data we use
Become propaganda, and, like
language, can easily blindside
policy
Call this Propaganda ConsciousnessRaising
• The ways data messages about education move
across the communications environment. . .
• Why the media selects what you hear and see
...
• How the URL world supports and cements
those messages.
A call for due diligence on your part remains a
major theme.
A plea for “due diligence”: we have to audit
unofficial statistics, e.g.
• 40 percent of entering 4-year college students
take remedial courses
• 25 percent of entering 4-year college students
and 50 percent of entering community college
students do not return for a second year
• Out of every 100 9th graders, only 18 will wind
up with a bachelor’s or associate degree 10
years later
None of these assertions can be supported by any
adjudicated national data set. None.
One of the larger statistical frauds
bought by policy-makers
Base
Type
Unofficial
Official
“Out of every
100 9th
graders”
X-Sectional
8th graders,
12 years from
1988
Longitudinal
HS Grad on time
67
78
Enter College
38
53
Get to Year 2
26
48
Assoc/Bach
18
35
The data cry-babies make the
news. . .
And policy either panics or gives up
or goes out on a witch hunt
Bawling up and down the editorial
pages
• Less than 70% of 9th graders will graduate
from high school, and of those who do, less
than 40% are college-ready
• Only half of entering college students will earn
a degree of any kind in 6 years, and more than
half of the graduates can’t even understand a
credit card offer
This is typical stuff from the bad news press.
Of course the media are not
helped by dubious data stories
• One study wants to tell us that high schools have failed
and their graduates are dim, so it raises the statistical
bar for “ready for college” to exclude 60 percent of
high school grads.
• An almost simultaneously-released study from another
source wants to tell us that we have masses of rocketscientists among high school graduates who are simply
too poor to attend college, so it lowers another
statistical bar for “academically qualified” to include
60 percent of high school grads.
• So which one is it? Nobody seems to care, as long as it
has tears.
Crying Across State Borders
• Worst chances in life: New Mexico; best
chances in life: Virginia. Ergo, New Mexicans
since the 15th century, to give your kids a better
chance, pack up and move to Virginia
• The Parker Brothers board game of
“predetermined ‘weights’” for state education
indicators gives Idaho a “D” and Kentucky a
“B” in postsecondary participation. Go figure
who “predetermined” these weights and how!
The board game: indicators and their
weights for “preparation” grades
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
18-24 year olds w/high school credential
20.0%
9th-12th graders taking upper-level math
8.75
9th-12th graders taking upper-level science
13.125
12th graders taking upper-level math
4.375
8th graders “proficient” on NAEP reading
3.50
Scores in top 20% of SAT/ACT /1000 H.S. grads
8.75
7th to 12th graders taught by teachers with a
10.00
major in their subject
So you pay $300 for Pennsylvania Ave. and $80 for Baltic
Place.
And tears for the nation. . .
• India produces 200k engineers a year with
degrees loaded with math & science, while the
U.S. produces only 45k (and, presumably, little
math & science)
• The U.S. now ranks 7th among post-industrial
nations in the proportion of its 25-34 year olds
with college degrees (and let’s not forget, too,
that our college graduates are too dumb to
understand newspaper editorials about all of
this).
Elaborating on the India case
• Only 7 percent of the traditional-age
population enters higher education
• 160,000 Indian students are studying abroad
(with English language countries obviously
being the major hosts)
• And as for US engineering programs, have you
met a graduate who hasn’t taken Differential
Equations (that’s 5th semester calculus)?
• The issue, really, is not whether we are
“competing,” but how well everyone is joining.
Is that a problem?
Facts and conditions of change in European
higher education participation
• Much higher growth rates in the polytechnic sector
(Finland) and short degree programs analogous to our
Associate’s (UK)
• Growth rates by sector are more salient than net
participation
• Market response to the introduction of tuition and fees
in the late 1990s (Austria, UK)
• National variations in the definition of the denominator
(the “relevant” or “eligible” population)
• Flat population growth in the 20-29 age brackets across
Europe; declines in the younger population cohorts
Leaving no wasteland behind
• Do we really need to wag and point our fingers
today?
• Do we need to tell people how lazy, stupid, or
incompetent they and their children are?
• What do we gain by the state ranking game?
• What is the compulsion to rend our garments
when the rest of the world is learning more
than it used to learn?
Why do we do this? Maybe because we
love rankings, we love scores
• It’s a feature of culture: Who’s on top? Who’s
not? Who got to the Final Four? Who makes
it to the playoffs? Nielson ratings. Box office
receipts.
• We judge system education performance the
same way we judge entertainment and sports.
• And if it ain’t got “competitiveness,” it ain’t got
that swing.
• American society is not alone in this bent (you
remember “Ichi Ban!” I’m sure); but we turn
from the competition among nations to a
putative competition among states.
Policy, beware!
• Hysterical macro-data don’t help!
• Triangulate everything, i.e. if someone gives
you a number, ask for two other validating
sources.
• Watch the way the student population is
defined, e.g. combining your daughter and your
brother-in-law in postsecondary analyses, or
claiming that “low income” = everyone below
the median!
• Insist on official sources, with statistical
standards and review panels!
Want to close gaps?
You need to know what gaps you
are talking about and where to
drive your car to fix the problem.
Gaps in . . .
• Attitudes toward schooling
• Opportunity-to-learn
• Level of reading proficiency (10th grade)
• H.S. academic curriculum intensity
• Timing of postsecondary entry
• 1st year credit generation
• College-level math in college
For each of these, identify the cumulative gap,
and focus on the points at which gaps expand
and where paths take different terms.
Gaps for whom: gross population
or something else?
• Race/ethnicity. Highly visible minority
communities in Minnesota. Look at 2nd and 3rd
generations.
• Language in which students speak to mothers
most or all of the time.
• Geo-demography: isolated rural, zipcode.
• H.S. academic offerings profile.
Combinations of the above tell you where to drive
your car when you seek to fix something.
And the low-hanging apples come
first. . .
• You won’t get everyone: sweeping scattershots
strain resources and produce lesser results.
• So pick populations and problems that are
tractable. It’s knowing where to drive
• And in evaluating research and results, do not
let anybody claim “cause” or “effect” or
“prediction.” This is not a physics lab.
• Demand modesty: the best one can say is that
there are “positive associations” or “strong
suggestions.”
Population Realities: the fallacy of
“get-it-over-with----and fast!”
• Results in unrealistic credit loads and
non-completion.
• Results in cheap degrees that don’t do
anyone or any economy any good.
• Pretends that your brother-in-law lives
on the same planet as your daughter.
• Ignores the postsecondary history of
armed forces personnel.
If we didn’t have part-time students,
our access rates would be miserable
• Part-time was traditional in some countries
(e.g. UK, Poland)
• A separate cohort of part-time students in
Sweden, also traditional
• But other countries discovered part-time as an
instrument of increasing access, particularly of
adult populations
• And still others had it thrust upon them when
tuition was introduced (e.g. Austria)
What does part-time mean in
Europe?
• Poland: more than 60% time, but less than
80%
• UK empirical average: 40-60% time range
• De facto part-time definitions reference student
work, e.g. if 30+ hours/week, then 65 percent of
students are part-time throughout Bologna
countries.
• In distance education programs, e.g. Paris III,
it’s the only way you can be accepted, and you
must present evidence that you could not go to
school any other way.
But the Euros offer some creative
treatment of part-timers
• Univ. of Aberdeen regs allow 8 years to finish
with a maximum of 2/3rds credit load per year
• Swedish kursstudenter, now 40 percent of
entrants due to recruiting of 20-something
women coming in through bridge preparation
programs associated with community adult
education
• Part-time as a persistence path as well as an
access path. The “social dimension” is not
merely about walking through the door.
And as for our armed forces
enrolled for postsecondary courses
• 800,000 active duty did it in 2006. Do you think
they are full time?
• 28,000 earned Associate’s degrees; average
time: 7 years
• 9,000 earned Bachelor’s degrees; average time:
12 years
• Over 60% of student veterans are attending
part-time.
Have some respect for part-time status. Policy
should not penalize it.
Summary
• Watch your language!
• Due diligence on your numbers!
• Be sure of where you are driving your car when
you go out to fix a problem!
• Learn something from other countries who
have addressed problems similar to yours!
These are all critical elements of policy formation.