Compass Point
A Weekly Collection of Data, Articles and Insights from the Commonwealth Educational Policy Institute
A project of the Center for Public Policy
State & Local Education News
Virginia Board of Education sets public hearings to discuss recently passed legislation
The Virginian-Pilot
July 12, 2016

Starting this week, the Virginia Board of Education will hold four hearings at which the public can offer thoughts on how best to prepare students for academic and career success.

The first hearing is Thursday in Manassas. The second will be July 19, at Lafayette High School in Williamsburg. That session will begin at 6:30 p.m., according to a news release from the state Department of Education.

The other hearings are in August, in Abingdon and Lynchburg.

One scheduled topic at the sessions is legislation passed this year by state lawmakers that should alter graduation expectations in Virginia in the coming years. It requires the state Board of Education to work with school and community leaders to set up a "Profile of a Virginia Graduate." Early years of high school should still emphasize core classes, but in later years students will have more options, including work programs like internships..

Virginia taking steps to implement local and national
school initiatives



Richmond Times-Dispatch
July 7, 2016

Officials in Virginia are using the summer months, when the last thing on most kids’ minds is school, to work on developing several national and state education initiatives.

This week, the Virginia Department of Education announced four public hearings to get input on plans and Gov. Terry McAuliffe named more than 30 members to the School Readiness Committee, which is focused on early childhood education.

The governor also named new members to the SOL Innovation Committee, which is charged with recommending improvements to standardized testing as well as looking at how the state deals with instruction, assessment and accountability at schools.

“The School Readiness Committee will help us to improve how we train early childhood educators to prepare every student to succeed, and the SOL Innovation Committee will continue to provide bold recommendations to bring more innovation into our classrooms,” McAuliffe said in a statement.

Loudouners Tapped for State Ed Committees
Loudoun Now
July 12, 2016

Two Loudoun residents have been selected by Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) to serve on the School Readiness Committee and the Standards of Learning Innovation Committee.

The panel was established by the 2016 General Assembly to better equip the next generation of early childhood educators with skills that will ensure student success. The new members of the SOL Innovation Committee will build on the work of the inaugural group by pursuing additional reforms.

Andrew Ko, managing director of Global Education—Amazon Web Services and a Loudoun parent, was chosen for the School Readiness Committee. Ko also served on the Virginia Board of Education in 2014, before he moved temporarily with his family to South Korea.

National & Federal Education News

Poll: After education, young people diverge on 2016 issues
NBC 2 (WBBH)
July 12, 2016


When it comes to picking a new president, young people in America are united in saying education is what matters most. But there's a wide split in what else will drive their votes.

For African-American adults between the ages of 18 and 30, racism is nearly as important as education. For young Hispanics, it's immigration. And for whites and Asian-Americans in the millennial generation, it's economic growth.

The results from the new GenForward poll highlight big differences among young Americans who often are viewed as a monolithic group of voters - due in no small part to their overwhelming support for President Barack Obama during his two campaigns for president.

GenForward is a survey by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research . The first-of-its-kind poll pays special attention to the voices of young adults of color, highlighting how race and ethnicity shape the opinions of the country's most diverse generation.

House Passes Series of Higher Education Bills
U.S. News & World Report
July 12, 2016

The House of Representatives passed a slate of bipartisan higher education bills late Monday aimed at tackling some of the easier policy aspects of the Higher Education Act – the behemoth federal law that's overdue for an update but likely won't get a complete overhaul this year.

In context of rising costs of college, which localities have seen the number of in-state graduates increase since 2010-2011?

An op-ed column by Helen Dragas, formerly rector of the University of Virginia, drew significant media coverage this past week and placed questions of the cost of in-state tuition in the commonwealth back in the public eye.  Writing in the Washington Post, Dragas said the following:

Its founding DNA imprints U-Va. as a very public institution with what should be a very public responsibility.

Yet since 2009, the university has raised in-state tuition by 74 percent, cut grant aid to the poorest Virginians, formed an administrative committee to explore secession from the state, hired a private university governance consultant for $200,000, spent more than $100 million on financial aid to out-of-state students, raised the net price for some Virginia families to subsidize others, and proposed gagging board members from talking to legislators, the press and the public. Thousands of Virginia students who seek admission are denied a coveted spot every year. The University of Virginia is slowly being privatized.

The school's response emphasized a "long-time commitment to providing an affordable, accessible and world-class education to all qualified students."

Concerns over college affordability have been a significant political issue in the presidential primaries this past six months and while tuition is often a focus of such discussions, we were interested in a recent news article and academic paper that document how student fees have been rising even faster than tuition.  One of the clear findings of the study was that a legislative imposition of a cap on tuition tends to cause fees to increase more quickly.  This was especially true in states where either the governor or the legislature has some power to set the levels of tuition and fees. The author suggests this may be possible because fees receive less attention from students, parents and legislators than does tuition - politicians respond to increases in what the public pays attention to, but are less focused on fees.  Those states that have a coordinating body or system-wide board with fee setting authority tend to have lower fees.  

If you're interested in seeing how tuition and fees have changed for the various universities in Virginia, check out the 2015-16 report on the topic from the State Council of Higher Education for Viriginia (SCHEV).

Higher education is certainly a significant investment and the benefit for public investment in higher education is often measured in degrees awarded, especially to in-state students.  SCHEV also collects and publishes data on degrees awarded  by Viriginia higher education institutions broken down by locality of origin for the student (i.e. what county or city did they come from when they started college.) We were curious to see what the distribution of degrees awarded was in the most recently available year (2014-15) and how it has changed since 2010-2011.  The visualization below gives a sense of the share of degrees for each locality, the number of degrees by locality and percentage change in the number awarded over that period.  (Click here or on the graphic below to explore the various visualizations in more detail.)   

Data drawn from SCHEV Research site - http://research.schev.edu/localities/LD05_AllDegreesAwarded.asp

Some clear takeaways from this data include the following:
  • Northern Virignia is a huge engine of college graduates - Fairfax County is the clear leader in the number of degrees awarded to students originating from there and Prince William and Loudoun counties are also large contributors - of course, this is largely due to the large population of these localities. 
  • Those showing a drop in the number of degrees awarded tend to be clustered in more rural areas - this could be driven by declining population or a shift of college students from Virginia institutions to colleges in other states.  
We hope you enjoy exploring the visualizations and we're grateful to SCHEV for the public service of compiling and publishing the data in an accessible way.  

We also wanted to share with you this week's  Poll Snapshot, which looks at how the public feels Virginia colleges and universities are doing at providing particular skill sets to graduates - generally public opinion gives the Commonwealth's institutions of higher education good marks.   For example, 72% think those institutions are doing a good job of producing graduates in scientific fields.

We hope you're having a great week!
 
Sincerely,
CEPI
CEPI Poll Snapshot - What is public opinion on the performance of Higher Education in Virginia?
A short data insight from our 2015-16  Commonwealth Education Poll.

Evaluating the Performance of Higher Education

Higher education is also a key player in developing a competitive workforce and equipping students for success in a career. When it comes to specific outcomes, strong majorities say Virginia colleges and universities are doing a good job in four critical areas related to workforce development. Seventy-two (72%) percent of Virginians say colleges and universities are doing a good job in producing graduates in scientific fields and 70% said the same about preparing students for the workforce needs for the future. Sixty-eight (68%) percent say the state schools do a good job providing the skills that will be useful in obtaining a job. A slightly smaller majority (65%) thinks they are doing a good job developing students’ writing and communication skills.


Public opinion on these factors is either steady or trending slightly upward over the last five years in which the Commonwealth Education Poll has asked the question. All of the variation is within the poll’s margin of error.


Different age groups evaluated higher education outcomes somewhat differently. Respondents in the 18-34 and 35-44 year-old groups were significantly more positive about the performance of colleges and universities in the area of developing students’ writing and communication skills (72% and 70% respectively said colleges were doing a good job). Older age groups were less likely to say the same, where only 59% of respondents in the 45-64 year-old group and 61% of the 65 or older group felt colleges were doing a good job.

Relative to the same outcome area of communication/writing skills, there was also a difference in perspective among those with college experience. Those with a college degree or more (60%) and those with some college (63%) were less likely to say colleges were doing a good job. This compared to 71% of respondents with a high school diploma or less who said the same.

In the area of preparing students for the workforce needs of the future, there was a significant difference in perspective based on partisan identity. Almost eight in 10 Democrats (79%) felt colleges were doing a good job, compared to 66% of Republicans and 61% of Independents. Those aged 35-44 (at 60%) were less likely to say the same, compared to those aged 18-34 (72%), 45-64 (75%) or 65 or older (72%).


(To read the full poll, visit our website.)