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Articles of Interest
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State & Local Policy
Parents send a message and ‘opt out’ of Virginia SOL tests
CBS 6 - WTVR
May 19, 2015
One million Virginia public school students took the state mandated Standards of Learning test in 2012. But 680 parents opted for their children not to take the test. That number is growing, according to grassroots advocacy group RVA Opt Out.
Victoria Carll founded RVA Opt Out two years ago, after she said her nine-year-old daughter became increasingly stressed in preparation for the SOLs.
“As the year went on, there were more and more worksheets,” Carll said. “She became very anxious and there was a lot of pressure at the school that was trickling down from the administration to teachers and to my daughter.”
Virginia community colleges to shift toward open resources
Campus Technology
May 15, 2015
Virginia Community Colleges is piloting a new program to replace textbooks with open educational resources (OER) in designated programs.
According to Glenn DuBois, chancellor of the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), textbook costs present a barrier for students, whereas technology makes access to information "faster and less expensive without compromising quality."
Tidewater Community College in Virginia already operates an OER initiative, called the "Z-Degree" program. The Z stands for "zero textbook cost," and the Z-Degree program is a business degree that uses freely accessible, openly licensed educational materials. The college launched the program in fall 2013, and, according to VCCS, it has been "immensely successful."
VCCS plans to model its open textbook initiative on Tidewater's Z-Degree program. The pilot program will run at 15 of Virginia's community colleges and is expected to save 50,000 students more than $5 million dollars in the first year.
Virginia SOL tests disrupted by Pearson computer problems
The Washington Post
May 15, 2015
For two days this week, tens of thousands of Virginia students taking year-end Standards of Learning exams have experienced significant disruptions because of computer problems — including a cyberattack — involving the state’s test contractor, the testing giant Pearson.
Charles Pyle, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Education, acknowledged that on Wednesday and Thursday, SOL exams were disrupted in schools across the state, although for different reasons. Pearson, the world’s largest education company, has been the state’s testing contractor for years. Last July, Virginia renewed its contract with Pearson for three years, $37 million annually.
Federal Policy
Programs Aim to Smooth Student-Police Relations
Education Week
May 19, 2015
Mario Conway experiences a range of emotions when he sees police officers patrolling his South Side Chicago neighborhood.
Fear. Anger. Frustration.
Two years ago, Chicago police fatally shot his friend, 17-year-old Cedrick Chatman, as he fled a stolen car. During the foot chase, Mr. Chatman turned toward officers with a "dark object" they assumed was a firearm. The officers opened fire. No weapon was recovered.
His friend's death and his own tense encounters with police have left Mr. Conway's confidence in law enforcement shaken.
World Bank boosts investment in results-based financing for education
The Washington Post
May 18, 2015
The World Bank is betting that it can help speed the improvement of public education around the world by doubling down on “results-based financing”: Countries get money only if they show that they are able to meet agreed-upon performance targets.
The bank announced Monday that it will invest $5 billion in such arrangements over the next five years, twice as much as it has spent on results-based financing in education over the past five years.
The announcement comes as more than 160 countries meet in South Korea this week to hammer out goals for improving education over the next 15 years, particularly in impoverished communities.
More than 120 million children around the world are not in school. One of the key goals for 2030 is to make sure that those children are not only in school but also learning, said Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank Group.
“The truth is that most education systems are not serving the poorest children well. An estimated 250 million children cannot read or write — even though many have attended school for years. This is a tragedy and has serious consequences for ending extreme poverty,” Kim said in a statement.
The World Bank has spent $40 billion on education since 2000 and bills itself as the world’s largest international education funder. Results-based financing is already a familiar concept in international public-health circles, and the World Bank — which aims to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030 — has been experimenting with it in education.
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Should we trust those college rankings?
About a month ago, hundreds of thousands of young people made a decision about which institution to attend in the coming year. For students and parents, this is often the culmination of a long process of filling out applications, tense waiting for acceptance letters, working on-campus visits into spring break trips and a large amount of stress. In this process, one of the factors often trumpeted by colleges and universities is their ranking - usually the one compiled by U.S. News and World Report. (In case you're wondering, according to the U.S. News rankings for National Universities, the current pecking order is Princeton, Harvard, Yale.)
There are, of course, a diversity of rankings. There's a global ranking from U.S. News, another from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and one from a business executive networking organization called QS. There's a ranking of the top 100 universities that are younger than 50 years old.
There's also significant debate about whether there are better ways to do rankings. U.S. News uses a number of factors, but has been criticized for placing significant weight (22.5%) on the opinions of people who never study at the universities ranked (other top college administrators and high school counselors from high schools that make it onto the U.S. News high school rankings.) They also give universities added points for how much they spend per student and what percentage of alumni give to the school. Only 7.5% of the ranking is based on a value-added metric - the graduation performance rate of the university compared to what might be expected given their ability to spend and the incoming test scores and socio-economic class of their students.
The Brookings Institute recently released a report arguing for using a completely "value-added" approach to assessing higher education schools. As illustrated by the graphic below, the approach would take into account the profile of students attending the college, factors about the school itself, and then projects whether students from that school overperform what that those baseline elements would predict in terms of salary and loan repayment. Based on this assessment, a lot of high profile universities like MIT (45% value added) and Stanford (41% value added) still rank very high in mid-career earnings, but others also emerge like the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana (44% added) and Virginia Military Institute (38% added). These top performers compare to a national average for four-year schools of 9% value added).
Our contribution to assessing the performance of higher ed in Virginia is our poll - essentially, do Virginians think colleges and universities are doing a good job? The results of several higher ed performance questions are summarized in this week's poll snapshot.
Also this week, we feature an excerpt from Dr. Vacca's final education law newsletter of the year where he looks ahead to what issues are likely to be significant in the coming school year.
Sincerely,
CEPI
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Poll Snapshot - Performance in Higher Education
Amid continued concerns about college affordability and value for price, public evaluation of the quality of three options for pursuing higher education is increasingly relevant. Strong majorities of Virginians think both four-year colleges and universities and community colleges are offering a quality education. Eighty percent say the quality of education at a four-year institution is good or excellent. Likewise, 78% say the same about community colleges.
However, internet-based programs, where the degree is completed entirely online, received more mixed reviews. A narrow plurality of respondents, 44%, rated the educational quality of internet-based programs as either fair or poor, while 43% rated them as either excellent or good. Thirteen percent said they don’t know or declined to respond, potentially indicating that internet-based programs are still a less known option. Among different demographic groups, those with a H.S. diploma or less (48%) or some college (46%), as well as minority respondents (52%), more frequently evaluated online higher-education programs as being good or excellent.
When it comes to specific outcomes, strong majorities say Virginia colleges and universities are doing a good job in all four areas examined. Seventy-two percent of Virginians say colleges and universities are doing a good job in producing graduates in scientific fields and 69% said the same about providing the skills that will be useful in obtaining a job. Sixty-five percent say the state schools do a good job preparing students for the workforce needs for the future. A slightly smaller majority (62%) thinks they are doing a good job developing students’ writing and communication skills.
Different age groups evaluated higher education outcomes somewhat differently. Respondents in the 18-34 year-old group were significantly more positive about the performance of colleges and universities in the areas of producing graduates in the scientific fields (81% said good job) and in developing students’ writing and communication skills (76% said good job). This was different from other age groups, with the gap in perception being greatest when compared to respondents 65 or older where only 47% felt colleges were doing a good job at developing students’ writing and communication skills.
To read the full poll, visit our website.
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Potential Issues to Watch - 2015-16 School Year
In keeping with past practice this final commentary for the current school year is devoted to predicting “potential legal and policy issues” to watch in the next school year. What follow in the paragraphs below are my predictions of issues to be aware of as school officials and administrators plan for next year. It will be obvious to the reader that several of the issues discussed are not new and already have been the subject of considerable time and effort over the past several years.
Issues to Watch
School System Budgets. This past year stories both in professional literature and popular media have highlighted growing problems associated with a lack of tax dollars available to adequately maintain and operate local public school systems. Across the nation some local school boards have publicly announced that major cuts in academic program offerings as well as cuts in extra-curricular activities (including interscholastic athletic programs) now available to students must be made just to “keep the schools open next year.”
With growing populations of at-risk children, parents and students from non-English speaking families, and children in need of special education services, a continuing strain will be placed on fiscal resources. Where will local communities find adequate resources necessary to provide quality educational opportunities for all children entering school and to implement parent engagement efforts? At the same time where will many local school systems find the funds necessary to replace aging buildings, failing heating and cooling systems, unsafe school buses, and out dated instructional equipment.
Next school year the pressure of parent advocate groups and local tax payer coalitions on local school boards and school officials will accelerate to show positive results in: (1) raising student academic achievement, (2) reducing student drop-out rates, and (3) increasing the number of schools receiving full state accreditation. At the same time a growing number of parent and community groups will continue to insist on seeing a reduction in the disparity, where it exists, between schools in the same school system.
Next school year, as in past years, the following questions will once again be asked: (1) Are children destined to a level of educational opportunity by accident of their birth? (2) Is there a disparity in educational offerings and in student academic results between schools located in the same local school system? (3) Is there a link between socio-economic factors, school system funding, school system personnel assignments and quality education? How do local school systems effectively engage a growing number parents, many of whom do not speak English and/or who may be illiterate in their own native language? Suffice it to say, while in the 2015-2016 school year heated discussions regarding fiscal priorities will dominate many local school board meetings one thing is certain - business as usual will not be acceptable.
Special Education. This past year, while the population of children identified as in need of special education services continued to grow, neither the United States Congress nor the United States Department of Education has given state and local school systems anything new regarding the status of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2004). At the same time no clear links have been established between IDEA and such other national efforts as No Child Left Behind and the Common Core State Standards Initiative. In other words, as local public school officials plan for next year they must do so while often resorting to past policies, rules, procedures, and practices—a risky business to say the least. The challenges presented by and the impact and strain of unanswered questions on accurately funding state and local school system budgets (especially those related to procedural requirements, staffing needs, and providing necessary related services) will be profound."
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