(Name-mce) ListServ No College Student Left Behind

[Howe, William]

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i07/07a00101.htm 

>From the issue dated October 6, 2006


Spellings Lays Out 'Action Plan' for Colleges


Secretary cites urgent need to track student progress and increase
financial aid

By KELLY FIELD

Washington

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings wasted no time in
responding to the final report by her Commission on the Future of Higher
Education, announcing her "action plan" in a speech at the National
Press Club here last week.

The speech, which came less than a week after Ms. Spellings formally
received the report, detailed the first five steps the administration
will take to turn the panel's recommendations into reality. Chief among
them is the creation of a national system, known as a "unit record"
database, which would track students' progress through college; the
simplification of the federal financial-aid application process; and the
provision of grants to colleges and states that test their students and
report the results.

The secretary described her plan as "the beginning of a process of
long-overdue reform," saying she would take up "the full slate" of the
commission's recommendations at a spring summit with higher-education
leaders. She said she was moving ahead with those proposals "that I can
do immediately" because "time is of the essence."

"There is an urgency here," she said in an interview with The Chronicle
in her office the day before her speech. "The academy is underestimating
the American public - the anxiety and urgency about this."

Many of the report's recommendations will require legislative action, a
fact that Ms. Spellings acknowledged in a question-and-answer session
following her speech.

"I understand this is going to be a shared discussion, not only with
Congress, but with the community," she said in response to a question
about what she could accomplish through regulation.

In her speech, Ms. Spellings offered a mixture of praise and admonition
for American colleges, describing them as "the envy of the world," and,
at the same time, dangerously complacent.

She challenged the notion that "things are going just fine" in higher
education, asking: "Is it fine that college tuition has outpaced
inflation, family income, even doubling the cost of health care? Is it
fine that only half of our students graduate on time? Is it fine that
students graduate from college so saddled with debt that they can't buy
a home or start a family?"

But her tone was more conciliatory than many college officials had
expected, and her focus was on discourse, not dictates. While she spoke
of expanding "the effective principles of No Child Left Behind" to high
schools, she made no mention of mandatory testing for college students.
And while she proposed a test of a unit-record database under
development in her department's research division, she stressed that
participation in the pilot program would be voluntary.

David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, and the only
commission member who refused to sign the panel's report, said he left
the speech reassured.

"Many of my deepest anxieties were diminished," said Mr. Ward. "The
federal role could have been rather aggressive. I didn't get that model
at all. She talked about a process and dialogue."

Arthur J. Rothkopf, a member of the commission who is president emeritus
of Lafayette College and senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, was even more effusive.

"It's absolutely on target," he said of the speech. "She's moving
rapidly but judiciously."

And Arturo Madrid, a commissioner who is a professor of humanities at
Trinity University, in Texas, said the report's focus on five "first
steps" was "right on."

"This was a chance for her to get at the big picture, to get a little
focus," he said. "It would be very easy to get too spread out."

But another commissioner, Richard K. Vedder, a professor of economics at
Ohio University, said he was concerned about "things being put off until
the future" and "errors of omission" in the secretary's speech.

"The rhetoric is good, but there is a lot to be done," he said.

Unit-Record Redux

Meanwhile, some college officials and lobbyists said they remained
concerned with the secretary's proposal to test the prototype
unit-record database.

The department first proposed the creation of such a database in 2004,
saying it would allow the agency to measure a college's performance more
accurately by generating better information about retention and
graduation rates and by enabling the department, for the first time, to
track the academic progress of transfer students.

The idea has been opposed, however, by private colleges, civil
libertarians, and conservatives, who think it would violate existing
privacy laws.

In March, when the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 609, a bill
to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, which sets policy for the
Education Department, lawmakers specifically forbade the agency to
develop such a data system.

In her speech, Ms. Spellings sought to reassure critics of the proposal,
stressing that the system would be "privacy protected" and "would not
identify individual students, nor be tied to personal information."

"It wouldn't enable you to go online and find out how Margaret Spellings
did in her political-science class," she said.

Concerns About Privacy

But critics of the plan were unconvinced. In an interview following the
secretary's speech, Sarah Flanagan, vice president for government
relations at the National Association of Independent Colleges and
Universities, said private colleges remained concerned "about taking
control from parents and students over who they hand their records to."

"We think you can get the data you need for accountability without going
to student unit data," she added.

Asked in the interview with The Chronicle how she would overcome the
opposition that derailed the unit-record plan two years ago, Ms.
Spellings said she would give a better explanation to Congress on how
the system would work. She will also remind lawmakers that "except for
the private colleges, the higher-education community is for this," she
said.

"Lots of folks in the public systems that I'm aware of ... are crying
for this ability to go to their state legislatures and make the case for
resources," she said. "They are crippled by the lack of information as
well."

A Pell Increase?

Other lobbyists and commissioners said they were disappointed that the
secretary did not endorse the commission's recommendation to raise the
purchasing power of the typical Pell Grant to cover 70 percent of the
average in-state tuition at public four-year colleges over the next five
years.

While Ms. Spellings called for an increase in need-based aid, she did
not propose a specific dollar amount, saying that the number would be
negotiated with the White House as part of the budget-development
process.

"We all share a commitment to Pell," she said in response to a question
from an audience member about whether the administration would propose
an increase for the Pell Grant program. "As we negotiate the budget, the
dollar figures will be forthcoming."

Robert M. Shireman, who was an education-policy adviser in the Clinton
administration and now directs the Project on Student Debt, said he had
"hoped for more."

Mr. Shireman said higher-education advocates will be watching to see
whether the secretary can make the case for the Pell program in a time
of war and budget deficits.

"This will be a test of leadership for her," he said, adding that the
"summit will be far more effective if there is funding for need-based
aid on the table."

And James B. Hunt Jr., a commissioner and former Democratic governor of
North Carolina, who had pushed for the five-year increase in the Pell
Grant program, said he hoped the administration would at least propose
the first-year increase.

The American Council on Education has estimated that the commission's
proposal would cost the federal government an additional $9-billion to
$12-billion a year.

Robert M. Berdahl, president of the Association of American
Universities, said achieving that spending level "will be a challenge,
given the financial difficulties that face the country."

"But," he added, "if we are really serious about need-based aid, Pell
Grants are the place to start."

Advance Respsonse

Several days before the Secretary's speech, the six major college
lobbying groups released a letter outlining the steps they will take -
and those they believe their member institutions should take - in
response to the commission's recommendations.

The lobbyists described the letter, which was sent to their member
colleges, as an effort to respond "with one voice" to several recent
reports, including the commission's.

"This allows us to join the debate constructively and to embrace a
reform agenda that is consistent with the challenging job of our campus
execs who are on the ground," said Mr. Ward in a conference call about
the letter.

The letter, titled "Addressing the Challenges Facing American
Undergraduate Education," was also an attempt to counter claims, made by
the secretary's commission, that higher education is averse to change.

As the lobbyists put it in a memorandum accompanying the letter, "Our
institutions are not only dynamic and diverse but ready to work
proactively to improve undergraduate education from an already firm
foundation."

The letter's message to colleges was clear: Change must continue to come
from within, or it will come from without. As Mr. Ward explained, "We're
arguing that the more we could do ourselves in a reform mode, the
better. I'm not sure there is anyone who thinks regulatory solutions
would be the most desirable."

Following the Secretary's speech, Mr. Ward again urged colleges to act
on the commission's recommendations, saying it would be a "big mistake"
to try to duck them.

"There may be people who believe that if they lay low long enough, this
will go away," he said. "But I think they've caught the tail of
something they're going to hang onto."

THE SECRETARY'S 'ACTION PLAN'

Last week, as part of her response to the federal Commission on the
Future of Higher Education, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret
Spellings proposed five steps that she said would make American colleges
more accessible, more affordable, and more accountable:

*	Expand "the effective principles" of the No Child Left Behind
Act to high schools, while continuing "efforts to align high-school
standards with college work" and increasing "access to college-prep
classes such as Advanced Placement." 
*	Streamline the process of applying for federal student aid, to
"cut the application time in half" and notify students of their
eligibility "earlier than the spring of their senior year, to help
families plan." 
*	Create a federal database to track students' academic progress. 
*	Provide matching funds to colleges, universities, and states
that collect and publicly report student "learning outcomes." 
*	Convene members of accrediting groups in November "to move
toward measures that place more emphasis on learning." 

  http://chronicle.com
Section: Government & Politics
Volume 53, Issue 7, Page A1

 

 

 

William A. Howe, Ed.D.
Education Consultant for Multicultural Education & Gender Equity
Connecticut State Department of Education - Bureau of Educational Equity
165 Capitol Ave. Rm 312, Hartford, CT 06106 
Telephone: 860-713-6542 * Fax: 860-713-7496
email: william.howe at ct.gov <BLOCKED::mailto:william.howe at ct.gov> 
website: http://www.state.ct.us/sde

11th Annual Connecticut Conference on Multicultural Education, Marriott
Hotel, Farmington, CT -Oct. 16, 2006,
<http://www.state.ct.us/sde/calendar/index.htm>  

 

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