College Students vs. Faux Journalism

HuffPo recently ran what could be called a graphics-rich story (basically two big graphics plus captioning) that is sure to have some folks sounding the alarm bell, and there's no question that the data are striking.

The basic takeaway is this-- in no states in the US do the majority of students finish college in four years. Virginia is up top with 46%, with Nevada and DC bringing up the rear at 8.75% and 3% respectively. There's also a graphic for six-year graduation rate, but that picture isn't very pretty, either.

Of course, what's missing from the story is some perspective. So with some very quick and unsubtle help from my research assistant, Dr. von Google, I checked to see if this looked any worse than the US track record. I did nothing more strenuous than what any person with a computer, a desk, and a half hour to kill (or spend researching a story) could do.

Here's a 2010 piece by our old friend Kevin Carey at the awesomely named blog The Quick and the Ed. The title gives away the game-- "U.S. College Graduation Rate Stays Pretty Much Exactly the Same."

Carey makes two points. One is that looking at percent of adults with college degrees doesn't show much movement in the US over time-- about 30% "four year" degrees plus another 10% associate degrees. That fits with this 2002 chart from the OECD that shows US degrees are about the same for both the young generation and the older.

Carey's second point is that getting graduation rates in X years is hard because colleges generally know who finished at their own school, but not whether their drop outs successfully finished college elsewhere. Carey then goes on to explain the rather convoluted means by which federal statisticians come up with such a figure, depending on something called BPS.

The source for the infographics was a site called Find the Best which is a fun little site that crunches numbers for everything under the sun. But my search of the site turned up neither this particular project not the methodology for it-- all we know is that they used IPEDS data. So, grains of salt at the ready.

I found other interesting charts and data sets, like this one looking at college completion rates for African American students/athletes

 

That came from the same article as this chart, with the article acknowledging that students who droped ou and finished elsewhere counted against the institution at which they started.

And an abstract of this paper  for just a couple years back which I am sure to revisit, that suggests a couple of things:

    * From 1979 to 1997 there is a growing gap between rich and poor students in terms of college entrance, persistance, and graduation
    * There is also a growing gender gap-- women are outpacing men
    * However, the inequity gap grew much more sharply among women than men

Or there's this graphic, from CAP of all places

In fact, simple straightforward data about college completion rates is not all that prevalent, suggesting that this yet another conversation we're having without the benefit of lots of facts.

But more than that, I want to point out that once again, we're looking at lazy reporting. It has been literally forty-five minutes since I sat down and started working on this story. How hard would it be for someone who is doing journalism as their actual Real Job to spend some time adding some context, nuance and data to a story instead of just saying, "Wow-- cool graphics. And I can write the whole story in one sentence." Yes, I realize criticizing HuffPo journalistic standards is a little like criticizing Arctic beaches, but being HuffPo is not an excuse to be lazy.

This is a complicated issue, from the assumptions we start with (exactly why is it critical that a college degree be completed in four years) to the data we look at (how can we really know how many people started and finished when they move around so much). It deserves more than a quick couple of infographics that by themselves don't tell us much of anything.

How Much Money Is Tenure Worth?

Economist Allison Schrager is quoted over at Yahoo putting forth the idea that tenure is worth cold hard cash.

Certainly this is not the first time the idea has been introduced. She Who Will Not Be Named tried in DC to introduce a plan to have a non-tenure big-buck track. This failed to get traction, perhaps because it's hard not to see trading tenure for big bucks as being synonymous with trading a an actual career for just one more year of teaching. And in North Carolina (motto "We're the Seventh Circle of Teacher Hell, but We Want To Dig Deeper") the money-for-tenure trade has been offered as well. Of course, the problem there is that the legislature has no idea where the money for the tenure-buyout-bonuses would come. I imagine a sort of reverse Ponzi scheme-- once they get things get going, they can pay this year's tenure-buyout-bonus by firing the teachers who have no tenure because they took the bonus last year. There's no way it can fail.

So it's possible that tenure could have monetary value to teachers, but maybe that the value is currently equal to all the money they expected to make during the rest of their career, because that's what taking one of these tenure-for-cash deals would cost them-- the rest of their careers. DC schools were never going to keep teachers on at $130K a year for thirty years.Take a pay raise, then take a hike.

Kudos to Yahoo for not simply repeating Schrager's Bloomsburgh column (though they didn't link to it, either), but pulling in Alan Singer to point out, politely, that Schrager's idea is fully stuffed with bovine fecal matter.

What we call tenure is, of course (and I say "of course" even though the world is full of people who seem not to know this), a job protection that guarantees due process, so that teachers cannot be fired for disagreeing with a school board member or administrator.

Ultimately, Singer said, from the teachers’ point of view, “freedom and money are not equivalent. Freedom should never be exchanged for money.”

I'm going to agree with Schrager here. I think tenure is a valuable benefit that is worth actual money. But here's where we part ways-- I would argue that tenure has monetary value to the school district.

Tenure helps insure the school district as an entity that a school cannot be trashed by a single disastrous individual. Whether we are talking about a bad principal or a egregious board member, tenure gives the school district a buffer, a way to protect its teachers and thereby protect its mission. Tenure is why parents in districts rarely say, "Well, Bogswallow High used to be a great place, but we had a principal who came in, fired all the best teachers and replaced them with his buddies, and now it sucks." Tenure is why parents rarely say, "Don't bother trying to get anything done about it. Everybody who works at that school is so scared of Board Member McCrazypants that they won't say or do a thing."

Yes, yes, yes, that kind of thing happens right now in some places. That's my point. How much worse would it be if there were no tenure, if teachers could not say, "You can try to make me miserable, but you can't take my job."

Tenure has value to districts in helping them avoid the costs of replacing staff, of recruiting replacements, of dealing with all the internal problems that would come with a staff that does not feel safe to use the full range of their professional skills and judgment. Tenure saves school districts money. It has monetary value to them, and because it costs them nothing to give it to teachers, it is a huge bargain.

Memo to Three-Year-Old Slackers

To: American Three-Year-Olds
From: America's Education Reform Thought Leaders'
Re: Get to work, you lazy slackers

It has come to our attention that your older brothers and sisters have been showing up to Kindergarten completely unprepared for the requirements of a rigorous education. It is time to nip this indolent behavior in the bud. You probably don't even know what 'indolent" means, do you? Dammit-- this is exactly why Estonia and Singapore are challenging the US for world domination!

It's time for you to understand-- the party is over. We waited patiently for you to get potty trained and weaned off breast feeding on your own schedule, and that was probably a mistake because it led you to believe that you could just do things when you're good and ready. Well, no more. We're on to you. We saw you spend all that time crawling instead of walking because walking was just tooo haaard. Wah, wah, wah. We're done coddling you. The state has a schedule for you, and you are damn well going to get with it. You got to float around all free and easy in your Mommy's non-rigorous womb, and that's enough time off for anyone.

No, I don't want to see the pretty picture that you drew, unless you can explain what sources and data contributed to your compositional choices. You really need to be synthesizing two or more disparate sources for your pictures. And stick to the prompt-- I said draw a picture of an important Sumerian ceremony, not a bunny and a sun. And stop getting up every ten seconds to go look at something. You need to start learning how to focus properly. Sit in that chair and draw for the next ninety minutes without getting up.

Sitting will be good preparation for testing. Of course we're going to test you. How else will we know whether or not you are on track for college? Yes, I know your Mommy says she loves you and you can do anything, but what the hell does she know. Only a good solid expensive standardized test can tell us whether or not you are college material. Stop whining and get your pudgy little hand wrapped around that mouse. C'mon-- show some grit.

I know this is a lot to take in, and we really would have started last year when you were two, but frankly, all you would say was "no" over and over again. It's possible that terrible twos are the educational barrier that we can't break past. But now you're three, and all we have to break you of is this tendency to be distracted by childlike wonder and joy, and this ridiculous desire to play all the time. We must get you ready for Kindergarten, or you will never get into a good college and then we won't have the workers we need to compete globally and our leaders will lose supreme command of the universe and our corporations will have access to fewer markets. You don't want that, do you? You don't know what "compete globally" means? See, this is what we're talking about. Go sit down and write a six-sentence paragraph utilizing multiple sources about economic developments in post-agrarian societies, using non-fiction sources from government websites.

Look, kid. Everybody wants you to be Kindergarten-ready, so you've got to practice sitting inert, taking senseless tests, and being properly compliant. You need experience in going days at a time without playing, and I'm a little concerned that your napping is getting out of hand. And don't think your teacher is going to let you off the hook-- we know how soft and wimpy she is, and we've taken care of her.

Does everyone want this for all three year olds? Well, no, actually. Chad and Buffy, you can disregard this memo. Shaniqua and Bubba Jean-- you'd better listen up.

No Shocking News About Principals In Study

In all of public education, is there a job that has gotten worse in past years than that of principals? And yes-- there are many, many truly terrible principals out there. How surprising is that, really? Who would want to sign up for a job that provides all of the responsibility with none of the power and the absolute guarantee that somebody in your district will be hating pretty much every decision that you make.

At least, that's the common perception. And I would love to find some sexy, click-baity spin to put on the study just released by the USDOE, but the most surprising thing in the study is the degree to which things don't suck in the front office. But there's still some interesting data here about the state of principalling in US education.

The National Center for Educational Statistics has released the findings of its 2012-2013 follow-up survey that was designed to check principal attrition rates, and while the survey is not exactly chock full of shocks and surprises, there's some interesting data to be unpacked.

We'll be looking at what happened between the 11-12and 12-13 school years.

There were 114,330 principals in the US. Over that span, 78% stayed in place. 6% moved to different schools (movers), 12% left the field (leavers), and another 5% went... somewhere, but we didn't get that data. So, mystery departures.

The rates of departure were pretty even between male and female principals.

Between private and public, some differences emerge when you break it down by age. In the under-45 crowd, private schools had 11% attrition, while public schools had 8%. In 45-54, private had 9% and public 8%, and over 55, private schools had 13% leavers and public 20%. Of those leavers, retirements only accounted for roughly a third-- 38% of the public and 30% of the private leavers were retirees.

Of movers, 54% of the public principals moved to another school in the same district, with 6-9 year veterans most likely to make that kind of move. 70% of the private school principals moved to another private school, and that move became less likely, the more years of experience they had. The movers who jumped from private to public or public to private were tiny, tiny, tiny.

The fun parts of the report come in the charts. Here are some fun facts about the State of Principalling in 2011-2012.

In public schools, age distribution is more even than you might expect. Of the 89,453 public school principals, 35,630 were under-45, 29,650 were 45-54, and 24,250 were over-55. But even though teaching is predominantly female, only 51% of principals are women. 10% are African American, and just under 7% are Latino.

44% of the principals had been at their school for less than three years. Only 11% had been there more than ten. One piece of good news-- only 7% had had less than five years in a classroom before moving into the office. That figure was 18% for private schools.

In public schools, 53% of principals reported and over-sixty-hour work week.

In public schools, 73% of principals felt they had a major influence on setting performance standards, but only 43% felt they had a hand in establishing curriculum. While have-strong-influence numbers were high for hiring, handling discipline, and teacher evaluation, only 64% felt they had a big say in how the budget would be spent. The picture is very similar in private schools. None of these factors appear to correlate strongly with departure.

So. The world of principals not quite so bad, apparently. We do have the same problem there that we have in the classroom-- a population that doesn't look much like the student population. But we are not hemorrhaging principals in the same way we're losing teachers. Of course, there are some principals we would like to lose, but that's another column.

Racing to the Bottom: The New School Leadership Challenge

As the assault on public education continues, school leaders face an unprecedented challenge-- how to win the race to the bottom without being too obvious about it.

Occasionally, somebody notices that a district is becoming too successful in trashing its own mission. Just this week in Indianapolis, members of the school board noticed that about 200 teachers-- almost 10% of the entire teaching staff-- had bailed out in the last three months. Theories included that teachers were leaving for neighboring districts that paid better (which is apparently all of them). Solutions included signing up with TNTP to get more bodies shipped in toot de suite, and strengthening the policy on giving notice.

Of course, some regions don't worry about tipping their hands. Cleveland has been pretty straightforward about its desire to gut public schools for a charter system, staffed with TFA temps. And of course when it comes to destroying public education wholesale and ending teaching as a viable career, nobody holds a candle to North Carolina (although Florida would really like to try). In addition to being poached by its neighbors, folks have come all the way from Houston to convince North Carolina teachers that indeed, many things could be finer than to be in Carolina in September.

Some inequality of destruction is good. In particular, it allows teachers to hope that Somewhere Out There is a district that it doesn't suck to work for. Hope may keep them a little more quiet and pliable. Winning the race to the bottom is about being worse, but not too much worse.

It's conceivable (though we have no NC proof yet) that accelerating the destruction of your public ed system might make enough noise to wake people up. To trot out a well-worn but handy cliche, you've got a boiling frog problem, and some places are just cranking the heat too high, too fast. The trick is to race to the bottom slowly and carefully, so that you are not too noticeably worse than everyone else. If people will just be patient, I'm sure they can drag down most of the country's institutions of public education eventually.

Mean What You Say

One of the surreal features of the reformster world is the degree to which words simply don't match actions. It's as if someone sold you a can of pop clearly labeled "cola" and when you opened it up, it was filled with furniture polish.

Suppose somebody said, "This is the most important new program we've ever rolled out. It will revolutionize the industry."

Imagine what would come next. Piles of money spent on training. Lots of time and effort preparing your people for the changes. Long strategic planning meetings to figure out how to most effectively roll out the new program. More money and planning devoted to putting the right supports in place, and a review process to catch and adjust any part of the rollout that turns out to have issues on the ground. Think about how a business rolls out a new product, or the work Disney and Pixar put into creating and releasing a new film.

And yet for Common Core, not so much. Instead, a race to get it implemented quickly and quietly, before anyone could stop or slow the adoption. Let's hurry up so we can get to the Corporations Making Money part.

Or imagine somebody said, "We must get great teachers into every classroom."

What would you think they were about to do? Raise great gouts of money so that they could aggressively recruit and retain the very best? Offer good teachers perks like offices and resources-- maybe hire administrative assistants so that teachers could spend less time dong clerical work and making copies. Perhaps offering teachers job security and retention bonuses. Lots of continuing education at no cost to the teacher, allowing her to keep her edge and grow. And an administrative system that focuses on getting those good teachers the tools they need and allowing them autonomy to use their best professional judgment. And you'd want to find highly trained, super-qualified people to hire (not folks who learned how to teach at a month or two of summer camp.0

And yet, the call for good teachers invariably travels hand in hand with a call to reduce teacher job security and let teachers know that we reserve the right to fire them at any time.

Most reformster teacher-related discussion is backwards. "We must give merit bonuses to the best teachers" invariably means "We must pay everyone else less." We pair a search to find and reward teacher greatness with an evaluation system that says nobody is great for more than an occasional spurt. We declare our interest in great teachers, and then we act as if looking for such teachers is an educational snipe hunt.

What if someone said, "We must put the needs of students ahead of the concerns of adults."

Wouldn't you imagine that this person was about to figure out the needs of students actually are? Might they not start by saying, "Damn! Look at how many children live in poverty. We'd better make sure that they are decently fed and clothed. No matter how much adults don't want to pay for it or talk about how to fix it, we are going to get on that."

Would a group that put students first not do things like, say, consult the vast body of research about how students develop and learn and demand--demand!!-- that educational policies reflect what the research tells us about the growth of human cognition and skills in children. Such a group would declare, "Sire, I do not care how much money you have invested in this program. It clearly does not meet the needs of our students, so good day to you, sir. I said, good day."

Would a group so concerned with the needs of students not consult and listen attentively to the groups of adults in this country professionally devoted to meeting the needs of children and working with those same children-- pediatricians, social workers, and, oh yeah, teachers. Would that group not work with parents, and might they not (cray thought) go out and find some actual students and listen to them.

Instead, we have reformsters who start with the assumption that, somehow, teacher needs and student needs are always diametrically opposed; therefor, if you are denying a teacher request, you must be doing something good for students.

Riding in the great clown car of reform is like riding with someone who keeps saying, "We need to turn right now," and then turns left. Eventually, you start to doubt your own understanding of right and left.

Well, don't doubt. One of the central features of the school reformsters is that the repeatedly say "right" and then turn "left." You are not crazy.

My Doctoral Thesis

I've been following the problems of Dr. Terrence Carter in Connecticut with some interest. It seems that the Dr., "hand picked by Arne Duncan" might not have an actual PhD. Not even a super-easy PhD, but a PhD he just bought. Faked the whole thing. And he's not remotely alone in this.

How can somebody do that, I wondered. Seriously, how do you do that?

Turns out the answer is, "Very easily." Googling "get PhD on line" turns up a ton of paid placements. Walden, Trident, Capella-- they are all jostling for the top of the google heap. But these still require the performance of some nominal classwork. That would be just tooooo haaaaardd. I want to be a school superintendent next week. Can I do better?

Sure can. Just halfway down the second page of results, I found these guys.

They are not particularly subtle or sneaky. "BUY A PHD" says the opening headline. "We are waiting for your order to buy a PhD from us." But let them explain further.

Although quite demanding, people would still prefer to reach for greater heights in terms of academic qualifications.  This is the reason why a doctorate is being offered to maximize the potential of an individual.  Being called a doctor even if you are not a medical doctor by degree is such music in the ears.  To buy a doctorate degree gives a level of competency.  Since it is the highest possible academic degree, you can explore a lot of opportunities if you have credentials that would prove a doctorate degree.

"To buy a doctorate degree gives a level of competency." Well, there you have it. Don't waste your time in classes. It's the degree itself that magically confers prowess on the person. Don't laugh too hard unless you can tell me that you don't know people with "real" doctorates that think the same way.

You can see why a place like this might appeal to someone like Dr. Terrence Carter.

If you buy a PhD you will achieve promotions at your workplace without having to write complex projects and attending classes that will ruin your family or work life.

Yeah, projects and classes that take time just suck.

They do require that you provide some information about work history and prior education (if any). And while the doctorate is their marquee degree-for-sale, these folks offer everything all the way from Associate Degrees up to Honorary Doctorates.

Prices? A Doctorate will run you $250. You can have a professorship for $290. The top-of-the-line honorary doctorate runs $400, while the associate's is a mere $150. You can also indicate how you got the degree-- on line, part time, whatevs. This will "make your documents better."

You can get lots of fine extras. A transcript is $100 (don't forget to indicate what grades you want on it). You can also get up to three letters of recommendation from your professors (boy, do I wish I could see some of those professors' names), and graduation caps, gown and hood. If you're in a real hurry, you can opt for four day delivery by fedex or DHL.

If you doubt the awesomeness, they do have a page of testimonials:

I am a teenage mom and after giving birth to my daughter, i never had time studying in college. I have wanted to become an accountant and land a stable job to support my child. When i got my diploma at expreesuniversitydegree.com oppertuinities for me flooded. My dilemma now is what job i should choose ?? Mommy Tine

It has always been my dream to earn a degree in Doctorate. I have searched for many sites only at expressuinversitydegree i become satisfied. the service is perfect, the degrees are accredited, and the documents are delivered on time. Sally Girbauch, Ph.D

I have enjoyed my previliges being a doctor ! I get the best sit in the plane, I get discounts in restrurants, I get the best promo in my travels. My Ph.D is such as wonder. Dr. Morgan Elenor, Ph.D  in Social Science

Are you beginning to suspect that we have some ELL students working on this site? And no-- no school superintendents offer testimonials.

There is some faith-based leaping involved here. The site would like all your credit card information, plus a piece of id (including a scanned copy). I suppose when you are buying fake credentials on line, you must always consider the possibility that you are dealing with a university run by a Nigerian prince.

It's tempting. A doctorate would give me such clout and importance, and I, too, want the previlige of discounts at restrurants. But even at these prices, I can't really afford it. maybe a kickstarter launch is in order, to con my loyal readers into making my dream come true. Maybe I should ask for some career advice from Dr. Terrence Carter, who appears to have plenty of free time in his future.