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 Consciousness- Raising

• 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

Unofficial Official

Base “Out of every 100 9th graders”

8th graders, 12 years from 1988

Type X-Sectional 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 rocket-scientists 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 subjectSo 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 collegeFor 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.