{"feed":{"date":"2017\/08","num_posts":14,"item":[{"id":"110196","title":"Higher Education Is Rigged Against Students","byline":"","excerpt":"
As millions of college students across the country pack their bags for the fall semester, many are wondering how they are going to pay for it.<\/p>\n
Millennials today face tuition and fees three times higher<\/a> than their parents did in the ‘70s and ‘80s, adjusting for inflation. Skyrocketing costs are forcing students to borrow money at historic levels. Nationwide, Americans owe more than $1.4 trillion<\/a> in student debt – double what they owed in 2009.<\/p>\n With the rise in tuition rates and student debt showing no sign of slowing, it might seem as if our nation’s higher education system is rigged against the very students it is designed to serve. In fact, it is.<\/p>\n Empowered by the federal government, a powerful cartel of college accreditors is stifling competition, driving up tuition costs and limiting the options available to students.<\/p>\n","author":"David Barnes","link":"http:\/\/www.realcleareducation.com\/articles\/2017\/08\/31\/higher_education_is_rigged_against_students_110196.html","image":"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/41\/410979_5_.jpg","postDate":"August 31, 2017"},{"id":"110195","title":"The Problem With 'Privilege'","byline":"","excerpt":" Students are heading off to college around the country this month. In addition to the disciplines of chemistry, history and psychology, they will also learn a great deal about the politics of their faculty and administrators. One key word they will encounter and be expected to understand is “privilege.” They should be prepared.<\/p>\n Today, the Left is busy trumpeting an ever-expanding list of privilege (e.g. white-privilege, hetero-privilege, Christian-privilege). The Right, on the other hand, either works itself up into a lather or poo-poos the whole idea.<\/p>\n As is often the case with such issues, both sides have a point and both are missing the larger issue. We have once again oversimplified a complex social reality, creating a stereotype of “privilege.”<\/p>\n First of all, “privilege” is a misnomer. Privilege has to do with special treatment. If one group faces discrimination, it does not necessarily mean another receives a particular privilege. If Gingers get picked on, it doesn’t mean the rest of us enjoy non-gingered privilege. What we are talking about are relative advantages, which are indeed real. Overuse of the word “privilege” turns people off; they are then less likely to stop and listen.<\/p>\n","author":"Jeffrey K. Mann","link":"http:\/\/www.realcleareducation.com\/articles\/2017\/08\/28\/the_problem_with_privilege_110195.html","image":"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/41\/414796_5_.jpg","postDate":"August 28, 2017"},{"id":"110194","title":"Yearning for More Robust Choice Than Charters Can Provide","byline":"","excerpt":" Charter schools are not going to disappear overnight from the menu of education-reform options. However, the precipitous decline in popular support for these semi-autonomous public schools, as shown by a 2017 EdNext Poll<\/a>, is stunning and certainly a cause for serious reflection by the movement’s boosters and sympathizers.<\/p>\n A drop of 12 percentage points from 2016 to 2017—from 51 percent support down to 39 percent—is particularly noteworthy given that it comes in a survey overseen by highly respected, fair-minded scholars at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and the Harvard Kennedy School. The dip in charter support was the largest change the pollsters found in opinion on a broad range of education issues. Support for charters declined in similar proportions among Republicans and Democrats.<\/p>\n It’s also significant that the latest EdNext Poll showed private choice, which offers families a far more robust array of options than charters, gaining in public esteem. Opposition to universal vouchers—publicly-funded scholarships available to all—shrank from 44 percent to 37 percent, while opposition to tax-credit-funded scholarships dipped to just 24 percent (from 29 percent in 2016). The scholarship tax credits were the most popular form of school choice, with nearly seven of every 10 respondents supporting that option.<\/p>\n In the 2016 poll, universal vouchers –an idea originally championed by free-market economist Milton Friedman – were more popular among Democrats than Republicans— and by an 8-percentage-point margin. Who knew? Perhaps a partial explanation lies in the high level of support for all-out choice among African-Americans, who vote heavily Democratic despite that party’s catering to the anti-parental-choice teachers' unions.<\/p>\n","author":"Robert Holland","link":"http:\/\/www.realcleareducation.com\/articles\/2017\/08\/25\/yearning_for_more_robust_choice_than_charters_can_provide_110194.html","image":"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/42\/424489_5_.jpg","postDate":"August 25, 2017"},{"id":"110193","title":"Can Technology Help Prevent Improper Pell Payments?","byline":"","excerpt":" Earlier this summer, the U.S. Department of Education disclosed the fact<\/a> that it had made over $6 billion in improper payments across its vast portfolio of student loans and grants. The department’s revelation was both alarming and multifaceted. Incorrect amounts were disbursed resulting in overages. Unnecessary payments were made altogether. And, in some cases, payments were made to the wrong students entirely.<\/p>\n Well over $2 billion was erroneously paid out in Pell Grants alone—need-based aid designed to help make college more affordable for low-income students. Shockingly, Inspector General Kathleen Tighe acknowledged that while she was committed to “recommending corrective actions,” the Department had no plan in place to sort out, or address, the “root cause” of its sweeping problem.<\/p>\n As a former financial aid director with an understanding of both the technological and procedural underpinnings of aid disbursement processes used by American colleges and universities, I am deeply concerned by what appears to be a growing problem. Among institutions charged with administering the Pell Grant program, improper payments surged<\/a> from 1.52 percent in the fiscal year 2015 to 7.85 percent in the fiscal year 2016.<\/p>\n As a former beneficiary of federal aid, I’m also afraid that failure to address improper payments threatens the potential for programs like Pell play in making good on the promise of higher education for low-income students. That risk is especially troubling, given the potential to prevent improper payments through well-established, but inconsistently utilized, processes for verification of self-reported student financial information. Here’s why:<\/p>\n","author":"Amy Glynn","link":"http:\/\/www.realcleareducation.com\/articles\/2017\/08\/22\/can_technology_help_prevent_improper_pell_payments__110193.html","image":"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/41\/414119_5_.jpg","postDate":"August 22, 2017"},{"id":"110192","title":"Response to Max Eden on Vouchers and Segregation","byline":"","excerpt":" Max Eden, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, recently wrote<\/a> in an opinion piece for RealClearEducation that the American Federation of Teachers had launched a public relations offensive to “smear school vouchers as a racist tool for resegregation,” citing a speech I gave recently. Eden suggested that I said that “modern voucher programs have caused segregation.” I made no such claims. I requested this opportunity to clarify what I did say in the speech Eden incorrectly characterized.<\/em><\/p>\n I don’t know whether Max Eden did not read, did not understand or deliberately distorted a speech<\/a> I recently delivered. Regardless, in his piece written last week, he mischaracterized what I said, so I appreciate this opportunity to correct the record. Last month, speaking to 1,400 educators, I laid out a path forward to strengthen public education for all children in America, 90 percent of whom attend public schools. And, since the Trump administration is pursuing different goals—the devastating disinvestment from public education in favor of school vouchers and privatization—I cited the overwhelming evidence that school vouchers are doubly harmful: They negatively affect student achievement, and they drain resources from public schools.<\/p>\n But Eden distilled all this to “playing the race card.” I strongly disagree, although I did talk about race. I noted that, in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, some white segregationists used school vouchers to resist school integration. Voucher advocates today have different intentions but, regardless of their motivation, vouchers still tend to segregate by race and class, as the Century Foundation<\/a>, the Center for American Progress<\/a> and journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones<\/a> have found. And the evidence is unequivocal that school vouchers<\/a> fail most of the children they purportedly are intended to benefit—children who are disproportionately black or brown and poor.<\/p>\n Clearly, our nation is still afflicted by racial bigotry; the actions by white supremacists in Charlottesville made that clear. Rather than criticize my recitation of a historical fact as exploiting racial issues, let’s confront the very real scourges of discrimination, hatred, segregation and bigotry. Why not demand that no school receiving taxpayer money will discriminate against students based on race, religion, gender or sexual orientation? Why not insist that public funds that support public schools not be diverted to private school vouchers?<\/p>\n","author":"Randi Weingarten","link":"http:\/\/www.realcleareducation.com\/articles\/2017\/08\/21\/response_to_max_eden_on_vouchers_and_segregation.html","image":"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/42\/423451_5_.jpg","postDate":"August 21, 2017"},{"id":"110191","title":"Why Study the Classics?","byline":"","excerpt":" Why study the Classics? Classics offers, at least on a superficial analysis, little in the way of short-term gains or practical real-world benefit. Have you heard about all of our major institutions and nonprofits throwing obscene amounts of money at those who can dicere Latine<\/em>?<\/p>\n Me neither.<\/p>\n In our current educational climate, the focus rests almost exclusively on job preparedness, with the result that STEM education is the preferred method for our pragmatic moment. This focus often forces advocates of learning Latin and Ancient Greek to proffer utilitarian reasons for the study of antiquity: it trains you to think logically, to read carefully, to pay attention to detail and to solve complex problems!<\/p>\n These are all true, but with something of the whiff of apology about them. And self-justification is almost always unbecoming.<\/p>\n","author":"Eric Hutchinson","link":"http:\/\/www.realcleareducation.com\/articles\/2017\/08\/17\/why_study_the_classics_110191.html","image":"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/42\/425922_5_.jpg","postDate":"August 17, 2017"},{"id":"110190","title":"Dear Students, Don’t Be a Commodity","byline":"","excerpt":" A recent report<\/a> from the Census Bureau found that one in three Americans ages 25 and older holds at least a bachelor’s degree. While producing more college graduates than ever before seems like good news, it reveals a growing challenge for young people entering the labor market: the commodification of the college diploma.<\/p>\n A commodity is a product or good, usually a raw material or agricultural item, which can be bought or sold. One of the defining characteristics of a commodity is that it doesn’t have quality differentiation in the market. If I take my bushel of wheat to market, it will sell for the same price as your bushel of wheat. There is no difference between the two products, so neither of us can command a better price.<\/p>\n The commodity model works just the same with people. With so many students graduating from college, holding a degree is no longer the differentiator it once was. It has become the bare minimum.<\/p>\n Commodification is a big part of why we see such high underemployment among recent college graduates. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reports<\/a> that 44 percent of recent college graduates – people ages 22 to 27 with a bachelor’s degree or higher — are working in jobs that typically do not require a college degree.<\/p>\n","author":"Vince Bertram","link":"http:\/\/www.realcleareducation.com\/articles\/2017\/08\/16\/dear_students_dont_be_a_commodity_110190.html","image":"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/42\/425760_5_.jpg","postDate":"August 16, 2017"},{"id":"110189","title":"Vouchers Improve Student Outcomes and School Diversity","byline":"","excerpt":" Last month, the Center for American Progress (CAP) and the American Federation for Teachers (AFT) launched a joint public relations offensive to smear school vouchers as a racist tool of resegregation. CAP’s recent report, “The Racist Origins of Private School Vouchers<\/a>,” highlighted some southern communities that used vouchers to resist court-ordered integration by sending white students to private schools. In a speech soon after, AFT president Randi Weingarten labeled<\/a> school choice as “the only slightly more polite [cousin] of segregation.” <\/p>\n Residential segregation has been, is and will continue to be the main driver of educational segregation. Yet you do not hear Randi Weingarten and her ilk complaining about that, much less proposing to do anything about it. Instead, they defend the segregated status quo system that educates 50 million students by raising the alarm bell of the hypothetical effects of a policy that serves 400,000.<\/p>\n CAP and AFT have modified the old advice oft given to lawyers: If you don’t have the law or the facts, pound on the table and play the race card. They are using a shameful yet fundamentally minor chapter in the history of American education to distract from the significant segregation and the lackluster results seen in our traditional, zip-code based system of public education.<\/p>\n For a few short months earlier this year, the anti-choice crowd could actually point to a few studies<\/a> showing negative results from voucher programs. But follow-ups<\/a> on those studies revealed that, after seeing an initial loss when they transferred to private schools, those students caught back up after another year or two. Hence, the lion’s share of the research literature suggests that vouchers help students, both in the short and long run. In fact, studies suggest benefits from vouchers that go well beyond academic achievement. One study<\/a> of Washington, D.C.’s voucher program showed even as the program had limited effects on standardized tests, it increased high school graduation rates from 70 percent to 91 percent. In Milwaukee, researchers found<\/a> that voucher students were significantly less likely to be accused of or commit crimes.<\/p>\n","author":"Max Eden","link":"http:\/\/www.realcleareducation.com\/articles\/2017\/08\/15\/vouchers_improve_student_outcomes_and_school_diversity_110189.html","image":"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/42\/422557_5_.jpg","postDate":"August 15, 2017"},{"id":"110187","title":"DeVos Scales Back Federal Role, Lets States Lead","byline":"","excerpt":" State lawmakers around the country are pushing bold and ambitious education reform plans and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos appears content to let them lead the way.<\/p>\n “It’s encouraging to see so many states pass pro-student and pro-parent legislation that expands the educational opportunities available to children and their families,” DeVos told RealClearEducation in a statement. “I’ve always said that parents and educators at the grassroots level know best what their students need.”<\/p>\n While the secretary is a vocal proponent of school choice, she prefers that states and local officials take the initiative. Even with Republican control of the White House and Capitol Hill, DeVos has pledged not to push a federal school choice program and has indicated that any federal action would come in the form of support for choice programs that states can opt to participate in.<\/p>\n The secretary's philosophy runs counter to much of the modern history of American public education. Starting with President Lyndon Johnson's Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, nearly every administration has exerted some sort of federal influence over K-12 education, from President Jimmy Carter's creation of the Department of Education to President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind to President Obama’s Race to the Top.<\/p>\n","author":"Christopher Beach","link":"http:\/\/www.realcleareducation.com\/articles\/2017\/08\/11\/devos_scales_back_federal_role_lets_states_lead_110187.html","image":"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/42\/422315_5_.jpg","postDate":"August 11, 2017"},{"id":"110188","title":"A Campus Free Speech Comeback","byline":"","excerpt":" At colleges and universities across the country, the right to speak freely faces brutal attacks on a regular basis. But the tide is turning in favor of free expression. Last week, North Carolina enacted bipartisan legislation to protect speech on campus by overwhelming margins.<\/p>\n North Carolina isn’t alone. Arizona passed campus free speech protections last year, and California, Michigan and Wisconsin are considering similar legislation. It’s not surprising. The furor over free speech on campus has affected people across the political spectrum—and that’s creating some unlikely bedfellows.<\/p>\n By now, the saga of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, is well-known. Students at the avowed progressive school shouted down Bret Weinstein, the self-professed “deeply progressive” faculty member, after he opposed the idea of asking all white members of the campus community to leave school for a day. As racially charged protests overran the campus, images of the unrest spread across social media and even national television. In one video, protesters trapped the school president<\/a> and would not allow him to use the bathroom without an escort. Weinstein told the Wall Street Journal<\/a> that campus officials could not guarantee his safety.<\/p>\n Colleges must be places that allow for the free exchange of ideas, but schools are failing in this role. A string of speaker disinvitations has been punctuated by violent demonstrations that blocked lecturers earlier this year at Middlebury College<\/a> in Vermont and Claremont McKenna College<\/a> in California. At Middlebury, the response was milquetoast: some students had a letter placed in their “permanent record;” no one was suspended. At Claremont, students were suspended—some for as much as one year—or placed on probation. These two instances show how an ad hoc approach to discipline is inadequate to deal with free speech cases.<\/p>\n","author":"Jonathan Butcher, Jim Manley","link":"http:\/\/www.realcleareducation.com\/articles\/2017\/08\/11\/a_campus_free_speech_comeback_110188.html","image":"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/41\/415767_5_.jpg","postDate":"August 11, 2017"},{"id":"110186","title":"NextGen Standards: A Pre-K Teacher's Perspective","byline":"","excerpt":" Whether we know it or not, we are all stakeholders in our local public schools and helping prepare children to be productive in life. Strong academic standards that push students to strive for their highest potential benefits our entire community. As a prekindergarten teacher, my role is to provide my students with a strong foundation for future learning and I expect standards that respect early childhood development.<\/p>\n That’s why the New York State Education Department’s process to revise the learning standards from pre-K through 12th grade is so important to me. High standards can help set students on the path to success while clear expectations help educators level the playing field.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, when I read the first draft of the standards back in September, I felt let down. What I expect for pre-K reflects the joyful learning environment created by and for our students matched with developmentally appropriate and meaningful standards. In this first set of revised standards, neither joy nor the purposeful benchmarks were adequately represented. Instead, there were still many standards that didn’t have appropriate grade bands, lacked a realistic timeline to acquire and cultivate skills or were simply out of the range of appropriate pre-K behaviors.<\/p>\n Now, after reading the revised draft<\/a> for the pre-K standards in June, I see changes reflective of feedback, including my own, as not only received but incorporated into the process to create more meaningful and attainable standards that align more appropriately with child development.<\/p>\n","author":"Sara Garro","link":"http:\/\/www.realcleareducation.com\/articles\/2017\/08\/04\/nextgen_standards_a_pre-kindergarten_teacher_perspective_110186.html","image":"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/42\/423451_5_.jpg","postDate":"August 4, 2017"},{"id":"110184","title":"Johns Hopkins University’s Free Expression Posturing","byline":"","excerpt":" Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins University—America’s first research university, currently 10th on U.S. News & World Report’s college rankings—numbers among the nation’s most prestigious higher-education institutions. Along with this blue-blood pedigree, however, Hopkins’ also boasts one of the nation’s more abysmal track records for free expression and diversity of thought.<\/p>\n For starters, the university holds the worst possible speech-code rating<\/a> from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE): a “red light” rating, awarded to institutions whose policies “both clearly and substantially restrict freedom of speech.” Particularly egregious, for example, is Hopkins’ inherently-subjective, neo-Victorian “civility” policy—which declares in bolded italics, “Rude, disrespectful behavior is unwelcome and will not be tolerated.<\/strong><\/em>” While it may seem reasonable at first glance, in reality, this and other “zero-tolerance” policies are invariably used to silence heterodox speech rather than to inspire comity.<\/p>\n Johns Hopkins ranks in the bottom half of institutions on Heterodox Academy’s new “Guide to Colleges<\/a>,” which scores schools on a scale from 0 to 100 for how likely they are to welcome viewpoint diversity and open discussion. Even after their rating was increased following the Agora Institute announcement, Hopkins still only receives a paltry score of 40. The guide cites a September 2016 study<\/a> of faculty voter registration at 40 leading research universities that found a 35:1 Democrat-to-Republican ratio among Johns Hopkins’ faculty, making them one of the least politically diverse institutions surveyed.<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, near-total ideological uniformity and sweeping strictures on speech make for a noxious combination. Just ask now-former Johns Hopkins professor Trent Bertrand, who was barred from his classroom without warning last December and suspended from teaching after three students (in a class of 68) complained that a joke he told created a “hostile learning environment.” Recounting his experience last month, Bertrand related<\/a> how he’d been suspended before the investigation into the students’ complaints had even begun:<\/p>\n In an ongoing effort to promote STEM – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – education, Ivanka Trump helped read “Rosie Revere Engineer” to a group of young girls at the National Museum of American History last week. Alongside Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, she emphasized the themes of resilience and confidence seen in the story.<\/p>\n “You are the next generation of innovators and inventors,” the first daughter told the group. “If you need someone in the passenger seat, I’ll be there to help you build it.”<\/p>\n Trump has made several such appearances recently, helping bring attention to the fact that women, who make up roughly half of America’s workforce, represent less than a third of those working in STEM-related professions. The author of the recent book “Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success,” she also established the Ivanka M. Trump Charitable Fund with proceeds from the book, which will grant $100,000 to a STEM program for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.<\/p>\n “Boys & Girls Clubs' STEM program and STEM Centers for Innovation are helping produce a generation of STEM-ready youth who are equipped to fill the jobs of the future, become our next generation of innovators and solve our nation's most critical challenges,” she said in an April 20 Facebook announcement<\/a>.<\/p>\n","author":"Ford Carson","link":"http:\/\/www.realcleareducation.com\/articles\/2017\/08\/03\/future_of_stem_education_in_doubt_110185.html","image":"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/42\/423914_5_.jpg","postDate":"August 3, 2017"},{"id":"110183","title":"National Database Could Help Students Pick College—and Income","byline":"","excerpt":" Routine data collected by the federal government could help students choose a college and a major—and help them calculate how much they stand to make once they graduate. Although the information exists, a searchable national database that could help students and their families make more informed decisions about college does not.<\/p>\n The Higher Education Opportunity Act<\/a>, passed in 2008, prevents the federal government from developing a database that would link information on students and colleges to outcomes, including post-college earnings and student loan repayment rates. But that could change. Some members of Congress are interested in overturning this ban. A bipartisan bill<\/a> introduced in May would create a postsecondary student data system that would be national in scope, collecting data on individual students’ college journeys and earnings after graduation. The data would be used only in aggregate and not to reveal personal details.<\/p>\n Ideally, such a database would connect pertinent information culled from colleges, the Department of Education, tax records and other sources while providing the necessary and critical security protections. In addition to aiding student decision-making, the data could also be used by colleges and federal and state governments to better allocate resources that end up helping students.<\/p>\n In the absence of a federal system that links students’ college experience and later earnings, states and private companies have tried to fill the gap.<\/p>\n","author":"Charles Goldman","link":"http:\/\/www.realcleareducation.com\/articles\/2017\/08\/01\/national_database_could_help_students_pick_collegeand_income_110183.html","image":"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/41\/419191_5_.jpg","postDate":"August 1, 2017"}]}}\n","author":"Grant Addison","link":"http:\/\/www.realcleareducation.com\/articles\/2017\/08\/03\/johns_hopkins_universitys_free_expression_posturing_110184.html","image":"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/42\/423911_5_.jpg","postDate":"August 3, 2017"},{"id":"110185","title":"Future of STEM Education in Doubt","byline":"","excerpt":"