Wisconsin Needs to Educate, Not Incarcerate

Yet another policy brief highlights what realists know:  Wisconsin policymakers are presiding over poor policy decisions that threaten to undermine taxpayers' decades-long investment in the state's human capital.

Far from saving our children from lifetimes of debt, those on the neoliberal Left and the conservative Right advocating for either "freeing" state universities from the limitations of state funding in pursuit of market models, or diminishing state spending in a time of austerity, are accomplishing the same goal:  driving up the costs of college attendance and reducing the overall educational attainment of our state's workers.

Forty years ago our grandparents elected officials who invested $14 per $1000 of personal income in higher education.  Today, we elect jokers who put in just $5.  What happened?

Figure courtesy of Tom Mortenson, Postsecondary Education Opportunity

Let's admit it: we aren't leaders anymore, we're laggards. Yes, Wisconsin pays taxes, but we throw away far too much of it on other things.  According to Figure 4 in the new report I referenced above, we rank 32nd thanks to the policy choice displayed above-- relative to per capita income, we are outspent by the likes of Mississippi, Alabama, and West Virginia, not to mention our neighbors Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Minnesota.

Where is that money going instead? One simple word answers the question: corrections.  To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, we fought a War on Drugs, and drugs won-- but heck, we are still throwing our money at the problem.  Legacy spending, you might call it.   Over the last 10 years, spending on corrections went up 9%, while spending on k12 dropped by 6% and spending on higher education dropped 20%. Right, because clearly the goal of Wisconsin taxpayers is not to help educate our children, but rather to lock 'em up and shut 'em up.

For those who manage to avoid prison and get into college, instead of investing in their future, Wisconsin taxpayers seem to want their families to foot the bill. How's that working for us? Well, enrollment in our public institutions is lagging behind those in other states.  We have experienced far slower growth in fall enrollment as measured over both 5-year and 10-year periods, compared to the national average (see Table 6 here). Perhaps most startling is how little enrollment in our 2-year colleges has changed-- there was practically no change at all in enrollment there over the last 5 years (0.6%) while the national average was 16.7%! Perhaps not coincidentally, during that time, tuition and fees at the 2-years (already higher than the national average 5 years ago) rose by 20%.

I have to admit being persistently perplexed at how other parents throughout Wisconsin can sit idly by while we pour money intended for our kids into pits of despair like the state's correctional facilities.  It is far more cost-effective to educate rather than incarcerate.  It's time to make our policymakers do right by the limited dollars we have. Let's re-instate a real early release plan, and rollback the ridiculous "truth in sentencing" guidelines that lengthened parole time, greatly increasing the likelihood of being returned to prison. As UW-Madison expert Walter Dickey notes, there are numerous hidden costs to incarceration, and as state we simply can't afford to be in the corrections business.   

The best solution is to treat education as the crime-fighting technique it really is.  Providing young people with truly viable opportunities later in life gives them something to really aim for, helping keep them off the streets and on the job.  A recent UW-Madison graduate, economist Ben Cowan, finds that a $1,000 reduction in tuition and fees at two-year colleges is associated with a 26% decline in the number of sexual partners an adolescent has, and a 23% decline in number of days in the past month he used marijuana.  Policies that support affordable higher education may simultaneously support reductions in the costs of incarceration, in a virtuous cycle that is win-win for all.

This is pure common sense and we all know it.  It's simply time we demand that our "leaders" catch up.

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A New Year

We hope all our readers enjoyed relaxing holidays and have returned refreshed for the new year. While our family and professional lives continue to make it difficult to blog with great frequency, we hope you'll continue to read our infrequent commentary and join in the discussion during 2011.

A few thoughts to start the new year...

(1) Outcomes First? If outcomes are what really matter in education, it is interesting that so many advocates, commentators and policy organizations seem to count adoption of favored policy reforms as ends in themselves. We are all guilty of this to some degree. It is only when there is a research base to suggest that specific reforms and programs work that there is a strong argument to be made. Examples might include targeted class size reduction in grades k-3, high-quality early childhood education, and comprehensive, multi-year induction support for new teachers. But, at a macro level, certain arguments fall apart when there is no evidence to back them up, such as teachers' unions being a wart on the ass of progress. Take Massachusetts, for example, a strong union state. It leads the nation in TIMMS scores in spite of the fact that the Massachusetts Teachers Association looms large in state politics.

(2) Teachers, Teachers: One of the best developments of 2010 was an increased focus on teachers and on teacher effectiveness in particular. This focus was not always for the better, as in the case of the Los Angeles Times' decision to publish value-added scores for individual teachers or the misleading, union-bashing documentary Waiting For Superman. But an overall focus on the outcomes of teaching is the right policy conversation to be having. However, that conversation must lead to solutions that create comprehensive structures and systems to maximize benefits for all involved -- students, teachers, parents, etc. Regular feedback about teaching is critical for educators, not just summative data or annual evaluations that don't provide actionable feedback. A key goal around improving teacher effectiveness should be the development of schools and districts as communities of practice that make teaching more of a collective endeavor and support all educators to strengthen their individual practices and skills.

(3) ESEA: I am increasingly of the mind that something -- but not much of anything -- will happen with regard to reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 2011. If successful, reauthorization will primarily serve as a token of bipartisanship that both parties can carry into the 2012 elections to say "we can work together to get things done." If accomplished, it may be one of the few significant bipartisan accomplishments of this Congress. Look for substantive tweaks to the No Child Left Behind Act rather than a wholesale overhaul of it. More flexibility around AYP. Attention to the needs of rural districts. More local control. Perhaps a stronger focus on teacher performance pay, charter schools and school choice options -- some elements of the Obama Blueprint combined with priority issues for Republicans like John Kline and Lamar Alexander. And level funding, at best.

(4) Exclusivity: One of my wishes for the New Year is that the DC echo chamber would become less and less influential in conversations about education policy. I am constantly amazed at how regularly the usual suspects parrot, squawk about and retweet the comments and ideas of the other usual suspects, especially those with whom they have personal or proprietary relationships. And how the same usual suspects are quoted saying the same usual things by the mainstream and educational media. This dynamic plays out, too, in conversations within multiple exclusive fiefdoms within education that generally have little to no intersection with fiefdoms with competing worldviews or different policy priorities. As someone who once worked in DC and who now works for a non-DC-based national non-profit organization that has relationships with all sides of the education community, I am especially cognizant of this dynamic in which voices outside of the Beltway 'influentials' are not heard.

One alternative stream recently profiled by Rick Hess and Jay Greene are academics doing policy-relevant research and cutting a high profile in policy conversations. We need more of that type of intellect in play -- and not just from economists. Another is the rise of state-based reform groups like Stand for Children, the PIE Network, Delaware's Rodel Foundation and Oregon's Chalkboard Project. Finally, the voice of actual teachers is too often missing from policy conversations. Fortunately, there are numerous efforts afoot to remedy this. Two, in particular, worth checking out are Teach PLUS and the VIVA Project. My organization, the New Teacher Center, in conjunction with the College Board, recently profiled real-life teachers in a publication about the importance of teacher mentoring.

One way or another, 2011 undoubtedly will be an interesting year for education.

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Race and Debt

The College Board's Advocacy and Policy Center reports that "too many students are borrowing more than they are likely able to manage" and this is particularly true for black undergraduates. According to researchers, fully 27% of black BA recipients borrow more than $30,000 for college, compared to 16% of white BA recipients. The gap is especially large among independent students (those who are a bit older, are parents, or independent for other reasons)-- more than 1 in 3 black independent students who earn BA's graduate with high levels of debt, compared to less than 1 in 4 white independents.

This is a trend we need to know more about. There have been a few articles written about race differences in college financing patterns and receptivity to financial aid, but none have been especially adept at sorting out the underlying reasons for variation by race/ethnicity. Are the patterns attributable to factors which map onto race in this country (e.g. poverty, segregation, school quality, etc) or to factors more closely related to beliefs, expectations, values, etc?

I'm working on this question in the context of a study I co-direct in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Scholars Longitudinal Study is exploring the impact of need-based financial aid on college outcomes. We've got very rich survey data from students' first two years of college, as we explore it we're beginning to learn a lot. For example, the data (from a sample of more than 2,000 Pell Grant recipients attending 2-year, 4-year, and technical colleges) indicate that black undergraduates are far more likely than white students to know who to contact in their financial aid office and to seek out help, yet at the same time they are less likely to feel comfortable doing so. They are twice as likely as white students to fill out the FAFSA without any help, and almost half as likely to get FAFSA assistance from a parent. In their first year of college alone, they are more than twice as likely to report receiving a private, non-federal loan.

As the College Board report concludes, too much college debt can contribute to future financial insecurity. Many of us hope that increasing rates of educational attainment among students from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds will perpetuate a virtuous cycle benefiting all families-- but those prospects will undoubtedly be diminished if debt takes its toll.

Image courtesy of John Fewings

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Fight The Power!

Dana Goldstein raises some serious questions and concerns in her American Prospect article ("Testing Testing") about the process of developing national academic standards. The process is dominated by three organizations--two (ACT and the College Board) with a proprietary interest in ensuring that assessments are a featured component of any final product.

The problem is that the initiative's co-signers aren't just state governments--they are also testing groups: Achieve, a nonprofit that advocates for more effective standardized tests; the College Board, maker of the SAT; and ACT, which administers a competing college-entrance exam. Right now, the College Board and ACT have little engagement with the K-12 education sector. They do, however, have ample experience creating and administering national exams. And there is little doubt that one goal of this national-standards process is to create standardized tests--not one single national test but perhaps two or three options from which states can choose.

As oligopolists, it makes total sense for the College Board and ACT to be eyeing, together, expansion into the immense K-12 assessment market. But given these testing companies' track records, it is worth asking if this is a wise idea. A number of studies have found SAT scores are far less effective than high school grades in predicting how well students will perform in college, and professors say standardized-test prep does little to teach students the research and critical thinking skills they will need at the college level. Because of these shortcomings, an increasing number of colleges--led by the giant University of California system--have made standardized test scores optional for admission.

It would be a shame if national education reform further cemented a system in which passing standardized tests is the goal of learning.

While others (including Dan Brown) have pointed out that only one classroom teacher has a seat at the table, Goldstein follows the money, so to speak. I am disappointed, although not surprised, that the national organizations leading this effort have basically turned it over to Testing, Inc. The corporate boards of both the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association are littered with representatives of the student assessment industry--ETS, McGraw Hill, and Pearson in the case of CCSSO; and ACT, the College Board, ETS, and Pearson in the case of NGA. To their defense, both CCSSO and NGA list these organizations directly on their respective web sites. As a former employee at NGA, I also can honestly say that their funding did in no way impact the substantive advice provided to the nation's Governors when I worked there. But does it provide these companies ready access to Governors and their senior staff at regular meetings? Sure. Does it raise questions about their role in this standards-setting process and create the appearance of bias? Absolutely.

Of the 29 slots on the mathematics and English-language arts Work Groups, 15 are taken by employees or affiliates of ACT and The College Board. Another seven slots are occupied by Achieve, Inc. (Some individuals serve on both Work Groups.) Of the remaining seven slots, two are filled by America's Choice, two by Student Achievement Partners, and single seats by a communications firm, a consultant, and a professor. In addition, 37 individuals serve on twin Feedback Groups for both math and English/LA standards. They are overwhelmingly higher education faculty. Of the 19 members of the math feedback group, 15 represent higher education with a single k-12 teacher in the mix. Of the 18 members on the English/LA feedback group, 14 are professors and there is one "instructional performance coach" from a public charter school as well.

The decision to cut k-12 educators out of the standards development process contrasts sharply with the rhetoric of President Obama and Secretary Duncan about including educators in the development of education reforms. Indeed, it would "be a shame" if Testing Inc. rode this gravy train to the (hopefully not) inevitable conclusion suggested by Goldstein's article. Of course, in the end, it is the product rather than the process that really matters. In this case, one can hope that some of the participants' potentially parochial and proprietary interests don't define the outcome or the intent of the entire effort. The standards should be developed based on what is best for students and how such standards can best be utilized by educators -- not to ensure their ease in being converted into multiple-choice tests.

Hat tip to TWIE.

UPDATE: See Education Week story (7/30/2009).

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