e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Category: Policy

  • Forbes Fantasies: Why Hillsdale College is not in the College Scorecard (hint, boring reasons)

    Richard Vedder wrote a particularly uninformed article in Forbes on Friday about the Education Department (ED) not including Hillsdale College in the new College Scorecard. Freed from the burden of facts or research, Vedder let loose the dogs of conspiracy [emphasis in original].

    The Obama Administration, with much hype, released its College Scorecard recently, designed to help students find the college that best fits their interest. The Scorecard includes some interesting information, such as data on student repayment of college loan debt, the average post-graduate earnings, et cetera. But as we delve more into it, something arguably sinister is revealed: the Scorecard excludes mention of several prominent colleges with a conservative or traditional academic orientation.

    Vedder then speculates that the reasons for the omission are A) Hillsdale not accepting any form of federal financial assistance and the associated regulations and B) Hillsdale having a conservative orientation. At the end of the short post Vedder comes back to reality.

    It may be my sinister thinking is unwarranted, that there were reasons unrelated to ideology or refusal to accept financial aid that figure in the exclusion of these schools. But even so, they are legitimate, even accredited, educational institutions, and their exclusion diminishes the utility and the perceived integrity of the new Scorecard.

    Would that Richard of the First Paragraph would talk to Richard of the Last Paragraph before posting, because Richard the Last got it right. The sinister thinking is unwarranted. (more…)

  • College Scorecard Problem Gets Worse: One in three associate’s degree institutions are not included

    Late yesterday I posted about the Education Department (ED) new College Scorecard and how it omits a large number of community colleges based on an arbitrary metric.

    In particular, the Education Department (ED) is using a questionable method of determining whether an institution is degree-granting rather than relying on the IPEDS data source. In a nutshell, if an institution awarded more certificates than degrees, then it is not labeled as “predominantly awarded 2-year or 4-yeard degrees” and therefore excluded.

    I am not quite confident that the explanation for the vast majority of missing schools is based on this finding. In short, if an institutions awards more certificates than degrees, ED removes them from the public-facing website even if they are technically degree-granting institutions.

    Originally it appeared this situation encompassed 17% of all community colleges, but further analysis shows it to be more significant. (more…)

  • 17% Of Community Colleges Are Not Included In College Scorecard

    In addition to the highly-misleading usage of ‘first-time full-time’ qualification for official graduate rates reported in the College Scorecard, there appears to be another major issue with the data. In particular, the Education Department (ED) is using a questionable method of determining whether an institution is degree-granting rather than relying on the IPEDS data source. In a nutshell, if an institution awarded more certificates than degrees, then it is not labeled as “predominantly awarded 2-year or 4-yeard degrees” and therefore excluded.

    Russ Poulin noted in his WCET post that several community colleges were missing from the Scorecard based on a quick spot check:

    • Colorado – Aims, Front Range, Pueblo, and Otero Community Colleges.
    • Arizona – Rio Salado College.
    • California – Bakersfield College.

    The consumer website itself offers no explanation that certain degree-granting schools are excluded. The Technical Paper that corresponds to the data release explains that selection of schools on page 28: (more…)

  • Ed Tech Evaluation Plan: More problems than I initially thought

    Late last week I described the new plan from the US Department of Education (ED) and their Office of Educational Technology (OET) to “call for better methods for evaluating educational apps”. Essentially the ED is seeking proposals for new ed tech evaluation methods so that they can share the results with schools – helping them evaluate specific applications. My argument [updated DOE to be ED]:

    Ed tech apps by themselves do not “work” in terms of improving academic performance. What “works” are pedagogical innovations and/or student support structure that are often enabled by ed tech apps. Asking if apps works is looking at the question inside out. The real question should be “Do pedagogical innovations or student support structures work, under which conditions, and which technology or apps support these innovations?”. [snip]

    I could see that for certain studies, you could use the ED template and accomplish the same goal inside out (define the conditions as specific pedagogical usage or student support structures), thus giving valuable information. What I fear is that the pervasive assumption embedded in the program setup, asking over and over “does this app work” will prove fatal. You cannot put technology as the center of understanding academic performance.

    Upon further thought as well as prompting from the comments and private notes, this ED plan has even more problems that I initially thought. (more…)

  • US Department of Education: Almost a good idea on ed tech evaluation

    Richard Culatta from the US Department of Education (DOE, ED, never sure of proper acronym) wrote a Medium post today describing a new ED initiative to evaluate ed tech app effectiveness.

    As increasingly more apps and digital tools for education become available, families and teachers are rightly asking how they can know if an app actually lives up to the claims made by its creators. The field of educational technology changes rapidly with apps launched daily; app creators often claim that their technologies are effective when there is no high-quality evidence to support these claims. Every app sounds world-changing in its app store description, but how do we know if an app really makes a difference for teaching and learning?

    He then describes the traditional one-shot studies of the past (control group, control variables, year or so of studies, get results) and notes:

    This traditional approach is appropriate in many circumstances, but just does not work well in the rapidly changing world of educational technology for a variety of reasons.

    The reasons? (more…)

  • ED and CBE: Example of higher ed “structural barrier to change” that is out of institutions’ control

    There has been a great conversation going on in the comments to my recent post “Universities As Innovators That Have Difficulty Adopting Their Own Changes” on too many relevant issues to summarize (really, go read the ongoing comment thread). They mostly center on the institution and faculty reward system, yet those are not the only sources of structural barriers to change that lead institutions to this “difficulty adopting their own changes”. Increasingly there are outside forces that both encourage change and resist change, and it is important to recognize the impact of the entire higher education ecosystem.

    Yesterday Amy Laitinen from New America wrote an excellent article titled “Whatever Happened to the Department’s Competency-Based Education Experiments?” highlighting just such an example.

    About this time two years ago, President Obama went on his college affordability bus tour and unveiled his plan to take on the rising costs of higher education in front of thousands of students at SUNY Buffalo. Promoting innovation and competition was a key part of his plan and President Obama held up competency-based education (CBE) up as one of the “innovative new ways to prepare our students for a 21st century economy and maintain a high level of quality without breaking the bank.” The President touted Southern New Hampshire University’s College for America CBE approach. The university “gives course credit based on how well students master the material, not just on how many hours they spend in the classroom,” he explained. “So the idea would be if you’re learning the material faster, you can finish faster, which means you pay less and you save money.” This earned applause from students in the audience as well as from CBE practitioners around the country. [snip]

    The problem is that day was nearly two years ago and the CBE experimental sites are not yet off the ground. (more…)

  • Miami, Harvard and MIT: Disability discrimination lawsuits focused on schools as content providers

    In the discussions at Google+ based on last week’s post about the Miami University of Ohio disability discrimination lawsuit ((Insert joke here about G+ and its hundreds of active users.)), George Station made two important points that deserve more visibility.

    It’s been a-coming for several years now. Cal State has some pretty strong rules in place for compliance with ADA and state-level disability laws. Still, [Universal Design for Learning] UDL is a little-known acronym on any campus you care to visit, and staff support is probably one person in an office, except for Miami of Ohio as of this week, I guess…

    Add the recent edX settlement with the US Department of Justice, and the whole direction of edtech changes…

    Put another way, it should come as no surprise that the US Department of Justice is ramping up its enforcement of disability discrimination regulations in the education world. Captioning service provider CaptionSync has an excellent summary of the field, written before the DOJ intervention at Miami. (more…)