e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: U.S. Department of Education

  • Is the DOE backing down on proposed State Authorization regulations?

    Now witness the firepower of this fully written and delivered WCET / UPCEA /Sloan-C letter!

    – D. Poulin

    One of the policies that we’re tracking at e-Literate is the proposed State Authorization regulation that the US Department of Education (DOE) has been pushing. The latest DOE language represents a dramatic increase in federal control of distance education and in bureaucratic compliance required of institutions and states. In the most recent post we shared a letter from WCET, UPCEA and Sloan-C to Secretary Duncan at the DOE.

    What does it take to get all of the higher education institutions and associations to agree? Apparently the answer is for the Department of Education to propose its new State Authorization regulations. [snip]

    Here’s what is newsworthy – the idea and proposed language is so damaging to innovation in higher ed (which the DOE so fervently supports in theory) and so burdensome to institutions and state regulators that three higher ed associations have banded together to oppose the proposed rules. WCET (WICHE Cooperative on Educational Technologies), UPCEA (University Professional and Continuing Education Association) and Sloan-C (Sloan Consortium) wrote a letter to Secretary Arne Duncan calling for the DOE to reconsider their planned State Authorization regulations.

    While it is unclear how direct an impact the letter had, yesterday brought welcome news from Ted Mitchell at the DOE: they have effectively paused their efforts to introduce new State Authorization regulations. As described at Inside Higher Ed: (more…)

  • WCET, UPCEA & Sloan-C call on DOE to change State Authorization proposal

    What does it take to get all of the higher education institutions and associations to agree? Apparently the answer is for the Department of Education to propose its new State Authorization regulations.

    As part of DOE’s negotiated rulemaking process over the past half year representatives from schools (Columbia University, Youngstown State University, Benedict College, Santa Barbara City College, Clemson University, MIT, Capella University) to higher ed associations (WCET) were unanimous in their rejection of the proposed State Authorization rules. As Russ Poulin wrote for WCET:

    On Tuesday May 20, the Committee we had our final vote on the proposed language. I voted “no.” I was joined in withholding consent by all the representatives of every higher education sector. Nine out of sixteen negotiators voting “no” is a high ratio.

    Note that only one of the mentioned groups is a for-profit university – the purported offenders causing the need for the regulations. I wrote a post arguing that the proposed rules represented a dramatic increase in control over distance education that would cause a significant increase in compliance and administrative overhead for both colleges / universities and for states themselves.

    In the end, predictably, the rulemaking process ended in a lack of consensus that allows the DOE to propose whatever language they desire. The latest proposal was from DOE, and it would make sense for the final proposal to follow this language closely.

    Here’s what is newsworthy – the idea and proposed language is so damaging to innovation in higher ed (which the DOE so fervently supports in theory) and so burdensome to institutions and state regulators that three higher ed associations have banded together to oppose the proposed rules. WCET (WICHE Cooperative on Educational Technologies), UPCEA (University Professional and Continuing Education Association) and Sloan-C (Sloan Consortium) wrote a letter to Secretary Arne Duncan calling for the DOE to reconsider their planned State Authorization regulations. As the intro states [emphasis added]: (more…)

  • Restructuring higher education: NCES Stats-DC 2010 Conference

    This is a guest post by Jim Farmer.

    As you know, the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems program is funding states’ work to improve their data systems. Over the past four years, 41 states and the District of Columbia have received more than half a billion dollars from this program. It has supported states as they link data from preschool, K-12, and postsecondary education. In some states, it supports their work to track students into the workforce. We’re committed to helping all states.

    Keynote presentation – Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan

    For 40 years institutional and policy researchers and information technologist have met with staff from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics to learn and advise on NCES data collection efforts. NCES is a source of useful statistics on K-12 and higher education. As described by Secretary Duncan, this year NCES staff and consultants provided detail data on the anticipated changes in higher education being implemented through the state agencies and conditions for any federal funding.

    At last year’s STAS-DC conference the primary focus of the 600 participants was qualifying to receive federal grants to develop statewide longitudinal data systems (SLDS). The $500 million was for in grants to state education agencies. Higher education did not receive any of those funds directly or via the state higher education executive officers.

    Now NCES has become the leader of perhaps the largest information technology (IT) implementation ever attempted in the U.S. It spans 4.339 colleges and universities and 98,916 public schools with annual revenue of $1.1 trillion. The Stats-DC 2010 conference, held 26-30 July in Bethesda, Maryland, focused on this implementation.

    This year’s conference provided evidence of the Department’s perspective of higher education and the requirements that would be placed on public colleges and universities and incentives for private non-profit and for-profit colleges to participate as well. Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) have become an unfunded mandate for higher education through new state-required data reporting requirements and data exchanges among colleges, universities, and schools. States that received funding agreed to build state-level data warehouses of these data; the model was centralization within each of the states or the use of servicers.

    In the long term higher education will be restructured by the metrics used to represent the success of college and university management and teaching faculty. The Stats-DC Conference offered an opportunity to learn the underlying assumptions about education and perception of the value and use of data. A caution: The U.S. Department of Education has a number of knowledgeable, dedicated, and hard-working educators. This is also true of the state education agencies. But the design and beginning implementation of a national education data system within the available time does not permit the thoughtful planning that would have reduced the risks of unintended consequences.

    (more…)