“It makes me puke to think about borrowing more money.” A comprehensive look at the rising cost of college and how students and families, bogged down by student debt, handle expensive loan payments. (New York Times)
‘States lack capacity for reform.’ The Obama administration’s waiver program puts more pressure than ever on states and their education departments. Can they handle it? Some aren’t so sure. (Education Week)
Getting accepted is only half of the equation. Then there’s paying for college. Three college students won $1,500 each for creating how-to videos for their peers on college net price calculators. You can see the videos here. (Homeroom/U.S. Department of Education)
Take a cue from the business sector. A new report calls on business leaders to hold school boards more accountable in an effort to improve overall performance. The report includes 13 case studies of school boards in 12 states. (h/t Eduwonk) (U.S. Chamber of Commerce)
Tagged as:
College Affordability,
college net price calculator,
Quick Hits,
school boards,
state education reform
A couple of weeks ago, while discussing the announcement of the Harvard / MIT edX initiative, I included a brief recap of what’s been happening over the last six months in the land of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which began as follows:
Throughout the fall 2011 semester, a group of well-known Stanford professors had been running an unorthodox experiment by letting over 100,000 students around the world take their courses, online, for free. Those who did well got a certificate from the professor saying so.
Later that day, I received an email titled “error in your blog” from a person who works in communications for Stanford, which I’m reprinting with permission. The person said:
Students who did well did not receive a certificate. Neither Stanford nor the professors issued a certificate. All students who completed the courses received a letter from the professor saying that they had completed the course. And that’s it.
This is telling. I used the word “certificate” deliberately, because “letter” seemed inadequate. A letter is a vehicle for interpersonal correspondence, e.g. “Dear Mom, I am having fun at camp this summer, please send cookies,” or “Dear Sir, we regret to inform you that your manuscript does not meet our standards for publication.” A certificate is a document describing some kind of important characteristic of the bearer, as attested by the issuer. A college diploma is a kind of certificate, as is a teaching certificate issued by a state licensing board, as were the old-fashioned “letters of introduction” people once used to facilitate business and social interactions. As is, I would argue, the document that students received upon completing the Stanford MOOC in question. Here it is:
Looks like a certificate to me.
This shows the biggest weakness in Stanford’s engagement with the rapidly-developing world of highly-branded MOOCs. By rights, Stanford should own this space. Winning the MOOC space will require a combination of investment capital, branded credibility in the marketplace, deep expertise in academics, and deep expertise in the formation and scaling of hugely popular online enterprises. There’s nowhere in the world with more of that stuff in one place than Stanford and the surrounding Silicon Valley environs.
But unlike Harvard and MIT, Stanford has thus far been unwilling to lend its super-valuable brand name to some kind of certificate of learning. That will make a huge difference over time. People need more than learning; they need evidence of learning. Stanford’s current reflexive “Don’t say certificate!” attitude reflects the deep ambivalence of organizations that look at MOOCs and see both immense opportunities to expand their mission and presence worldwide and huge risks to an exclusivity-driven success model that has served them well for the last century. Harvard and MIT have gotten over it. Stanford should, too.
Tagged as:
edX,
MITx,
Open Courses,
Open Credentials
Soliciting student input whatever way possible. Kindergartners in Georgia will be asked to circle smiley, neutral, or frown faces next to statements about their teachers’ performance. It’s part of a pilot program aimed at incorporating student feedback into personnel decisions. (The Hechinger Report)
‘The Morality of a For-Profit College, in One Act.’ A former for-profit college admissions counselor writes a play that illustrates the moral questions he faced in his work, which he said forced him to target “poorly prepared students for expensive degree programs.” When he stopped doing that, and instead helped prospective students get the social services they eeded, he lost his job (in real life; the play’s ending wasn’t disclosed). (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
We’ll wait for confirmation on this one. But in the meantime, we’re picking up a new book. A new study links reading and other intellectually stimulating, but sedentary, activities to a lower body weight. (Pacific Standard)
Under “What NOT To Do When Your Students Misbehave.” A Florida high school teacher reportedly made bad-behaving students don a “cone of shame,” or a plastic cone-shaped collar usually worn by dogs after surgery to prevent them from licking their wounds. (Tampa Bay Times)
Tagged as:
Classroom Management,
For-Profit Colleges,
Quick Hits,
student feedback,
Teacher Evaluations
Beyond classroom walls. The underlying theme in yesterday’s NAEP science scores? An overall lack of hands-on experimentation and learning. So get children outside and learning, says Andy Rotherham. (TIME)
Just in case. A scuffle between one Ohio school district superintendent and a board member has left the board member so rattled that he’s hired a bodyguard and sheriff’s deputy to accompany him to meetings. (Columbus Dispatch)
Recording school lunches. A Scottish schoolgirl is posting photos of her school lunches and writing about them on a blog, which has attracted the attention of chef Jamie Oliver. She describes each meal and ranks it according to different factors, including health, price, mouthfuls, and even “pieces of hair.” (BBC)
Eduwonks. Alexander Russo asked the Twittersphere for the best “thought leaders” in education and these are the responses he got. (This Week In Education)
Tagged as:
eduwonks,
NAEP science,
Quick Hits,
school boards,
School Lunches,
science instruction
To round out Teacher Appreciation Week, Education Sector’s Anne Hyslop thanks not one, but five of her former teachers. Why? “It’s impossible for me to appreciate only one excellent teacher this week, since I have been fortunate enough to learn from many,” says Hyslop. And, Amy Laitinen recalls one no-nonsense teacher that has her double-checking sentence structure to this day…
- With Marilyn Ware, my kindergarten teacher, I learned about the Italian Renaissance via Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Michelangelo was my favorite, and I loved recreating one of his greatest masterpieces in the only way a 6-year-old could: lying on the floor, with a bunch of markers and a “canvas” attached to the bottom of my desk. Five years ago, when I saw the real Sistine Chapel, I made sure to send Mrs. Ware a postcard.
- Anita Grimes, my 6th grade English teacher, not only taught me how to diagram a sentence (do kids still learn this kind of thing?), but also how to eat lettuce properly. I’ll never forget her lunchroom critique, or her high expectations in the classroom.
- I loved biology because of Ann Griffin, my AP bio teacher. She was the kind of teacher who brought out the best in students… demanding but kind (“You don’t have to be perfect – you just have to beat the mean!”), funny and eccentric (“What is sex? Meiosis and fertilization!”), and invested in each of her students’ success, academically and personally. DNA replication and the Krebs Cycle pale in comparison to the larger lessons she taught and exemplified: be brave enough to discover something you love to do, and then, go out and do it.
- Without a doubt, no professor ever challenged me more than Paul Manna. His senior seminar on education policy at William and Mary is the reason why I’m writing on this blog today. Not only did he introduce me to Education Sector, but he was the first person to tell me that synthesizing other people’s arguments wasn’t good enough – I needed to generate and defend my own.
- Finally, I’d be remiss to leave out Carolyn Hill, my statistics professor at Georgetown. While she was an amazing professor, she is an even more amazing mentor, role model, and friend. I don’t know how she does it all – professor, dean, advisor, wife, mother (I’m pretty sure she’s superhuman). Working with Carolyn has helped me recognize what I really want out of life and, more importantly, given me the confidence to ask for it.
–Anne Hyslop
“There’s a pit in hell for people who write sentences like this.”
Mr. Remis, my senior high school English teacher, didn’t mince words with his students who were used to getting good grades without trying too hard. He gave us challenging work to read and refused to let us be lazy thinkers (or writers). By expecting (and demanding) more and better from us, we expected and demanded more from ourselves. Unfortunately, I still write “hell pit” sentences sometimes–but at least I know to strive for better. Thanks, Mr. Remis!
–Amy Laitinen
Tagged as:
Teacher Appreciation Week 2012
Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! From all of us here at Education Sector, thank you to all the teachers across the country for doing the amazing work you do, and for making a difference in students’ lives every day! This week we celebrate you by remembering teachers from our own past who impacted us in truly amazing ways…
When I was in school, I never really knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. By high school, it seemed like everyone had it figured out from lawyer to doctor to forensic pathologist. I had some ideas, but no real clue. This changed with Mrs. Garstka’s writing seminar class when I was finally able to move beyond the dreaded persuasive essay prompts that plagued my middle and high school years.
But it wasn’t easy to transition to a narrative style. Mrs. Garstka criticized me for being too flowery which made my writing both inaccessible and inauthentic. Her advice was that it’s better to write about what you truly know, rather than what you think would interest an audience. She taught me that writing is hard work and there’s always, always room for improvement. Most importantly, she helped me discover and develop my voice as a writer so that I could finally sing. My biggest takeaway was that even though I was not sure what career I wanted to pursue, it needed to involve a significant amount of writing. Fast forward about ten years later to my interview here at Education Sector when someone asked me if I liked to write. Thanks in large part to Mrs. Garstka, my yes was genuine.
–Rachel Fishman
Tagged as:
Teacher Appreciation Week 2012
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5/11/2012 | Kevin Carey talks to Salon about the government's role in rising student debt.
5/8/2012 | Kevin Carey discusses the problem of rising tuition and student loan interest rates with The Nation. 
5/4/2012 | Stephen Burd talks to Education Week about student loan debt and help from Congress.