Education News

Matthew Lynch published in HBCU's, Higher Education April 21, 2016

Are new student amenities boosting the cost of tuition?

As described by insidehighered.com, new student amenities such as lazy rivers are “bad for optics” when talking about the cost of college. The article explores the notion of luxury amenities on college campuses driving up the cost of tuition.

Because New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren have criticized these high-priced student enhancements, they may be unfairly correlating these spending projects with the cost of tuition.

With student loan debt spiraling out of control and tuition continuing to spike, both lawmakers believe that these types of amenities aren’t needed.

But according to insidehighered.com’s article, tuition isn’t rising because of a lazy river. The price of higher education is going up due to cuts in state budgets.

“These lazy rivers are not the reason why student debt is soaring seemingly out of control. The big problem that higher education faces today, at the public side, is cuts in state spending,” said Professor of Economics at the College of William and Mary, David Feldman to insidehighered.com.

This certainly is an interesting antecedent when looking at college costs. As mentioned earlier, adding lazy rivers and climbing walls is “bad for optics” when discussing how colleges charge students for their education. In this case, LSU is in the process of upgrading its student recreational facilities by installing a lazy river and other amenities.

While tuition isn’t impacted by the cost of the upgrade, which is $85 million, student fees were effected. That decision to increase student fees was granted by the school’s student government, not leadership brass.

If anything, this just seems like a popular talking point for politicians gearing up for the 2016 election season. The cost of college and student loan debt will be hot butting topics for voters nationwide, and to hinge “lazy river” and “rock climbing wall” onto the rising cost of college will simply add fodder to the conversation.

Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation April 7, 2016

How digital gives literacy a boost

By way of the United States Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, nearly 15 percent of the U.S. population cannot read.

That is an astonishing number.

Delving deeper into the metrics, just 29 percent of adults read at a basic level and nearly 20 percent of high school graduates cannot read.

It’s why we celebrate and encourage reading in schools and observe International Literacy Day in September. From the echos of hearing “reading is fundamental” to understanding the basic nature of being able to read street signs or contracts, reading is a basic need of life.

That’s why companies like myON are so important. A business unit of Capstone, myON “created a personalized digital literacy environment that transforms learning…and expands the classroom for teachers and students by providing unlimited access to the largest collection of more than 10,000 enhanced digital books…”

myON recently expanded its offerings by redesigning “its award-winning personalized literacy environment for PreK-12.”

The company’s new redesign also includes a new writing tool, the myON Literacy Toolkit, advancements in content recommendations based upon individual student interests, and much more.

In an effort to help improve the literacy rate, companies like myON are important to the future of education as they are on the cutting edge of technology and have their fingers on the pulse of what teachers and students need. By combining what is familiar to today’s students (digital learning options) with the fundamentals of reading, we can fight against illiteracy in ways that were not possible just a generation ago. I look forward to hearing the progress with these digital reading tools, and seeing a more literate public as a result.

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here.

Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers March 25, 2016

Math scores for 4th and 8th graders on the decline?

According to Edweek.org, math test scores for 4th and 8th grade students taking the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) exam might be on the decline.

The article notes that scores from the exam, which is taken every two years, are lower than they were in 2013.

“U.S. 4th and 8th grade students are performing worse in math, and somewhat worse in reading, than they were two years ago, according to new data from a national test.”

But Peggy Carr, commissioner of the organization that conducts the tests, said that the scores represented “an unexpected downturn.”

She also notes that the drop in scores isn’t considered to be a trend because the test is given every two years. In addition to the recent drop, EdWeek shows that math test scores are still higher than they were in the 1990s.

While the news isn’t all bad, it’s not necessarily all good. There is still an achievement gap between white and black students, and the majority of states saw a decline of some sort. The children who need the improvement the most are not seeing it, despite newer initiatives like those included in Common Core math.

So what does the drop in scores mean? That depends on how one looks at the scores and what they may represent. Perhaps this is just a temporary dip on the road to a rise overall. The test will be taken again in 2017, and if scores continue to decline, then we have a trend.

If the scores remain the same or increase, 2015 may be seen as an anomaly. Either way, its worth looking at what may have caused the drop this year.

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

Matthew Lynch published in Equity, Higher Education March 19, 2016

Report: 11 states spend more on prisons than higher education

According to a new report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 11 states spend more money on correctional facilities than public research universities.

The report outlines how many states have cut spending on higher education while increasing budgets for jails and prisons.

Higher education spending didn’t start to fall once the recession started. Funding for higher education in many states begin toppling back in 1990 from 14.6 percent to just 9.4 percent in 2014.

Michigan, Oregon, Arizona, Vermond, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Delaware, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Colorado, and Connecticut all failed to make the cut. Each state has a higher budget for jails and prisons than public research universities.

Adjusted for inflation, spending on elementary and secondary education increased by nearly 70 percent while corrections saw an increase of over 140 percent between 1986 and 2013.

In Michigan, nearly 25 percent of the state’s spending from general fund expenditures went towards corrections compared to just 15 percent on higher education.

The percentages are much closer in other states like Rhode Island and Delaware but corrections spending still gets a larger percentage.

Oregon seems to be the worst defender. Less than 5 percent of general fund expenditures are dedicated to higher education but the state spends nearly 15 percent of that money on correctional facilities.

Bottom line is that too many states invest in faux rehabilitation methods and not enough on student engagement. Imagine if we invested that money upfront in our troubled youth instead of putting it towards locking them up. It takes a fundamental understanding that it NEEDS to happen though – something that generally is lacking in the U.S. education system.

Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity March 4, 2016

Black students suspended, expelled more than peers

According to a new study published by the University of Pennsylvania, black students make up nearly 40 percent of students suspended in Florida.

“The study details how black students in 13 Southern states receive school punishments disproportionate to their enrollments. In Florida, for example, black youngsters make up 23 percent of the public school population but 39 percent of those suspended.”

That number, unfortunately, matches with the trend of how many black men and women are sent to prison. Making up just 13 percent of the population, people of color make-up about 60 percent of the nation’s prison population. The school-to-prison pipeline is real, even if it is uncomfortable to admit. There IS a correlation between the way behavior issues are treated in our P-12 schools and the people in our prisons.

The Sentencing Project projects that 1 in 3 black men will likely see the inside of a prison cell at some point in their lives.

If that trend continues, suspending more black students will nudge them towards a path of incarceration.

But the study notes that black students are suspended and expelled more due to “unfair discipline practices” and appearing as “disrespectful or threatening.”

While the numbers for the state are bad, it gets worse in Orange County. Making up just 27 percent of the county’s public school population, black students represents 51 percent of the students suspended.

It’s much easier to learn while at school than away from it, and if schools are placing an unfair and undue burden of punishment on black students, our future workforce will suffer because of it.

Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education February 26, 2016

Report: For-profit institutions source of most student loan debt

According to a new report by the Brookings Institute, a good chunk of student loan debt is held by students who attend for-profit institutions.

“The so-called student loan crisis in the U.S. is largely concentrated among non-traditional borrowers attending for-profit schools and other non-selective institutions, who have relatively weak educational outcomes and difficulty finding jobs after starting to repay their loans.”

That’s a fairly significant finding, I would say.

Students who attend non-profit private schools or public universities do not face the same debt issue because their job prospects are much higher upon graduation.

Borrowers at for-profit institutions have a harder time finding gainful employment, and when they do, their average earnings barely creep over $20,000.

[T]the median borrower from a for-profit institution who left school in 2011 and found a job in 2013 earned about $20,900—but over one in five (21 percent) were not employed; comparable community college borrowers earned $23,900 and almost one in six (17 percent) were not employed.”

The report also finds that students who attend the University of Phoenix hold the most debt. In 2014, students there held over $35 billion dollars in student loan debt.

If anything, this report shows that the government has to inflict tougher regulations on for-profit institutions in the higher education sector. College students work hard to make a better life for themselves and their families — but student loans can have the opposite effect, at least in the immediate. Tuition at these private schools is astronomical, and if students cannot find jobs to pay their loans back, attaining a degree from these schools is pointless.

Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity February 24, 2016

Wearing a suit equals success? It just might to these kids

Photo via Timefrozen Photography

Work hard, get good grades in school, and you’ll eventually find some semblance of the American dream in life.

It’s what all kids are taught as they matriculate through grade school. It’s why we so often hear the saying that one should “dress for success.”

It’s also why 100 men of color wearing suits greeted elementary school students on their first day of school last week.

An attempt to present a varying image to kids of color of what men of color may actually turn out to be: successful.

Statistics state that black male “students in grade K-12 were nearly 2 1/2 times as likely to be suspended from school in 2000 as white students” and that most of the nearly 2.5 million people in prisons and jails “are people of color…and people with low levels of educational attainment.”

From pictures to videos, so many kids of color see men of color as effigies of what not to become. The criminal on the news is likely a man of color and so is the high school drop-out.

Seeing a roaring crowd of black men cheering on young students from kindergarten to fifth and sixth grades was not only heart warming, it was inspiring.

A suit represents so much more than just a tailored look. It’s success; it’s happiness; it’s an ability to overcome; it’s positive; it’s anti-everything we’ve been feed to believe that’s negative about black men.

For each kid seeing that image, it’s eternal.

I applaud this action and know it will have even more of a long term impact than it did initially.

Matthew Lynch published in Equity, Higher Education February 21, 2016

Study: Nearly 90 percent of full-time professors are white

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, just 16 percent of full-time professors at post-secondary institutions are minorities. That means that 84 percent of those in full-time professorships are white, 60 percent are men and 25 percent are white women.

Those numbers decrease slightly with faculty. 79 percent of the “instructional faculty“ within this nation’s colleges and universities are white and just six percent are black.

Considering the hiring boom that many schools have experienced since the start of the 1990’s, it’s mildly surprising that not many minorities were included in that growth.

“The Condition of Education: Characteristics of Post-secondary Faculty“ shows that there was a 42 percent increase in the number of instructional faculty hired from 1991-2011. During that 20 year period, not many institutions hired minorities to fill their vacant positions.

Outside of ethnicity and growth, the study also found that the wage gender gap between men and women professors was well north of $16,000. Less than half of America’s private and non-private post-secondary institutions had tenure systems, faculty at for-profit colleges and universities make far less than those at non-profit schools, and less than 10 percent of all faculty within higher education are employed at for-profit institutions.

What’s striking is the gross under-representation of minority professors at America’s higher education schools. While many may be concentrated within Historically Black Colleges and Universities or schools who have a high number of black students, that percentage makes barely a dent in the overall number of black, Asian, Hispanic, American indigenous who may teach at America’s best schools of higher learning.

While the government is rightly focused on the rising cost of education, we should slightly turn our attention towards why many colleges and universities fail to hire minorities for faculty and professorship positions.

Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform February 20, 2016

Will Congress ever fix America’s education system?

U.S. News and World Report recently sat down with Senator Lamar Alexander, chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee to talk about the re-authorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and higher education.

In the interview, Alexander talks of slicing the FAFSA application down to just two questions in an effort to encourage more students to apply, and he wants to expand school choice so that more students have the ability to exercise variety in their education.

But perhaps one of the more interesting antecedents of the interview was Alexander’s grade on how Congress has performed on NCLB.

“We’ve been stuck for seven years. We should’ve reauthorized it. If students were this late on homework, they’d get an “F.””

If we could go lower on a grading scale, I’m sure many would give Congress something much worse. NCLB expired nearly ten years ago and many states are still operating under waivers because Congress can’t seem to agree on how to move forward.

Luckily, Alexander, who’s a Republican, has taken a bipartisan approach to getting the law reauthorized. He said that Senator Patty Murray, the Democratic ranking member of the committee, has worked well with him to push the bipartisan effort through.

Nothing earth shattering regarding the future of education, or Congress’ attitude towards it, was revealed. There is still a lot of work left and there is no guarantee that the reauthorized will pass through this time around. Meanwhile as time passes, more and more students are suffering the repercussions of Congress and its slow pace.

Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Education Leadership, Education News February 17, 2016

Are we getting closer to 1:1 iPad programs?

It’s been almost a half-decade since education communities started pushing for an iPad for each student in classrooms. The amount of individualized learning available on tablets that are equipped with Internet technology is virtually limitless, making customized learning more possible than ever. Many school districts are still trying to reach this standard, of course, but in the areas where the iPad-to-student ratio is 1:1, that connectivity is making a positive difference.

Recently, Carl Hooker, the creator of iPadpalooza and director of innovation and digital learning at Eanes ISD (TX), was honored as 2016’s Thought Leader of the Year by PR with Panache! Hooker was recognized for his district’s personalized learning initiative that has put iPads in the hands of 8,000 students. He’s also the founder of iPadpalooza – an event that brings together global education leaders to talk about the role of technology in classrooms and beyond. Hooker is the author of the Mobile Learning Mindset series that approaches the technology of learning from a positive place.

In 2014, Hooker was also named Leader of the Year by Tech & Learning.

What leaders like Hooker are getting right is this: technology can benefit teachers and students when it is implemented correctly. Screen time can never replace the benefit of one-on-one teacher contact — but in classrooms where individual attention is scarce (and that’s most of them), tapping technology for customized learning can be a complete game-changer. Finding ways to extend technology resources to the schools that need it the most should be a goal of any progressive education advocate because within technology is the capability to reach more students with more customized learning experiences.

You can learn more about Hooker’s award and work by clicking here.

Has your district implemented a 1:1 iPad program yet? What sort of changes has it made in your classroom, for better or for worse?