There are many benefits to knowing more than one language. For example, it has been shown that aging adults who speak more than one language have less likelihood of developing dementia.
Additionally, the bilingual brain becomes better at filtering out distractions, and learning multiple languages improves creativity. Evidence also shows that learning subsequent languages is easier than learning the first foreign language.
Unfortunately, not all American universities consider learning foreign languages a worthwhile investment.
Why is foreign language study important at the university level?
As an applied linguist, I study how learning multiple languages can have cognitive and emotional benefits. One of these benefits that’s not obvious is that language learning improves tolerance.
This happens in two important ways.
The first is that it opens people’s eyes to a way of doing things in a way that’s different from their own, which is called “cultural competence.”
The second is related to the comfort level of a person when dealing with unfamiliar situations, or “tolerance of ambiguity.”
Gaining cross-cultural understanding
Cultural competence is key to thriving in our increasingly globalized world. How specifically does language learning improve cultural competence? The answer can be illuminated by examining different types of intelligence.
Psychologist Robert Sternberg’sresearch on intelligence describes different types of intelligence and how they are related to adult language learning. What he refers to as “practical intelligence” is similar to social intelligence in that it helps individuals learn nonexplicit information from their environments, including meaningful gestures or other social cues.
Learning a foreign language reduces social anxiety. COD Newsroom, CC BY
Language learning inevitably involves learning about different cultures. Students pick up clues about the culture both in language classes and through meaningful immersion experiences.
Researchers Hanh Thi Nguyen and Guy Kellogg have shown that when students learn another language, they develop new ways of understanding culture through analyzing cultural stereotypes. They explain that “learning a second language involves the acquisition not only of linguistic forms but also ways of thinking and behaving.”
With the help of an instructor, students can critically think about stereotypes of different cultures related to food, appearance and conversation styles.
Dealing with the unknown
The second way that adult language learning increases tolerance is related to the comfort level of a person when dealing with “tolerance of ambiguity.”
Someone with a high tolerance of ambiguity finds unfamiliar situations exciting, rather than frightening. My research on motivation, anxiety and beliefs indicates that language learning improves people’s tolerance of ambiguity, especially when more than one foreign language is involved.
It’s not difficult to see why this may be so. Conversations in a foreign language will inevitably involve unknown words. It wouldn’t be a successful conversation if one of the speakers constantly stopped to say, “Hang on – I don’t know that word. Let me look it up in the dictionary.” Those with a high tolerance of ambiguity would feel comfortable maintaining the conversation despite the unfamiliar words involved.
Applied linguists Jean-Marc Dewaele and Li Wei also study tolerance of ambiguity and have indicated that those with experience learning more than one foreign language in an instructed setting have more tolerance of ambiguity.
What changes with this understanding
A high tolerance of ambiguity brings many advantages. It helps students become less anxious in social interactions and in subsequent language learning experiences. Not surprisingly, the more experience a person has with language learning, the more comfortable the person gets with this ambiguity.
And that’s not all.
Individuals with higher levels of tolerance of ambiguity have also been found to be more entrepreneurial (i.e., are more optimistic, innovative and don’t mind taking risks).
In the current climate, universities are frequently being judged by the salaries of their graduates. Taking it one step further, based on the relationship of tolerance of ambiguity and entrepreneurial intention, increased tolerance of ambiguity could lead to higher salaries for graduates, which in turn, I believe, could help increase funding for those universities that require foreign language study.
Those who have devoted their lives to theorizing about and the teaching of languages would say, “It’s not about the money.” But perhaps it is.
Language learning in higher ed
Most American universities have a minimal language requirement that often varies depending on the student’s major. However, students can typically opt out of the requirement by taking a placement test or providing some other proof of competency.
Why more universities should teach a foreign language. sarspri, CC BY-NC
In contrast to this trend, Princeton recently announced that all students, regardless of their competency when entering the university, would be required to study an additional language.
I’d argue that more universities should follow Princeton’s lead, as language study at the university level could lead to an increased tolerance of the different cultural norms represented in American society, which is desperately needed in the current political climate with the wave of hate crimes sweeping university campuses nationwide.
Knowledge of different languages is crucial to becoming global citizens. As former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan noted,
“Our country needs to create a future in which all Americans understand that by speaking more than one language, they are enabling our country to compete successfully and work collaboratively with partners across the globe.”
Considering the evidence that studying languages as adults increases tolerance in two important ways, the question shouldn’t be “Why should universities require foreign language study?” but rather “Why in the world wouldn’t they?”
Many South Africans were outraged by the recent announcement that for 2016, pupils in Grades 7 to 9 could progress to the next grade with only 20% in Mathematics.
The usual minimum has been 40%, provided that all other requirements for promotion are met. Pupils with less than 30% in Mathematics in grade 9 must take Mathematical Literacy (this involves what the Department of Basic Education calls “the use of elementary mathematical content” and is not the same as Mathematics) as a matric subject.
Public concern is understandable. South Africans should be deeply worried about the state of mathematics teaching and learning. The country was placed second from last for mathematics achievement in the latest Trends in International Maths and Science Study.
Research closer to home has shown that pupils, particularly from poorer and less well resourced schools, are under performing in mathematics relative to the curriculum outcomes. These learning deficits compound over time, which makes it increasingly difficult to address learning difficulties in mathematics in the higher grades.
All of this means that children and young people may be in Mathematics classes but are not learning. But the answer to this problem does not lie with making pupils repeat an entire grade because of poor mathematical performance. There’s extensive research evidence to suggest that grade repetition does more harm than good.
Repetition is not effective
Grade repetition is practised worldwide – despite there being very little evidence for its effectiveness. In fact, it can be argued that its consequences are mainly negative for repeating pupils. Grade repetition is a predictor of early school leaving, sometimes called “drop out”.
Pupils who repeat grades and move out of their age cohort become disaffected with school. They disengage from learning.
South Africa’s rates of grade repetition are high. Research by the Department of Basic Education shows that on average, 12% of all pupils from grades one to 12 repeat a year. The grades with the highest repetition rates are grade 9 (16.3%), grade 10 (24.2%) and grade 11 (21.0%).
And grade repetition is an equity issue. The Social Survey-CALS (2010) report found that black children are more likely to repeat grades than their white or Indian peers. This reflects the fracture lines that signal socioeconomic disadvantage in South Africa.
Repetition rates decrease as the education level of the household head increases. Poor access to infrastructural resources, like piped water and flush toilets, are associated with higher rates of grade repetition. Boys are more likely to repeat than girls. There’s also an uncertain link between pupil achievement and grade repetition, particularly for black learners in high schools.
So why does grade repetition persist?
Beliefs about the benefits of repetition
Schools and societies still believe in the value of making children repeat grades, despite evidence to the contrary.
A recent survey of 95 teachers in Johannesburg – which is currently under review for publication in a journal – showed how teachers believe the additional time spent in a repeated year allows pupils to “catch up” and be better prepared for the subsequent grade. This view is reflected in recent reportsthat teachers are against the new 20% concession which has stirred so much controversy. Their opposition is echoed by countless callers to talk shows, who all seem to assume that repeating subject content results in improved understanding.
But unless the reasons for a pupil’s misunderstanding of concepts are identified and addressed, any improvement is unlikely. Given that the deficits in mathematical understanding may stretch back to the foundation phase (Grades 1 – 3), it’s doubtful that merely repeating a grade in the senior phase is going to be sufficient for remediation.
And teachers may struggle to provide support to pupils repeating a grade. Research conducted in South Africa reveals that teachers lack confidence in their ability to teach pupils who experience learning difficulties. They would prefer to refer such pupils to learning support specialists and psychologists who are seen to have more expertise.
Many of the teachers we surveyed believe that grade repetition solves problems intrinsic to pupils. Immaturity is seen as one reason for learning difficulties and teachers expect that the repeated year compensates for this. Other teachers regard the threat of retention as a means to motivate pupils who are not sufficiently diligent or who are “slow” or “weak”. When learning difficulties are seen as being intrinsic to pupils, it is less likely that factors within the education system will be considered as the cause of barriers to learning.
Failing pupils is not the solution
Poor achievement in mathematics is not going to be solved by making pupils repeat their grade. Repetition effectively makes pupils and their families pay an additional – financial and emotional – cost for the system’s failure.
Repetition because of poor mathematics achievement during the senior phase compounds the bleak outlook for these pupils. They already have a minimal grasp of mathematics, which denies them access to Science, Technology, Engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects and careers. Then they’re also at risk of leaving school early and joining the ranks of the unemployed.
The Department of Basic Education’s 20% concession indicates that it knows grade repetition won’t achieve much. The public outcry should not be that these learners are being given a “free pass” and don’t deserve to be promoted. Instead, civil society needs to hold the government accountable for addressing the crisis in mathematics teaching and learning across all grades – and particularly in the crucial primary school years.
And the list of what teachers “should” or “could” be trained in is now very long. But while each call for training has a justified and reasonable argument behind it, we cannot escape the fact that initial teacher training cannot deliver fully trained, for every eventuality, teachers.
The general postgraduate route into teaching in the UK is 36 weeks long. Of those weeks, 24 are spent “on the job” in school – which leaves 12 weeks for all the rest. This isn’t a great deal of time when you consider those 12 weeks are when students will largely learn the skills required to actually be a teacher. This includes classroom management and lesson planning, along with how to deliver practical demonstrations and organise activities for pupils as well as subject knowledge for teaching.
Of course, there are also the fast track teacher training programmes like Teach First. Under these types of training programmes, high-flying graduates are placed in difficult schools with minimal initial training and ongoing support.
But the danger is that such an approach promotes a view that subject knowledge combined with altruism and social justice is all that is needed. And it is probably with this in mind, that Teach First has recently extended its training to a two-year postgraduate diploma model. Previously, their model included a one year Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) followed by a year studying educational leadership.
The 21st century teacher
The length of initial teacher training varies from country to country. In Finland and Portugal, for example, it is a master’s level programme taking about five years in total. While in Japan, teaching qualifications are graded, with the highest grades needed to teach in higher secondary schools – this also takes around five year’s of training.
As a teacher trainer, I also regularly get fresh demands that teachers must be trained far better in classroom management and behaviour management. Related issues are also highlighted as special cases requiring training for teachers. This includes dealing with time-wasting in classrooms – such as children using mobile phones. Or the more serious issues of how to deal with bullying, as well as knowing how to deal with racism.
Then there have been calls to train teachers in how to exploit computer technology and games. And to cap it all off, apparently teachers should also be trained how to teach left-handed children. All this, on top of the day job of actually teaching their subject, marking papers and setting homework.
Time for a rethink?
So although many of the above calls and demands may have good reason to be implemented, exactly how and when they are introduced needs a lot of further thought – because trying to cram it all into 36 weeks just won’t work.
Teachers can’t be all things to all people. Pexels.
Of course, teachers should be trained – it is just a case of figuring out what else “should” and “could” be included in this initial training. Although that said, for Michael Gove it wasn’t that obvious – he changed the law to allow untrained teachers to be hired in academies and free schools. Still, it could be worse. In the US, there were genuine calls for all teachers to carry guns, and to be trained to shoot in order to protect the children – some states already legally allow this to happen.
Perhaps in the UK, then, it is time we looked again at the demands of teacher training, and rethink how long it should take, along with what exactly initial training should cover. Because things can’t carry on as they are.
And by working out how we want future training to look, we can decide what “core initial teacher training” must involve – and at the same time work to ensure there is an entitlement for, and ongoing provision of, training for all qualified teachers.
The Independent Schools Council, a body representing 1,200 private schools, is offering to provide 10,000 annual free places to low-income pupils. As we prepare for an extended debate over the benefits of getting deprived children into private schools, we would do well to look back at the last government-backed attempt to do this: the long-gone Assisted Places Scheme.
The first education policy that Margaret Thatcher announced after she came to power in 1979, the scheme saw more than 75,000 pupils receive publicly-funded and means-tested assistance to attend some of the most selective and prestigious private schools in England and Wales over the course of 17 years.
The scheme was highly controversial, and when New Labour came to power in 1997 it was quickly abolished – and the arguments over its merits are now set to resume. They generally revolve around three main questions: whether it reached the right students, whether those students actually benefited from it, and whether it hurt nearby state-maintained schools.
Even with the benefit of hindsight, these are still complex questions. Here’s a brief outline of some evidence we can use to answer them.
#1: Did the scheme reach the right children?
One of the main criticisms of the scheme was that it didn’t reach the right pupils. While it was often framed as an attempt to “rescue” bright children from working class families and disadvantaged communities, the main criterion for eligibility, other than passing the school’s entrance examination, was financial need.
This meant the policy was significantly “colonised” by parents who might have been suffering short-term financial hardship (often because of divorce), but who were in many ways quite culturally and economically advantaged.
An early study of the scheme in 1989 found that fewer than 10% of those with an assisted place had fathers in manual jobs, whereas 50% had fathers in middle-class jobs. Almost all the employed mothers of assisted place pupils were also in middle-class jobs.
In general, it became clear that the majority of children who received assistance came from families with relatively strong educational inheritances, meaning the gap between what they’d have achieved without assisted places and what they managed with them was probably not as wide as imagined.
#2: Did pupils who received assisted places actually benefit?
There’s no straightforward answer to this one, but there’s little doubt that many individuals did benefit measurably from the scheme.
My colleagues and I have tracked the careers of a cohort of assisted place-holders over the last 30 years, and have found that for many of them, the scheme provided access to learning opportunities and experiences that they might not otherwise have had. In terms of qualifications, simple comparison of GCSE and A-level results revealed that our assisted place holders did better than our state-educated respondents, and better than might have been predicted on the basis of background socio-economic and educational inheritance variables.
But the academic achievement of those who held assisted places varies widely. The place-holders who saw the highest gains in qualifications were from middle-class backgrounds. The advantages for those from working-class backgrounds were less clear cut, and overall these pupils did worse than might be expected. This is largely because these pupils were disproportionately likely to have dropped out school before they were 18.
It seems these students found it difficult to thrive in the more socially exclusive environments of elite private schools. And while the degree results of assisted place-holders compare favourably with their state-educated counterparts, they were less likely to have completed their studies. Nearly one in ten dropped out of or failed their university courses.
In general, we concluded that if children from disadvantaged backgrounds stayed on at school and at university, they did well. However, the odds of these students “dropping out” were high.
#3: How did it affect neighbouring schools?
This is perhaps the most difficult question of all to answer. There is already considerable social segregation between many state-maintained schools, and it’s impossible to know what choices parents might have made had the Assisted Places Scheme not been available.
It might be argued that the impact was minimal, especially if the scheme benefited those who might have sent their children to private school anyway (as was often suggested – see question #1). The number of assisted places certainly wasn’t large enough to have any significant system-wide effect on admissions statistics. But the scheme’s ideological impact was perhaps more significant than the numbers of pupils involved. Simply by virtue of being in place, it sent a clear message that state-maintained non-selective schools are unable to meet the needs of the academically able.
Overall, then, the scheme’s history is a chequered one. Although individual schools and students did benefit, there’s plenty of evidence that this 30-year-long experiment was hardly an unqualified triumph. If the Independent Schools Council’s latest proposal is taken up and the government commits to once again helping poor and deprived pupils into private schools, the Assisted Places Scheme provides clear benchmarks for success.
Any new scheme must serve the people it’s actually meant to serve, and any schools that participate need to find ways of making students from disadvantaged backgrounds feel like they belong. And more than that, any such scheme has to be careful what message it’s sending about the state sector, where the overwhelming majority of eligible children will still spend their school years.
HBCUs came into existence in vastly different times, when they were necessary for black students to attend college. Today, they have to be savvy if they want to stick around. Let’s take a look at the shift HBCUs are making to become prominent in today’s integrated culture.
There are many different business models out there, but in general, some serve the mass market and some appeal to niches. When it comes to today’s colleges, it’s easy to see PWIs (or predominantly white institutions) as “mass market” and HBCUs as “niche” schools.
HBCUs have also had long histories, were created to give a healthy university experience to specific populations of students, and are facing closures today as more and more students choose to attend mainstream colleges.
The question stands. How will HBCUs compete against PWIs that now accept and actively recruit minority students and have more resources to serve them? To stick around, HBCUs need to find solutions.
We’re seeing a lot of these solutions in action today. Here is how they are handling situations where the deck is stacked against them.
A solution for when affordability is no longer a good selling point
Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders wants to help students by giving them a free ride to college. Sanders’ plan calls for making public colleges and universities tuition free. It is, to him at least, a way to make American students the most educated in the world by making the way to college easier.
But some are criticizing Sanders for his plan because it would force states to pick up the extra tab; something that many states are struggling with currently. State legislatures have cut k-12 and higher education for years and don’t seem to be slowing down, even with improvements in the economy.
Another criticism being levied towards Sanders and his plan for college is that it will potentially destroy HBCUs. Representative James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who is supporting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president, has taken issue with Sanders’ free college plan.
Talking to the press earlier this week, Clyburn said that private HBCUs will begin to shut down because states will start to offer free tuition to public colleges. He continued his hits on Senator Sanders by saying that nothing in life is free including college.
For what it’s worth, Clyburn said that he believes in making college more affordable for anyone who wants to attend, just not free.
Clyburn’s assessment of Sanders and his plan for college was devoid of what it will cost as he is attempting to bolster Clinton’s stock with black voters.
To the point of what it may cost to make college free, Sanders has said that he will have to raise taxes to pay for covering college tuition. He wants to place a larger tax on Wall Street speculators which is likely to be a tough sell.
But for what he’s at least attempting to do, it’s not a bad idea. The cost of college has spiraled out of control, and many students have been priced out of even thinking of going to college. But he’ll have to deal with the potential consequences of what this may do to private colleges, including HBCUs.
A solution for when the state isn’t on your side
Issues with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) in Maryland continue as the Maryland HBCU faculty caucus put forth a protest at the state’s capitol in March 2016.
The group is demanding equality for HBCUs in the state as they claim that PWIs (Predominately White Institutions) receive better treatment from the state’s lawmakers.
From academic programs to funding, the caucus believes that the state is mistreating its HBCUs and demands better.
The divide runs so deep that a group of former students who attended the state’s four HBCUs filed a lawsuit that claimed that the state gave cover for Maryland PWI’s to commit academic segregation.
In essence, the state allowed for duplicate program offerings at Maryland PWIs when the state’s HBCUs already offered the same coursework.
A judge sided with the former students in their claim that segregation had indeed taken place.
Although the legal wrangling continues as neither side has been able to compromise on a solution that will satisfy either party, the protest leads its way back to the merits of the lawsuit: HBCUs receive improper treatment from the state.
To gain equal footing with Maryland’s PWIs, the caucus wants to eradicate all duplicate programs that are already offered at HBCUs within the state. Secondly, the group wants programs that are in high demand to be offered at Maryland’s HBCUs.
This will partially satisfy its needs, but there is still work to be done.
No resolution has been found, and there is no word on if the group’s suggestions, or demands, will be acted upon.
If anything, this shows just how fragile the relationship may be between state lawmakers and leaders at HBCUs. Some struggle financially, and because of that, those issues may show up in how the schools perform academically.
Hopefully, both sides may soon find a solution to an almost decade-old legal issue.
A solution that may lead to mixed results
In 2015, Historically Black College and University (HBCU) Albany State University (ASU) was forced to merge with Darton State College, a predominately white institution.
The merger was presented as ASU faced mounting financial issues. The school’s enrollment was declining as it dropped nearly 11 percentage points last year, and 15 academic programs were canceled due to money and enrollment issues.
Albany State had problems, and one way to fix them was to merge the HBCU with another school.
That’s where we find Darton State College; a predominately white institution (PWI) of higher education that focuses on two-year degrees.
But no matter, this move was seen as a way to eventually save a struggling ASU from itself. Bleeding money and students, the merger gave some students and leaders hope for the future.
That was until the school’s new mission statement was released. Operating under the banner of Albany State University, students were under the impression that the school would still be considered an HBCU and have that distinction noted in the mission statement.
Darton State’s student body is more diverse as just 45 percent of its student body is black. To accommodate, the state Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia proposed, and approved, a new mission statement that does not include Albany State University as an HBCU.
The old statement notes ASU’s status as an HBCU in the first sentence, while the new one only mentions that the school has historical roots.
Upset over the missing nomenclature, more than 300 ASU students protested the altered mission statement and walked out of the school’s Honor’s Day festivities as ASU President Dr. Art Dunning prepared to speak.
He promised those remaining that while HBCU is missing from the mission statement that ASU will remain an HBCU. Dunning was careful to note that ASU isn’t the only HBCU that doesn’t explicitly note that in its mission statement as seven other HBCUs fail to do so as well.
Dr. Dunning makes good points, but students there are likely feeling that their school is being taken away from them. Many black students choose to attend HBCUs because of the rich history and cultural significance that cannot be found on the campuses of PWIs.
Some probably feel that that experience may be taken away from them if even the smallest things–like a mission statement–is changed.
On the one hand, it’s great that ASU is here to stay. On the other hand, will moves such as the new mission statement dilute the HBCU experience and message? Could this school’s roots and purpose be forgotten in the long run now that its mission statement does not explicitly state that it is an HBCU?
A solution that fills a desperate need
Actor Nate Parker, best known for his work in movies Red Tails, The Great Debaters, and The Birth of a Nation, has started a new film school at Wiley College, a Historically Black College, and University.
The name of the program will be the Nate Parker School of Film and Drama and will open this fall.
Parker launched the school to increase opportunities for persons of color, specifically black people, who are interested in working in film. Parker said that that he wants the new school to cover everything involved in the filmmaking process including sound and lighting.
Familiar with Wiley College, Parker filmed the move The Great Debaters with actors Denzel Washington and Jurnee Smollett-Bell there nearly ten years ago.
In addition to creating the new school, Parker recently sold his newest and latest independent project, The Birth of a Nation, to Fox Searchlight for nearly $18 million.
The movie is based on Nate Turner’s slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia in 1831. Parker directs and stars in the film about Turner. Still, in production, The Birth of a Nation has a scheduled release date of October 7th, 2016.
The good news continues for Wiley as the state of Texas honored the school with three historical markers. Professor H.B. Pemberton, Matthew W. Dogan, and the man responsible for coaching the debate team known as the Great Debaters, Professor Melvin B. Tolson.
Between Parker starting a new film school at Wiley, and three figures that were vital to the success of the school, history continues to be made at Wiley College.
With varying news about the health and viability of HBCUs, Wiley College’s ability to remain innovative while attracting new talent is important and worth celebrating. This shows just how much America, and black students, needs HBCUs — for new opportunities like the new one that Nate Parker is creating on the campus of Wiley College.
A solution that promotes an interdisciplinary experience
North Carolina Central University (NCCU) is set to offer a new minor in the fall of 2016. Women and Gender Studies will make its debut at NCCU, and the school will be the first historically black college and university (HBCU) in North Carolina to introduce such a minor.
Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Carlton Wilson believes that the minor will allow students new chances to research how events– current and in the past — are identified with women and gender.
In essence, this minor may be viewed as a subtopic of intersectionality where as one theory or subject may not be properly studied without the other. While the two words women and gender are certainly separate, it is tough to dismember each because of the power structures that are connected to them.
For example, we cannot gain context of what it is to be a woman without examining how hyper-masculinity, or just masculinity in general, has affected women. The same goes for gender.
The minor will delve deeper than what I just mentioned as African diaspora, women and their global experiences, equality, and more will also be studied by students who choose to select Women and Gender Studies as a minor.
Women and Gender Studies will be available to all students to select, and hopefully many will choose to do so. Courses attached to minors like this will teach students to think critically about issues and areas that impact them or their social structures directly. Race, class, sexism, religion, and so much more will be better understood once students successfully move through the coursework associated with Women and Gender Studies.
It will also give men who take the course a better understanding of just how privilege and masculinity create avenues of opportunities for them that may not be the same for women. I look forward to hearing more about the program once it launches.
A solution where companies are created just to serve HBCUs
Four former Historically Black College and University administrators have partnered with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund to start a new executive search firm.
Titled TM2 Executive Search, the goal of the new company is to pair candidates with administrative jobs at HBCUs.
Former president of Howard University, Sidney Ribeau; Dorothy Yancy, former president of Shaw University; John Garland, former president of Central State University; and Wayne Watson, former president of Chicago State University have all come together to form the aforementioned TM2.
What’s interesting and intuitive about the new venture is that it is the first of its kind for HBCUs. No other company will focus on the needs of HBCUs by searching for prospective employees to fill positions at these schools.
Getting into an arena that will surely help HBCU graduates, and help HBCU schools in the process, is a plus for those who support HBCUs and would like to continue that support post-graduation.
But one reason the effort was started was because many search firms that help colleges find administrators rarely focus on the need of HBCUs. There was an opening in the marketplace to address a specific need, and TM2 did just that.
Because HBCUs are steeped in history and have a deep culture that some may find intimidating or hard to read, the positions may be hard to fill through a traditional head hunting firm.
That may no longer be the case as TM2 gets started.
While the company is certainly focused on servicing HBCUs, one does not have to be a graduate of a Historically Black College and University to be considered for a position found through TM2.
More companies of this nature will hopefully be created in the future as the needs of HBCUs can be vastly different than those of predominately white institutions of higher learning.
A solution where HBCUs diversify their student bodies
Institutions of higher education have the felt the sting of budget cuts due to cramped state budgets. None more so than Historically Black Colleges and Universities as many black schools have turned to creative means to remain viable.
Non-black students are starting to litter many HBCU campuses due to educational opportunities but also because so many schools are strapped for cash.
From students who are white to Asian, to Latino, HBCUs have to recruit non-traditional students to keep its doors open.
While this isn’t necessarily a discovery as HBCUs have always welcomed students who aren’t black, the number of non-black students on HBCU campuses is starting to rise.
As recent as 2014, the University of Pennsylvania reported that the non-black population of students at HBCUs is at least 20 percent.
It’s also worth noting that many colleges that have a traditional student population of white students have stepped up efforts to diversify its campuses with black students, which has decreased the enrollment at many HBCUs.
Of course, without a steady flow of students, schools are unable to keep its doors open, and with state legislatures continuing to cut money from education, HBCUs have to find new avenues of revenue.
But this news hasn’t come without controversy or concern. Some alumni at HBCUs that are turning its focus to welcome more non-traditional students on campus are concerned that their school’s changing demographic will upset the history and culture that many alumni and black students enjoy about HBCUs.
It is unlikely that HBCU campuses will be so overrun with non-black students that some will have to drop the HBCU moniker, but without a diversifying campus population and new ways to make money, HBCUs will be unable to remain open if the trend of tightening state budgets continues.
When you look for solutions, others notice
Take Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, for instance.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has kicked off a tour of Historically Black Colleges, and Universities called “Feel the Bern.”
The presidential candidate will tour a host of HBCUs including Howard University, South Carolina State University, Jackson State University, Alabama State University, Florida A&M University, and many more.
Sanders is attempting to connect with young black voters by talking about issues that matter to them, such as income inequality and criminal justice reform.
According to nbcnews.com, Sanders, and his team face an uphill battle in states where black voters will be crucial, such as South Carolina.
“A recent Monmouth University poll showed Hillary Clinton’s lead at 69 to 21 percent over Sanders and other major polls show Clinton with a sizable lead over the Vermont senator.”
Sanders will need to ensure that his reach goes farther than just black students, but he also understands that the youth vote helped to welcome President Barack Obama to the Oval Office.
But Sanders has a radical message that resonates with college students. He has a plan to make college free for anyone who wants to attend and also wants to change America’s healthcare system over to single-payer.
That’s radical enough to bend the ear of any first-year political science major. While most believe Sanders isn’t a true contender for President, his messages are stirring up a lot of debate, particularly what some feel is a socialist view on what American life should be. His free college plan isn’t so radical, though, as President Obama has proposed the same for the first two years of community college for students who can keep their grades up.
It will be interesting to see how the young vote, and the minority vote, stacks up for Sanders. Will it be enough to elect him to the highest office in the land?
HBCUs are in the business of looking for solutions
There are many ways to react to the fact that PWIs are taking over. Giving up is one way, and as I’ve discussed on my website, some schools have. Fortunately, many schools are finding ways to serve the students of today. The HBCU advantage in 2016 is finding and providing the “missing link” for its students—and it’s different from what students needed in 1956.
The charter school debate is getting even more heated. Recently, charter opponents launched a campaign from the steps of the Massachusetts State House to warn that charter schools were “sapping resources from the traditional schools that serve most minority students, and creating a two-track system.” Similar opposition has been voiced by critics across the country as well.
So when it comes to educating kids, are charter schools good or bad?
Differing views
Minnesota authorized the first charter schools in 1991. Charter schools are public schools that are independent and more autonomous than traditional schools and typically based around a particular educational mission or philosophy.
Charters’ governance structure – who can operate a charter and what kind of oversight they face – varies by state. For example, while charter schools in some states are managed by nonprofit organizations, in other states they are run for a fee by for-profit companies.
Regardless, over the years, an increasing number of students have been enrolling in charter schools. At present there are more than three million students enrolled in 6,700 charter schools across 42 states. Nationally, charter school enrollment has more than tripled since 2000.
The response to charter prevalence is varied: proponents say these schools provide a vital opportunity for children to attend high-quality alternatives to traditional public schools. Especially when those traditional schools are struggling or underperforming.
Opponents, like those in Boston, say charter schools are threats to the very idea of public schooling – they weaken neighborhood schools by reducing enrollment, capturing their funding and prioritizing high-ability students instead of those most in need of educational improvements.
What’s the evidence?
As a researcher who studies school choice, I know that many of these arguments are reflected in evidence. But, the truth is, when you look nationwide, the effects of charter schooling on student test scores are mixed – charters in some states do better than traditional public schools, worse or about the same in others.
Research has been less ambiguous when it comes to educational attainment. We know that kids from Boston charter schools, for example, are more likely to pass the state’s high school exit exam “with especially large effects on the likelihood of qualifying for a state-sponsored college scholarship.” Charters also “induce a clear shift from two-year to four-year colleges.”
What’s more, a new study published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (the top peer-reviewed policy journal in the country) has shown that students from charter schools not only persist longer in college than those from traditional public schools, but also earn more in income later.
But critics charge that charters achieve these kinds of effects by pushing out kids with learning disabilities or problematic behavior – or avoid such children altogether.
Critics say that charter schools tend to push out underperforming children. Neon Tommy, CC BY-SA
There are also concerns that charter advantages are rooted in new patterns of racial/ethnic segregation because white and minority families may choose schools with more children of the same race or ethnicity.
Then there is the understudied issue of teachers in charter schools. Most of these teachers are not unionized, which remains a source of major tension between charter and traditional public school advocates.
We know, for example, that charter teachers tend to exit schools at higher rates than other public teachers, which, all else being equal, could be detrimental to student outcomes.
But we also know that charter administrators may prioritize teacher effectiveness and other attributes in making staffing and compensation decisions. This differs from traditional schools, where teachers’ pay and job retention are not usually linked to their classroom performance.
What do parents think?
Public opinion about charter schools varies along with this evidence.
A recent national poll indicated that 51 percent of all Americans support the idea of charter schooling. Only 27 percent actively opposed charters, which means almost as many Americans either don’t like or don’t have an opinion about these schools as those who do and support them.
Respondents in these urban areas were far more supportive of school choice generally and charter schools in particular than the national average: no less than 83 percent (in Tulsa) and as much as 91-92 percent (in Atlanta, Boston, Memphis, New Orleans and New York City) agreed that parents should have more school choices.
No less than 58 percent (in New York City) and as much as 74 percent (in Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles and New Orleans) believed that overall, charter schools improve education.
In that survey, there was a direct correlation between respondents’ perceptions of surrounding public school quality and support for charter schools: the worse parents believed their traditional schooling options to be, the more they favored charter schools.
Charters are here to stay
So, where do we go from here?
Scholars like me tend to conclude our studies by saying “we need more evidence.” And on charter schools, that’s true: we need to know more. But on the big questions of public policy – and education certainly is one of these – research tends to go only so far.
Rigorous evidence can tell us about differences between charter and traditional schools. But it cannot solve a more fundamental and subjective disagreement about whether public education should or should not continue to exist largely as it has for the last century.
This is especially true whenever we add the caveat – “it depends.”
Whether charter schools are better for kids than traditional public schools appears to depend on which charter schools we are talking about, and in which states.
So too does the question of whether charters exist to help all kids or to provide a specialized education to a few. And whether parents see charters as a positive force in their communities appears to depend on their sense that traditional schools will provide what they need for their children.
In my view, one thing seems certain: charter schools are here to stay. Already, there are more of them every year.
So, it’s time to move the debate away from “are charters good or bad for kids” and to a more careful consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of the charter approach in many different places.
Charter proponents can and should recognize that not all charter schools are superior to the traditional public model. Charter critics should note that traditional public schools have failed many families – especially poor families and families of color – and there are reasons many have turned to alternative education providers.
More evidence is needed, to be sure, but these basic realities are likely to remain.
Since the 1970s, a “doom loop” has pervaded higher education, writes Christopher Newfield in his new bookThe Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them. Newfield, a professor of American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, calls this loop “privatization” – the hidden and overt ways that “business practices restructure teaching and research.”
It’s a cycle in which colleges spend more and more money chasing research projects, building luxury dorms and academic centers to attract wealthy students, and engaging in activities that compel them to compete against each other, rather than focus on their own students. Newfield says he saw this first-hand while serving on the University of California’s planning and budget committee.
One consequence, according to Newfield: After decades of public universities raising tuition, legislatures have learned to rely even more on tuition increases to enable them to cut funding for public higher education.
Families suffer, of course, but the long-term impact transcends that. “The converting of public funding into higher tuition focuses the student on assuring her future income to cover higher costs and debt,” he writes. At stake, he believes, is a citizenry that sees college not as a place for in-depth learning and inquiry, but as a means to economic security, forcing colleges to conduct themselves more like a business, and less like a public good that all students can afford.
The Hechinger Report spoke with Newfield to learn more.
Society – culturally, economically and socially – gets the majority of the benefits. Here I’m using the work of some economists, particularly Walter McMahon, who has actually tried to count up all of the non-market benefits that universities generate.
My parents are first-generation college people, and they probably wouldn’t have gone if it hadn’t been free for them. The benefit of that was that society got two more productive, also politically more thoughtful, more complex people that had better health, people that were able to make contributions to their community, because they had incomes that allowed them to work only one job.
What’s happened since is, it’s just kind of an arrangement of convenience for state governments, for taxpayers, for business taxpayers, who’ve gotten a cheaper deal. But, it’s economically and socially less efficient to save money this way [by reducing state funding and relying on tuition plus businesslike revenue from research]. It’s also philosophically and economically incorrect.
Q: What’s one example of the way colleges have been behaving like businesses at the expense of students?
A: They had to look for multiple revenue streams really starting in the 1980s, and some of those were very high-value and glamorous … like technology-transfer revenues through patenting, increasing contracts and grants revenues, and increasing fundraising.
The national statistic is that universities have to put in 19 cents of institutional funds to make up, to get to a full dollar of their research expenditures. [And] this number is higher at public universities than it is at private universities. The last numbers that I saw are about 25 cents on the dollar of overall research expenditures at publics, and something like half that at privates. So there’s a public subsidy that’s going on at these institutions, through ongoing general fund contributions, that means that they’re just paying more of their own money … and not paying for what the public thinks it’s paying for, which is instruction, and some other kinds of core things.
There’s actually one article that was published on this in the general press that said on $3.5 billion in gross contract and grant revenues [at the University of California], they lose $720 million [in one year].
Q: Why were states increasing tuition – your book notes public colleges raised tuition by about 50 percent in the 1980s and 38 percent in the 1990s – even though, as you point out, state funding was growing slightly?
Because they were adding prestigious activities. And after U.S. News came in with [college] rankings in the late 1980s, it just really took off. Because they were having to compete for revenue, for overall amount of R&D expenditures, for selectivity rates, which were tied to the prestige of the faculty. … Bayh-Dole [legislation], in 1980, which is the door opening [for universities] to keep patenting revenues, was a driver that we haven’t talked about enough.
But I think some of it is just that it was more important to have a kind of a national profile than it was to do really good regional service. Shifting from regional service to national profile created competitive costs; you just tend to duplicate a lot of things that other people have. Then later, in the 1990s and 2000s, when you’re starting to compete for blue chip out-of-state students, the arms race in facilities accelerates, and just re-accelerates after 2008.
Q: What’s the most glaring example of privatization at work that you saw on the UC planning and budget committee?
A .We just started prioritizing private revenue streams, and energy and brains and additional positions were created in order to go after that other stuff. The Regents were pitched fundraising statistics and contracts and grants, gross statistics – always with the gross numbers, never with net. Undergraduates and academic graduates students became more of an afterthought at the senior management level. They were kind of the revenue source, in terms of tuition and general funds per capita, but then, after that, they were not at the center of policy. We really lost our focus.
Q:Let’s say there’s a reformer who’s sympathetic to the arguments in this book. Does she sit down with President-elect Trump? Or with her state’s governor? And what will that elevator pitch sound like?
She would say to Trump, you ran on making America great again. And to make America great again, you have to make the economy great again. And to make the economy great again, you have to bring all the non-college workers of the country into it. And to do that, to include the non-college, you have to rebuild open-access, high-quality, public universities. There is no other way. It can’t be job training. It can’t be political rhetoric. It can’t be browbeating a few companies to not off-shore their workers.
This has to be liberal arts and sciences. Rebuild high-end cognitive skills, so that these folks don’t just go down the street to the machinist shop that’s still open if they lost their factory job. They can be eligible for a whole range of jobs, or build jobs and businesses on their own with these skills.
This interview was conducted by telephone and lightly edited for length and clarity.
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about higher education.
Kindergarten classes at Ernest R. Geddes Elementary School in Baldwin Park, Calif., are taught primarily in Spanish as part of the school’s bilingual program. Photo: Sarah Garland)
As the election results were rolling in across the country signaling that Donald Trump would become the 45th president of the United States, nearly three-quarters of Californians had voted to restore bilingual education in California.
The Trump campaign had been overtly anti-immigrant, while the restoration of bilingual education was an affirmation of the valuing of the children of immigrants. How could California and the nation be at such great odds?
In 1976, California was one of the first states in the nation to pass legislation making it a requirement for schools to provide bilingual education to its English learners (ELs). The rationale for these programs was that such instruction would combat discrimination against immigrant children and support development of a stronger self- concept, in addition to providing instruction in a language the children could understand, thereby avoiding school failure.
While there wasn’t a large body of research on any of this, it made intuitive as well as logical sense. This remained the policy in California until the passage of a voter initiative in 1998 entitled Proposition 227, or “English for the Children,” effectively prohibited bilingual instruction in most cases.
The seemingly slow acquisition of English and the low achievement of EL kids were blamed on bilingual education, even though no more than 30 percent of ELs were ever provided bilingual instruction, mostly because of a lack of credentialed bilingual teachers.
The solution was to immerse the students in a cold bath of English, eschewing instruction in a language they could actually understand.
The snake-oil salesman who convinced the voters in 1998 that with English-only instruction ELs would become proficient in English in one year and raise their academic performance at the same time was not unlike Donald Trump. Even at the time, there was sufficient research to suggest that the first of these promises was unlikely, and the second simply impossible.
Ron Unz manufactured statistics that could never be verified: “The majority of English learners are in bilingual programs,” “hundreds of thousands of these students languish in classes where only Spanish is taught, not English.”
These remarks aren’t dissimilar to the claims of Donald Trump that Mexican immigrants are “rapists and criminals,” that he will build a wall to shut out our neighbors to the south, or that he will rescind the program that allows young “Dreamers” (young people brought to the U.S. as children) to go to college or work without fear of deportation — no verifiable facts, no specificity about how the proposals would actually work.
The ban on bilingual instruction passed with more than 60 percent of the vote – mostly by voters who had never seen a bilingual program (as was the case with Unz) or even understood how they worked. After five years, the state’s commissioned evaluation of the impact of Proposition 227 found no significant difference in outcomes for English learners as a result of the new law, but it did “conclude that Proposition 227 focused on the wrong issue.”
Bilingual education was not the problem. Nonetheless, California, home of more children of immigrants than any other state, continued to live with the virtual ban on bilingual instruction until this year.
Proposition 58, “The Multilingual Education Initiative,” lifted the ban and expands access to bilingual (usually targeted to English learners) and dual-language programs (that incorporate both English learners and English speakers wanting to learn a second language).
During the last 18 years, research has been conducted that shows significant benefits to multilingual instruction. Canadians have long been researching the cognitive benefits and concluding that learning in more than one language effectively made students “smarter” – they demonstrated a greater capacity for focused attention and avoidance of distractions. However, this research never had a major impact on policy in the U.S., perhaps because we have always considered our situation to be very different from Canada’s.
In recent years, longitudinal research – following the same children over their entire school career, from kindergarten to high school — comparing those in bilingual and dual-language programs to those in English-only classrooms, has concluded that while the bilinguals start slower, they end with superior outcomes in English, and Latino students perform better in both English and math when enrolled in bilingual programs.
Other research has shown that the children of immigrants who attain literacy in their home language actually earn more once in the workforce, and, again, in the case of Latinos go on to four-year universities at higher rates than those who lose that language ability.
Over the last two decades, too many children have been denied an education that could have conferred real benefits, and too many have been left behind. But perhaps equally important, California’s classrooms have been emptied of bilingual teachers. Although the demand for these programs continues to grow, less than one-third as many young people prepare to become bilingual teachers today as did in 1998. Why prepare for a job that doesn’t exist?
The dearth of prepared teachers will be a significant impediment to mounting these highly desired programs even as they have become once again legal.
Meantime, we have to hope that false promises and unverifiable claims made by presidential candidates do not tear at the fabric of this nation, a nation of immigrants.
Patricia Gándara is Research Professor and Co-Director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. She is also Chair of the Working Group on Education for the University of California-Mexico Initiative.
Many academics, including myself, have explored why free higher education is not economically viable in South Africa.
Money is not the only issue, though. Quality also matters. And the two go hand in hand. Students have hastened to conflate free education and access to quality education. But introducing free university education will not magically grant students access to quality education, nor employment in the marketplace. There’s a lot of work to be done to achieve this. And in my view this should take precedence over doing away with university fees.
This work will not only involve universities as institutions.
The starting point must be to improve the quality of basic and secondary education. South Africa’s basic education system faces serious problems and has done so for years.
Added to this is the fact that universities have become increasingly bureaucratic as well as driven by the need to raise money from fees. This makes them ever more expensive and beyond the reach of the vast majority of South Africans. Universities must return to their core business of teaching, research and learning rather than focusing on profit margins.
And, last but not least, there needs to be a shift in students’ attitudes: they must begin to value their access to universities.
Basic education is a mess
The basic education system compares poorly with others on the continent. It fares even worse when compared globally.
The country has too few teachers; those who are in classrooms are frequently under qualified and perform badly. Teacher to pupil ratios are extremely high and many public schools – particularly those in rural areas – lack even basic infrastructure like desks and books.
Against this backdrop, the relatively small number of students who eventually manage to enter university education are naturally ill-equipped to handle the complex nature of knowledge construction at a tertiary level. They struggle with literacy and numeracy and are in no way ready to tackle university assignments.
So, fundamental change must happen in the basic education sector. It’s no use making higher education free for all if those entering the system are not able to cope with its demands.
Universities aren’t corporate houses
While it is necessary to overhaul the basic education system, South Africa needs to also transform its educational institutions and make them affordable.
This will involve not just equipping students with the skills the country needs, but also making degrees affordable. The cost of higher education in South Africa has risen phenomenally in the last two decades.
According to a 2016 survey, a standard Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Social Science costs anywhere from R14 000 to an average of around R35 000. This is far beyond the reach of most South African households. By comparison, a standard Bachelor of Arts at one of Kenya’s biggest public universities currently costs the equivalent of R14 000 for a year.
Higher education must be seen to be within the reach of poor students who aspire to it. Universities are not corporate houses that need to be obsessed by profits and income. It’s not appropriate that they focus on things like “management and efficiency techniques and professional support for accountability, measurement, ‘product control’ and assessment” instead of teaching and research.
Corporatisation of the higher education system has led South Africa down the wrong path. Too much money is spent on paying senior managers and remunerating bloated administrative units.
With the ever-growing decrease in state funding for higher education, the universities are forced to depend on student fees, donor funding and other sources. There may be some justification that universities are profit driven to pay for the increasing costs of higher educational institutions.
But all this comes at a cost to students and the academic programme. It’s time to return the academic agenda – teaching and research – to the centre of university life.
Rethinking protest
It’s also important to remember that access to education is a two sided coin. It’s not enough for universities to open their doors; the people entering must also value their access. Yes, universities have a lot of work to do to ensure they are transformed. But there must also be a change in the culture of students.
Students must realise that South Africa is no longer fighting an external enemy like the apartheid system. Instead, citizens are fighting within a system of democracy. This means that the way the country protests needs to be rethought. In the past the means for legal protest weren’t easily available. There are now appropriate structures and institutions to seek redress and put pressure through peaceful protest and through democratic negotiations. The destruction of infrastructure that’s been seen at educational institutions in recent months will only deprive the future generations of access to education.
Politicians have a major role to play in changing this culture of protest, as do parents, traditional leaders, NGOs and other religious and cultural institutions, such as churches.
The signature issue for Betsy DeVos, nominated to be the next U.S. Secretary of Education, is giving parents freedom of choice, either to choose charter schools or to use vouchers to buy an education at any school they like, public or private. The logical extension of such policies – permitting students to take individual courses wherever they wish, by using online options – has already begun to take root in about a dozen states.
It’s called “Course Access” or “Course Choice.” Under such plans, the funding for a course taken by an individual student goes to the school or online company offering the course, often away from the student’s local district. In Nevada, in fact, parents can spend state education dollars any way they please — on private, public, online, part-time and full-time schools, on tutoring and extra books — through education savings accounts, which an advocate for them calls “the purest form of educational freedom.”
As they have emerged in some states, these programs have been assisted by conservative groups such as Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change and the Koch Industries-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). It remains to be seen whether a Trump Administration will boost them further, using federal policy.
The growth of “Course Choice” initiatives in various states was chronicled in depth by The Hechinger Report last year, in this story from our archives.
— The editors
Thanks to a relatively new state policy, all spring Clarke went to the school library during second period for an online sociology class.
“It was very cool,” said Clarke, noting it lived up to his psychology teacher’s description: “It was a very interesting topic with some things that will tie back to psychology.”
This initiative, often called “Course Choice” or “Course Access,” is, as one proponent described it, like “school choice on steroids.”
Proponents count at least 10 states that have adopted a collection of policies they began promoting as Course Access — policies that allow students to take classes part-time online (and sometimes in other off-campus classrooms) by choosing from a variety of providers, including charter schools and other districts, instead of being limited to their local course offerings or to one state virtual school. And the Course Access movement is gaining momentum as it expands across the country, with eight states adopting or considering such laws in just the last four years, according to a comprehensive report on Course Access sponsored by the conservative group the Foundation for Excellence in Education and the lobbying firm EducationCounsel.
For Clarke and other students, online schools mean options, but for school district officials, they can mean less revenue, as education dollars flow toward charter schools or other districts that offer the online courses.
And, not unlike what often happens with charter schools and vouchers, the Course Access policies can set up a competition for limited education dollars.
States generally allocate money per student to districts, but in states with Course Access, districts have to share that funding based on the number of courses a student takes elsewhere. Much of the money can end up in the hands of for-profit companies that supply the curriculum, directly provide the classes or run the online schools in which students enroll part time.
“What is possible is the exploding wiring — if you will — of money across district lines or even state lines,” said Patricia Burch, associate professor of education and policy at the University of Southern California. “That can have a very immediate funding implication for a district.”
“It is a significant cost,” said Randy Paulson, Chatfield High’s principal. His school, with 400 students, can manage it partly because no more than 40 students a year are taking an online class. In Chatfield’s case, nearly all the classes are provided by the Minnesota Virtual Academy, run by the Houston Public School District about 40 miles away, with help from the for-profit company K12 Inc.
“What we want to do is serve our own students the best we can,” said Paulson, noting that adding an online class or two sometimes helps keep students in school. “We don’t want to lose students. If we lose students, we’re not able to provide students those opportunities.”
Similar to efforts to open charter schools or offer vouchers for private schools, Course Access aims to allow students (usually in high school) and their families to make choices — in this case, about where to go for individual classes. Advocates believe that the programs have the potential to appeal to all students, even those who would never consider leaving their local schools or don’t have the option of a charter school.
“We think the market is infinite,” said Mary Gifford, senior vice president of education policy and academic affairs at K12 Inc., the nation’s largest virtual school operator, which provides the curriculum and some management for the school where Clarke and his classmates enrolled. She said that although no more than 1 or 2 percent of U.S. students will ever enroll in virtual schools full-time, the company is now working closely with districts to help them start online programs as part of Course Access policies.
So far, only a tiny fraction of eligible students have enrolled for online classes. For example, in Minnesota, which began allowing part-time online enrollment in 2006, roughly 1 percent (5,520) of the state’s secondary school students enrolled during the 2013-14 school year, according to the Minnesota Department of Education.
But the policy has powerful backers, including at least three Republican presidential candidates — former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker — along with conservative groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC, the Koch Industries-backed association of state legislators and businesses), not to mention allies in the for-profit education business.
“If you rewind and go back to the last election cycle, you had at least two governors campaigning on Course Access,” said John Bailey, vice president of policy at the Jeb Bush-founded Foundation for Excellence in Education, referring to governors Bruce Rauner of Illinois and Greg Abbott of Texas.
And the reform-minded group Chiefs for Change, also founded by Jeb Bush, is pushing to include a provision in the update to the federal No Child Left Behind Act to set aside 5 percent of Title I dollars to be used, among other things, for Course Access. (The House version of the bill already sets aside 3 percent, or roughly $410 million, mostly for outside tutoring services; changes could be made when the House and Senate versions are reconciled in conference committee.)
Many of these backers prefer the term Course Access to Course Choice, to distinguish it from school choice and the controversies surrounding it, and also as a way of indicating its focus on addressing many schools’ lack of course offerings.
As states around the country try to prepare more students for college and careers, they are working to provide more students with access to advanced classes, particularly in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The widespread lack of access to some key courses — only half of all high schools nationwide offer calculus and just 63 percent have physics — has become a rallying cry for Course Access supporters.
“Having a high-quality education must no longer depend on location,” wrote Jeb Bush in the introduction to last year’s Course Access policy brief. “For the next generation of students, the international stakes are too high to restrict access to great courses based on ZIP code.”
Yet at least so far, the program may not be living up to its promise of creating greater access for the very kids who might need it most. The students using the program in Texas are wealthier and whiter overall than the public school population as a whole, suggesting that gaps in access persist online. Data on the Florida Virtual School show a similar trend; in Utah, a stunningly low 6.15 percent of students participating in the state’s Course Access program are officially listed as poor enough to qualify for a fee waiver, though officials said course providers might not be filling out the information correctly.
Utah — the model legislation and its aftermath
When Utah passed the law creating a Course Access program in 2011, school districts panicked over what it would do to their budgets.
“We were fearful because those who were pushing it were pretty intense,” said Ken Grover, now the principal of Innovations Early College High School in Salt Lake City, describing billboards that advertised free online courses.
The program — officially called the Statewide Online Education Program — has been phased in over time. High school students this fall will be able to take up to five classes online during the school year while remaining enrolled in their local high school. This past school year, when students could take four classes online, it cost districts up to $366 per student per semester, according to the Utah State Office of Education.
In the fall of 2016, students will be able to take up to six online classes (usually considered a full load of coursework) while remaining enrolled.
Utah’s Course Access legislation also allows kids in private schools and home-schooled kids to participate through a separate funding stream.
The Utah policy was the model for what conservative backers of the program had imagined. In fact, Utah’s legislation is one of two officially approved by the Koch-backed ALEC. (The other, which contains two possible funding options, is based on a law passed in Louisiana, though later overturned by its state court, and on the law passed in Texas.)
The disaster that public school districts in Utah anticipated never materialized — partly because, within a few months, many districts in the state had established online schools to compete for dollars with the online charter schools.
Canyons School District, for example, went from having no online students in 2011 to 1,900 this past year. They are all enrolled part time, and all but 400 come from within the district, said Darren Draper, who runs what he’s been told is the largest of the district’s part-time schools, the Canyons Virtual High School.
“That’s huge,” said Draper. “If we didn’t build CVHS, we would have many students going elsewhere, without question.”
In fact, just 1,367 students in the entire state took an online class outside their district in 2014-15, according to preliminary state figures, meaning district budgets were largely spared.
In the end, advocates of the change and public school officials who balked at the measure can both claim victory in Utah — at least so far.
Course Access backers, however, claim credit for creating the competition that spurred the public schools to change.
“We changed the landscape in the state entirely,” said Robyn Bagley, board chair for Parents for Choice in Education, a Utah group that advocated for the law locally. “The amount of options skyrocketed in some form or another.”
Bagley maintains that the program has already grown dramatically in its first four years and will expand further.
But Grover said he doesn’t expect to see a spike in numbers. “Most parents want their kids to go to school,” he said. “They want them at school learning. It’s their identity.”
(In perhaps a reflection of where online learning is headed, both Bagley and Grover now run blended-learning schools that they say offer the best of both worlds — the personalization of an online school with the in-person interactions of a traditional school.)
Although rural Texas districts depend on Course Access, statewide its enrollments have dropped
Rural school districts across the state of Texas are using its version of Course Access to offer courses to fulfill basic high school requirements and even to save money.
In the tiny Dell City Independent School District, with fewer than 100 children enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade, every single middle and high school student was enrolled in an online social studies class after the district’s teacher left mid-year. Algebra II and Spanish classes were also offered virtually, said Veronica Gomez, a physical education teacher who doubles as the liaison to the Texas Virtual Academy Network, as the statewide program is officially called.
“We live in a rural area; it’s out in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “We don’t have the staff. Because we don’t have the staff, we have to go online.” The district hadn’t found a good candidate to teach Spanish, she said, but added that the online program has other advantages: “It’s cheaper for us. We don’t have to pay benefits or anything like that.”
Most Texas districts, however, appear to be taking a different route — they are opting to spend money on their own schools and teachers instead of paying for online classes.
When the state originally started up the Texas Virtual School Network Course Catalog, in 2009, students could take courses online without the districts having to cover the costs; the state had allocated a separate pool of money for the program.
But after the state stopped covering the cost, the number of spots filled in the semester-long online classes dropped precipitously, from 22,899 in 2010-11 to 5,757 in 2013-14. The wording of the state law may have been a major factor.
The law says that districts can turn down a student’s request for a state-vetted online class only if their school offers a “substantially similar” class. Backers of Course Access said they think many districts are using a generous interpretation of that concept (they tried unsuccessfully this spring to get the legislature to close that loophole).
Louisiana’s new source of funding for college and career classes
In a striking innovation, Louisiana adopted a program, officially called Course Choice, that includes not just online courses but off-campus classes as well. As the law was originally written in Louisiana, for-profit companies and other outside groups could compete to directly provide the online or in-person classes, with parents and students choosing among them and funding going to the winners.
The political opposition to the program was initially fierce, and the law was challenged successfully. The state Supreme Court ruled that the funding approach was unconstitutional because it didn’t provide local school boards a say. Lawmakers revamped the program, removing the competition for resources, allowing schools to control what classes their students enrolled in and adding additional money — in essence, guaranteeing extra funding for the extra classes.
The revised program has expanded rapidly, according to the Louisiana Department of Education, with 19,068 semester-long Course Choice enrollments in 2014-15, just its second year. While the state has been championed as the model for Course Access policies, state superintendent John White said the program hasn’t lived up to his original vision.
The program was originally conceived as a way to bring new and inspiring classes to high school students preparing for life after graduation, White said, with “things that would not have existed without Course Choice.”
Although a welding program, an elite private college’s associates degree program and an ACT-preparation program have successfully flourished as prime examples of innovation under the revised program, schools across the state are most commonly using the program to prepare high school students for life after graduation, specifically allowing students to earn college credit through the state’s four-year universities, technical and community colleges. More than two-thirds (13,000) of the course enrollments have been in these so-called dual-enrollment classes.
“That’s an important thing,” White said, but added, “much of that would exist — not all of it, but much of it would exist without Course Choice.” (Significant numbers of students already took dual-enrollment classes before Course Choice ever started.) He had also hoped, with the initial bill, to put decision-making control in the hands of parents instead of school boards, and argues that the program now has less innovation as a result.
White, who heads the Chiefs for Change group, said federal funding of Course Access, if changes are made to the No Child Left Behind Act, could drive further innovation, with outside groups essentially guaranteed a chance at significant funds. “You’re going to attract a lot of actors that you wouldn’t otherwise attract — creative actors,” he said.
Despite the wide consensus that the program is now working, critics still aren’t happy about how it was originally conceived in Louisiana. “I think it was an ALEC-driven, an American Legislative Exchange-driven, initiative that Superintendent White felt would work in Louisiana,” said the Louisiana School Boards Association executive director, Scott Richard, who helped launch a lawsuit against the state program as it was initially conceived.
“I think it’s all part of the national reform, so-called reform, from the national think tanks,” he added, arguing that the new form of Course Choice had provided districts with resources to make important changes.
White said his inspiration was the online experience in Louisiana and with charter schools and school choice generally, but acknowledged that, because schools are happier with the revised version of the program, principals and teachers are collaborating with the state on everything from scheduling problems to reaching students who hadn’t had access to courses in the past.
Some proponents of Course Access now say that a program that doesn’t start off as competitive for funding may be best.
“I don’t see one system as better than the other; they’re just very different,” White said.
Other options besides Course Access
Of course, for many advocates of Course Access, the program represents just one possibility for changing the public education system — their goal is to put more power in the hands of students and parents to decide where state education dollars are spent.
Nevada passed a law in June that allows parents to spend state education dollars any way they please — on private, public, online, part-time and full-time schools, on tutoring and extra books — through education savings accounts, or “vouchers on steroids,” as they were called in one news story about the legislation. (Four other states have similar laws, but they limit the savings accounts significantly — to students with special needs, in foster care and/or from high-poverty households.)
“I think Course Choice is sort of evolving, just as a policy area, into what you may know as an educational savings account,” said Lindsay Russell, the director of the ALEC Task Force on Education and Workforce Development. “We’re evolving as a country, and I think students continue to need to be competitive, not only within the United States, but globally as we continue to slip. I think educational savings accounts are the purest form of educational freedom.”
Course Access in its current form, while seemingly less radical than Nevada’s approach, appeals to some of its more conservative backers because it can be set up to pay schools and other course providers only when students complete a course (or potentially pass an outside exam).
Proponents call this a step toward accountability and paying for the right thing — results, instead of student attendance, especially given the dismal completion rates for online classes. (In Louisiana and Utah, providers of courses receive half on enrollment and half when the course is completed, for example.)
“Nevada is the poster child for seeing a different way to approach this,” said Michael Horn, co-founder and executive director of the Clayton Christensen Institute. “We need to step back and start learning what policy environments work in terms of incentivizing the right behavior. Course Access is this intriguing place to play with a lot of policies that move away from seat time toward competency-based learning and measuring individual student growth and things like that.”
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about blended learning.
