Posted by Mary Grabar @ Selous Foundation
As noted in my last
post, outgoing Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
has done his part to transform America through K-12 education. This has
happened through Common Core and by expanding the Department’s reach into
younger and older cohorts. Duncan got the promise for an additional $1 billion for preschool education. As the Chronicle of Higher Education noted, Duncan is
also leaving a “big imprint” on higher education. His legacy is one of “innovation and regulation.” College is put
into a seamless web of K-16, or P-20, with an unprecedented federal role in
admissions, placement, assessment, and financing.
The Chronicle notes
that Duncan has deviated from the standard practice of
Democratic secretaries who have just doled out money. He has been “personally
upbraid[ing] colleges over rising prices and low graduation rates, their
handling of cases of sexual assault, their lax academic standards for athletes
. . . , and their resistance to greater oversight.” Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity
Washington University, has become disillusioned with Duncan’s “top-down
approach.” Institutions, like Yale University, get nervous about the
Department’s investigations of “sexually hostile environments.”
The nonprofits,
like the Lumina Foundation, that have been funding
Common Core, however, give a positive assessment. Jamie Merisotis,
President and Chief Executive, praises Duncan’s “strong leadership” in putting
our higher-education system “a step closer to reflecting the needs of today’s
increasingly diverse college students — and the changing meaning of ‘college’
to include all types of postsecondary learning.” Competency-based programs that
“measure learning” through demonstration of a skill set are among his many
“innovations.” Inside Higher Education calls it “new
delivery model with the potential to improve degree completion, reduce costs to
students, and improve transparency and alignment of learning outcomes to the
needs of employers and society.”
Currently, over 600
colleges are designing, creating, or already have competency-based education
programs. This number has grown from 52 last year. As with Common Core, it is
being funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with “guidance” from the
U.S. Department of Education.
The notion of
“competency” changes the fundamental notion of education, taking it from
learning for its own sake, with a knowledgeable, independent citizenry as an
outcome, to producing workers with skill sets. Colleges that have agreed to
align financial aid to such tests have ceded their own power.
Funny, Arne Duncan, when he spoke at the 2013 meeting
of the American Education Research Association (AERA) and promised a
“sea-change” in assessments for K-12 students, included “competency-based
education,” as well as “non-cognitive skills.” Others at that AERA meeting of
academics and researchers working at universities, federal and state agencies,
school systems, test companies, and non-profit agencies were Linda
Darling-Hammond, who oversaw the development of the SBAC (Smarter Balanced
Assessment Consortium) tests, one of the two Common Core tests, and her close
colleague, Bill Ayers.
Many colleges are
following the Department of Education in emphasizing non-cognitive, “social and
emotional learning” skills. Seventeen colleges have received funds from the Department’s “First in
the World” grants to identify and help at-risk students through the aid of a
tool called Diagnostic Assessment and Achievement of College Skills to measure
such emotional attributes as “grit.”
Colleges have been
targeted strategically. Jacqueline King, director of Higher Collaboration at
SBAC, has been working to “create greater academic alignment between K-12 and
higher education.” Common Core tests are determining placement in college
courses. In 2014, college faculty in Tennessee attended workshops to learn how
to “synch up with Common Core,” in effect to teach grade 13.
I reported that the Department of Education had
funded the 2013 working paper, “The Common Core State Standards: Implications
for Community Colleges and Student Preparedness for College.” It described the
“Core to College” program in ten states: Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon, and Washington.
Core to College is funded by the Lumina, the William and Flora Hewlett, the
Bill and Melinda Gates, and other foundations. Their report, “Making
Good on the College-Ready Promise and Higher Education Engagement
Core to College Alignment Director Convening, August 1-2, 2012,” provides a
record of discussions by “alignment directors” and guest speakers on teaching
“a new type of student, more prepared for college-level, discipline-specific
work.” (As a former college instructor I am skeptical: having “more prepared”
students meant an easier time in teaching them—not the need for
special workshops.)
The ten states are
to serve as “bellwethers and models for the rest of the country.” Among the
strategies, directors suggested more data, outreach to other “stakeholders” and
private colleges, and more meetings. They are also looking beyond “the English
and Math Departments” that receive Common Core-certified students. Speakers
proposed “engaging faculty in other disciplines that could be touched by Common
Core implementation, such as history or the social sciences.”
WestEd, a major Common Core funder, is
evaluating the initiative.
The push for new
assessments (especially at community colleges) has been quickly followed by
calls for free community college. In his 2014 State of the Union address,
President Obama cited Tennessee’s still-developing program as a model. The
American Association of Community Colleges welcomed the proposal. This year, on
September 9, Obama announced that the “College Promise Campaign” would be
chaired by Second Lady Jill Biden. AACC President Walter Bumphus and Trustee
President J. Noah Brown will serve on the National Advisory Board.
Democratic
front-runners, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, pushed free college in their
first presidential debate on October 13, 2015.
To top it off, the
federal government is providing a college “scorecard.” Of course, those who
continue to refuse federal aid, like Grove City College and Hillsdale College, will
continue to be left off.
Students at these
colleges will also find themselves at an increasing financial disadvantage. One
of Obama’s first orders of business was to make the federal government the
bank for student loans. This “bank” practices “loan forgiveness,” by graduating
payment to income and providing complete forgiveness through work in government
jobs, such as in public schools or at Americorps, the federal agency. Indiana
University law professor Sheila Seuss Kennedy and Indianapolis Chamber of
Commerce manager Matt Impink enthused about such a “tour of duty” that sounds like the “civilian
corps” Obama put forth at the beginning of his presidency.
We are well on our
way. With schools producing graduates with competencies “align[ed] to the needs
of employers and society,” and with Common Core spitting out high school
graduates “college and career ready,” we will no longer worry about higher
learning.
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