Winners & Losers

Eduflack offers up a first-rate post today on the winners and losers in the education portion of the President's FY2011 budget.

Claus von Zastrow issues a wise caution regarding federal funding for professional development (UPDATE: as well as a second thought).

The New York Times's Sam Dillon and the National Journal's Eliza Krigman (hat tip: Eduwonk) have the scoop on implications for Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization.

The budget is just at the first step and Congress has yet to have its say. Likewise, I wouldn't bet on reauthorization this election year (yep, congressional elections are only nine months away!). 2011? 2012? Anyone? UPDATE: Here is what the Education Experts at the National Journal's blog think.

Jumping to Conclusions

In a recent post on Education Week's Inside School Research blog, Debra Viadero offers a caution about President Obama's support for community colleges. Pointing to her recent article on community college research that indicated how much more we need to know about how best to improve completion rates in that sector, she questions whether the president would be wiser to place his bets on career colleges. She says that a recent study by the Educational Policy Institute (EPI) and an ongoing program of research by James Rosenbaum and colleagues support her contention that community colleges ought to take cues from career colleges.

In my opinion, this talented reporter is jumping to conclusions.

Yes, the graduation rates at two-year for-profit colleges exceed those at two-year public colleges. No one disputes that. That does not necessarily mean, however, that career colleges are outperforming community colleges, or that community colleges should take steps to become more like career colleges. The plausible alternative explanations for the differences in results are numerous. For example, the students attending the two types of colleges may differ in important yet unmeasured ways, ways that are associated with chances of graduation (what researchers refer to as selection bias). Is one group more economically or educationally advantaged? More motivated? More apt to have a family, nighttime work, or receive tuition support from an employer? It's also possible that the differences in graduation rates stem from constraints that community colleges face but career colleges do not-for example, inadequate resources or a lack of control over mission or governance. It's one thing to point to differences in practices between the community colleges and for-profit colleges, and another thing to attribute those differences to variation in the "will" or intentions of practitioners, rather than attribute them to under-funding and all that comes with it.

Establishing that community colleges have poorer graduation rates than career colleges for reasons they can and should do something about requires evidence that the two differ on one or more key aspects that is causally linked to college completion. Say we knew that smaller classes caused better student retention-and community colleges have larger classes than career colleges. We'd then be able to say, there's something community colleges ought to fix. But we don't have evidence that that's the case.

Instead, research simply establishes that (a) career and community colleges have different graduation rates and (b) career and community colleges (sometimes) employ different institutional practices. Rosenbaum and his colleagues have done a nice job, as Viadero notes, of documenting the latter-using qualitative methods, mostly at colleges in the Chicago area. But they have not shown that those practices cause observable differences in graduation rates. Moreover, while they've produced one paper indicating that differences in the student populations at career and community colleges do not appear to account for disparities in outcomes, that analysis is based solely on a limited set of observable characteristics-and therefore don't rule out the possibility that different levels of student motivation, for example, are really the culprit. Just think about how students get to college-many at career colleges are actively recruited (sometimes off their living room couches) while many at community colleges effectively wander in the door. Why would we think, then, that career and community colleges are serving the same kinds of people and producing different results?

There's another consideration Viadero neglects, and that's college costs. Students at career colleges leave with far more debt than students at community colleges. Data from the 2007-2008 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study reveal that 61% of community college students graduate with less than $10,000 in debt, compared to only 22% of students graduating from 2 year for-profits. In contrast, 19% of graduates from 2 year for-profits have $30,000 or more in student loans, compared to only 5% of community college graduates. Nearly all students (98%) finishing at 2 year for-profit colleges have taken on a loan, compared to just 38% of community college graduates. Is that a problem? Is it offset by higher rates of graduation? The answers are far from clear. Absent better ones we shouldn't be relying on evidence like EPI's---a study of career colleges' high graduation rates that was supported by the Imagine America Foundation, formerly the Career College Foundation, established in 1982 as the research, scholarship and training provider for the nation's career colleges. Full-text of that study wasn't even placed online for researchers to fully vet!

Community colleges have a long, rich history of serving this nation. Sure, there's room for improvement, but without more solid evidence of which changes are needed let's not jump to conclusions and tout the for-profits as a model to which they ought to aspire. We might end up in a bigger mess than we're already in.

POSTSCRIPT:

I have now obtained a copy of the full EPI report. My suspicions were correct: the authors use nothing more than simple descriptive comparisons of students' characteristics and degree completion rates (calculated using NCES's DAS system, likely without propering weighting) to support their causal claims about the "benefits" of attending community college. For example, they write "The report suggests that career colleges work harder to provide appropriate student services and support" but present no data on institutional services or effort expended, particularly any tied to student outcomes. Their final conclusion -- "statistically, not only do students attending career colleges perform as well as or better than many other students attending comparative public institutions, but they persist in and complete their education while typically being more economically, educationally and socially challenged than other students"-- is based on nothing more than comparisons of sample means (no regression, no nothing). C'mon folks, this ain't the kind of research any consumer ought to be taking seriously. Glad to see Kevin Carey agrees.

Where Have You Been?

A spate of recent articles, including those covering Bill Bowen and Mike McPherson's new book (which I promise to review just as soon as my copy arrives), have left me a bit perplexed-- wondering aloud "where have you all been?" The punchline each time is that a fair proportion of adults starting college are not finishing. Yes, and duh. This is not new, and if it's news well I guess it's only because we've deliberately kept our heads in the sand.

But there's no way that folks like New York Times reporter David Leonhardt have been deliberately oblivious, and yet he's writing about low college completion rates as if they've just been unearthed. In a recent blog post, Kevin Carey implied the same-- just as he did in a recent American Enterprise Institute report. But this has been a prominent topic of discussion for years--maybe a decade plus! Just look at Kevin's own 2004 report A Matter of Degrees (which received plenty of media coverage), or the Spellings Commission report, or Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz's book. I know I could go back several more years and find plenty more evidence.

I think it's one thing to imply something is new when it isn't (because again, maybe you just didn't know, or you feel the issue still is widely known enough and want to beat the drum more), and it's another thing entirely to claim that policymakers still aren't paying attention. In Leonhardt's case, he's simply wrong when he says the current Administration isn't focused on college completion. Um, how about that $2.5 billion Access and Completion Fund, part of Obama's original budget proposal? What about the performance (outcomes)-based components of the new community college monies contained in HR 3221? Foundations like Lumina and Gates have been beating this drum for years, and those in the Administration are well aware. No one in DC is saying institutions should continue to be judged solely based on enrollment (even enrollment of disadvantaged groups). There is plenty of ado about completion rates. The question is now, what exactly are the best solutions? That's a debate that needs to be richer and more visible, since the answers are far from clear-- and we'd be terribly wrong to simply resort to NCLB-style responses that remind me of my toddler: "Institutions bad. Do wrong. I punish you and you do better. Now." Let's direct our energies toward really identifying the sources of the problems, and developing a sense of how reforms can be most effective. When I get a chance to read the new Bowen and McPherson book, I'm hoping I come away with new ideas on how to do that.

Join Us!

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

You are invited to the Jam on the American Graduation Initiative for community college leaders; an online discussion with you and others from around the country about President Obama’s recent announcement to invest $12 billion in America’s community colleges. Convened by the Brookings Institute, The Education Commission of the States, and Jobs for the Future, the Jam will be held on September 16, 2009 from 8:00 am to 12:00 Midnight EST.

Sponsored by Knowledge in the Public Interest, with LaGuardia Community College as the lead college, the Jam will solicit your ideas about:

1) WHAT we should know—the benefits and consequences--about what the administration is proposing

2) HOW we can organize ourselves to make a difference for every community college in the US

Join a diverse group of individuals—community college presidents, faculty and staff; public officials; policy researchers and advocates--to influence the discussion on this groundbreaking proposal. The result will be a tool kit for action that will be available within two weeks of the Jam.

You can RSVP for the Jam until Sunday, September 13 by:
1) Going to http://polilogue.net and complete the sign up form.

2) Receive a confirmation email from “Polilogue Admin” with a link back to the site.

3) Click on the American Graduation Initiative community to enter the Jam site.

4) The passkey is: register

Please join in shaping the community college response to the most important national higher education initiative since the GI Bill. Come and go as your time permits, post as often as you like, and move between conversation threads.

See you online.

Sincerely,

Sara Goldrick-Rab
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Lead Author, "Transforming Community Colleges,"(Brookings Institution, 2009)