Ed Policy Watch

London Calling: Are Early Ed Standards in England Tougher Than America?

Christina Satkowski — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:37:00 -0400

Those British accents sure make them sound intelligent, but are preschoolers in England smarter than American preschoolers? Associated Press reporter Nancy Zuckerbrod posed the question last week. Zuckerbrod and her family just moved to London, and she was surprised to find that her charming 5-year old daughter was "behind" academically according to the standards of her prospective English primary school. Back in Washington, D.C., where Zuckerbrod's daughter attended publicly funded pre-k, she had been a star student: curious, played well with others, an all-around good kid. Meanwhile, peers her age in England, the school told Zuckerbrod, were expected to be reading by themselves and understand fractions.

So are early education standards really higher in England? Early Ed Watch took a look at the English Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage, which has been operating in English preschool ("reception") classes since 2002. We compared those standards with those from two U.S. states--Georgia, which has the nation's oldest universal pre-k system, and Massachusetts, which is generally regarded as having some of the nation's strongest academic standards (and is now en route to universal pre-k)-as well as the District of Columbia, where Zuckerbrod's daughter had previously attended pre-k.

The verdict: Publicly defined standards for pre-k programs in the United States are pretty similar to those for our friends across the pond. There are some differences, however, especially in early literacy standards. English 5-year olds are expected to be reading "a range of familiar and common words and simple sentences" and be able to "write their own names and other things such as labels and captions," and "beginning to form simple sentences, sometimes using punctuation." Kids in the United States, by contrast, may not even be expected to know all letters of the alphabet, though the American standards put greater emphasis on reading comprehension.

Contrary to the expectations of the particular school Zuckerbrod visited, English standards don't actually say kindergarteners need to master fractions. Massachusetts standards, though, do say they should be working to "observe and manipulate concrete examples of whole and half." In fact on math, the American standards go further, encouraging teachers to have preschoolers create graphs (Georgia), measure distance and weight (Georgia and D.C.), and even "use estimation in meaningful ways and follow up by verifying the accuracy of estimations" (Massachusetts). Overall, American standards seem to put more emphasis on a child's curiosity and investigation skills while English standards have more concrete, measurable performance indicators.

So is the difference that English preschools are turning out little Lord Tennysons while American preschools are designed to produce Einsteins? Not really. The difference comes not in how the standards read on paper, but in how they are implemented.

Standards documents are a good indicator of what children should be learning, but they can't tell us what kids aren't learning, since many skills may be implied in standards even if they are not articulated. In the case of England, we are also talking about a slightly different set of kids: the English Foundation Years extend through age five (to include the American kindergarten year), while most of the standards we looked at are for pre-k (typically age four in the United States), which may account for some of the differences in expectations.

In addition to the standards we read on paper, we must also consider the infrastructure that undergirds these standards. Pre-K standards in the United States vary from state to state: Some states (such as Georgia) have very detailed standards directly tied to performance assessments. Others are less extensive, and some don't have any kind of early education standards at all. But in many cases these standards are actually loose guidelines that may are followed up with rigorous assessment.

England, by contrast, has a National Curriculum for all primary and secondary schools in England (and Wales). In 2002, Parliament extended the National Curriculum to include the foundation stage (ages 3-5, though schooling is mandatory only starting at age 5), including a single national assessment system. All schools that receive government funding must complete "profile assessments" that measure how well they are working towards the Early Learning Guidelines. The results are available to parents as report cards if they request them.

The English system is not fully comparable to the American system. Most obviously, the federal government, cannot mandate curriculum. States, however, can learn a lot from the English system. England has aligned standards (in their case, nationwide), which promote accountability and increases transparency about student achievement. They have a regular assessment scheme that ensures that the standards are worth more than the paper they are printed on. Most of all, the curriculum is fully integrated into the primary school system as a stepping stone for achievement in later grades. Standards are there not simply to ensure health and safety standards in a childcare setting, but are seen as a crucial part of the student's academic development.

Some in England have expressed concern that the standards and assessment regime in the early years may be too stressful on kids and that it pushes instruction to be more subject-oriented than child-centered. These are valid concerns that policymakers in the United States should look at as they go about designing their own pre-k and PK-3 standards. Yet English instructors on the whole report that having standards helps them develop better, more detailed lesson plans. English researchers have also credited a multi-million dollar early literacy effort (launched in 1997) with dramatic increase in 11-year olds' literacy exam scores.

As more and more states join the pre-k club and beef up their early ed standards, they should take close note of the success and trials of other states (and countries) that have gone before them. Along the way it is important to remember that designing standards is not just about crafting a cleanly-worded document. It is about creating a system that encourages quality and ensures that all children have a safe and academically rich early childhood experience.

Happy Summer!

Ed Policy — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:36:00 -0400

Higher Ed Watch will be taking the next two weeks off to celebrate sunshine, summer break, and Congressional recess. See you September 2.

What Do Elmo, Chris Brown, and Susan Neuman Have In Common?

Sara Mead — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:56:00 -0400

We can't stop smiling at this Sesame Street clip featuring Elmo and Chris Brown--and not just because of the mad dance skilz Elmo displays between verses.

Walking through New York City, Chris helps Elmo read the signs the two of them encounter--Welcome, Stop, Open, etc. This is a great pro-literacy sequence that builds print awareness by showing children how the letters on the signs they see connect with the words Chris is singing, while also providing context images (pictures of baked goods or a closed or open door) that reinforce what the signs say in a familiar, real world environment.

This sequence also reminded us of Susan Neuman's sobering research on differences in children's exposure to print between middle class and low-income communities. In a now-famous study, Neuman and Donna Celano document that low-income neighborhoods offer far less access to print than middle class ones: Fewer children's books are available for purchase in local stores, there are fewer--and lower quality--books available for children in school and public libraries, and there are fewer hospitable public places where children might see adults reading. Even the signs in low-income neighborhoods, from which children take important literacy cues, were in much poorer quality than those in more affluent communities, often covered with graffiti that made them illegible. Neuman and Celano write:

In these middle income neighborhoods, children had a variety of opportunities to gain an understanding of the purposes and processes of reading, of connecting print with meaningful activity. In the lower income neighborhoods, such opportunities were far more limited and narrow in scope. In these communities, signs were often made inaccessible to children who might pretend to read them.

Elmo's New York City neighborhood has gentrified significantly since Sesame Street first aired in 1969, so the little red guy has plentiful access to books, libraries, and high-quality signage to help him develop print awareness. But too many of the children who most need support for early literacy development live in communities where signs look more like this:

And we've certainly seen our fair share of "creative" spellings at carry-outs in some Washington, D.C., neighborhoods. All just another example of how disadvantaged children persistently get less support for literacy from all kinds of sources, causing them to arrive in school at a tremendous disadvantaged vis a vis their peers from more affluent backgrounds. That's also why high-quality early education programs with a strong focus on language and emerging literacy development are essential to narrow achievement gaps.

We also hope Chris Brown's example will encourage more parents and adults in children's lives to point out print signage--whatever its quality--to children, to read and discuss signs with them, and to encourage children to make their own attempts at sign-reading.

Sign image courtest of this sad, but sometimes amusing, website that collects images of misspelled signs in the New York City area.

Higher Ed Roundup: Week of August 11 - August 15

Ed Policy — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:04:00 -0400

President Bush Quietly Signs Higher Education Act Into Law

No Need for Additional Loan Changes for Now, Congressional Research Service Says

Massachusetts Calls Off Plan To Rescue Lender

ACT Exam's Popularity Increases

President Bush Quietly Signs Higher Education Act Into Law

Without any comment or ceremony, President Bush signed into law on Thursday legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act for five years. The measure, which was approved by Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support late last month, has received a less-than-enthusiastic reception from the Bush administration. On the day the legislation won final approval, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings released a statement criticizing it for creating more than 60 "new, costly, and duplicative" programs. Spellings also complained that lawmakers were not tough enough on colleges. "While the legislation takes some positive steps forward, it fails to create the necessary reforms in accessibility and affordability, and it falls short on strengthening accountability," she said. "More work can -- and must -- be done to make achievement outcomes more transparent to students and families." Among other things, Spellings was reportedly peeved that the new law reduces the education secretary's power to regulate college accreditation.

No Need for Additional Loan Changes for Now, Congressional Research Service Says

The need for additional changes in federal student loan policy to deal with the credit crunch will depend on “how the current economic slowdown develops, and how financial markets react and evolve in the face of challenging economic conditions,” according to a recently released report by the Congressional Research Service. The report, “Economics of Guaranteed Student Loans,” surveyed the supply and demand functions of the student loan market and concluded that it was too early to determine whether difficulties faced by lenders and banks were endemic to the student loan market or an effect of global financial turmoil. As such, the report did not endorse any additional legislative changes, instead suggesting policymakers take a wait-and-see approach. Such a tactic also seems prudent given recent reports from states such as New Hampshire that students are still finding loans, overblown stories about the loan crunch notwithstanding.

Massachusetts Calls Off Plan To Rescue Lender

Officials in Massachusetts announced this week that they were abandoning a plan to try and bail out the state's nonprofit lender, the Massachusetts Education Finance Authority (MEFA), because they realized that there isn't a student loan crisis in the state after all. Last week, Gov. Deval Patrick (D) issued an eleventh-hour appeal to colleges and the state pensions agency to to come to the aid of MEFA , which stopped issuing federally backed loans on July 1, asking them to invest in an upcoming $425 million bond sale by the agency. The state, however, received no commitments from these parties. On Thursday, State Treasurer Timothy Cahill said that state officials had second thoughts after seeing a recent poll by the Association of Independent Colleges in Universities that found that 70 percent of schools in Massachusetts had 15 or fewer students still looking for a lender. "It seems like most of the students in the state of Massachusetts have gotten alternative funding sources," Cahill stated.

ACT Exam's Popularity Increases

Once a heavy underdog, the ACT is starting to overtake the SAT as the college admissions test of choice for many students. On Wednesday, ACT officials announced that 1.42 million high school seniors took the test this year, up 9 percent from last year, and 21 percent from 2004. Much of this increase was attributed to the growing number of states that now require all graduates to take the test as part of their state assessment regimen, including ones outside of the ACT's traditional base in the Midwest. Despite the increase in test takers, exam scores remained mostly steady.

Early Ed Roundup: Week of August 11 - August 15

Christina Satkowski — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:41:00 -0400

Boost for Pre-K in Michigan

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm (D) signed legislation on Wednesday that will boost funding for the state pre-k program, the Great Start Readiness Program, by $10 million. This is far short of the $31.5 million Gov. Granholm had asked for, which would have expanded the program to 7,000 more children. The program currently serves more than 25,000 low-income children across the state.

Good Start for Minnesota Early Ed Scholarship Project

A scholarship program to provide low-income families in St. Paul, Minn., with grants of up to $13,000 to attend preschool programs has experienced higher than expected enrollment for its first year, according to a report by the StarTribune. The program is run by the business- and foundation-financed Minnesota Early Learning Foundation (MELF), which also runs the Parent Aware early childhood rating system that launched as a pilot in four regions of the state this year. Through this integrated program, MELF is able to ensure that their grants support high-quality programs by requiring students to be enrolled in programs that receive 3 or 4 stars under the rating system. The scholarship program has also encouraged private providers to return to low-income neighborhoods of the inner-city after cuts in early education subsidies forced them out of those neighborhoods in 2003-2005.

Tackling Standards-Phobia in South Dakota

Efforts to establish voluntary quality standards for preschools in South Dakota have faced an unexpected backlash from legislators who think creating standards will lead to mandatory preschool down the road. Critics say it represents government intrusion into an area already served by government and religious groups. An editorial in the Argus Leader argues that they have nothing to fear, since the program will still be voluntary and there is widespread parent support for quality standards. South Dakota is one of eleven states in the country that does not have a publicly funded pre-kindergarten program, but the state has adopted Early Learning Guidelines. South Dakota preschoolers have a friend in Gov. Mike Rounds (R) who advocated the voluntary standards and used his 2007 State of the State address to highlight a pilot pre-k project in South Dakota.

EZ FAFSA: Read the Fine Print

Ed Policy — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:17:00 -0400

By Christina Satkowski and Stephen Burd

You can't always believe what you read in the papers. That old saying has gained new currency this year with all of the misleading and panicked news coverage of the student loan credit crunch. Unfortunately, the same can be said of recent reports about Congressional efforts to simplify the process of applying for financial aid.

At issue are news stories reporting on a provision in the recently-passed Higher Education Act reauthorization legislation that requires the U.S. Department to create a new "EZ FAFSA," a shorter version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) that tens of millions of students fill out each year to determine their aid eligibility. Recent articles in Congressional Quarterly, Education Week, The New York Times, and other publications leave the impression that the new bill streamlines the FAFSA -- from seven pages to two -- for all students.

But that's not the case. While the legislation introduces an EZ FAFSA, it makes it available to only those students whose family income is low enough that they already qualify for an expedited review of their finances when applying for federal financial aid. As a result, most aid applicants will still be stuck with the longer form.

Under the new law, students who will be eligible to use the EZ FAFSA include those whose families earn earn less than $50,000 a year and either are not required to file the long version of the 1040 federal income tax return or receive certain federal means-tested benefits such as welfare payments or food stamps. The federal government doesn't take into consideration the assets of families of students who meet these criteria.

Some student aid experts -- including our colleagues at the Institute for College Access and Success -- have questioned whether the new, shorter form will even make the process of applying for aid that much easier for the students it's supposed to serve. The EZ FAFSA is designed to eliminate questions that don't apply to the lowest income students, primarily ones about family assets. But first these students have to figure out if they qualify to use the short form, and the only way to do that is to answer certain difficult and error-prone questions that make the regular FAFSA form so challenging. In the end, having to determine which FAFSA form to use could lead to more complexity and confusion for low-income students, not less.[Disclosure: Higher Ed Watch is supported in part by the Institute for College Access & Success, with funds provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts.]

So how did so many reporters get the story wrong? It appears that they lifted verbatim from a press release that Senate Democrats issued shortly after legislation gained final approval from Congress. Touting the bill's most significant achievements, the release proudly declares that it "replaces the complex, 7-page Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) with a 2-page 'EZ-FAFSA.'" Only lower down in the text does it add that the new form is "for-low income students."

An innocent mistake? Doubtful. It appears that the bill's sponsors were all too eager to make it sound like the measure was more far-reaching than it is. Take, for example, comments that Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) made to The New York Times the day after the bill passed. Mikulski, who played a pivotal role in ushering the legislation through Congress, was already speaking about the longer FAFSA in the past tense. "Though it was only a seven-page form, you had to hire a financial services outfit to do it," she stated.

Because the reauthorization legislation doesn't actually include a lot of tangible benefits for students (besides a year-round Pell Grant), politicians may have had more incentive than usual to overstate their accomplishments. In a way the lawmakers are a victim of their own success. Last year, they pushed through Congress a major expansion of federal financial aid as part of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act. Without having much else to offer in terms of student aid funds, they had to find other things to boast about.

It's also understandable that journalists would be confused. The reauthorization bill is 1,158 pages of dense legislative language. Operating on very tight deadlines, it's tempting for reporters to take at face value what they are fed.

But this case shows the pitfalls of that approach. In a year when there is so much misinformation being spread about the availability of student loans, it seems particularly cruel to raise students' expectations falsely. Because the truth is, for most students, the FAFSA will remain as cumbersome as it has always been, standing as one more hurdle on the application-paved road to higher education.

Guest Post: A Better Solution for Campus-Based Aid

Ed Policy — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:18:00 -0400

By Rupert Wilkinson

The Bush administration has repeatedly called for simplifying the federal student aid system by eliminating two of the main "campus-based" aid programs, which provide colleges with federal funds for needy students that they allocate themselves. Under the administration's plan, funds from the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant and Perkins Loan programs would be transferred into expanded Pell grants, the government's main source of grant aid for low-income students.

A better solution would be to restructure the campus-based aid programs so that they do a better job of leveraging college support for students who are promising but disadvantaged.

In America's decentralized higher education system, the ultimate responsibility for meeting (or not meeting) student financial need lies with the college itself. Outside an elite band of well-endowed institutions, most four-year colleges do not meet all need -- because they are either unable or unwilling to use their own grant aid to fill the gap between the cost of attendance and the family resources and financial aid (including federal loans and a reasonable amount of College Work-Study employment) that students are able to cobble together. Estimating that gap is tricky, but it is the widest for poor students -- probably well over 20% of what they need.

Expanding the Pell Grant program won't close the gap because unfortunately, each added Pell dollar does not necessarily produce an extra dollar for Pell recipients. Many four-year colleges use Pell grants as budget relief, diverting their own aid to middle- and even upper-income students. In fact, at some less selective private colleges, rich students actually get bigger institutional aid awards (in the form of "merit" aid) than poor ones. Of course, this isn't true at smaller state colleges that don't offer student aid of their own. But a study of state universities by Michael J. Rizzo and Ronald G. Ehrenberg has found that the these institutions tend to cancel out the value of increased Pell grants by raising their prices.

Instead, what are needed are new federal "student-program" grants to colleges aimed at encouraging them to give more of their own money to low-income students, while recognizing that these students need more than financial aid to help them persist. Colleges would be required to spend a certain proportion of the money they receive on financial aid for low-income students. The rest of the money could then be spent on academic back-up and support services for these students. The academic programs should be especially relevant to disadvantaged students but need not be confined to ‘remedial' tutoring. They could include, for example, courses in writing and argument that could benefit other students as well.

Funding for these grants would be allocated to colleges based on two criteria: the number of low-income students enrolled and the institutions' own effort to support them. Allocations, at least for four-year institutions, might be weighted according to the proportion of a college's total budget spent on institutional aid to Pell Grant recipients.

The new grants would not dry up college aid to middle-income students (who are also the main beneficiaries of federal tuition tax credits). In modern market conditions, affecting public as well as private colleges, the incentive to use some aid to buy advantaged, high-scoring students is not easily dislodged. And many colleges, especially under-enrolled private ones, would continue using aid as a form of price discounting to get more students, needy or not. The new grants, however, would create a counterveiling incentive for colleges to seek more economic diversity.

The grants would have something in common with existing state programs such as New Jersey and New York's "opportunity" grants, given to colleges for supporting disadvantaged students with financial aid and academic back-up. The "student-program" grants would also fit in well with the new College Access Challenge Grant program, which provides federal matching grants to states for aid and outreach to "underserved populations." Congress created the program last year as part of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act.

The whole idea of matching grants -- giving money to other players in return for their own contribution -- is an old tradition in America. With the exception of the GI Bill, almost all federal student aid until the 1970s was campus-based and involved matching grants. One problem with federal matching grants is how to ensure that the federal funds bring in new, added money that would not have been contributed anyway. On this and other grounds, the new student-program grants could do a better job than the current SEOG program.

To suggest replacing SEOG with this new grant program is to enter a potential bear pit, reopening past acrimony between defenders of the campus-based aid programs and their critics. But that is true of any proposal to terminate or radically revise a federal student aid program. One reason why federal aid programs have proliferated over the years is that each has acquired its own impassioned constituency with supporters in Congress. That makes it easier to add a new program than axe an old one.

SEOG consists solely of financial aid; there is no subsidy to the college for academic programs (the original Pell grant legislation actually provided for that but it was deleted). The supplemental grants are supposed to go to students with "exceptional financial need" and colleges have to give recipients one dollar for every three that they get from the government. But this contribution can include state student aid and outside scholarships obtained by students from private donors. More importantly, as Higher Ed Watch noted yesterday, the grants are allocated to colleges on historical and biased formulas that tend to give the most aid per student to elite institutions (private and public) that have relatively few low-income students.

The future demographics of higher education -- involving many more lower-income students -- require a new and better targeted campus-based grant program. Not just more money for Pell Grants.

Rupert Wilkinson is the author of Aiding Students, Buying Students: Financial Aid in America (Vanderbilt University Press, 2005), a wide-ranging history of student aid in America, including recommendations for making the programs more equitable. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New America Foundation.

Targeting Campus-Based Aid

Stephen Burd — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:34:00 -0400

Now that Congress has completed work on legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, momentum is growing among student-aid experts and some policymakers for a fundamental redesign of the federal student aid system. A key question they are asking is whether the federal campus-based student-aid programs are still needed.

The campus-based programs -- College Work-Study, Perkins Loans, and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants -- are intended to supplement Pell Grants for low-income students and to provide aid for students who just miss the cutoff for the grants. Unlike Pell Grants, which are awarded directly to students, campus-based aid is distributed to colleges, which add their own dollars to the programs and then give the money to students.

By requiring colleges to provide matching funds, these programs have long played an important role in enticing colleges to spend their own money to help support low- and moderate-income students. The programs, however, are no longer serving the neediest students well. The formula the government uses to distribute the aid overwhelmingly benefits elite private colleges and public flagship universities, even though low-income students predominantly attend community colleges, state colleges, and trade schools.

Of particular concern are the disparities among colleges participating in the SEOG program, which is meant to supplement Pell Grants for the most financially-needy students. Under the program, which received $758 million from Congress this year, colleges are required to award SEOG funds first to Pell Grant recipients who need more money to pay for school and then to other students who are deemed to have "exceptional need." Because they receive a disproportionately small share of funding, many community colleges are forced to ration SEOG funds -- and often run out of money before they are able to provide awards to all their students who are eligible for the maximum Pell Grant. In contrast, wealthier schools sometimes have to return excess SEOG funds to the government because they don't have enough students on their campuses who fit the "exceptional need" designation. [In 2003, a group representing 31 elite private colleges tried to persuade Congress to relax the rules so that they could use the money to provide awards to less needy students.]

The roots of these disparities date back over 40 years. In the campus-based aid programs' first couple of decades, the federal government set aside money for each state. Regional boards reviewed applications submitted by colleges for the funds and made decisions based on the students' financial need as reported by the schools. Over time, federal officials became concerned, however, that wealthier institutions were benefiting disproportionately because they tended to employ savvy aid administrators who were particularly skilled at grant writing.

To address these concerns, Carter administration officials called for a new method of allocating the funds. That plan, dating to the late 1970s, phased out institutional shares, or "base guarantees." The entire pool of money was to be awarded based solely on the financial need of the students attending the colleges

But this new method threatened high-priced private colleges and public flagships that were poised to lose significant sums. So lobbyists for these schools pushed Congress in 1980 to reverse the Carter administration's action and to guarantee that participating institutions would continue to receive the same proportion of aid money they had received since the start of the program.

The results of this law continue to be felt today. Because funds are distributed based largely on the formula set in 1980, a choice group of institutions, many of them wealthy and elite, benefit the most. An astounding two-thirds of funds appropriated each year for SEOG go to colleges that have dominated the programs for decades, leaving little money for the schools that enroll a much larger share of low-income students. This problem has been compounded in recent years, as the program's budget has stagnated.

For these reasons, the SEOG and Perkins Loan programs are attractive targets for those looking to redesign the federal student-aid system to make it more equitable.

Leading the charge are Bush administration officials in charge of the U.S. Department of Education. They have told college leaders that they hope to issue recommendations for overhauling the federal student aid programs before President Bush leaves office. Speaking last month at a Department summit on higher education, Sara Martinez Tucker, the under secretary of education, said that the recommendations would include proposals to eliminate the SEOG and Perkins Loan programs and use the money saved to increase spending on Pell Grants. According to Inside Higher Ed, she estimated that the savings derived from terminating these programs, as well as others, would be enough to raise the maximum Pell Grant, which is currently $4,731, by $370.

Also considering these issues is a group of higher-education researchers and student-aid experts, known as the Rethinking Student Aid Study Group, that has been meeting for about 18 months to develop recommendations for revamping the federal financial aid programs. The group, which was assembled by the College Board, plans to release a report in October outlining its proposals. It's unclear whether these analysts will back the Bush administration's proposal to eliminate the two campus-based aid programs, but it's widely assumed that the group will call for an overhaul of these programs.

At Higher Ed Watch, we certainly believe that the federal student aid programs need to be made more equitable. But we're not sure that the Bush Administration's plan is the best way to go. After all, a $370 increase in the maximum Pell Grant doesn't seem like a big enough bang for the buck.

Tomorrow, guest blogger Rupert Wilkinson, author of Aiding Students, Buying Students: Financial Aid in America, will offer an alternative proposal for revamping the campus-based aid programs that we believe is worthy of consideration. Stay tuned.

Higher Ed Roundup: Week of August 4 - August 8

Ed Policy — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 21:01:00 -0400

IG Faults Dept. of Ed's Management of Grant Programs

Shareholders Suffer Setback in University of Phoenix Lawsuit

Massachusetts Governor Asks Colleges to Help Save Lender

IG Faults Dept. of Ed's Management of Grant Programs

The U.S. Department of Education has not done enough to promote and oversee two relatively new federal grant programs that aim to reward low-income students who take academically-challenging courses, according to the Department's Inspector General. In an audit report released last Friday, the Inspector General said that the agency needs to do a better job of ensuring that colleges that are required to offer Academic Competitiveness Grants (ACG) and National SMART grants are doing so. According to federal law, all colleges that take part in the Pell Grant program are required to participate in the ACG and SMART grant programs, which Congress created in 2006 as part of the Higher Education Reconciliation Act. Some colleges have been reluctant to offer the programs, which they say the Department has made too difficult to administer. The IG report urged the Department to do more to verify claims by non-participating institutions that they are ineligible for the program and to penalize those that are willfully non-compliant. The grant programs, now entering their third year, have suffered from low uptake, as barely half of the grant money available for the 2006-07 school year was actually disbursed.

Shareholders Suffer Setback in University of Phoenix Lawsuit

Shareholders in a lawsuit against the University of Phoenix, the largest for-profit university in the country suffered a major setback this week, when a federal judge in Arizona overturned a $280-million jury verdict against the Apollo Group, the university's parent company. In January, a federal jury found the company guilty of securities fraud for having withheld crucial information from investors. At issue was the failure of the trade school chain to disclose in its Security and Exchange Commission filings and in its conference calls with financial analysts the existence of a U.S. Department of Education review that blasted its student recruiting practices. That report, which found that the university had violated a federal law that bans colleges from compensating admissions officers on the basis of enrollments, became public only after the university reluctantly agreed to a $9.8-million settlement with the Department in which it denied any wrongdoing. In his ruling overturning the jury's action, Judge James Teilborg of the U.S. District Court of Arizona said that while Apollo Group "misled the market in many ways," evidence presented at the trial "was insufficient to support the jury's finding" that investors suffered significant harm as a result of the company's actions.

Massachusetts Governor Asks Colleges to Help Save Lender

Just in time for classes to start, Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick called upon the state's largest universities and state pensions program to help rescue the state's nonprofit lender, the Massachusetts Education Finance Authority (MEFA), after the loan provider stopped issuing federally backed loans on July 1. Gov. Patrick's proposal asks the state pensions fund, Harvard University, Boston University, the University of Massachusetts system, MIT, and other schools to invest in the upcoming $425 million bond sale by MEFA, which issued $110 million in federally backed student loans last year. Massachusetts state legislators have been pressuring Patrick to loosen up funds for MEFA after more than 40,000 students were left scrambling to find other lenders after the loan provider decided to stop lending.

National associations representing colleges and universities expressed reservations about establishing financial relationships between colleges and lenders in the wake of the high-profile 2007 investigations by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and ensuing student loan scandal. "It would be risky for a college to invest in a student-loan organization given the charges of conflict of interest that would surely follow," Terry Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education, told The Chronicle of Higher Education. A representative for Harvard University and the pensions fund said that they will consider the proposal.

Early Ed Roundup: Week of August 4 - August 8

Christina Satkowski — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:57:00 -0400

Massachusetts Governor Signs Universal Pre-K Into Law

Universal pre-k is now a reality in Massachusetts -- on paper, at least. Last week, Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick signed the Act Relative to Early Education and Care, which formally establishes a Department of Early Education and Care and establishes a pre-kindergarten program available to all three- and four-year olds in the state. The bill, however, does not come with funding for new pre-k classes. Massachusetts boosted its pre-k budget by $3 million this year, though a state budget shortfall thwarted proposals for much more substantial increases. Nearly 18,000 - or about 10 percent - of the state's three- and four- year olds are enrolled in public pre-k classes.

Challenges for Preschools as Population of Young Hispanics Grows

One in four children under age five is Hispanic, according to data released last spring by the Census bureau. This week, the Washington Post describes how this population growth will likely affect local school systems, including a growing need for English as a Second Language professionals and how changes that will impact non-minority children. The number of Hispanic children attending preschool classes is growing too, though half of Hispanic children under five stay home with family members, and Hispanic youngsters are less likely than those from other ethnic groups to attend pre-k.

Minnesota Launches Childcare Rating System

Minnesota is piloting a childcare quality rating system, Parent Aware,that helps parents find quality childcare programs and offers information about state childcare funding programs for low-income families. More than 200 providers have signed up to participate in the program, which begins this year in a low-income neighborhood of Minneapolis, St. Paul, a Minneapolis suburb, and two rural counties. Childcare providers say that they have been working with the program to improve the quality standards at their facilities. Quality rating scales are an important tool for improving the quality of childcare in a state, improving parents' ability to make informed choices among providers, and integrating community-based childcare into state pre-k programs. Minnesota joins 30 other states that have implemented or are experimenting with quality rating systems for childcare providers in their state.