Education Archives - Page 28 of 37 - Progressive Policy Institute

Osborne-A Note to Massachusetts Progressives: Remember, It Was Democrats Who Brought Charter Schools to Town

Posted on October 13, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

In my home state of Massachusetts, voters will decide in November whether to expand the number of urban charter schools — now capped at 18 percent of students in a city. The propaganda wars have begun, and the lies are flying as fast and thick as they do from Donald Trump’s mouth.

Charters are public schools operated independently of district bureaucracies, with more freedom to design their schools and choose their teachers but also subject to greater accountability. If they fail — if their students fall too far behind — they are closed.

Led by the teachers unions, critics of the current ballot proposition to lift the state’s charter cap use several lines of argument — the same arguments they use to oppose charter schools in every other state.

Continue reading at The 74 Million.

Osborne for U.S. News & World Report: Holding Schools Accountable

Posted on October 7, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

School performance standards are outdated. Here are six ways we can improve them.

Because Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act last December, states are revamping their federally required systems to measure school quality and hold schools accountable for performance. But most are doing so using outdated assumptions, holdovers from the industrial era, when cookie-cutter public schools followed orders from central headquarters and students were assigned to the closest school.

Today we are migrating toward systems of diverse, fairly autonomous schools of choice, some of them operated by independent organizations. Before revising their measurement and accountability systems, states need to rethink their assumptions.

For instance, most states have assumed they should apply one accountability system to almost all public schools. Under the old No Child Left Behind Act, most of those measures were standardized test scores, and what counted was the percentage of students scoring proficient or better. When schools repeatedly failed to meet such standards, most states assumed the proper response was some minor form of restructuring required by No Child Left Behind – perhaps a new principal, perhaps some new teachers, perhaps some new money.

None of these assumptions will produce the schools our children need in the 21st century. The No Child Left Behind Act was an important step in its time, but it relied on the blunt tools most states used back in 2001: primarily achievement scores on standardized math and reading tests.

A Note From PPI President Will Marshall on Obama’s “Way Ahead”

Posted on October 6, 2016September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

I’d like to draw your attention to this extraordinary essay by President Obama in The Economist. It stands out for two reasons. First, it provides what has been sorely missing from the bizarre 2016 presidential race – a progressive roadmap for restoring America’s economic dynamism.

Second, President Obama’s approach to reversing nearly two decades of slow economic growth is uncannily parallel to the Progressive Policy Institute’s policy blueprint for pro-growth progressives: Unleashing Innovation and Growth: A Progressive Alternative to Populism.

Both documents reject populist claims that the U.S. economy is a “disaster” or a game hopelessly rigged by Wall Street or billionaires and focus instead on the main driver of meager wage gains and growing inequality – slumping productivity growth. As the President notes, one reason for the slowdown is lagging private investment – a problem PPI also has been highlighting in multiple studies of the nation’s “investment drought.”

We also agree with many of the President’s key prescriptions for putting America back on a high-growth path. To highlight just a few:

Pro-growth tax reform, including lowering business taxes and closing special interest loopholes.
Expanding U.S. exports and passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership to strengthen global trade rules.
Lowering college costs, not just expanding education subsidies.
Making work pay by expanding tax credits for low-income workers.

Why is all this important? Because despite all the rhetoric about “inclusive growth,” in this election, we’re hearing a lot more about distributing existing wealth than creating new wealth. To speak to the hopes and aspirations of working families, Democrats need to balance that equation.

Should colleges be required to accept AP credit? PPI’s Weinstein & AEI’s Malkus debate

Posted on September 30, 2016September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Rising college tuition prices have become a serious obstacle for many low and middle income students. One potential way to manage those costs is through Advanced Placement (AP), which allows students to earn college credit in high school, thereby reducing the time and money needed for a degree. But not all colleges grant credit for AP, and many cap the amount they accept or require test scores above the AP standard.

In a recent report, Paul Weinstein, Jr., of the Progressive Policy Institute, documents the limits colleges place on AP credit. He recommends new requirements — that colleges accept AP credit and students’ test fees be waived — to ensure the benefits of AP are equally accessible to all students.

AEI’s Nat Malkus responds with concern, countering that Weinstein’s recommendations might have unintended consequences for AP programs, which have successfully produced value for students and colleges alike by maintaining quality even as access has increased.

Both make compelling points. We invited them to discuss them below, hoping to foster constructive, substantial dialogue on how policy should influence these valuable programs.

Group school exam

Paul Weinstein:

The American higher education system is the finest in the world. Yet there are big cracks in the ceiling and the cause is money – or more specifically the amount of cash students need to attend college and graduate school.

Fueled by the ability of students to access relatively cheap loans through the student loan program, colleges and universities have been jacking up the cost of college. Since 1981, tuition and fees have risen 129% in real terms while median family incomes have grown only 11% over the same period.

Current reform proposals such as debt forgiveness and more subsidized loans will enable schools to continue to raise the price of tuition. To cut the cost of college and ensure students get the best educational experience – on campus – we must help students earn their bachelor’s degree faster. Moving to a three-year degree would save students anywhere from $9,000 (public institutions) to $30,000 (private institutions), open more slots at better schools, and avoid pushing students into MOOCs or shady for-profit institutions.

How do we transition to a three-year degree? One step is to ensure that students who successfully complete Advanced Placement (AP) courses, the International Baccalaureate (IB), or other recognized assessments receive actual course credit instead of a pat on the back.

Unfortunately, despite encouraging students to spend time and money on AP courses and tests, colleges aren’t always giving them course credit when students succeed. Among the top 152 colleges and universities, 83 percent restrict AP credit (including a growing number that deny credit completely). Schools argue they are acting to ensure quality – that AP courses don’t measure up. Yet many of those same schools acknowledge that these students have mastered college-level coursework by allowing them to waive core requirements for that same AP coursework. That simply does not pass the smell test.

It’s time for schools to reward hard work and put students first. Ensuring colleges and universities do not overly restrict AP and IB credit for the sake of additional revenue should be prevented. And no school that encourages applicants to take AP and IB courses should be allowed to deny course credit for successful work.

Nat Malkus:

Paul, you rightly identify rising college costs as a problem, and I agree it’s far better to lower those costs, rather than pumping more money into the system. It’s also prudent to make the most of proven systems, like AP courses and exams, in that effort.

I encourage readers to read your succinct report, because it usefully leverages new data to plainly show that some students may be in for a bait-and-switch when they learn they won’t get college credits for their hard earned AP scores. This issue is worthy of attention, but I think the problem may be smaller than you believe, and that your solution could have negative unintended consequences.

The data indeed show a majority of institutions restrict AP credit. However, only 6% refuse all AP credit, and the remainder give credit for 85% of AP exams. Most institutions accept the standard score of 3, while a minority require 4’s or 5’s. Again, most take all students’ AP credit, but 38% have an upper limit. As I see it, giving full credit for AP work isn’t the exception. It’s the rule.

Nonetheless, relatively small problems may still warrant a solution. But requiring all colleges and universities to give full AP credits will take away an important check on AP program quality.

Critics have long warned that AP quality is or will be eroded by rapid program growth. My research suggests such watering down of AP hasn’t happened broadly, yet, and it is worth considering why. In part, it is because the College Board has had to focus on quality because AP serves both students and post-secondary institutions, and they serve neither well if quality slips and more institutions refuse credit.

If AP credit were required by law, it would erode the pressure to maintain AP rigor to preserve the high voluntary acceptance rates among post-secondary institutions. Those high acceptance rates are evidence of AP’s high quality. It’s predictable – and it would be unfortunate – that an overzealous effort to maximize the benefits of AP could ultimately undermine the educational quality of such a successful program.

Paul Weinstein:

Nat, your excellent research is really key here – that the rapid growth in AP course and exam takers has not diminished the quality of the program. Unfortunately, many schools have used that fallacious argument to restrict or eliminate credit for AP work. Just look at the case of Dartmouth. With regards to your argument that “giving full credit for AP work isn’t the exception. It’s the rule,” I would reiterate that not only do the majority of institutions on my list limit AP credit, but almost half don’t offer any credit for a score of 3 – and even among those schools that do accept a minimum score of 3, most require a score of 4 or 5 for certain AP subjects.

Your second point, that a government solution could lower AP quality, is worthy of consideration. There are always positive and negative consequences to any policy. But one way to ensure quality remains high is to give schools a seat at the table in developing the AP curriculum and examinations.

Nat Malkus:

Paul, I think we agree on the problem here, and only marginally disagree on its scale. I am less convinced than you that post-secondary institutions limit AP credit primarily for profit, but wholeheartedly agree that institutions that do so should stop.

Your report proposes some big solutions — that Congress mandate AP credit and the administration underwrite AP exam fees — which I have taken issue with elsewhere. I will add here that those solutions are unlikely, especially given Congressional productivity.

Since it is too easy to critique without offering solutions, I will throw out one of my own which would be readily achievable. The Department of Education could collect and report institutions’ AP credit policies, including the exams for which they give credit, any caps they have, and what scores they accept. That transparency won’t force any changes, but institutions that want the best students will have to balance their AP restrictions with possibly losing some of them. The administration has made multiple attempts to shed light on college costs and outcomes, and this is an easy step in that direction. If nothing else, by making the terms for credit clear up front, it could keep unwitting students from the AP bait-and-switch.

Paul Weinstein, Jr. is a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute and director of the graduate program in public management at Johns Hopkins University. Nat Malkus is a research fellow in education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Press Release: New PPI Report Finds Top U.S. Colleges Denying Student Tuition Savings By Restricting AP Credit

Posted on September 8, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

WASHINGTON—A new report released today by PPI finds that 86 percent of the top 153 universities and colleges in the United States restrict the awarding of Advanced Placement (AP) credits, denying students and their families hundreds of millions in tuition savings. This is especially alarming as more and more high school students (over 1 million—double the number from 2003) take and pay for AP exams at the encouragement of the higher education community, including a record 275,874 minority students.

“While the number of students taking AP exams grows, colleges and universities are making it increasingly difficult for them to get actual college credit,” writes Paul Weinstein Jr., PPI Senior Fellow and Director of the Graduate Program in Public Management at the Johns Hopkins University. “As a result, students who start their undergraduate studies thinking they have enough AP credits to graduate a semester or year early often discover their school has denied some or all of their AP coursework.

“The costs of postsecondary education are now higher in the United States than anywhere else in the world. … One simple and inexpensive way to cut the cost of college is to ensure institutions of higher education don’t unfairly limit credit for AP and IB work.”

In his research, Weinstein examined the AP policies of the top 102 universities and top 51 colleges according to U.S. News and World Report. According to information made publicly available by the College Board and these schools, a majority of colleges and universities limit the use of AP credit towards a degree. There are four primary ways schools restrict AP credit:

Disallow course credit for any AP work. Nine schools give students no credit for AP work. These institutions include some of the top schools in the country: Dartmouth University, Brown University, the California Institute of Technology, Williams College, and Amherst College.
Restrict the number of AP subject areas that are eligible for course credit. Only 25 percent of the schools in this study allow students to receive credit in all AP subject area disciplines. The rest (75 percent) eliminate some subject areas from consideration.
Cap the total amount of AP credit that students can receive. Some 38 percent of the schools on our list cap the amount of AP credit they will give students, making it nearly impossible in some cases for students to graduate early.
Hike the minimum AP score needed to receive credit. Almost half (44 percent) of the top schools do not accept a score of 3 on AP exams for credit.

The report concludes with three ways policymakers can expand credit for the successful completion of AP coursework and cut the cost of college.

Download “Diminishing Credit: How Colleges and Universities Restrict the Use of Advanced Placement”

Diminishing Credit: How Colleges and Universities Restrict the Use of Advanced Placement

Posted on September 8, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

The college affordability crisis looms large for working and middle class Americans. Parents and students are reeling from record levels of student loan debt and ever-increasing tuition hikes. Total student loan debt is now a record $1.26 trillion and the typical 2016 college graduate has $37,172 in student loan debt, up six percent from last year.

The costs of postsecondary education are now higher in the United States than anywhere else in the world. Despite the buildup of student debt, schools continue to jack up prices in the form of higher tuition and fees. The cumulative change in tuition and fees at all types of higher education institutions has grown (in constant dollars) by 129 percent from 1981 to 2014. Median family income, of course, has not kept pace, growing only 11 percent over the same period. In 1981, annual college tuition and fees represented 18 percent of median family income. Now they account for 37 percent.

For a growing number of students the cost of college has become so bad that they sometimes are forced to choose between skipping meals and paying for tuition, books, and dorm rooms. According to a study by Sara Goldrick-Rab of 4,000 community college students, slightly more than half of respondents indicated they experienced marginal to very low food security. If college costs continue to rise at their current pace, Congress may have to consider a free college lunch program for undergraduates.

Osborne for U.S. News & World Report: The Charter School Pot and Kettle

Posted on August 25, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

By David Osborne and Anne Osborne

Critics of charter schools love to charge that charters “cream” the best students by making it hard to apply and pushing out low performers. That’s why charters outperform traditional public schools, they assert. But they rarely present evidence, and they never admit that traditional public schools do exactly the same thing – only more often.

The NAACP recently passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter schools, in part because the schools allegedly encourage segregation and engage in “exclusionary discipline” and “differential enrollment practices.” In reporting this development The New York Times wrote, “Although charters are supposed to admit students by lottery, some effectively skim the best students from the pool, with enrollment procedures that discourage all but the most motivated parents to apply. Some charters have been known to nudge out their most troubled students.”

A few weeks earlier, a Los Angeles Times editorial criticized charter schools for discouraging families from applying by using long, complicated application forms. To be fair, they did point out that most charters are prohibited from selecting their students: When demand exceeds their capacity, they have to use lotteries in which every family has an equal shot at admission.

USA TODAY: Trump, Clinton double-team charters: Column

Posted on August 9, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

By David Osborne and Richard Whitmire

The list of failed school reforms launched since 1983’s A Nation at Risk is embarrassingly long. Worse yet, these sputtering reforms appear to be stacking up at a faster rate: Common Core, evaluating teachers partly on student test scores, luring top teachers into low-performing schools.

Nothing seems to work out, with one very big exception: Districts that fold high-performing charter schools directly into the mix of schools offered to parents.

Denver is probably the best example of a traditional school district taking that path, called a portfolio strategy. In many other cities, including Boston, Los Angeles, Washington and New York, charter schools that are independent of districts — but in some cases experimenting with district collaborations — offer the best opportunities for kids growing up in poverty.

In Denver, business groups, foundations and community organizations were all fed up with the traditional district’s failures. When the board hired a new superintendent in 2005 — today’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet — he quickly realized they were right. His decision to embrace charters had support from both sides of the aisle.

Back then, Denver had the lowest rates of academic growth of Colorado’s medium and large districts. Since 2012, it has had the highest. By fall 2014, the percentage of students scoring at or above grade level in reading, writing and math had increased 15 percentage points (from 33% to 48%), far faster than the state average. On a new state test last year, Denver took a huge leap, its middle schools surpassing the state average. Charters are among the biggest reasons.

Now, just when other cities should be greenlighting similar reforms, Denver-style innovations could be at risk.

Continue reading at USA TODAY.

PPI School Reform Newsblast: 25th Anniversary of the First Charter School

Posted on August 8, 2016September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

We are delighted to send you this inaugural issue of the School Reform Newsblast, a new information service launched by Reinventing America’s Schools. It aggregates important news about developments in school innovation and reform across the country. The Newsblast is going to a select audience of school reform leaders and activists in government, business, and the civic sector, and we hope you find it useful.

Reinventing America’s Schools is a project of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a longtime advocate for improving and modernizing the nation’s elementary and secondary public schools. The project’s director is David Osborne, the co-author of Reinventing Government, a best seller that had a profound impact on President Bill Clinton’s efforts to make government less bureaucratic and more performance-oriented. David is working on a new book that will show how cities across America are developing a new model for organizing and governing public education.

In addition to keeping you abreast of developments on the K-12 reform front, the Newsblast from time to time will update you on the project’s work, and solicit your comments and ideas. To highlight developments in your community, please email us at ReinventingEd@www.progressivepolicy.org. Ultimately, we hope to forge a nationwide network of influential people like yourself and encourage you to weigh in with political leaders when critical decisions about K-12 reform are made.

With the 25th anniversary of the first charter school bill in June, conversations about the 21st century model of school governance were big in the press. Hot button issues included the false binary of school choice and democratic control, the future of charter schools, school accountability, and much more. In articles written in the past month, Chester E. Finn, Jr., Bruno V. Manno, Brandon Wright, and Matt Barnum discussed the successes of charter schools and THE importance of accountability. In other pieces, Andy Smarick, Peter Cunningham, Danielle Dreilinger, and Chris Gabrieli explored the debate over the best model of school governance. With the 25th anniversary of charters and the presidential conventions coinciding this past month, we were provided important material to consider as we promote 21st century school governance across the nation.

School choice or democratic control? Andy Smarick addresses the false binary and offers an option that blends the two together. As communities struggle with the politics of education, Smarick thinks about how to bridge ideological divides for the benefit of families.
As the charter school movement hit its 25th anniversary, Chester Finn, Bruno Manno, and Brandon Wright reflect on the successes of charter schools and areas where charter schools have fallen short. The authors conclude that there is still a lot of untapped potential in the charter school movement.
Democrats are at risk of compromising their past educational positions in support of charters and public school choice, which benefitted minority and poor children. This article pushes the Democratic party to take a closer look at its new stances on a number of issues, including school accountability, school closures, school choice, standardized testing, and more.
All eyes are on Orleans Parish School Board as New Orleans’ public schools return from state to local oversight. New Orleans has proven to be the nation’s greatest success story in implementing the 21st century model of education. These new developments will have locally elected officials oversee the nation’s fastest improving school system.
WATCH: In this video, recorded at Empower Schools’ “Third Way” conference, Chris Gabrieli discusses a Third Way of school governance, one in between the traditional district model and the newer charter-only portfolio model. This Third Way, which promotes autonomy and district-charter collaboration, is intriguing but has yet to yield clear results.
As a bonus, we have a video of David Osborne’s panel from that conference.

A Response to the National Education Policy Center

Posted on July 28, 2016September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

When I saw that the University of Colorado-Boulder’s National Education Policy Center had published an 11-page review of my recent Progressive Policy Institute report, A 21^st Century School System in the Mile High City, I was flattered. Then I read Professor Terrenda White’s work and was flabbergasted.

Professor White contends that “the only data presented are in the form of simple charts.” Later: “The reader is led to conclude the efficacy of all manner of reforms based on eyeballing what is basically a scatterplot.”

This is probably the oddest criticism I have ever seen, because it is so obviously false. Here is a short list of the data presented in the report:

The percentage of students in Denver and Colorado scoring proficient or advanced on state standardized tests, 2009-2014, overall and broken down by race.
The percentile ranking of Denver schools vs. all Colorado schools on state standardized tests, 2013-2015, based on the percentage of students scoring proficient or above.
Dropout rates and graduation rates from 2005-06 to 2014-15.
Denver ACT scores vs. the state and nation, 2007-15.
Increases in the number of students taking and passing Advanced Placement courses.
College enrollment rates in Denver and Colorado.
The percentage of college enrollees from Denver Public Schools (DPS) required to take remedial classes, 2010-2013.
The achievement gap between low-income and non-low-income students and between white and African American and Latino students.
A 2014 study by Alexander Ooms, published by the Donnell-Kay Foundation, presenting school performance data through 2013, which concluded that the district’s “success in creating quality schools—as well as serving low-income students within those schools—resides overwhelmingly with charters.”
My analysis of 2014 school performance scores, which revealed little change in Ooms’ conclusions.
A study of test scores from 2010 through 2014, by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Duke University, which found that Denver’s charters produced “remarkably large gains in math,” large gains in writing, and smaller but statistically significant gains in reading, compared to DPS operated schools.

Odder still, Professor White acknowledges the MIT-Duke study on p. 5, which of course contradicts her repeated statements that the report’s only data is in the scatterplots. (These compared charter, traditional, and innovation schools in Denver based on two factors: percentage of low-income students and standardized test scores in 2015. They showed that charters generally outperformed DPS-operated schools with students of similar income levels at the middle- and high-school level but not in elementary schools.)

Then there’s her criticism of my recommendation that DPS open more charters: “Replication of charter schools that use a narrow set of practices, moreover, suggests limited options for parents seeking diverse curricular and pedagogical choices.” Did Professor White miss my recommendation that DPS “begin to recruit outstanding charter networks from outside Colorado”? Or does she think that all charter schools “use a narrow set of practices”?

One of Professor White’s central criticisms was that “causality cannot be determined, and the report did not attempt to isolate the effect of a multitude of reforms—including charters, performance pay, and a new performance framework—from larger complex forces shaping student demographics in the city.”

First, it is impossible to isolate the exact impact of specific initiatives, given how many reforms Denver has implemented over the last decade. But the report does compare the impact of charter and DPS-operated schools, using multiple sources of data (as indicated above). It also makes demographic comparisons between charter and traditional schools: by 2014-15, “charters served 3 percentage points more low-income students (those who qualify for free and reduced-price lunches) and 10 percentage points more English language learners.” Then it introduces the scatterplots to provide more fine-grained demographic comparisons.

In a related point, White writes, “The report does not address whether the expansion of charter schools has exacerbated racial segregation, but this is a vital question in light of trends in other cities.” Her footnote cites a study done on New York State, which has absolutely no bearing on Denver. The city has seen a decrease in integration since the courts ended mandatory busing in 1995, but not because of charters. Indeed, the largest charter network works hard to make sure its schools are well integrated by race and income, reserving 40 percent or more of the seats for low-income students. Alexander Ooms took a look at racial and economic segregation in 2012 and found that the district’s own selective schools were the biggest offenders. His conclusion: “So is there a type of school within DPS that is systematically contributing to segregation within our public school system? You bet. But they are not charter schools, and they are not a secret. They are selective admissions schools—including many of the most popular programs in the district—and they are hiding in plain sight.”

Finally, Professor White asserts that I downplayed “the role of outside forces and moneyed groups that influenced the nature of reforms.” Did she read this sentence? “In 2013, Democrats for Education Reform and its allies raised significant money and recruited as candidates a former lieutenant governor, another former city council president, and a former chairman of Denver’s Democratic Party.” How about this one? “The reformers won in part because they had more money and in part because their approach has yielded results.”

She also criticizes me for downplaying “the vulnerability of current reforms to future protests due to embittered stakeholders and local actors concerned about the influence of outside interest groups….” But her footnote cites only one source, a blog by an embittered former board member who hates the superintendent and current board, criticizes everything they do, and has little credibility. As the report notes, reformers won a 6-1 majority in 2013 and a 7-0 majority in 2015. There is opposition, but it is poorly organized and has been wildly unsuccessful in recent years.

Sadly, Professor White did not write a scholarly review, she wrote anti-charter propaganda—something we see all too frequently these days. It’s no surprise that the NEPC is funded in part by the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association.

Rather than publishing distortions aimed at discrediting charter schools, I would invite NEPC scholars to do some research to better understand just what is driving improvement in Denver’s public schools. Why, for instance, are all 12 of the secondary schools with the highest academic growth rates charters? There is surely some fascinating “causality” to be unearthed there!

Cutting the Cost of College with Three-Year Degrees

Posted on June 14, 2016September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Recently a group urging free tuition at Harvard University failed to win a seat on the University’s Board of Overseers. With an endowment of $38 billion, Harvard can afford to have this debate. But the vast majority of schools in America today are too tuition dependent to offer universal free tuition. And while any plan to get the debt monkey off the back of students is welcome, the reality is the promise of free tuition is illusory – most of the proposals would only cover the cost of tuition at your typical community college, fail to reign in rising college prices, and are cost prohibitive (for example Senator Sanders proposal would run about $70 billion a year).

Fortunately, many voters have not been blinded by the allure of promises of free tuition. According to a recent poll by veteran Democratic pollster Peter Brodnitz for the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), When asked to choose between free college tuition and a proposal to offer three-year college degrees, thereby cutting college tuition costs by a quarter, Swing voters picked three year degrees by a 63 percent to 29 percent margin

Three-year colleges are the norm in many European countries, and a few enterprising universities here have begun to follow suit. This proposal would require any U.S. college or university with students who receive any type of federal student aid to offer the option of earning a bachelor’s degree in three years, and to hold annual increases in the price of tuition and fees to just over inflation.

By making a three-year bachelor’s degree the norm the cost of attending college would drop dramatically. Students currently attending four-year public schools (in-state) would see savings on average of $8,893 while those at private schools would experience a $30,094 reduction.

Cutting tuition by a quarter would also reduce the amount students need to borrow. Nearly 70 percent of bachelor degree holders have taken out student loans, with an average debt burden of $29,400. Assuming someone borrows $29,400 at the going rate of 4.66 percent over four years, the interest owed would amount to $7,505. But shaving a year off college cuts that interest tab to about $5,629, a savings of $1,876. And keep in mind we are talking averages here; the many students carrying debts well above the average will reap bigger savings.

But wouldn’t shaving a year off college also mean giving colleges a financial haircut? Not necessarily. Colleges could increase the number of students in each incoming class by 33 percent given that annual class capacity would be greater with the elimination of the 4th year. While suffering transition costs over the initial three years, many schools, particularly the most attractive ones in the top two-thirds of college rankings, would eventually be made whole under the Three-Year Degree.

While some schools might be tempted to squeeze a four-year degree into three years, that approach would be unwise, given that the majority of today’s college students need six years to complete a bachelors.

A better approach would be for schools and their accreditors to rethink their curriculum. For example, reducing the number of electives, cutting back on core requirements or shifting to shorter semesters are all options that schools could use to move to a three-year bachelors and improve the educational experience.

The debate over the cost of college is long overdue. Yet the solution cannot be one that would cripple the world’s finest system of higher education nor allow colleges and universities to continue to pile debt on the backs of families and students. Shifting to a three-year degree bachelor will ensure American’s can afford college to send their children to college again while expanding access to the best schools in the world.

U.S. News & World Report: When Performance Pay Doesn’t Pay Off

Posted on May 24, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

In 2005, Denver stepped into the national spotlight by adopting a performance pay system negotiated with the teachers’ union, financed by a $25 million-a-year boost in property taxes. The subsequent decade of experience reveals a surprising lesson: No one in Denver thinks performance pay has made much difference in student outcomes, but most agree that charter schools – which aren’t eligible for the taxpayer-funded performance pay – have made a big difference.

Performance pay can work. But compensation systems are more effective when they are fashioned by individual schools or groups of schools (charter management organizations). Different schools and teachers have widely different needs and attitudes toward performance pay, and fashioning one system for 150 different schools is probably a fool’s errand.

The Denver effort began in 1999, with a pilot negotiated for the Denver Classroom Teachers Association by Brad Jupp, the union leader who later became Superintendent Michael Bennet’s chief policy adviser. The union not only embraced the effort, it helped raise more than $1 million from foundations to finance it. But to participate, a school had to get 85 percent of its teachers on board, so only 16 schools joined the pilot.

Continue reading at U.S. News & World Report.

The Mile-High City Leads the Way

Posted on May 13, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Some of the most dramatic gains in urban education have come from school districts using a “portfolio strategy”: negotiating performance agreements with some mix of traditional, charter and hybrid public schools, allowing them great autonomy, letting them handcraft their schools to fit the needs of their students, giving parents their choice of schools, replicating successful schools and replacing failing schools.

Many doubt that such a strategy is possible with an elected board, because closing schools and laying off teachers triggers such fierce resistance. Most cities pursuing the strategy – such as New Orleans, Washington, D.C. and Camden, New Jersey – have done so with insulation from local electoral politics.

All of which explains why reformers are paying close attention to Denver, Colorado. With an elected board, Denver Public Schools has embraced charter schools and created “innovation schools,” which it treats somewhat like charters. Since 2005 it has closed or replaced 48 schools and opened more than 70, the majority of them charters. In 2010, it signed a Collaboration Compact with charter leaders committing to equitable funding and a common enrollment system for charters and traditional schools, plus replication of the most effective schools, whether charter or traditional.

Money and Schools: Debating Ben Spielberg 50 Years After the Coleman Report

Posted on May 5, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Is “more money” a vital education policy, when compared with other possible changes? Should taxpayers allocate significantly more money to existing K-12 public schools, without demanding structural reforms? On average, if existing K-12 public schools had more money, would students obtain significant or sustainable benefits?

Increasingly, conventional wisdom answers “yes:” many say that money alone, even without reform, helps students. Matt Barnum, policy editor of education website The 74 Million, posted in April: “At this point there’s a large body of evidence that more $ leads to better outcomes,” linking to a February summary of recent case study research. Nick Albares, a policy analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote in January’s Education Post: “common sense and research suggests [that] money matters for long-term outcomes.” In response to my 2015 column contrain Dropout Nation, the analyst Ben Spielberg wrote a sharp dispute.

In the spirit of the Education Post mantra of “better conversation, better education,” Spielberg and I dedicated several hours researching each other’s claims and meeting in person to develop a common fact base and framework. This column represents my reflections on that effort.

Continue reading at Education Post.

A 21st Century School System in the Mile High City

Posted on May 4, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Some of the most dramatic gains in urban education have come from school districts using what many call a “portfolio strategy.” Others call it “reinvention,” a “21st century approach,” or “relinquishment.” By whatever name, it generally means that districts negotiate performance agreements with some mix of traditional, charter, and hybrid public schools, allow them great autonomy, let them handcraft their schools to fit the needs of their students, give parents their choice of schools, replicate successful schools, and replace failing schools.

Many doubt such a strategy is possible with an elected board, because closing schools and laying off teachers triggers such fierce resistance. Most cities pursuing the portfolio strategy—such as New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Camden, N.J.—have done so with insulation from local electoral politics. In New Orleans, the state board of education and its Recovery School District (RSD) oversee most of the schools; in D.C., Congress intervened, creating an appointed Public Charter School Board; and, in Camden, the state took over the district.

All of which explains why reformers are paying close attention to Denver, Colorado. With an elected board, Denver Public Schools (DPS) has embraced charter schools and created “innovation schools,” which it treats somewhat like charters. Since 2005 it has closed or replaced 48 schools and opened more than 70, the majority of them charters. In 2010 DPS signed a Collaboration
Compact with charter leaders committing to equitable funding and a common enrollment system for charters and traditional schools, plus replication of the most effective schools—whether charter or traditional.

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