Posts from — December 2010

For the past 50 years we have seen a focus on the need to improve high school graduation rates. During the majority of that period, post-secondary education received a pass.

Simply stated, there was a perception that American higher education represented the best the world had to offer. That perception was greatly enhanced by the volume of foreign students seeking the opportunity to be educated here.

But over the last ten years we have seen a push towards holding higher education accountable for its product. In one of those areas, graduation rates, it is clear that American Universities are falling short, abysmally so.

College Graduation Rates

Here are the attention-getting numbers courtesy of the Department of Education (pdf) based on data collected through 2008:

At public colleges and universities only 29.0% of students graduate in the traditional four-year time frame. Even when the Historically Black Colleges are factored out, the rate climbs only to 30.3%.

Of course, the timeframe most used to discuss graduation rates is the six-year window. This timeframe appears to be used because here graduation rates pick up substantially. At public schools the percentage of students that graduate within six years nearly doubles to 54.7%.

Given even more time, the percentage of students who graduate does increase to 58.3% if we measure the period over 8 years. This minimal increase is dismal when weighed against the cost of two additional years of college.

One might think those more expensive private, non-profit schools would have significantly better numbers. They do in fact have better numbers but given their overall selectivity the rates continue to be extremely disappointing.

Over the four-year timeframe, we see that private schools graduate 50.4% of their students, a number that nearly mirrors the six-year of public institutions. But in this sector, an additional 2 years yields just a 14.2% increase in the grad rate and an additional 4 years yields only a total rate of 66.4%. Here again, once one moves beyond six years, very few additional students finish.

Where the numbers really disintegrate is when we move to the for-profit industry. Like public colleges and universities, the for-profits struggle to graduate their students in the four-year timeframe as only 26.8% earn their sheepskin in four years. While most would insist that for-profits are geared towards part-time, working students, the study looks only at those individuals who started as full time students.

But whereas public schools see a massive bump when the time period is extended to six years, for profits see very little gain. Just 33.9% earn a diploma in six years and 37.7% when given eight years.

Abysmal Results

If we move from percentages to simple assessments we find the following:

If you take any three students attending a public college, you can expect that two of the three will not earn that diploma in the four-year period. Furthermore, just one of every two students will graduate in six years. Even at private colleges, roughly one of every two students fails to earn his or her diploma in four years.

And unlike American high schools, every one of these institutions has some form of entrance criteria and application process. In fact, the highly selective private sector college admission criteria fly in the face of these final graduation statistics.

College is a very expensive proposition for students and the costs associated with attending school are multiplied by every year of attendance. But the multiplication is astronomical for those who spend exorbitant sums of money and time only to come up empty when it comes to earning a diploma.

Some insist that college graduation rate data is not really that meaningful. After all, in America we want to provide every one opportunities and that is what colleges are doing, providing options. Under such a view, it is the students themselves and not the schools that are to blame for these poor results.

Of course, once upon a time that was the line given by public schools. Today, the federal government insists that schools educate all students or face sanctions under the No Child Left Behind Act.

It seems only right that colleges and universities be held to a similar standard, especially those schools that have entrance criteria and admissions policies that limit student access to their programs.

We have noted previously the need for modern schools to begin to include media literacy in their respective curricula. It is a subject of growing importance as we move into a world where savvy business and advertising professionals consistently seek to take advantage of an undereducated and naïve public citizenry.

Two recent reports reveal how media is impacting our lives. The first involves a recent survey by Harris Interactive called the Youth EquiTrends Study. The second involves a poll conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, based at the University of Maryland, and Knowledge Networks on the recent election and the disappointing level of misinformed voters.

EquiTrends Study

The Harris Interactive survey consisted of polling more than five thousand 8- to 24-year-olds last August. The researchers sought to identify what has been dubbed “brand equity” amongst our young people.

Brand equity is a term used to express a brand’s overall strength based upon three factors: familiarity, quality, and purchase consideration. To get at the youngster’s view of specific product names, those polled were asked to rate between 98 and 125 popular brands of goods. The research sample was drawn online for 13- to 24-year-olds and by way of parents for 8- to 12-year-olds.

The 8- to 12-year-old top ten went like this:

1. Nintendo Wii
2. Doritos
3. Oreo’s
4. M&Ms
5. Disney Channel
6. Nickelodeon
7. Nintendo DS
8. McDonald’s
9. Toys R Us
10. Cartoon Network

It was somewhat nice to see Nintendo holding the top spot since the Wii incorporates exercise into the gaming experience. But in an era where children are suffering from premature obesity so much is revealed by what we see in slots 2, 3, 4 and 8.

And while television appears prominently in the top ten, no mention is made of the one television program, Sesame Street, that might mix the viewing pleasure with some learning.

If we move on to 13- to 17-year-olds the level of junk food and the extreme calorie intake moves just a tad further:

1. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
2. iPod
3. Google
4. M&Ms
5. Oreo’s
6. Subway
7. Hershey’s Milk Chocolate
8. Target
9. Sprite
10. Microsoft

On the positive site, there is a noteworthy drop here in television-related items and the move towards media that is at least interactive (Google and Microsoft).

Finally for the oldest group , 18- to 24-year-olds, we see some modest changes:

1. Google
2. Facebook
3. iPod
4. Gatorade
5. Target
6. Subway
7. Apple
8. iTunes
9. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
10.Oreo’s

It is clearly nice to see those food items fall down and off the list. But this list speaks volumes for educators especially given the brand familiarity of Google and Facebook to this age group. Those wanting to implement these tools in the education setting clearly have a captive audience that is already familiar with their use.

Of course, this also conjures up that age-old challenge for educators: distractibility. While these tools can be put to use in the learning environment, their ability to be utilized so easily in an off-task manner continues to leave educators concerned about their implementation.

Finally, if ages are not broken out we see the following list:

1. M&Ms
2. Google
3. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
4. Oreo’s
5. iPod
6. Target
7. Subway
8. Hershey’s Milk Chocolate
9. Doritos
10. Pixar

Uninformed Public Voter

The second report on the impact of media and the need to be aware of its effects parallels one of our more recent concerns regarding uniformed voters. The World Public Opinion poll reported that 9 in 10 voters indicated they had encountered information they believed was misleading or false during the 2010 election. The report further noted that 56% of respondents indicated they thought this had occurred frequently with a nearly like number (54%) believing this misinformation was more frequent than usual.

But the most interesting development was that voters in total had in fact been misinformed on some very basic issues but did not realize they were unaware of the truth. For example, though the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had concluded that the stimulus legislation has saved or created somewhere between 2.0-5.2 million jobs, only 8% of voters thought most economists who had studied it concluded that the stimulus legislation had created or saved several million jobs. Perhaps most astonishingly, 20% even believed that it resulted in job losses.

As but one more example, though the CBO concluded that the health reform law would reduce the budget deficit, 53% of voters thought most economists have concluded that health reform would increase the deficit.

Because misinformed viewers actually reported watching different news channels, the failure to be properly informed could not be attributable to one specific news source. Perhaps most importantly, those who had greater exposure to news sources were generally better informed.

But the report did reveal a number of cases where greater exposure to a news source increased misinformation on a specific issue. The report also noted that those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to be misled.

Some examples with direct quotes from the study:

Those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to believe that most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely), most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points), the economy is getting worse (26 points), most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points), the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points), their own income taxes have gone up (14 points), the auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points), when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points) and that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points).

As for the final nail in the Fox coffin, the effect was not deemed a function of partisan bias. Even those Fox watchers who voted Democratic were more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch that specific network.

Media Literacy

In our world today, we are bombarded with imagery designed to sell us on specific products. Our media consumption involves exposure via two traditional outlets, television and print media, as well as all the new forms that accompany the explosion of technology and the Internet.

It is important for all of us to understand that those candy makers and the folks at Doritos know how to get their message across. As we move towards epidemic levels of obesity in our country, it is imperative we look at the messages being provided to children on a daily basis.

But we adults are just as easily manipulated. How else could those who watch a certain network that calls itself “fair and balanced” not realize they are not receiving factually accurate information.

Collectively, the two studies reveal the importance of being able to realistically and properly assess brands. The results are alarming.

First, and foremost, we can clearly see that the ability to assess is not something the general public can do. And that of course leads to the ultimate issue, that brand equity transfers over time into brand loyalty.

Over the past month we are witness once again to the incredibly myopic view of our citizenry as well as that of our elected officials. We as a country are stuck in a collective rut, allowing ourselves to be swayed by the best sound bites reproduced over and over again on the cable news networks, the best Republican bites and worst Democratic offerings replicated repeatedly on Fox, the reverse on MSNBC.

Back in 2005, James McGann took a look at one of the places our ideas come from, the concept of a “think-tank.” McGann noted the famous quote offered by Bill Baroody Sr. of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

“The competition of ideas is fundamental to a free society.”

I could not agree more.

While reviewing this notion, McGann suggests that conservative think-tanks were created to “develop an alternative set of ideas …. intended to challenge the liberal orthodoxy that dominated policy debates in Washington and on college campuses throughout the United States. McGann notes that these institutions initially were able to achieve “their objective through thoughtful and independent analysis of policy issues.”

Since that time however, McGann sees think-tank agendas mirroring the emerging partisanship in Washington. Instead of looking at ideas with a healthy independent skepticism, McGann notes that these tanks are developing specific bents and simply leaning left or right ideologically depending on their affiliation.

Meanwhile, that partisanship has further devolved into two rather simplistic viewpoints: one – that the majority of think-tanks in the US are on college campuses and thus controlled by the liberal elite to promote their liberal agenda contrasted with the second – that conservatives have such deep pockets that they are simply spending their way towards the promotion of their conservative agenda.

McGann writes:

Such simplistic and one-sided explanations miss the big picture. They also enable the partisan merchants of fear on both sides to raise huge sums of money while providing a smokescreen for the shortcomings of their analysis.

Most importantly, McGann summarized seven environmental forces impacting the ability of think-tanks to provide independent analysis and advice. All sound terribly familiar to this concerned citizen.

· the development of partisan politics
· the growth of liberal and conservative advocacy groups
· the restrictive funding policies of donors
· the growth of specialised think-tanks
· the narrow and short-term orientation of congress and the White House
· the tyranny of myopic academic disciplines
· the growth of 24/7 cable news networks.

Our Economy

With that as a backdrop, we turn to one undisputed fact, that our nation’s economy continues to struggle. Unemployment rates remain an enormous issue despite the fact that our country is showing some signs of emerging from its collective funk.

Amidst that backdrop, we are hearing about a negotiated tax plan out of the White House, brokered with Republicans, one that President Obama is touting as a necessary step to ensuring that our economy does not slip backwards in the near future. The contrasting debate points feature the traditional Republican talking points regarding the need to reduce taxes and government spending against the Democratic talking points on protecting governmental programs that provide key safety nets for our citizens.

What we are witnessing represents some of the worst elements of McGann’s think tank analysis. In particular, we are seeing once again the immediate short-term orientation of both congress and the White House. This despite the recent election where many of the winning candidates ran on a platform of the importance of reducing the soaring national deficit.

I for one, would prefer a deeper discussion, one I thought our President would be able to bring forward. I voted for Obama believing he had the intellectual and leadership capacity to bring about policy that would move our country forward long term.

Here I turn to the white paper (pdf) of Larry M. Bartels of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Bartels points us first to a theme that is beyond dispute currently: the growing economic disparity between the haves and the have-nots in America.

Bartels notes that over the past thirty years that we have seen economic inequality grow substantially in the United States. He cites several measures of this discrepancy including the Gini coefficient. Bartels notes that this measure reveals an almost 25 percent growth between 1970 and 2000.

For those not enamored with this quotient, Bartels turns to another measure, the income share of the richest five percent of U.S. households. Here the number increased by more than one-third between 1980 and 2000.

Bartels revised this paper in 2004 so it does not discuss the most recent developments. However, the consensus is that there has been only a widening of this discrepancy over the last decade.

Of course, the most important question should be: is this discrepancy meaningful? There is a certain morality that one would question but we will skip that debate and turn simply to the economic one.

Are the tax cut policies espoused by Republicans and now also being reinforced by the White House good for our economy or do they primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans?

At the heart of the debate is yet another fundamental fact: our economy is driven primarily by consumer spending. So when it comes to a stronger economy, Bartels provides some very interesting data regarding our election priorities.

Over time, Bartels notes that have been real “consistent differences in patterns of real pre-tax income growth under Democratic and Republican presidents in the post-war U.S.” Here is what Bartels found:

• Democratic presidents have produced slightly more income growth for poor families than for rich families, resulting in a modest decrease in overall inequality.
• Republican presidents have produced a great deal more income growth for rich families than for poor families, resulting in a substantial increase in inequality.
• Families at the 95th percentile of the income distribution have experienced identical income growth under Democratic and Republican presidents.
• Those at the 20th percentile have experienced more than four times as much income growth under Democrats as they have under Republicans.

But if we focus on two issues that appear to be most relevant right now, Bartels found that the basis for these differences are attributable to partisan differences in two areas:

• Unemployment, which has been 30 percent lower on average under Democratic presidents,
• And GDP growth, which has been 30 percent higher on average under Democratic presidents.

It is these two factors that have also had the strongest impact on income growth at the bottom of the income distribution.

For this reader, these two elements are in significant contrast to the prevailing sound bite that dominated our recent election: tax and spend liberals are bad for the American economy. It also stands in remarkable contrast to Obama’s separation over the last month from his base towards the need for tax cuts to spur the economy.

But even more importantly, it is a clear indication that we have not elected anyone, our president included, who is ready to tackle big ideas. Instead, we have as McGann noted, a cycle that perpetuates short-term interests of all, politicians and the public alike.

Like many Americans, I will benefit personally from the negotiated tax plan. But also, like most Americans, I am disappointed with a president who was elected based on a collective belief that we might actually find ourselves focused on producing a future for our children and our country.

But as disappointed as I am with our President, I am more disappointed that people seem to be so easily manipulated. I am also wondering when we as Americans will once again insist that we have a government that is by and for the people.

The current tax policy debate reinforces that our government is unable to provide us the requisite leadership in these enormously challenging times.

And that we citizens are either too distracted or uncaring to hold these people accountable.

With each passing year, we enter new worlds when it comes to understanding inhibitors to learning. As but one example, back in the mid-1970’s when this educator was going through his teaching program, the concept of stereotype threat had not even been conceived of.

But there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that stereotype threat is not only real, there may be ways to actually address the issue. Of course, teachers cannot tackle an issue unless they have an understanding of what the concept entails.

But then again, many of the teaching fundamentals already employed by educators of our youngest students may actually be critical to addressing this new found learning inhibitor.

Stereotype Threat

To get a quick definition of stereotype threat, we head on over to Wikipedia where we find this very direct synopsis:

Stereotype threat is when a person who belongs to a group that has a negative stereotype attached to it subconsciously conforms to the negative stereotype by performing a task to a lesser degree than they would otherwise.

The site offers this simple example:

Black people have the “less intelligent” stereotype attached to them, so a black person might perform poorly on an IQ test. If said person was either unaware of the stereotype or knew the stereotype to be wrong (stereotype threat is not present) then they would perform better.

Another way of thinking about the idea is to think about the traditional stereotypes associated with a specific subgroup: about a female student focusing on traits associated with being a female or of an African-American focusing on traits associated with being an African-American.

Wikipedia goes on to note that the typical issue found in education is one where a subgroup performs poorly because of the prevailing stereotype. It could be the case of poor standardized test performances by blacks on the SAT. Another typical subgroup performance issue involves young women in either mathematics or science.

Latest Study

A recent study by researchers at the University of Colorado reveals that the issue of stereotype threat in the sciences is very real for young women. The study also reveals that educators can take some very simple steps to help reduce the impact of stereotype threat in the classroom.

In the case of the Colorado research, it appears that two simple 15-minute writing exercises administered early on in the semester boosted the scores of female students in an introductory physics class. Perhaps even more amazingly, the writing exercises had nothing to do with physics and everything to do with making these young women more comfortable with being women even while they were in the science setting.

For their writing assignments, the students were asked to write about things that mattered to them: things like relationships with family and friends. It appears that those young women who were allowed to hone in on things they care about provided additional affirmation that then helped them perform better on the science tasks when they were presented with them.

At Slate Magazine, Amanda Schaffer has dissected the results of the experiment featuring 399 undergrads in a calculus-based physics class. Some students were randomly assigned to write about two or three items from a list that included “learning and gaining knowledge,” “belonging to a social group,” “athletic ability,” “relationships with family and friends,” and “sense of humor.” These individuals were then asked to reflect on why these things mattered to them.

The second set of students was provided the same list of values. In an amazing twist, these students were asked to select the values on the list that were least important to them but to explain why these values might be important to other people.

The writing assignment came early when students were theoretically feeling the most apprehension about the course: the first week of school and then the week before the first midterm.

The results of this activity were amazing. Schaffer explains that most of the women who “received C’s in the class were in the group that had written on values they cared about least” while most of the “women who received B’s had written on what they cared about most.”

In contrast, there was no effect for the women who were receiving A’s or for the men in the class irrespective of grades. Later on in the course, those women who had affirmed their own values also “scored higher on a standardized exam of key physics concepts, taken at the end of the term.”

The theory being suggested is that those students who were able to write about the things they cared about felt some additional comfort early on in the class. The assignment may have reduced some of the anxiety associated with stereotype threat and thus allowed the students to relax and let their true intellect come through.

The key of course is that each positive development helps build confidence over the course of a semester. A slightly better performance on test one leads to greater motivation and thus leads some to work harder. That work then transcends to understanding of the material that then leads to greater confidence and even further motivation. As Schaffer states, “it’s easy to imagine such a virtuous cycle.”

Praise and Success

We have written previously about the importance of praise in the learning process for our youngest learners. But it seems that we should rethink how important this concept is with older students as well.

From this latest study, we see that how students feel about themselves in a particular classroom setting is critical. Therefore, finding ways to help students feel comfortable in a classroom setting is critical to helping them believe in themselves.

Lastly, there does appear to be an exceedingly virtuous cycle, one where comfort and belief in oneself leads to additional levels of success that can in turn further a student’s motivation and effort level. And when it comes to learning, it is the work ethic of students that matters most.

Ironically, the steps teachers can take to address any and all of these characteristics appear to be similar in scope to what educators must do to address the issue of stereotype threat. The key is finding age-appropriate methods for doing so.