Author: Don Heller

Strikes and scores

Posted on by Don Heller

strikeThe Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) voted Tuesday to end its seven-day-old strike, and the teachers were back in the schools yesterday.  The strike, at the nation’s third largest school district, received quite a bit of attention across the nation, with coverage on major media outlets.  There were a number of contentious issues in the negotiations between the CTU and the Chicago Board of Education, but none was more vigorously contested than that of teacher evaluations.

How to effectively assess teacher performance has been hotly debated in educational policy – and research – circles in recent years.  Historically, at least in those school districts around the country that were unionized, there was relatively little formal teacher evaluation and assessment done once a teacher had been tenured, which generally occurred within the first four years of his or her career (disclosure: while I have never been a member of a teacher’s union, my wife has been in the past).

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Happy 40th birthday, Pell Grants

Posted on by Don Heller
Senator Claiborne Pell (D-RI, 1961 to 1997)
Senator Claiborne Pell (D-RI, 1961 to 1997)

In 1972, Congress passed and President Richard Nixon signed into law the 1972 amendments to the Higher Education Act of 1965.  A key aspect of the legislation was the creation of the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant program (BEOG), later renamed the Pell Grant program in 1980 after the late Senator Claiborne Pell.  Senator Pell was the key champion for the creation of the BEOG program.

Since the passage of this legislation, tens of millions of undergraduate college students have received a total of over $280 billion in Pell Grants from the federal government.  Pell Grants are awarded based only on the financial need of the student and/or her family, and they are designed to be the foundation grant for promoting college access.  This school year alone, almost 10 million students will receive over $35 billion in Pell Grants.

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Political theater

Posted on by Don Heller

HELPThis week I had the opportunity to testify at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.  The hearing was titled “Making College Affordability a Priority: Promising Practices and Strategies.”  This committee of the Senate, long chaired by Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts until his death a few years ago, has held a number of hearings on the topic of college affordability in recent years in response to concerns raised in the media, by students and parents, and by policymakers at the state and federal level.  The committee is now chaired by Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, with Mike Enzi of Wyoming the ranking minority member.  The hearing came in the middle of a vacation I had planned in New York City, where I was attending a number of Broadway shows.  This was certainly a very different type of theater experience.

This was my first time testifying to a Senate Committee; my three previous trips to Capitol Hill as a witness were on the House side of the Capitol.  I was joined on the panel by three college presidents: Steven Leath of Iowa State University, Jim Murdaugh of Tallahassee Community College, and Thomas Snyder of Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana.  Also on the panel was Carol Twigg, president of the National Center for Academic Transformation.

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A sad day at Penn State

Posted on by Don Heller

penn-state-nittany-lion-crying-w500x352Today, former FBI Director Louis Freeh released his investigative report into the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State.  In some ways, my time there seems like it is a long way in my past, but in others it’s still very fresh in my memory.  The unfolding of the scandal less than two months before I left, and over the subsequent eight months, has kept me connected to my former employer in ways that I never would have anticipated when I accepted the job here at Michigan State.

Today I published a commentary piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education about the release of the Freeh report and its findings.  I won’t repeat what I said there; you can read it for yourself.  Suffice it to say that reading the report, and then writing about what it means for Penn State, has saddened me a great deal.  But I believe that the story needs to be told to ensure that these kinds of heinous crimes, and inaction on the part of the leaders of the university, are not repeated at Penn State or elsewhere.  My thoughts are with the victims of the crimes and their families, as well as with all my friends and colleagues back at Penn State who will be dealing with the fallout of the scandal for some time into the future.

The New York Times corrects the truth about student loans

Posted on by Don Heller

NYT_correctionIn yesterday’s post, I described how I believe The New York Times in a front-page story misrepresented the state of student loan borrowing.  I pointed out that the Times story prominently (above the fold on page one of the Sunday Times) featured the statistic that 94 percent of all graduating bachelor’s degree recipients borrow to pay for higher education, a figure that was far in excess of other data published by the U.S. Department of Education and known to those of us who conduct research on financial aid.  After having the figure questioned by a number of people, most prominently economist Sarah Turner of the University of Virginia, the Times finally issued a correction and edited the story.  It now states that “About two-thirds of bachelor’s degree recipients borrow money to attend college, either from the government or private lenders, according to a Department of Education survey of 2007-8 graduates; the total number of borrowers is most likely higher since the survey does not track borrowing from family members.”

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The truth about student loans

Posted on by Don Heller
Credit: NYT
Credit: NYT

The New York Times is currently running a series on student loans, a topic that has been at the forefront of both the media and the general public for some time now. There has been widespread publicity (here’s just one recent example from USA Today) regarding the fact that student loan balances now exceed $1 trillion, an amount in excess of the balances of either consumer credit card debt or  automobile loans.

The first installment of the Times series ran in a most visible location: above the fold in the Sunday paper (the headline and image above is from the web version of the article).

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Making sausage in the Department of Education

Posted on by Don Heller

Having taught educational policy throughout most of my career as a faculty member, I would often start the course with the old saying, “Policy is like sausage – you don’t want to see either being made.”  Just as most of us would not like to watch the sausage making process, for fear that we would find out what gets ground up and put into it, many of us – even those who consider ourselves “policy wonks” – similarly wish we could close our eyes as we watch the policy making process.  As I write, there is a good example of sausage-making going on at the Department of Education in Washington.

The Department, and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as its leader, has been pushing for more rigorous assessment of teachers and the programs that train them.  This is a goal that is understandable and laudable; there has been much attention paid lately to the issue of teacher quality and how school districts can determine which are the most effective teachers and which are the least. Mary Kennedy, a faculty member in our Teacher Education program, edited a recent book on the topic – Teacher Assessment and the Quest for Teacher Quality: A Handbook.  You can also read a briefing on the topic written by our Teacher Education program a few years ago.

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