哈佛大學的迷思

The School Ranking List Harvard Doesn't Top
By Nick Carbone
No matter how many accolades Harvard rakes in, its graduates are paling in comparison to their peers at lesser institutions in one crucial field: starting salary.

ABOUT K-12
RACE TO TOP WINNERS PUSH TO FULFILL PROMISES
As the 12 Race to the Top winners reach the midpoint of their four-year, $4 billion federal grant program, states are shifting their work from the planning stages to what is perhaps the more difficult part: implementing new programs and school improvement efforts in the classroom. This critical midpoint comes as President Barack Obama, who considers the initiative one of his signature domestic-policy achievements, campaigns for a second term. Race to the Top became a bragging point in several speeches at the Democratic National Convention this month, while some of its components took a beating at the Republicans' gathering last month.  Race to the Top was even invoked last week during the Chicago teachers' strike because revamping teacher evaluations to include student performance—a key sticking point between the union and the district—is also a focus of the grant competition. The article is in Education Week.
MARCUS WINTERS ON THE STRUGGLE TO REFORM TEACHER EVALUATIONS
There is widespread agreement that one of the most reliable ways to improve the quality of K-12 instruction in the United States is to increase average teacher quality. But this raises two crucial and interrelated questions: (1) how should we measure teacher quality? And once we agree on (1), (2) how should we actually go about increasing average teacher quality? Conventional measures of teacher quality include years of experience and attainment of advanced degrees. These are the indicators that are entrenched in salary schedules in school districts across the country, and that have been adamantly defended by teachers unions. Yet as Duke University economist Jacob Vigdor has found, the value of additional years of experience increases rapidly in the first few years before leveling off and advanced degrees appear to have no impact on effectiveness in the classroom. The article is in the National Review Online.

ABOUT HIGHER ED
WHERE IS TECHNOLOGY LEADING HIGHER EDUCATION?
The rush to create large, free online classes has generated anxiety at universities around the country. With finances already tight and with a surge of movement toward online learning, universities are being forced to move quickly to change centuries-old models of learning. Terms like historic, seismic and revolutionary now pop up in descriptions of the challenges that higher education faces in the coming years. Many institutions have been preparing for these changes for years, building infrastructure and expertise, experimenting and recruiting, and integrating online learning into long-term strategies. Many others, especially traditional research universities, have been caught flat-footed as education has transformed around them. This point of dramatic — and traumatic — change didn’t swoop in unannounced. Rather, it crept in like a series of streams meeting in a roiling confluence. Only by stepping back and looking in panoramic fashion can we truly understand how we’ve arrived at a point of transformation and how we might deal with it. The article is in MindShift.
REPORT: CREDIT-HOUR MODEL OUTDATED, INEFFICIENT
Colleges and universities are holding back a competency-based credit hour system in higher education, even as the federal government has signaled support for the nontraditional credit-earning model, according to a report that supports the growing opposition to the credit hour status quo. The New America Foundation’s “Cracking The Credit Hour” is the latest critique of the long-held belief that college credit should be judged solely on hours spent in a classroom, whether it’s in person or online. Penned by the foundation’s director of higher education, Amy Laitinen, the foundation’s report points out that traditional universities have stuck with the seat-time credit hour model despite the U.S. Department of Education’s definition of credit hours, which was based on 1,200 comments from educators and includes three ways to measure learning outcomes. The article is in eCampus News.
ETS STUDY OF HIGHER EDUCATION OUTCOMES ASSESSMENTS SHOWS STUDENT MOTIVATION HAS SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON RESULTS
With increasing pressure for accountability in higher education, outcomes assessments have been an important resource in evaluating learning and informing policy. Today, a report produced by ETS researchers titled "Measuring Learning Outcomes in Higher Education: Motivation Matters" provides evidence that simply modifying the pre-test instructions to increase motivation has a significant impact on scores on a commonly used higher education outcomes assessment, the ETS® Proficiency Profile. The report has been accepted for publication in the journal, Educational Researcher. "The findings in this report provide institutions with strong empirical evidence that motivation matters. The report also demonstrates various practical strategies that, at low cost, could improve student performance by increasing motivation," said David Payne, Chief Operating Officer of the Higher Education Division at ETS.  "The ETS Proficiency Profile has an established history of measuring program effectiveness and assessing student proficiency in core academic skill areas through its multiple choice format." The article is from PRNewswire via COMTEX and available in MarketWatch.
 
ABOUT K-12
TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS 'HERE TO STAY'
Fawn Johnson reports in the National Journal’s Education Experts blog on the recent Carnegie Foundation forum, Revisiting Teacher Evaluation: The day after Chicago public school teachers returned their classrooms, a group of educators and researchers from around the country convened in a sunny conference room in Washington D.C. to ponder the very questions that had so recently vexed the Windy City. Where are we as a nation with teacher evaluations? Are we evaluating the right things? What role should student data play in professional development? What about employment decisions?
WHAT DO TEACHERS DESERVE? IN IDAHO, REFERENDUM MAY OFFER ANSWER
In the struggle to fix the nation’s public schools, the old red-state, blue-state idea is looking as dated as Dick and Jane. You can hear the change in the voice of Gov. C. L. Otter, a Republican here in one of the most deeply conservative corners of the country, when he expresses a brotherhood bond with Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic mayor of Chicago and former Obama administration chief of staff. Chicago’s fight may be over, but in Idaho, where a three-part proposition on performance pay, tenure and technology in the classroom is roaring toward Election Day, the debate over schools has morphed into a harsh discussion about whom the voters should trust. And as Mr. Otter’s attack line shows, the political and social battle lines are blurred — neither predictably conservative nor liberal, and often tinged with emotion about what schools can and might be. The article is in The New York Times.
MEASURING ACCOUNTABILITY WHEN TRUST IS CONDITIONAL
Michael J. Feuer writes this commentary in Education Week: Teachers have become the target of our toughest scrutiny. The basic proposition is that they have substantial authority in their classrooms, and that entrusting them with our children entitles us to evidence of their performance. Anxiety about the condition of education has been translated into rigorous but, to many observers, onerous and unfair efforts to measure and publicize teacher quality. Even if the metrics are new and the way teachers are at times subjected to public shame and ridicule is hideous, the basic idea is familiar. We have held teachers and schools accountable at least since the common-school reforms of the early 19th century. No profession is granted automatic autonomy or an exemption from evaluation. The challenge is where to set the dial between blind trust at one extreme and stifling control at the other, which is why the choice of metrics and the fairness of evaluation processes is so important. Just ask the teachers who went on strike in Chicago.

ABOUT HIGHER ED
CALIFORNIA'S COMMUNITY COLLEGES STAGGERING DURING HARD TIMES
Demand is up but funding is down for California's community colleges. Many students are shut out of needed classes, making it harder to get their degrees or transfer. This is the new reality for about 2.4 million students in the nation's largest community college system. The system is the workhorse of California's 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, which promised affordability, quality and access to all. In reality, the state's two-year colleges are buckling under the stress of funding cuts, increased demand and a weak record of student success. The situation can be seen on all 112 campuses — students on long waiting lists, those who take years to graduate or transfer and others so frustrated that they drop out. Most of them enter ill-prepared for college-level work. Eighty-five percent need remedial English, 73% remedial math. Only about a third of remedial students transfer to a four-year school or graduate with a community college associate's degree. The article is in the Los Angeles Times.
MOOC BRIGADE: BACK TO SCHOOL, 26 YEARS LATER
Technology writer Harry McCracken reports in TIME: I’m participating in a TIME experiment in which several staffers are signing up for massive online open courses, or MOOCs. These are free classes, often taught by accomplished university professors, that take place entirely on the Web and are open to anyone who registers and does the work. Once again, I have to attend classes, take tests and submit written assignments, all of which I can do from any location that has an Internet-connected computer. I’m two weeks in and it’s been fun, interesting and challenging. Parts of it still leave the same butterflies in my stomach that I remember from the mid-1980s. Then again, even if I blow this course, it won’t be a life-changing fiasco — just an embarrassment that I’ll be forced to share with you here. Students who get at least a 70 will receive a certificate, but this isn’t a true college class and doesn’t provide credit toward a degree. I’m taking a six-week course on gamification, the practice of applying gamelike techniques to things that aren’t games, such as marketing efforts and business processes. It’s being conducted on a site called Coursera by Kevin Werbach. Among other things, he’s an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, where he co-organized the first university course on the subject.