2012年12月31日 星期一

Building a Showcase Campus, Using an I.O.U.

教育

為打造體面校園,美國高校大肆舉債

John Freidah for The New York Times
哈佛大學為了維持其在學術領域的頂尖地位,已經花費了數十億美元,其中一項大工程就是擴建Allston分校區。

有些人將之稱為“大廈情結”(Edifice Complex),還有的人將其稱為“多多益善法則”(Law of More)或“泰姬陵綜合症”(Taj Mahal syndrome)。
數十年來,在修建教學樓、宿舍和休閑實施的巨額花費——為吸引學生,有些學校在建造方面極度鋪張——讓各大學院和大學債台高築。而往往學生們卻成了買單的對象。
信譽評級機構穆迪(Moody's)為《紐約時報》彙編的數據顯示,在調整了通脹的情況下,2000至2011年期間,500多所高校的總體負債水平增加了一倍多。與此同時,高校持有的現金數量、捐贈和投資占其債務的比重下降了40多個百分點。
隨着各類高校收入的減少,金融專家和大學官員敲響了花費和借貸後果的警鐘。上個月,哈佛大學(Harvard University)管理者對大學和高校“迅速而又令人困惑的變化”發出了警告。
哈佛大學在截至6月的2012財年報告的序言中異常嚴肅地指出,“學校的抱負在不斷增長,而學校發掘新財務資源、實現這些抱負的能力出現了脫節,因此,高等教育體制明確需要進行變革。”
那些為上大學借貸了幾萬美元並苦苦掙扎償債的學生和畢業生成為了債務議論的焦點。償還助學貸款的學生當中,有近六分之一都在拖欠債務。
但是有些高校也在大量舉債,將錢花在大規模擴張和設施修建方面,並藉此吸引更好的生源:擁有電影院和紅酒吧台的學生會;帶有室內登山牆和“環流河” 的健身房;提供單間和獨立衛浴的寢室。研究顯示,教學花費的上升幅度則要緩慢得多。結果,學校通過向學生們徵收更高的學費、食宿費和專項費用來支付部分, 即便不是大部分學校的債務,而在某些情況下,這些債務則由州納稅人來承擔。
在整個高校領域——公立的、私立的,知名的、不知名的——債務規模一直都在膨脹。穆迪彙編的數據顯示,儘管哈佛大學是美國資金最充裕的大學,它也有60億美元的債務,其債務規模在所有的私立大學中位居榜首。
茱莉亞音樂學院(Juilliard School)於幾年前完成了一次重大翻修,該校債務從2002年的600萬美元(考慮通脹因素)上升至去年的1.95億美元。穆迪的數據顯示,位於俄亥 俄州的公立大學邁阿密大學(Miami University)正在翻修寢室和學生會,該校債務從2002年的6600萬美元升至2011年的3.26億美元;紐約大學(New York University)一直在進行雄心勃勃的擴張,其債務從2002年的12億美元升至2011年的28億美元。
這筆債務——穆迪統計2011年高校未償債務總計2050億美元——是高校日益迷茫之時的產物。在經歷了數年的強勁增長之後,很多學校的招生規模正 趨平或出現下降,尤其在美國東北和中西部地區。隨着學生未償債務規模達到1萬億美元,學生和家長們開始質疑高校的成本和價值。而且在線課程對傳統的大學教 育體驗和付費模式已構成顛覆性威脅。
與此同時,金融危機和經濟衰退又帶來了一個全新的、時而令人痛心的財務桎梏。傳統收入來源例如學費、州政府撥款和捐贈不斷受到壓縮,而勞動力成本、僱員醫保、技術成本和債務利率則在普遍上漲。
學生們對助學金的需求越來越大,很多人認為,除了那些財大氣粗的高校之外,其他高校都難以應付這一趨勢。
穆迪高等教育和醫保實務執行董事約翰·內爾森(John C. Nelson)表示,“過去5年中,評級降級的學校要遠遠超過評級升級的學校,學校等級將被稀釋。”他對除了頂級州立大學和私立大學之外的所有高校都持負面展望。
目前,財務狀況最差的高校僅限於那些獨立的職業學校和依靠學費運轉的小型私立學院。例如,3月穆迪的評級報告顯示,6300萬美元的債務讓美國聖瑪 麗山大學(Mount St. Mary’s University)這所馬里蘭州的小型羅馬天主教學院的財務資源捉襟見肘,同時也讓該校的評級成為了垃圾級。
該校校長托馬斯·鮑威爾(Thomas H. Powell)表示,“我們借了很多錢,但是我們別無選擇。我不會坐視大樓倒塌不管。”儘管背負着垃圾級的信譽評級,托馬斯仍堅持認為學校已重新站穩了腳跟,並無需進行額外借貸。
基本上沒有人會預測高校會擁有與借貸學生和畢業生一樣的債務拖欠率,至少這一情況不會在近期發生。金融分析師表示,對於大多數高校來說,儘管用於償還債務本金和利息的整體花費有所增加,但其經費預算仍可以應付這一開銷,部分原因是因為借貸利率創歷史新低。
然而,更高的債務償還以及其他花費致使高校成本成了一匹脫韁的野馬,而這對學生的影響是實實在在的,往往也是巨大的。校園裡新的財務狀況為校方帶來了需求衝突:是降低學費,還是繼續花錢打造更具吸引力的校園?
穆迪的數據顯示,儘管金融危機使工程建設偃旗息鼓,但是借貸的步伐卻沒有停止。俄亥俄大學(Ohio University)經濟學教授兼大學負擔和生產率中心(Center for College Affordability)主任理乍得·韋德(Richard K. Vedder)說,“高校的行為跟希臘人一樣不負責任。”作為案例,他列舉了自己的僱主俄亥俄大學。該校已提議在未來20年於建設項目中投入26億美元,其中一半將來自於舉債——校方說這一花費對於陳舊校舍的升級來說是必要的。
韋德博士在一封郵件中提到,“高校里流行的大廈情節與那些需要進行資本支出控制的其他趨勢大相徑庭。”
多多益善法則
於1969年成立的公立大學新澤西瑞曼波學院(Ramapo College of New Jersey)一直以來夢想着成為紐約地區頂尖的公立文理學院。
但是擺在眼前的一大難題在於,新澤西州在過去20年中基本沒有為州立學院和大學重要工程項目提供過資金。
因此,該學院開始舉債,隨後又借了更多錢,修建了新的商學院、宿舍樓和一整套休閑設施,其中包括2200個座位的體育館。一棟為護理專業準備的側樓正在修建當中。
瑞曼波學院現在的債務達到了2.81億美元,債務償還支出占其預算的13%,這一比例比穆迪數據中的大多數高校都要高。
儘管瑞曼波債務償還支出占預算比例是少見的,但是借貸的做法卻是普遍的。
由於面臨爭奪優秀生源和更佳排名的激烈競爭,在過去這10年,美國各個高校管理者效仿了從影視作品中借過來的一個相對簡單的策略:只要肯建,就不愁沒有學生來。
麥格勞希爾建築信息(McGraw-Hill Construction)的調查顯示,2008年美國大學校園在建面積為3260萬平方英尺(約303萬平方米),創20年以來的歷史新高,而1990 年的在建面積為1210萬平方英尺(約112萬平方米)。麥格勞希爾官員說,金融危機之後建築面積有所下降但目前正有所抬頭。
建築經費通常是借來的。2011年,穆迪所評比的224所公立大學的未償債務增加到了1220億美元,而2000年為530億美元(考慮通脹因 素);281所私立大學的未償債務則於2011年升至830億美元,而2000年為400億美元。金融危機之後,一些高校寧願通過借錢而不是使用其捐贈來 支付開銷,但是大部分借貸都是用於基本工程項目。
自2000年以來,公立大學的本、息支付金額上升了67%,在2011年達到93億美元,而私立大學則上升了62%,去年達到了50億美元。穆迪的 內爾森表示,出現這一結果的原因不僅僅在於借貸,而且還在於近年來債務利率開始從浮動利率向固定利率調整,雖然這一做法會增加利息成本,但卻更穩定。
據貝恩諮詢(Bain & Company)和私募股權公司斯特靈合夥公司(Sterling Partners)7月公布的調查顯示,非營利性院校的長期債務在2002~2008年期間增長了12%,而利息成本增長了9%。
對比發現,教育成本同期上漲了5%。貝恩諮詢在報告中估計,三分之一院校的財務狀況要比他們幾年之前的狀況要差。
貝恩諮詢在報告中指出,“高等教育所面臨的流動性危機大部分拜‘多多益善法則’所賜。很多高校在運營中所抱有的想法是,修得越多,花得越多,多元化程度越高,擴張得越大,學校就能經營得更加持久,變得更加繁榮。然而,相反的情況出現了:高校因此而負債纍纍。”
辛辛那提大學(University of Cincinnati)校方則認為,並不是所有的舉債行為,包括令人咋舌的大額借貸,就必然是不好的。該校的債務達到了11億美元。
主管學生事務的副校長米切爾·利文斯頓(Mitchel D. Livingston)表示,“我們為學校帶來的變化讓學校受益無窮。”他注意到,招生量增加了,學生的素質進步了,而且“校園的生活質量也提高了。”
他說,“我們從次選學校成為了首選學校。”
去年辭職的佛蒙特大學(University of Vermont)校長丹尼爾·福格爾(Daniel M. Fogel)表示,由於缺乏州府支持,很多公立學院和大學不得不借錢來度日。他說,當他於2002年來到這所大學時,一些實驗室的條件還趕不上很多高中實驗室。
他說,“你如何利用如此低端的教學設施來吸引他人?在很多情況下,學校大興土木並不是為了錦上添花。”
其他學校同樣支持借貸。紐約大學發言人約翰·貝克曼(John Beckman)表示,該校近9億美元的債務被花在了附屬醫院上面,因此對學生沒有影響。他說,紐約大學的收入在過去十年中翻了一番,因此儘管債務有所增加,但是本、息支付開支相對於總預算的比例仍較為穩定。
茱莉亞音樂學院發言人表示,翻修是為了升級和增加設施,而且籌款活動將幫助負擔部分成本。
買單
邁阿密大學負責財務和商業服務的副校長大衛·克萊默(David K. Creamer)表示,學校排名的重要性迫使校方不斷地增加開支。在一些評選中,花錢的效果是最為直接的,因為人們會評選出“最佳寢室”大學或“最佳運動 設施”大學。克萊默說,對其他評選的效果是間接的:更好的設施會吸引更好的生源,從而最終提升學校的級別。
他說,“沒有標準表明,如果學校變得更為高效,學校的排名就會得到提升。學校的排名還有可能會因此而下降。”
邁阿密大學借錢來翻修其陳舊的宿舍和學生會,但是克萊默警告說,大學不能靠無休止地花錢來成為頂級大學。他說,“這不是一個可持續的方法。”邁阿密大學的債務今年上升至4.44億美元,較去年上升了36%。
其中一個問題在於,開支會導致高校學費過高。在一些州,包括紐約州、加州和康涅狄格州,公立學院和大學的借貸大部分是由納稅人買單,因此學生們與學校還債沒有直接的關係。但是在大部分高校,大興土木和高築的債台推高了學費和學生債務,這一點是毫無疑問的。
但是成本往往很難單列出來。
也有一些例外,有些大學用一般收入來支付利息和本金,這些收入包括學費、食宿、捐贈回報和州府撥款。在一些以學費作為其主要收入來源的小型學院,學生為學校擔負的償債任務更重。(相反,在擁有多種收入渠道、資金充裕的大學,學生幾乎無需替學校還債。)
一些公立大學的債務是通過學校的專項收費來償還的,這種收費需經過學生的同意。對於諸如新學生會會館和休閑設施以及在其他情況下,高校會追加針對基建項目和維護的專項收費。
在新澤西瑞曼波學院,校方於2009年增加了一項基本資產改良費,目前是每年1000美元,用於支付維修費用。其他位於新澤西的公立學院已在對學生徵收類似的費用。
新澤西本州居民在瑞曼波學院上學住校要花費大概24500美元(不包括教材費和個人開支),較10年前上漲了30%。
瑞曼波學院校長皮特·莫瑟(Peter P. Mercer)說債務無疑增添了學生的學費成本。但是他說,由於缺乏州府資助和其他的財務資源,學院沒有多少迴旋的餘地。因為學院目前僅有43年的歷史,因此捐贈的數目和校友支持相對較少。
莫瑟說,“如果瑞曼波學院要滿足學生的訴求,即更多、更全面的教學計劃和居住空間,那麼我們將不得不從外界借貸。”
縮減比例
哈佛可能無需通過大肆花錢來吸引生源。但它已花費了數百億美元,目的是維持、甚至是支撐其在學術領域的頂尖地位。
在金融危機到來之前的6年時間裡,由於有穩健的捐贈回報和債務作為資助,哈佛大學新招收了200名教職人員(增加了10%),並新修了總面積為400萬平方英尺的建築(增加了20%)。在此期間,學校向學生髮放的助學金增加了80%。
受金融危機和經濟衰退影響,學校被迫做出快速調整。為學校提供近三分之一運營預算的捐贈年度回報在2009財年出現了27%的負增長,損失了110 億美元。哈佛並沒有以低價變賣其資產,而是借了15億美元。2008財年至2011財年,學校的利息開支翻了一番多,達到了近3億美元。
哈佛校方在11月份發佈的年度報告中稱,“金融危機就像潮汐一樣,隨着它的退去,學校的一些弱點被更清晰地暴露了出來。”
這股潮汐衝擊了一大批高校。美國各大高校的校長被迫以全新的視角來審視開支和債務。
在費城私立高校德雷塞爾大學(Drexel University),由2009年去世的前任校長康士坦丁·帕帕達吉斯(Constantine Papadakis)所發起的一項雄心勃勃的擴張計劃將17年前這所擁有9000名學生、瀕臨倒閉的學校變成了目前擁有2.1萬名學生的現代化學校。該校 已被列入《美國新聞與世界報道》(U.S. News and World Report)“後起之秀”學校名單當中。但是變化是有代價的:4.67億美元的債務,而且其凈學費也是全美高校最高的學費之一。
帕帕達吉斯的繼任者、校長約翰·弗萊(John A. Fry)打算將這一計劃進行下去,但他不會在近期追加借貸。
然而,他更希望“使用他人的資金”來擴張校園,即將大學土地出租給私人開發項目。開發商已經在大學地界上修建了一棟宿舍,而且計劃再修一棟。弗萊去 年同意與費城自然科學院(Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences)合并,並藉此助力博物館和該校自然科學系的發展。
弗萊說,“我認為靠老辦法是行不通的。我覺得公眾對此已經感到厭倦了。”
在俄亥俄州立大學,校長戈登·吉(E. Gordon Gee)宣布,這一如同修建“泰姬陵”般大肆修建宿舍和校園建築的時代已經終結。
吉說,“沒有人比我更願意去大興土木。現實是,這讓學校陷入了困境。”他於2007年接手俄亥俄州立大學,成為了公立高校薪酬最高的校長。自那之後,該校的債務上升了近70%,達到了20億美元。
在瑞曼波學院,莫瑟校長表示,他打算集中精力推廣學校的學術聲譽,而不是修建新校舍。他說,學生似乎對“花哨的東西”不那麼感興趣了,而且學校的成本——以及潛在的債務——已經成為了痛心疾首的問題。
他說,“我覺得這一態度有所轉變。五年前,可能有人會問我學生們是否得共用衛生間。現在,人們問我學校的商學院是否已經得到了官方認可。”
本文最初發表於2012年12月14日。
翻譯:Charlie




Degrees of Debt

Building a Showcase Campus, Using an I.O.U.

Some call it the Edifice Complex. Others have named it the Law of More, or the Taj Mahal syndrome.
A decade-long spending binge to build academic buildings, dormitories and recreational facilities — some of them inordinately lavish to attract students — has left colleges and universities saddled with large amounts of debt. Oftentimes, students are stuck picking up the bill.

Overall debt levels more than doubled from 2000 to 2011 at the more than 500 institutions rated by Moody’s, according to inflation-adjusted data compiled for The New York Times by the credit rating agency. In the same time, the amount of cash, pledged gifts and investments that colleges maintain declined more than 40 percent relative to the amount they owe.With revenue pinched at institutions big and small, financial experts and college officials are sounding alarms about the consequences of the spending and borrowing. Last month, Harvard University officials warned of “rapid, disorienting change” at colleges and universities.
“The need for change in higher education is clear given the emerging disconnect between ever-increasing aspirations and universities’ ability to generate the new resources to finance them,” said an unusually sobering introduction to Harvard’s annual report for the fiscal year ended in June.
The debate about indebtedness has focused on students and graduates who have borrowed tens of thousands of dollars and are struggling to keep up with their payments. Nearly one in every six borrowers with a student loan balance is in default.
But some colleges and universities have also borrowed heavily, spending money on vast expansions and amenities aimed at luring better students: student unions with movie theaters and wine bars; workout facilities with climbing walls and “lazy rivers”; and dormitories with single rooms and private baths. Spending on instruction has grown at a much slower pace, studies have shown. Students end up covering some, if not most, of the debt payments in the form of higher tuition, room and board and special assessments, while in some instances state taxpayers pick up the costs.
Debt has ballooned at colleges across the board — public and private, elite and obscure. While Harvard is the wealthiest university in the country, it also has $6 billion in debt, the most of any private college, the data compiled by Moody’s shows.
At the Juilliard School, which completed a major renovation a few years ago, debt climbed to $195 million last year, from $6 million in inflation-adjusted dollars in 2002. At Miami University, a public institution in Ohio that is overhauling its dormitories and student union, debt rose to $326 million in 2011, from $66 million in 2002, and at New York University, which has embarked on an ambitious expansion, debt was $2.8 billion in 2011, up from $1.2 billion in 2002, according to the Moody’s data.
The pile of debt — $205 billion outstanding in 2011 at the colleges rated by Moody’s — comes at a time of increasing uncertainty in academia. After years of robust growth, enrollment is flat or declining at many institutions, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest. With outstanding student debt exceeding $1 trillion, students and their parents are questioning the cost and value of college. And online courses threaten to upend the traditional collegiate experience and payment model.
At the same time, the financial crisis and recession created a new and sometimes harrowing financial calculus. Traditional sources of revenue like tuition, state appropriations and endowment returns continue to be squeezed, even as the costs of labor, health care for employees, technology and interest on debt have generally increased.
Students are requiring more and more financial aid, a trend that many believe is unsustainable for all but the wealthiest institutions.
“We’ve had a lot more downgrades than upgrades in the last five years,” said John C. Nelson, managing director of the higher education and health care practice at Moody’s, which has a negative outlook on all but the top state universities and private schools. “There is going to be a thinning out of the ranks.”
For now, the worst financial struggles are confined to stand-alone professional schools and small, tuition-dependent private colleges. For instance, $63 million in debt has left Mount St. Mary’s University, a small Roman Catholic college in Maryland, with thin financial resources and junk-rated credit, according to a Moody’s rating in March.
“We borrowed a lot of money, but we had no choice,” said Thomas H. Powell, the university’s president, who maintains, despite the credit rating, that it has regained its footing and has no need for additional debt. “I wasn’t going to watch the buildings fall down.”
Almost no one is predicting colleges will experience default rates on par with those of indebted students and graduates, at least not anytime soon. While payments on debt principal and interest have increased over all, they remain a manageable piece of the expense pie for most institutions, partly because of historically low interest rates, financial analysts said.
Still, higher debt payments and other expenses have contributed to the runaway inflation of college costs, and the impact on students is real and often substantial. New financial realities on campuses are imposing conflicting demands on college administrators: do they make their institution more affordable, or continue to spend money to make their campus more attractive?
Despite a lull in construction after the financial crisis, borrowing has continued to grow, Moody’s data shows. “Schools are behaving like the Greeks, irresponsibly,” said Richard K. Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. As an example, he cited his own employer, Ohio University, which has proposed spending $2.6 billion on construction projects in the next 20 years, half of it paid for by debt — an undertaking university officials said was necessary to update antiquated buildings.
“The Edifice Complex pervading higher education flies in the face of other trends that call for caution in capital spending,” Dr. Vedder said in an e-mail.
The Law of More
Administrators at Ramapo College of New Jersey, a public institution founded in 1969, have harbored a dream of making it the premier public liberal arts college in the New York metropolitan area.
But one big obstacle has been the state of New Jersey, which has provided little money for capital projects on state colleges and universities in the last two decades.
So Ramapo borrowed, and it borrowed some more, building a new business school, dormitories and a recreational facility that includes a 2,200-seat arena. A new wing that will house the nursing program is under construction.
Ramapo now has $281 million in debt, and its debt payments account for 13 percent of its budget, high compared with most colleges rated by Moody’s.
While the proportion of debt payments to budget at Ramapo is unusual, its story is not.
Amid increasingly intense competition for better students and higher rankings, college administrators across the country during the last decade have deployed a relatively simple strategy borrowed from the movies: if you build it, they will come.
Construction starts on college campuses were 32.6 million square feet in 2008, the highest in two decades and up from 12.1 million square feet in 1990, according to a 2010 study by McGraw-Hill Construction. Construction declined after the financial crisis but is beginning to recover, McGraw-Hill officials said.
The building was often done with borrowed money. Outstanding debt at the 224 public universities rated by Moody’s grew to $122 billion in 2011, from $53 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars in 2000. At the 281 private universities rated by Moody’s, debt increased to $83 billion, from $40 billion, in that period. Rather than deplete their endowments, some colleges borrowed to help pay bills after the financial crisis, but most borrowing was for capital projects.
Since 2000, the amount paid in interest and principal has increased 67 percent at public institutions, to $9.3 billion in 2011, and it increased 62 percent at private ones, to $5 billion last year. Mr. Nelson at Moody’s said the increase was a result not only of increased borrowing but also, in recent years, of a shift from variable- to fixed-rate debt, which typically increases interest costs but is more stable.
A study released in July by Bain & Company and Sterling Partners, a private equity firm, found that long-term debt at the nation’s nonprofit colleges and universities grew 12 percent a year from 2002 to 2008, while interest costs increased 9 percent.
By comparison, the cost of instruction grew 5 percent in that time period. The Bain report estimates that a third of colleges and universities are financially weaker than they were a few years ago.
“Much of the liquidity crisis facing higher education comes from having succumbed to the ‘Law of More,’ ” the Bain report said. “Many institutions have operated on the assumption that the more they build, spend, diversify and expand, the more they will persist and prosper. But instead, the opposite has happened: institutions have become overleveraged.”
Not all borrowing, even an eye-popping amount, is necessarily bad if you are an administrator at the University of Cincinnati, a state university with $1.1 billion in debt.
“The institution has profited mightily from the changes that we have made,” said Mitchel D. Livingston, vice president for student affairs. He noted that enrollment had increased and that the quality of the student body had improved, as had the “quality of life experience on campus.”
“We have gone from a second-choice institution to a first-choice,” he said.
Daniel M. Fogel, who resigned last year as president of the University of Vermont, said that given the lack of state support, many public colleges and universities had to borrow money just to remain adequate. He said that when he arrived at the university in 2002, some of the laboratories were inferior to those at many high schools.
“How do you bring people to teaching facilities that are really subpar?” he said. “It’s not a matter of gilding the lily, in many cases.”
Other schools also stood by their borrowing. John Beckman, an N.Y.U. spokesman, said nearly $900 million of the university’s debt was for its hospital and therefore had no impact on students. He said that N.Y.U.’s revenue increased 100 percent in the last decade, so that while debt also increased, the proportion of interest and principal paid against the overall budget has remained relatively steady.
A Juilliard spokeswoman said that the renovations were needed to update and expand facilities, and that a fund-raising drive would help defray some of the costs.
Picking Up the Bill
David K. Creamer, vice president for finance and business services at Miami University, said the importance of college rankings had pressured administrators to spend more and more. In some rankings, the effect of spending is direct because institutions with “the best dorms” or “the best athletic facilities” are singled out. The effect on other rankings is indirect: better facilities attract better students, and that ultimately raises rankings, Mr. Creamer said.
“There is nothing in there that says if you become more efficient, your ratings will go up. They will probably go down,” he said.
Miami borrowed money to renovate antiquated dorms and a student union, but Mr. Creamer warned that colleges cannot indefinitely spend their way to the top. “It’s not a sustainable approach,” he said. Miami’s debt increased this year to $444 million, a 36 percent increase from last year.
One problem is that the spending can make college prohibitively expensive. In some states, including New York, California and Connecticut, borrowing for public colleges and universities is mostly paid for by taxpayers, so students are not directly responsible for payments on the debt. But at most colleges, there is little question that construction and increased borrowing have contributed to escalating costs and student debt.
Often, though, the costs are not easy to isolate.
With some exceptions, interest and principal payments are paid with general revenue, which includes tuition, room and board, a portion of endowment returns and state appropriations. At smaller colleges that are dependent on tuition for most of their revenue, students shoulder a bigger burden of the debt. (Conversely, at wealthy universities with multiple revenue streams, students may pay very little of the debt.)
Some debt at public universities is paid by specific charges approved by students, for things like new student unions or recreational facilities, and in other instances, colleges have added a specific fee for construction projects and repairs.
At Ramapo College in New Jersey, administrators in 2009 added a capital improvement fee, now $1,000 a year, to pay for repairs. Other public colleges in New Jersey had already imposed similar fees on students.
It costs about $24,500 for New Jersey residents to attend Ramapo and live on campus (excluding books and personal expenses), roughly 30 percent more than a decade ago.
Ramapo’s president, Peter P. Mercer, said debt had definitely added to the costs for students. But he said Ramapo’s options were limited given the lack of state funding and other financial resources. Since the college is only 43 years old, it has a relatively small endowment and alumni support.
“If Ramapo College was going to respond to what students wanted, which was larger, more comprehensive programs and residential housing, then we were going to have to go out and borrow,” Mr. Mercer said.

Scaling Back
Harvard may not have to spend lavish sums of money to attract students. But it has spent billions anyway, to maintain and even bolster its position atop the academic heap.
In the six years leading up to the financial crisis, financed by robust endowment returns and debt, Harvard added 200 faculty members (a 10 percent increase) and more than four million gross square feet of buildings (a 20 percent increase). Its grant aid to students grew 80 percent in those years.

But the financial crisis and recession forced a sharp correction. The university’s endowment, whose annual returns provided roughly a third of the operating budget, suffered a 27 percent negative return in fiscal 2009, an $11 billion loss, and Harvard borrowed $1.5 billion to pay its bills rather than selling off assets at a sharp discount. Its interest expense more than doubled from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2011, to nearly $300 million.

“The financial crisis has acted like a tidal wave that, as it receded, exposed certain vulnerabilities with a new clarity,” Harvard officials said in the November annual report.
That tidal wave struck a broad swath of higher education, forcing university presidents across the country to look at spending, and debt, in a new light.

At Drexel University, a private college in Philadelphia, an ambitious expansion by a previous president, Constantine Papadakis, who died in 2009, transformed it from a 9,000-student university on the brink of bankruptcy 17 years ago to a modern campus with 21,000 students and a spot on U.S. News and World Report’s “up and coming” schools list. But the change has come with a price: $467 million in debt and a net price of attendance that is among the highest in the nation.

Mr. Papadakis’s successor as president, John A. Fry, plans to continue that expansion, but without taking on additional debt anytime soon.

Rather, he hopes to “use other people’s money” to expand the university by leasing Drexel’s land for privately developed projects. Already, developers are building one dormitory on Drexel property, and there are plans for another. Mr. Fry also agreed last year to a merger with Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences, as a way to bolster both the museum and Drexel’s natural sciences department.

“Holding on to the old ways, I don’t think that is going to work,” Mr. Fry said. “I think the public is tired of that.”

At the Ohio State University, President E. Gordon Gee declared the era of “Taj Mahal-like” dormitories and academic buildings over.

“There is no one who likes to build more than me,” said Mr. Gee, who took over at Ohio State in 2007 and is the highest paid president of any public college. Debt has grown roughly 70 percent since then, to $2 billion. “The reality is, that is what got us in trouble.”

At Ramapo, President Mercer said he planned to focus on marketing the college’s academic reputation, rather than its new buildings. Students, he said, seem less interested in “bells and whistles” now that the costs of college — and the potential debt — have become painfully clear.

“I think the attitude has changed,” he said. “Five years ago, I might have been asked if they had to share a bathroom. Now, I’m asked if my business school is accredited.”


謝錦



2010
教育小說論 --巴赫金︰對話與狂歡//[日]北岡誠司


朋友說謝錦老師的講義可一讀
教育好夥伴:做自己的主人: 謝錦談愛與熱情-輔仁大學英文系副教授謝錦桂毓2010/1/21





2010年1月21日 星期四
題目:做自己的主人: 謝錦談愛與熱情
主持人:蕭慧英
來賓:輔仁大學英文系副教授謝錦桂毓
輔大英文系有位嚴酷的謝錦老師,表面唱著文學的調子,卻幹著改造民族靈魂的實驗;他以強勢手段將教室變成劇場,Live轉播學生藏於內心的幽閉恐懼。一群大一新生從困惑、錯愕、妥協、憤怒,進而挺身對抗,終於發現──「做自己,才是最深刻的反叛。」
剛 踏入校園的輔大英文系的大一新生,不約而同收到學長、學姐的恐嚇警告,「小心謝錦,不,應該說小心你自己!否則他將成為你大學四年揮之不去的夢 魘。」奈何警告一語成懺;謝錦的課,有如一項成年禮儀式,每個青春如花露的新鮮人,總要通過他的課堂,皮開肉綻、燒成灰燼後…方能開成一樹花海。
滿 頭白髮的謝錦,英文不通,卻是輔大英文系的國文老師。他是系上最受爭議,也是最多人恨的老師,功課多到難以想像,上課規定一大堆,唯一的中國式人 情是──「喪事或自己結婚可以請假。」有一年,因請假問題,他當掉一名同學──「少男殺手」蔡依林,之後有學生乾脆叫他少女殺手。
每一次上課、每一個對話,都隱藏著最尖銳的挑戰,更可怕的是句句命中目標,好像比自己還了解你。
好不容易,當同學逐漸摸清謝錦的電網,課堂氣氛水乳交融,師生關係達到某種恐怖平衡時,一個看似簡單的「是否自願上台報告」問題,竟如採中地雷般,爆發了有史以來最熾烈的衝突對立。
究竟誰才是教室裡的主人?「你為什麼要來這裡上課,是選擇還是召喚,你真的在生命的現場嗎?」在一連串跌跌撞撞的詰問中,在渾身挫折與疲憊的行動裡,這群同學終於明白,「勇敢,就是帶著恐懼往前走;做自己,才是最帶種的叛逆。」
謝錦Blog:http://www.wretch.cc/blog/xiejin2008tw


記錄教室奇蹟 遇見人師謝錦 2010/01/17 15:05 中央社 

  
面對學生的翹課、遲到、茫然、不負責任、、,您感到困擾嗎?
請來看看謝錦老師如何面對。 謝錦紀錄片(見說明)是一部活生生的生命成長蛻變過程,這是一場生命的邂逅,是幫助學生認識他自己。
有一種熱情叫堅持
有一種選擇叫覺醒
有一門功課叫做自己
原來可以用這樣的態度面對問題...





(中央社記者林思宇台北17日電)如果你看過「第56號教室的奇蹟」或「深夜加油站遇見蘇格拉底」,就不能錯過,由輔仁大學校友自發性拍攝的「謝錦」紀錄片,敘述發生在輔仁大學LA306教室啟發生命的歷程。
「如果不願意上台報告,現在就可以離開教室…」1/3學生立即離開教室。輔仁大學英文系大一國文必修課教師謝錦,上課重點與眾不同,認為「人是不能被教的,只能幫助他認識自己」,要學生真正認識自己,知道自己要什麼。
謝錦教的是「中國文學」,但在學生眼中卻是個十足的「嚴師」,輔大大一新生,一定會收到學長姐的警告說「要小心謝錦」,不但功課多到難以想像,上課規定更是一籮筐,只有喪事或自己結婚可以請假。
謝錦規定,1學期只能請1次假,「少男殺手」蔡依林卻因為參加婚禮,要再請第二次假,謝錦就當掉蔡依林,有學生乾脆稱謝錦「少女殺手」。
在學生眼中,謝錦講話毒到不行,「通往地獄的路是滑的、門是開的,你可以決定要怎麼走!」、「精神死亡就是20歲死了、80歲才下葬,行屍走肉也是人生…」,每句話都有尖銳的挑戰,句句命中目標,好像比自己還了解你。
有一次上課,謝錦要學生自願上台報告,但只有1組學生願意自願上台,謝錦當場就說「不願意自願上台的同學,現在就可以離開教室…」結果有1/3學生立刻走人。
謝錦認為,學生不想上課就離開,不然就不要選;有學生就直接說,他也不想選,但是是必修課,沒辦法;謝錦卻說,學生可以向系上反映不要上;學生覺得根本就是天方夜譚。
雙方僵持不下,有學生看不下去,出來協調各組,希望能有「雙贏」的局面,學生討論後,決定以「兩代電力公司」的方式來上課,事件才和平落幕。
台灣的學生,從小就是服從、上課和考試,很少自己思考生命歷程,謝錦嚴格教導下,學生們釐清自己要什麼,努力去追求,不會渾渾噩噩度日,校友們感激在心,拍攝紀錄片「謝錦」,希望將謝錦生命教育的經驗,推廣到全台灣每間教室,讓每個學生都有清楚的人生。
2003 年開始,「走過好味道」導演崔永徽開始跟拍謝錦,2005年正式拍攝輔大英文系大一國文課整學年,2007年整理拍攝素材,2008年毛片剪接,並成立部 落格,2009年3月毛片試映,5月舉辦募款茶會,募到新台幣100萬元,做為紀錄片後製與推廣映演經費,10月紀錄片正式完成,2010年1月28日在 台北試片,隨後將走進各大學校園推廣。
謝錦,全名其實叫謝錦桂毓,但是多年來他的朋友都稱呼他「謝錦」,如果只看名字,可能還會誤以為他是女老師。謝錦在2008年夏天從輔大退休,但他退而不休,帶了2個讀書會,下學期將在輔大心理系開課。他始終堅信,什麼樣的大學生,就有什麼樣的社會。
崔永徽說,紀錄片不是為謝錦而拍,而是為了探索生命的人而拍的;這部片,不只是大學老師和一群年輕人彼此對抗、爭執和相愛的故事,更是發掘一種價值、探尋一份意義,它訴說的是人的無限可能性,只要你願意,生命隨時可以變高變大,展現蓬勃不息的本質。
謝錦則不改本性,提醒每位記錄片的觀眾,「你們不是為我而來,而是為自己而來」。

2012年12月29日 星期六

Catalan language education row

《中英對照讀新聞》Catalan language row sets Spanish tongues wagging 加泰隆尼亞語爭議在西班牙引發議論

◎俞智敏
Tensions between Spain’s Catalonia region and the central government have flared over a national education reform that targets the sensitive issue of Catalan language teaching in schools.
西班牙加泰隆尼亞地區和中央政府間的對峙情勢,最近又因為全國教育改革而突然升高,這項改革的目標則為校內加泰隆尼亞語教學此一敏感議題。
In a sign of how dear the right to teaching in Catalan is to inhabitants of the northeastern region, Barcelona Football Club -- one of Catalonia’s most powerful institutions -- spoke out to defend it.
西國東北部地區居民有多麼重視在學校裡使用其母語加泰隆尼亞語的權利,從加泰隆尼亞影響力最大機制之一的巴塞隆納足球隊都公開發言力挺可看出。
"FC Barcelona wishes to express its active support for the Catalan language and the model of linguistic immersion which has been employed in Catalonia over the last 34 years," it said in a statement.
「巴塞隆納隊在此表達對加泰隆尼亞語,以及加泰隆尼亞地區過去34年來所使用的沉浸式語言教育模式的積極支持,」該隊在聲明中指出。
"The Catalan language and its teaching in our schools form part of our identity and are key elements for social cohesion and coexistence within our country."
「加泰隆尼亞語以及在我們的學校裡教授這種語言,構成了我們身分認同的一部分,更是促進社會凝聚力以及全國族裔共存的重要成分。」
Catalonia’s leaders and media jumped on the defensive after national Education Minister Jose Ignacio Wert proposed an education reform focussing on Spanish language teaching in all regions.
在教育部長韋特提出一項把焦點放在要求全國所有地區教授西班牙語的教改計畫後,加泰隆尼亞領袖及媒體立刻跳出來為政策辯護。
Wert proposed to stop obliging students in Catalonia to speak Catalan in order to study at universities there, and to make the region pay for private schooling in Spanish for children whose parents demanded it.
韋特提議停止強制加泰隆尼亞地區學生必須說加語,才能在當地大學就讀的規定,並要求當家長要求讓子女接受以西語教學的私立課程時,地方政府應支付學費。
"It could only come from a total ignorance of Catalonia or simply from bad faith," said the regional government’s spokesman Francesc Homs. "If it is necessary to appeal to the Constitutional Court, we will do so."(AFP )
「這只能是出於對加泰隆尼亞的全然無知,或者根本就是言而無信,」加泰隆尼亞地區政府發言人侯姆斯說。「假如此案必須上訴至憲法法庭,我們也一定會這麼做。」(法新社)
新聞辭典
flare:動詞,指情勢突然惡化,或某人突然發怒,例句:Tempers flared after a three-hour delay at the Airport.(機場作業延誤達3小時後,旅客終於忍不住發飆。)
jump on(something):指強烈攻擊或批評某事,例句:She was quick to jump on her rival’s poor record as governor.(她立刻痛批對手擔任州長任內的政績不良。)
bad faith:不可數名詞,指蒙蔽和誤導之意圖、奸詐、 不守信用,例句:She accused her landlord of bad faith [=dishonesty] because he had promised to paint the apartment but never did it. (她指控房東不守信用,因為他曾承諾要粉刷公寓卻從未動工。)

2012年12月24日 星期一

美國高中的英文課怎麼上?(高雨莘) /News

留學生活

美國高中的英語課怎麼上?


我在美國高中的第二年,也是高中最後一年,終於和同年級的同學坐進了同一個英語課堂。私 立高中的英語課和美國大學英語課設置類似,同一等級的課程分成很多專題,學生可以根據興趣自己選。莎士比亞、戰爭文學、存在主義、詩歌和小說寫作……一眼 掃下來,若不是親眼在課表上看到,很難相信這是高中英語教授的內容。
害怕自己眼大肚子小,我選了一門看上去比較淺顯的主題為“文學中的物質主義”的課程,老師是我宿舍樓層的舍監(很多美國私立高中的老師和學生一起住 在宿舍),有個七八歲一頭金毛的可愛兒子,平時總是笑眯眯的。然而在開課前,學校臨時發現她的課程時間排不進我的課表,於是將我分到另一門課里。課時是每 天下午讓人昏昏欲睡的第六節,課名叫做“自白式記敘”。
在Deerfield的兩年,與跟在美國求學的這七年一樣,令我最難忘的經歷總是來得陰錯陽差,而經歷的過程常常有如一場艱難的長跑,站在起點時往往並不會帶着歡欣鼓舞的心情。
第一天的課程結束後,我找到老師,告訴他我一點都沒聽懂他關於詹姆斯·喬伊斯作品的講解,然後沉默地等着他開口,勸我換到別的班級。
Dr. Driskill有一頭花白的頭髮和雪白的絡腮鬍,年齡似乎在五六十歲,具體歲數難以估計。他摘下眼鏡,看着我靜靜思考了一會兒。“我晚上會在英語教學樓一層的大書房看書,”他若無其事地說:“我們可以聊聊。”
晚上八點鐘,我來到英語教學樓,大書房的門半開着,高高的天花板下,棕紅色木壁前懸掛着一圈歷代校長的畫像。Dr. Driskill坐在房間正中央一張長木桌的盡頭,看到我微微點了點頭。
“去年在ESL(English as Second Language,英語為第二語言)你都讀了些什麼書?”
我一本本地列出來。有《殺死一隻知更鳥》、《麥田裡的守望者》、《紫色》、《老人與海》等。在英文文學裡,每一本都以文字簡明出名。而這學期Dr. Driskill課表上的書則艱深晦澀,又帶着濃重的時代背景,似乎每一本都是這些書的反義詞。
聽了這個單子以後,Dr. Driskill出乎意料地看上去很滿意。用不疾不徐的語速,他開始解釋這學期要讀的書:喬伊斯的《一個青年藝術家的自畫像》的主人公其實和《麥田裡的守 望者》中的霍爾頓帶着類似的困惑,都是渴望能夠掙脫身邊生活禁錮的年輕人;康拉德的《黑暗之心》和《老人與海》一樣,描述的都是主人公為了追尋某物而踏上 的遙遠征程;莫里森的《寵兒》則反映和《紫色》類似的社會話題:美國歷史上的黑人在社會歧視下做出的掙扎;《洛麗塔》,他頓了頓,可能是唯一一部比較大的 閱讀挑戰,不過——我至今記得他的表情,雙眼微微瞇着,好像單提到小說的名字就把他拉回到了那些令他着迷的詞句間——“太值得一讀了”。
第二天,我回到了Dr. Driskill的課堂,或許是由於他對我的“閱讀恐懼”漫不經心的態度,或許是由於他在文學作品中的牽線搭橋使那些“面目猙獰”的書變得不再高不可攀, 或許還有其他說不清的原因。總之,在那個學期的每天下午兩點鐘,在英語教學樓的二層的一張圓桌旁,我和十幾位同學一起穿越時間和空間,窺探了一位又一位英 文作家私密而引人入勝的“自白式記敘”。
美國私立學校的英文教學或許相當於中國高中的“語文課”,不過兩者的形式和內容則天差地別。Deerfield的英語課是由老師帶領的圓桌討論,以 整本書作為教學單位,比起就書論書,更注重教會學生如何做有鑒別力的讀者,和文字保持一定距離,學會分析各種文學技巧,從自己的立場欣賞或批判作者的寫作 手法。
Dr. Driskill帶着我們分析一本書,如同在用天文望遠鏡和顯微鏡快速切換着輪流審視作品。時代背景、作者生平和文學流派的介紹為我們勾勒出理解作品的大 框架,逐字逐句的審讀和關鍵詞的分析幫助我們理解作者字裡行間的藝術。一節課有時一掃幾百年的美國歷史,有時辯論幾句對白中體現的人物性格,很有大學課堂 不拘一格的風格,一路聽下來非常過癮。而考試的形式往往是建立在整本書之上的當堂小論文,不會為平時的課堂教學加上框框,因此一本書十位老師可以教出十種 風格,而同一位老師每一年的授課內容也會根據自己的心得調整,不盡相同。如同俗話說的:“一千個讀者眼中,有一千個哈姆雷特。”
中國的語文課堂以課文為單位,老師習慣指出大綱上列出的詞句,帶領學生按部就班地分析:我記得在北京高中時,老師曾花了半節課的時間為我們講解《孔 乙己》的最後一句,應該如何理解“大約孔乙己的確死了”中“大約”和“的確”的衝突。所問的問題也大多已經暗示着標準答案的方向,比如:“孔乙己的悲劇反 映了當時封建科舉制度怎樣的特徵?”而Dr. Driskill的課堂上則是另一種風景。他常常在每節課開頭隨意問:“那麼,大家對上一周的閱讀感覺如何?”然後靠回椅子里,聽學生七嘴八舌的看法。討 論如同前行的船隻,由學生的興趣和臨堂辯論產生的激流推進,而老師僅偶然拋出幾句評論來推動討論,使船隻不至於偏離航道太遠。
Dr. Driskill從不害怕提出一些對十六七歲的學生聽來高深抽象,無邊無際的問題。在講解《一個青年藝術家的自畫像》時,他鼓勵我們探討“主人公對藝術的 看法和對宗教、家庭、學校、祖國的看法有哪些區別?為什麼他會在藝術中尋求解脫?”他也從不避諱聽上去有些離經叛道的問題:“《洛麗塔》整本書是否包含了 任何道德教訓?作者有沒有打算通過這本書傳達任何道德教訓?”久而久之,雖然讀書仍要翻着字典,我對這些問題慢慢不再懼怕,也不太擔心自己答案的片面和幼 稚,畢竟最終的答案總是在大家的你一言我一語當中慢慢成形,而許多問題最後總是沒有答案的。
儘管每次的閱讀只有短短几十頁,課堂上幾十分鐘的討論卻往往不能窮盡其中豐富的內涵。於是,在每周二Dr. Driskill晚上在宿舍值班的時候,我常常造訪,在一棟低年級男生宿舍樓一層的公共客廳里,周圍十四五歲男孩打鬧嬉笑聲中,和他繼續探討課上沒有聊完的話題。
在這些談話中,我和Dr. Driskill有時會躍過書本,聊到各自的生活。他是愛爾蘭裔美國人,大學上到一半,徵兵被徵到了越南戰場上,曾在那裡擔任了好幾年飛行員。回到美國 後,在加州伯克利大學讀了文學博士,開始了當老師雲遊四方的生活,在意大利、香港、日本、西班牙的國際學校都曾當過英語老師。或許也正因為這個原因,他為 我們布置的閱讀書籍中,有愛爾蘭裔代表作家喬伊斯,有以寫越戰小說出名的Tim O’Brien,也有幾位以英語作為第二甚至第三外語創作的作家。
正如在課堂上,我學着在每本書的語句和片段中捕風捉影,揣摩作者的意圖,通過Dr. Driskill布置的書籍,也可以閱讀出他的思考、信仰和一生的閱歷,以及一些他從不願開口談起的回憶。
最後一節課,Dr. Driskill背着吉他,拿着一罐雪碧來到教室。“其實我根本不愛喝汽水,”他乾笑了一聲,啜了一口雪碧潤潤嗓子,撥動琴弦,開始演唱他為越戰當中死去 的士兵兄弟們創作的歌曲。教室安靜得出奇,只有窗外樹葉沙沙的響聲。我努力捕捉他的歌詞,但在吉他的伴奏下,很難聽懂。甚至比第一節課上,他關於詹姆斯· 喬伊斯的講解還難聽懂。
然而我仍滿心感激。Deerfield是我所接觸過校規最嚴格的學校,生活中處處是條條框框。然而在課堂上,學校卻給予學生完全的信任,天高任鳥 飛,相信不諳世事的我們也可以吸收文學世界中的精華。對我的自我懷疑,Dr. Driskill漫不經心的態度如同一支鎮定劑,因為他也同樣相信,哪怕藉著磕磕絆絆的英語,一位土生土長的中國女孩也一定能夠以自己的方式讀懂西方文學 巨匠們的“自白”;而通過這些文字,以及他的琴聲歌聲,她也能夠理解一位足跡遍布世界的越戰老兵的“自白”。
或許正如同他說的,這一切都“太值得一讀了”。
高雨莘是自由撰稿人,現居北京。



ABOUT K-12
OFF-TRACK, MUCH HARDER TO GET BACK ON
A new study from ACT focuses on the extent to which students who are academically far-off-track for college can catch up within four years. Researchers examined multiple cohorts of eighth-grade students whose EXPLORE (a test administered by ACT) scores were more than one standard deviation below benchmark scores associated with being on-track. Ten percent or fewer students who were far-off-track in the eighth grade attained ACT College Readiness Benchmarks by 12th grade. A separate analysis using state test scores for students in grade four and their EXPLORE scores in grade eight obtained similar results. For both fourth and eighth grade cohorts, the overall percentage of students catching up was lower in high-poverty schools. Even at more successful high-poverty high schools, fewer than 20 percent of far-off-track eighth graders attained College Readiness Benchmarks by 12th grade. These results indicate policymakers must emphasize prevention over remediation. Prevention strategies should be conceived more broadly -- for example, giving every student access to a content- and vocabulary-rich curriculum in the early years, or implementing programs and strategies that improve student attendance and academic behaviors. Efforts to close academic preparation gaps should begin as early as possible, be more intensive, and take as long as necessary. Based on the study's results, policymakers should not assume that rapid catching up is possible if only educators try harder. This information is from the PEN NewsBlast.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
WHY DO ACADEMICALLY PROMISING STUDENTS NOT CHOOSE COLLEGE?
Students with the academic potential make very different choices about higher education based on the high school they attend, according to a set of analyses. One analysis found that 18% of these students enrolled in less-selective four-year colleges, two-year institutions, or no higher education at all. Moreover, students who chose less-selective colleges were less likely to earn a diploma. The article is in Education Week.
PROMISE AND PITFALLS OF ONLINE EDUCATION
NEW YORK CITY – It seemed almost too easy. Catharine Stimpson (a former Carnegie board member) and Ann Kirschner start from such fundamentally different perspective in their views about technology-enabled education that staging a symposium at which the two of them talk about their experiences taking online courses (or writing about such an event) seemed like shooting fish in a barrel. Of course Kirschner would be a booster, and Stimpson a naysayer. What enlightenment could possibly emerge? The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
PLACEMENT TESTS STILL RULE
Research released earlier this year found that commonly used placement tests fail to adequately determine whether incoming college students need remedial coursework. Yet most colleges rely exclusively on tests like the ACCUPLACER or COMPASS, according to a new study from the National Assessment Governing Board. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
 


2012年12月20日 星期四

好學生是自己學出來的(方廣錩)新加坡/「讓每所學校都成為好學校」

新加坡「讓每所學校都成為好學校」


新加坡——一段時間以來,新加坡吳裕興私人有限公司(Goh Joo Hin)一直用優等生為人月牌雞精(New Moon Essence of Chicken)這一學生營養品做廣告。這個廣告到處可見,例如報紙和公交站。如今,公司可能不得不更換廣告代言人。
上月,就在小學畢業考試結果公布不久之前,新加坡教育部表示將不會公布優等生以及那些N/O水準考試高分學生的名單。新加坡新聞媒體向來對這些優等生進行大幅報道,而且這些學生有時也會出現在學習輔導和家教中心的廣告當中。

新加坡教育部的這個決定是公共教育體制改革的系列舉措之一。雖然新加坡教育在國際排名上佔優,但有時也會因為壓力過大而被人們詬病。9月,教育部宣布廢除當地按學生以往考試成績劃分中學“等級”的制度,並取消部分為表彰教育機構學術成就而設立的獎項。

新加坡教育部表示,此舉將讓“每所學校都成為好學校,並提供以學生為中心、以價值為導向的教育”。最近,多名律師致電教育部,呼籲廢除小學畢業考試制度,因為該制度基本會決定學生通往高中的學業路徑。

並不是所有的人都支持這一舉措。一旦官方停止公布優等生名單,一些家長們會上KiasuParents來比較分數,並分享成績背後那些令人落淚的故事。(“Kiasu”一詞在中國閩南語中的意思是“怕輸”。)這是個新加坡家長在線論壇網站,擁有7.5萬名會員。

新加坡總理李顯龍上月在一所小學裡就該問題發表了講話。他說,“我們必須找到合理的平衡度,我們並不希望製造過多的壓力。只要有類似問題存在,我們就必須做出調整,減輕壓力。” 亞洲新聞台(Channel News Asia)對此進行了報道。

新加坡出生、哈佛大學(Harvard)畢業的新加坡教育部長王瑞傑在Facebook上關於這一問題發表了看法。他寫道,“這項改革並不是完全針對壓力或停止褒獎優等生。完全消除壓力是不現實也是不可取的。我們也沒必要去迴避學生的成就。”

香港, 類似《南華早報》(The South China Morning Post)這樣的報紙會刊登國際文憑(International Baccalaureate)考試尖子生的名字和照片。在參加中學考試的7.3萬名學生當中,有5名學生拿到了滿分,《英文虎報》(The Standard)也同樣登出了這5名學生各自所在的學校名稱。在這條通往知名高中的道路上,激烈的競爭最早從幼兒園就開始了。

但是人們很少討論這一高度競爭教育體制所帶來的壓力。香港理工大學(Hong Kong Polytechnic University)的研究表明,約有三分之一的學生承認曾“自殘”,13.7%的學生曾考慮過自殺。

《南華早報》稱,明年,香港英文學校基金會(Hong Kong’s English Schools Foundation)將與美國韓氏基金會(Hawn Foundation)合作並引進其幫助緩解學生壓力的MindUP項目。

但是香港政府並沒有宣布在大部分學生就讀的中文公立學校引入這一計劃,以緩解學生壓力。
本文最初發表於2012年12月10日的《國際先驅論壇報》。Joyce Lau對本文有報道貢獻。
翻譯:Charlie


好學生是自己學出來的
方廣錩

    以前知道老師應該好好教,學生應該好好學,這樣才能出人才。當了這麼些年老師,纔懂得一個道理:學生能夠成才,主要不是靠老師教出來的,而是靠他自己學出來的。
    敎學活動中,敎與學是一對矛盾。學生是矛盾的主要方面,老師衹是次要方面。老師的作用是什麽呢?如果說是講知識,那些知識書上全有,哪裡用得著老師去講?最多不過指明框架,梳理結構,幫助學生把握大局而已。再就是疏解難點,說明重點,去掉幾個攔路虎而已。這些工作,老師不做,學生自己也能做。世有所謂“自學成才”,完全依靠自己看書學習,最終成才。所以我從來主張老師的任務主要是講前沿、講方法、講規範。是指出前進的方向,撿掉路上的石塊。再就是看到溝坎提醒一下,遇到上坡推上一把。如此而已,豈有他哉。
    從根本上講,學習這一活動是主體認識客體的一個過程。所以學習的好壞,關鍵在學習的主體——學生。學生想學,困難再多,環境再差,照樣可以成才。學生不想學,用槍逼著也沒有用。
    我不是推卸老師的責任,好的老師不但應該盡到上面我說的責任,還應該儘量為學生創造方便,搭建平臺,讓學生踩著自己的腦袋攀登。學術就這樣發展,社會就這樣前進。但我還要說,好的學生不是老師教出來的,是他自己學出來的。
                                         2011年6月12日星期日
HC: 方教授是著名敦煌學學者 出處  
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_53c23f390100ty47.html

胡適 《名教》 (1928)

R&D Ruminations

You’re Invited to Learn About the Use of Improvement Science and Networked Improvement Communities in Education

For the past five years, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has been pioneering a fundamentally new vision for the research and development enterprise in education. We seek to join together the discipline of improvement science with the capabilities of networks specifically designed to foster innovation and social learning. This approach is embodied in what Carnegie refers to as Networked Improvement Communities (NIC). These NICs are scientific learning communities distinguished by four essential characteristics:
  • focused on a well specified common aim,
  • guided by a deep understanding of the problem and the system that produces it,
  • disciplined by the rigor of improvement research, and
  • networked together to accelerate the development and testing of possible improvements, their more rapid diffusion, and effective integration into the highly varied contexts that is education in America.
While there remains much more to be learned about networked improvement communities in education, evidence is beginning to accumulate regarding their benefits for development, implementation, and improvement. Carnegie’s experience to date with NICs has not only demonstrated this to be true, it has also provided evidence of significant impact on longstanding and seemingly intractable problems (most notably, for example, the problem of inordinately high failure rates of community college students in developmental mathematics).
Explorers’ Workshop
The Explorers’ Workshop offers a first engagement with the ideas of improvement science pursued in the context of NICs. Lasting two days, it includes a “boot camp” introduction to improvement science, including problem definition and specification, systems analysis, measurement and analytics, change theory, and improvement research as well as the principles behind the organization, initiation, and support of NICs. It s intended for those interested in but not deeply knowledgeable about this work.
Who should attend?
The Workshop is intended for those interested in but not yet deeply engaged in this work.
Details
The next Workshop will be at the Carnegie Foundation in Stanford, California, March 7 – 8, 2013. The cost for the workshop is $1500, with some meals and a reception included.
Workshop Registration
Registration will begin mid-January, but to “pre-register” or for more information, email Gay Clyburn at clyburn@carnegiefoundation.org.


PREVIOUSLY ON THE R&D RUMINATIONS BLOG
The Futures of School Reform


ABOUT K-12
ADVICE, CAUTION FROM EARLY ADOPTERS OF NEW TEACHER EVALUATIONS
Two-thirds of states are in the process of adopting new evaluations, and many will include student achievement, along with intensive classroom observations. It's unclear whether the new evaluations will have the desired effect. But early adopters say they have at least begun to pinpoint what hasn't worked, and what teachers and principals find most useful. The article is in the Hechinger Report.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
THE EDUCATION REVOLUTION OPENS UP THE PATH LESS TAKEN
Jeff Selingo writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education: Last spring, Ithaca S+R, the research service of the nonprofit group Ithaka, which promotes the use of technology in education, released the results of a study that found students learned just as much in the hybrid format of a statistics course at six public universities as they would have in a traditional version of the course. In releasing the study’s findings, William G. Bowen, a former president of Princeton University and an architect of the research, said “the most important single result” was that “it calls into question the position of the skeptic who says, ‘I don’t want to try this because it will hurt my students.’”
THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF POSTSECONDARY DEGREES
President Obama, philanthropic and policy organizations, and states have set bold goals essentially to double the number of postsecondary degrees and certificates produced in the next 8 to 13 years. Behind this commitment to increased attainment is a value proposition for policymakers and the general public that achieving these goals will lead to social and economic benefits for individuals, states, and the nation. While the relationship between education and income is strong, incomes vary significantly among the types of degrees by level and discipline and within each state. It is beneficial for policymakers to understand market conditions as they make investments in higher education. Under the State Policy Resource Center (SPRC), SHEEO releases the Economic Benefit of Postsecondary Degrees: A State and National Level Analysis. This information is from the SHEEO website.
AUTHORS HELP STANFORD PRESS PUBLISH YOUNG SCHOLARS
Stanford University Press has started inviting authors to donate some or all of their royalties to a new fund with the goal of publishing more books by younger scholars. Alan Harvey, director of the press, said a few thousand dollars has been raised so far, and that more is likely -- especially when authors of some of the most popular books join the program. The funds will be set aside so that when the press is considering its ability to publish promising work by a young scholar, there is extra money available. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.

 青史字不泯、新聞說某區公所20萬人今年約5%要求改名(改運) 、全國的幼稚園必須改成幼兒園、行政院發言稿將陳以真之名寫錯、台大的校友募款信也有行政疏失胡適 《名教》 (1928) 真妙

2012年12月19日 星期三

Some of the News Fit to Print

Some of the News Fit to Print
ABOUT K-12
CAN TEACHING'S REVOLVING DOOR BE STOPPED?
Teaching Ahead, an interactive project jointly developed by Education Week Teacher and the Center for Teaching Quality, is designed to bring greater exposure to the ideas of standout classroom educators on the future of their profession. Each month, selected teacher panelists are asked to respond to and discuss key issues in education policy and instructional practice. The discussions are intended to help inform the national conversation on the direction of public schools. This month the topic is teacher retention.
K-12, HIGHER ED UNITE TO ALIGN LEARNING
The top education leaders in Minnesota are drafting a plan that aims to reinvent high school and align its mission with that of higher education. For nearly a year, they have been working on a major proposal to better connect K-12 and higher education, with the goal of working earlier with students to ensure they are equipped with the skills and career direction needed for a productive life after high school. The initiative, Redesigning the Transition from Secondary to Post-Secondary Education, is expected to be introduced in the legislative session that begins in January. The article is in Education Week.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
COLLEGE ENROLLMENTS FELL THIS FALL
Memo to college presidents: Your admissions directors weren't making excuses when they told you they were struggling to fill their classes this fall. Data released by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center on Tuesday -- in the first of what the center says will be twice-a-year snapshots of up-to-date enrollment statistics -- show that college enrollments declined by 1.8 percent in fall 2012, driven by larger drops for for-profit colleges (-7.2 percent) and community colleges (-3.1 percent). Enrollment fell by 0.6 percent at four-year public colleges and universities, and rose by half a percentage point at four-year private nonprofit colleges. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
SENATORS DEMAND PROBE OF FOR-PROFIT COLLEGE CIRCUMVENTION OF STUDENT LOAN DEFAULT RULES
David Halperin writes in The Huffington Post: The for-profit college sector is raking in some $32 billion a year in federal student aid money, as lax federal standards have permitted a torrent of waste, fraud, and abuse and a terrible race to the bottom where federal dollars are maximized by short-changing students. Major for-profit colleges have been caught using deceptive and coercive recruiting practices, offering poor quality programs, and lying to government authorities about job placement successes. Students across the country have had their lives ruined, left with worthless credits and degrees and insurmountable debt.

posted Dec 19, 2012 09:44 am

Workshop on Improvement Science and Working in Networked Improvement Communities Set for March 7-8 [What's Happening]


For the past five years, the Carnegie Foundation has been pioneering a fundamentally new vision for the research and development enterprise in education. We seek to join the discipline of improvement science with the capabilities of networks to foster innovation and social learning. This approach is embodied in what Carnegie refers to as Networked Improvement Communities (NIC).
These NICs are scientific learning communities distinguished by four essential characteristics:
  • focused on a well specified common aim,
  • guided by a deep understanding of the problem and the system that produces it,
  • disciplined by the rigor of improvement science, and
  • networked together to accelerate the development, testing and refinement of interventions, their more rapid diffusion out into the field, and their effective integration into varied educational contexts.


Explorer’s Workshop

The Explorer’s Workshop offers a first engagement with the ideas of improvement science pursued in the context of NICs. Lasting two days, it provides a “boot camp” introduction to improvement science including problem definition and specification, systems analysis, measurement and analytics, and change theory. It also includes an overview of the principles behind the organization, initiation, and support of NICs and the core functions served by a network hub.
Who should attend?
The Workshop is intended for those interested in but not yet deeply engaged in this work.

Details

The next Workshop will be at the Carnegie Foundation in Stanford, California, March 7 – 8, 2013. The cost for the workshop is $1500, with some meals and a reception included.

Workshop Registration

2012年12月18日 星期二

Some of the News Fit to Print


Some of the News Fit to Print
ABOUT K-12
WHY NATE SILVER CAN SAVE MATH EDUCATION
Across the land, kids hate math. You can hear it in their constant groans and see it in their deranged faces. They ask their teachers, “When am I ever going to use this in life?” On most occasions, they never will. Even President Obama agrees. He recently said on the Tonight Show. “The math stuff I was fine with until seventh grade. Malia is now a freshmen in high school and I’m pretty lost. It’s tough.” And no wonder — the system is suffering from a tragic case of nostalgia. The origins of the current curriculum draw back to 1892 when the Committee of Ten hashed out a standard curriculum, which would eventually be adopted almost unanimously by schools. As a result, the potential to love and embrace math is being squandered — perhaps even the future of potential Nate Silvers and Nobel Laureates. As students progress from grade to grade, many start losing interest in math. The piece is from KQED.
EDUCATION DEPARTMENT PROPOSES CHANGES IN INVESTING IN INNOVATION
The Investing in Innovation grant program—one of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's marquee initiatives—would get a makeover under a proposed set of new priorities released Friday. Up until now, the i3 program, which was initially created under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was geared to projects that addressed the four education redesign "assurances" spelled out in the stimulus, including improving state data systems, bolstering teacher quality, turning around low-performing schools, and revamping state standards and assessments. The post is inEducation Week’s Politics K-12 blog.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
A GUARANTEED PELL GRANT?
Early-commitment scholarships -- in which a donor offers to pay the way for a class of students to attend college, for example -- have been an occasional hallmark of philanthropy. A new study examines making a similar effort with the Pell Grant: telling low-income students as early as the eighth grade that they will receive federal help to attend college, in the hopes that it would encourage them to prepare for and pursue a postsecondary education. The study, by Robert Kelchen and Sara Goldrick-Rab of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, found that guaranteeing a Pell Grant to students who qualify for free school lunch in the eighth grade could increase retention rates in college. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
COLLEGE LEADERS MAY MAKE FLORIDA’S NEXT PUBLIC UNIVERSITY ONLINE ONLY
TALLAHASSEE -- Florida’s 12th university became a reality earlier this year, and there is already discussion about whether the state needs a 13th. House Speaker Will Weatherford challenged the board governing state universities to look into creating an online-only school in order to increase access to distance education. And Monday, the Board of Governors received the results of an independent study on the topic and discussed next steps. The article is in the Miami Herald.
FOR WHOM IS COLLEGE BEING REINVENTED?
The pundits and disrupters, many of whom enjoyed liberal-arts educations at elite colleges, herald a revolution in higher education that is not for people like them or their children, but for others: less-wealthy, less-prepared students who are increasingly cut off from the dream of a traditional college education. Here's the cruel part: The students from the bottom tier are often the ones who need face-to-face instruction most of all. The commentary is inThe Chronicle of Higher Education.
 ABOUT HIGHER ED
STATE CHIEFS TO EXAMINE TEACHER PREP, LICENSING
Twenty-five state superintendents are vowing to take action to update their systems of teacher preparation and licensing. The announcement from the Council of Chief State School Officers is probably state officials' most explicit promise to engage in changes to teacher preparation. They will implement recommendations in areport by a CCSSO task force. The article is in Education Week.
DOES IT MAKE SENSE TO FUND CAMPUSES BASED ON WHETHER STUDENTS EARN DEGREES?
Reflecting the national trend to outcomes-based education funding, Georgia’s public colleges will now earn dollars based on how many students earn diplomas rather than how many enroll. Tennessee has led the nation in this effort, eliminating enrollment as a funding criteria for its public colleges. The article is in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
MEASURING SUCCESS IN NEW WAYS
Given the complexities of graduate education, it can be hard to measure program success in meaningful ways. Traditional, external reviews track things such as time to degree and completion rates every five to 10 years at large research institutions, but students and faculty are rarely asked deeper questions about curriculum relevance and program goals. A new effort at the University of Minnesota seeks to change that by establishing ongoing, qualitative models of assessment centered on students and action. If successful, the pilot Graduate Review and Improvement Process (GRIP), could be instituted on a voluntary basis across the university next year. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
ABOUT K-12
FISCAL CLIFF MAY FORCE SOME HIGH SCHOOLS TO CLOSE
f Congress goes off the so-called fiscal cliff, federal funding for K-12 education programs will go along with it—but high schools in some districts will see their budgets fall further than others. Technically called sequestration, the cliff refers to a package of mandatory spending cuts and expiring tax credits totaling $1.2 trillion. Those cuts will kick in on January 1 if an alternative deal is not reached, resulting in an 8.2 percent decrease in federal education spending. The article is in U.S. News and World Report.
 

2012年12月14日 星期五

TEACHERS WATCHING TEACHERS: KEYS TO PEER OBSERVATION

Carnegie's Elena Silva on Peer Review [In the News]


TEACHERS WATCHING TEACHERS: KEYS TO PEER OBSERVATION
Where administrator observation is typically viewed as an evaluation, peer observation is more generally seen as an approach to professional development and improvement of personal skills. Carnegie Senior Associate for Public Policy Engagement Elena Silva joins other experts to discuss the keys to making peer observation work in today’s classrooms on the Educators Channel.
posted Dec 14, 2012 10:04 am

Daily News Roundup, December 14, 2012


Some of the News Fit to Print
ABOUT K-12
ASSESSMENT GROUP CHOOSES TESTS FOR COLLEGE-READINESS IN MATH
The decision about whether students are "college-ready" in mathematics will be based only on the exams students take at the end of a math sequence, rather than on a combination of results from all the courses in the sequence, a state assessment group decided today. The decision by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers, or PARCC, approved at its quarterly governing-board meeting here in Washington, completes a discussion of several ways to arrive at the college-readiness determination for math students. The post is from Education’s Week’s Curriculum Matters blog.
NEW STUDENT POVERTY MEASURES PROPOSED FOR NATIONAL TESTS
Aiming to get a clearer picture of how students' home and community resources affect their academic achievement, America's best-known K-12 education barometer, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, is building a comprehensive new way to gauge socioeconomic status. The new measure, being developed by the National Assessment Governing Board and the National Center for Education Statistics, is intended to look beyond a traditional measure of family income to a child's family, community, and school supports for learning. The article is in Education Week.
CHURN AT THE TOP
A new study in the American Educational Research Journal finds that in 90 of 100 California districts, 43 percent of superintendents left within three years, but in districts with 29,000 students or more, 71 percent left, Sarah Sparks reports in Education Week. Superintendent turnover has gotten less attention than teacher or principal turnover, but stability at the central office is linked to greater success for education initiatives, which typically take five to seven years to mature. The information is from the PEN NewsBlast.
WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?
In an article in American Educator, Richard Kahlenberg discusses obstacles he's faced in promoting socioeconomic school integration over the past 16 years, the overwhelming evidence in support of it as an education policy, and promising signs of its undertaking nationally. At present, policymakers on the left and right find it politically safer to support "separate but equal” institutions for rich and poor, though to date no one has made high-poverty schools work at scale (Kahlenberg addresses the case of KIPP in a sidebar). Decades of research indicate that as the poverty level of a school rises, the average achievement level falls. This information is from the PEN NewsBlast.
VIRGINIA PROPOSAL FOR GREATER TEACHER ACCOUNTABILITY
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell outlined proposals that would give teachers a pay raise and includes bigger incentives, improved professional support, and a streamlined process for administrators to cut teachers loose who aren't doing well. The probationary period would be lengthened from three years to five before teachers are put on the "continuing contract" that makes it more difficult to dismiss them. The article is in The Washington Post.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
As the semester draws to a close at schools and universities across the country and college applications are submitted, the Treasury Department has released a report that should be food for thought for students scrambling to complete their work and finish their exams. The new report, prepared in conjunction with the Education Department, shows that investing in education expands job opportunities, boosts America’s competitiveness, and supports the kind of income mobility that is fundamental to a growing economy. The article is from the U.S. Department of Treasury’s cleverly named Treasury Notes blog.
LIMITS OF PERFORMANCE-BASED GRANTS
At a time when policy makers are faced with budget constraints, the idea of tying financial aid to desirable outcomes has a lot of surface appeal. But a new study -- one of a series being conducted to test the concept -- shows the limits of the approach. The study, published by the research group MDRC and part of a larger project financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other sources, explores the effects that grants tied to measures of enrollment, persistence and academic performance have on low-income students at two New York City community colleges. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
 
ABOUT K-12
GIVING TEACHERS MORE POWER HELPS IN SCHOOL TURNAROUND
Six low-performing Boston schools participating in a pilot program that gives teachers more training, support, and leadership roles are showing higher growth on state tests than other low-performing city schools according to a report released Monday by the non-profit Teach Plus. The T3 Initiative program, a collaboration between Boston Public Schools and Teach Plus, began training and placing groups of experienced teachers with track records of raising student test scores in a set of three failing schools in 2010, after a dozen city schools were deemed underperforming by the state in 2010 for chronically low test scores. The pilot expanded to three more schools the following year. The article is from the Hechinger Report.
IN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS, CALIFORNIA EIGHTH GRADERS PERFORM IN MIDDLE IN SCIENCE AND MATH
In international comparisons among about 50 countries and states, California eighth-graders scored right in the middle in math and science but lower than the U.S. average. Despite their ranking, California's students tested just below the "high" level on both subjects, according to 2011 data analyzed by the National Center for Education Statistics from a sampling of students. California participated as a state only in the eighth-grade math and science tests, administered last year for the first time since 2007. The article is in the San Jose Mercury News.
IS A TEACHER, EMPLOYER SKILLS MISMATCH DRIVING UNEMPLOYMENT?
According to research conducted by McKinsey & Co, the real reason behind chronic underemployment could be the teachers – or as the McKinsey report calls them, education providers — who are chronically overestimating the skill level of their students, especially compared to how those skills are assessed by potential employers. The article is from EducationNews.org.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
NEW PLATFORM LETS PROFESSORS SET PRICES
Professors typically don't worry about what price point an online course will sell at, or what amenities might attract a student to pick one course over another. But a new online platform, Professor Direct, lets instructors determine not only how much to charge for such courses, but also how much time they want to devote to services like office hours, online tutorials, and responding to students' e-mails. The new service is run by StraighterLine, a company that offers online, self-paced introductory courses. Unlike massive open online courses, or MOOC's, StraighterLine's courses aren't free. But tuition is lower than what traditional colleges typically charge—the company calls its pricing "ultra-affordable." A handful of colleges accept StraighterLine courses for transfer credit. The article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
 

2012年12月11日 星期二

Some of the News Fit to Print, classroom flipping

ABOUT HIGHER ED
GRADING PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
Grades earned by many students at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College will soon factor in “soft skills,” such as whether they show up for class on time or work well in groups. And next year the college will issue workplace readiness certificates alongside conventional credentials to recognize those skills. Located in Asheville, N.C., A-B Tech, as it is commonly known, has developed a template that helps faculty members determine how to incorporate eight primary workplace expectations into grading, including personal responsibility, interdependence and emotional intelligence. Soft skills should count for 8 to 10 percent of grades in courses that adopt those guidelines, college officials said. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
FIVE WAYS TECHNOLOGY WILL IMPACT HIGHER ED IN 2013
2012 was a transformative year in education. Between the introduction of the MOOC (the ‘Massive Open Online Course’), and the explosive growth in the number of online offerings, all eyes were on higher ed. In the past twelve months, students were increasingly able to learn from leading faculty at elite institutions beyond the four walls of their classrooms, and soon, professors will be collaborating across universities to collectively create and distribute for-credit curriculum for an online semester. New high growth players entered the online education marketplace, and universities began to align around interactive platforms.  As online certificate programs became more robust and hyper-targeted towards professional development, more and more students looked to gain these credentials as a differentiator in the work force.After such a dynamic year, the discussion naturally turns to what the higher education environment of 2013 will look like and to what extent it will be impacted by technology. The article is in Forbes.
ABOUT K-12
K-12 EDUCATION MAY NOT BENEFIT FROM BRIGHTER FISCAL OUTLOOK
Despite some positive signs that could help school budgets, states are still facing a shaky financial environment as they head into the new year--a circumstance that could disappoint advocates hoping that even sluggish economic progress could give K-12 funding a boost. The article was in the Huffington Post.
ED DEPARTMENT FOCUS ON ENGLISH LEARNERS SEEN WANING
As the number of English learners continues to grow faster than that of any other group in the nation's public schools, concerns are mounting that the distinctive needs of those students and the educators who work with them are receiving diminishing attention from the U.S. Department of Education. The article is in Education Week.



U.S. NEWS Using Chips to Track Students Faces Test
A federal judge in Texas next week will consider whether a San Antonio high school can force a student to take part in a program that equips students with microchips to track their attendance, despite the student's protests that the surveillance system violates her religious views.



Some of the News Fit to Print
ABOUT K-12
LOS ANGELES TEACHERS' EVALUATION VICTORY BUCKS A TREND
The recent groundbreaking agreement over evaluations for educators in the Los Angeles school district is a major victory for the teachers union because it limits the use of a controversial — but increasingly widespread — measurement of teacher effectiveness. The tentative pact puts the nation's second-largest school system at odds with a national trend to gauge the effect of teachers on student achievement by using a value-added analysis. The new system was to include an individual growth rating as a key measure of teachers, along with a rigorous new observation process, parent and student feedback and an instructor's contribution to the school community. Instead of the growth rating for individual teachers, the district and United Teachers Los Angeles agreed to use a mix of individual and schoolwide data, such as raw state test scores, district assessments and high school exit exams, along with rates of attendance, suspension, graduation, course completion and other indicators. The article is in the Los Angeles Times.
IT’S THE CURRICULUM, STUPID
Sociologist Aaron M. Pallas writes in The Hechinger Report: If some districts are using an older curriculum not aligned with the new standards and assessments, while others are using a newer curriculum that is aligned, then there’s a risk that differences in student performance on the new assessments will be improperly attributed to differences in the quality of the students’ teachers, rather than differences in the curriculum to which students were exposed. That’s the inference that would be drawn from a value-added model that doesn’t take into account variations in curriculum. And value-added models rarely, if ever, do so.
U.S. STUDENTS STILL LAG GLOBALLY IN MATH AND SCIENCE, TESTS SHOW
Fourth- and eighth-grade students in the United States continue to lag behind students in several East Asian countries and some European nations in math and science, although American fourth graders are closer to the top performers in reading, according to test results released on Tuesday. Fretting about how American schools compare with those in other countries has become a regular pastime in education circles. Results from two new reports, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, are likely to fuel further debate.  South Korea and Singapore led the international rankings in math and fourth-grade science, while Singapore and Taiwan had the top-performing students in eighth-grade science. The United States ranked 11th in fourth-grade math, 9th in eighth-grade math, 7th in fourth-grade science and 10th in eighth-grade science. The article is in The New York Times.
GOT A PROBLEM? STUDENTS CAN FIND THE SOLUTION
Schools are the perfect breeding ground for fostering students’ questions, a place to spark students’ interests and ideas for designing innovative solutions to real problems. Everyday, educators have opportunities to help kids develop the tools, skills and habits to come up with meaningful, lasting solutions to problems. Take, for example, an incident that occurred in a first-grade teacher’s classroom at Marin Country Day School in Northern California, which provided an opportunity to understand design thinking. Students were struck by the sound of a bird that crashed into the classroom window and died. After the teacher brought in a lower school science specialist to give an in-depth look at the qualities and characteristics of the bird, from sight to body structure, she challenged students to come up with designs to prevent another bird from crashing into the window. The teacher took her students through the design thinking process to figure out a way to save the birds. The article is in the MindShift blog.

ABOUT HIGHER ED
5 WAYS TECHNOLOGY WILL IMPACT HIGHER ED IN 2013
2012 was a transformative year in education. Between the introduction of the MOOC (the ‘Massive Open Online Course’), and the explosive growth in the number of online offerings, all eyes were on higher ed. In the past twelve months, students were increasingly able to learn from leading faculty at elite institutions beyond the four walls of their classrooms, and soon, professors will be collaborating across universities to collectively create and distribute for-credit curriculum for an online semester. New high growth players entered the online education marketplace, and universities began to align around interactive platforms. As online certificate programs became more robust and hyper-targeted towards professional development, more and more students looked to gain these credentials as a differentiator in the work force. After such a dynamic year, the discussion naturally turns to what the higher education environment of 2013 will look like and to what extent it will be impacted by technology. The article is in Forbes.
THE FLIPPED ACADEMIC: TURNING HIGHER EDUCATION ON ITS HEAD
Education models are turning inside out. First came the concept of the 'flipped classroom' in schools: pupils completing course material ahead of lessons to free up time with their teachers and apply the knowledge they have just learned. Now a related philosophy is developing in higher education. Can we also flip academics – or even academia itself? Alex Bruton, associate professor in innovation and entrepreneurship at Mount Royal University in Canada, thinks so. The 'flipped academic', as he sees it, is an academic who informs first and publishes later, seeking usefulness as well as truth in their research and striving to publish only after having had an impact on students and society. This is an opportunity, says Bruton, "to reinvent the brand of the academic (ie. the perceived promise an academic makes to society) as more than just a teacher and academic publisher; as someone who also wants to engage deeply with communities and find new ways of developing, delivering and discussing knowledge." The article is in the Guardian.

ABOUT K-12
TEACHING TRENDS
Over the past 20 years, the teaching force has become larger, grayer, greener, more female, more diverse and less stable, according to a study published by Richard Ingersoll and Lisa Merrill of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education. The report identifies seven major trends and changes shaping the teaching profession in the United States. Their “exploratory research project” relied on data from six cycles of the Schools and Staffing Survey and the Teacher Follow-Up Survey, which were both collected by the National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education between 1987 and 2008. In each cycle, NCES administers questionnaires to a nationally representative sample of about 50,000 teachers, 11,000 school-level administrators and 5,000 district-level officials. The article is in the Huffington Post.
MORE TEACHERS FLIPPING THE SCHOOL DAY
Welcome to the 21st century classroom: a world where students watch lectures at home — and do homework at school. It's called classroom flipping, and it's slowly catching on in schools around the country. The piece was on NPR’s All Things Considered.
CLASSES A LA CARTE: STATES TEST A NEW SCHOOL MODEL
Some states -- including Louisiana, Michigan, Arizona, and Utah -- have adopted or are considering a new education model that allows students to build a custom curriculum by selecting from hundreds of classes offered by public institutions and private vendors. Backers of the concept acknowledge there will be challenges but say the one-size-fits-all "factory model" of public school is woefully outdated. The article is from Reuters.
ALASKA TEACHERS TO BE EVALUATED ON SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT
The Alaska State Board of Education on Friday approved a controversial rule change that adds, for the first time, "student learning data" to teachers' job evaluations. The action moves forward a plan to base 20 percent of a teacher's assessment on their students' growth and performance using criteria that includes at least one standardized test, starting in the 2015-2016 school year. By the 2018-2019 school year student learning will make up 50 percent of the evaluation, a move state officials say is in direct response to a public request by Gov. Sean Parnell. The article is in the Anchorage Daily News.
RACE TO THE TOP FINALISTS INCLUDE NEW HOPEFULS
The list of 61 finalists for the latest Race to the Top competition shows that the U.S. Department of Education was successful in enticing high-scoring applications from districts in rural America and in states that had not shared in the Race to the Top bounty before. The article is in Education Week.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
HOW POLICY AFFECTS ACCESS
Brian L. Durham, with the Illinois Community College Board writes: Policymakers, higher education leaders, foundations, and others, including President Obama, have touted the completion agenda as a requirement to maintaining the nation’s economic and intellectual dominance across the world (see, for example, Lumina Foundation, 2010). Indeed, President Obama and his administration have advanced completion as the primary measure of community college performance (Obama, 2009).  Though well meaning, this environment creates a danger of institutions increasing student completions by limiting access, particularly for those who lack readiness for postsecondary education.  If community colleges sacrifice access in lieu of completion, greater inequity is certain to emerge. If policy leaders fail to recognize the link between access and completion, the community college is potentially jeopardized in the public dialogue (Goldrick-Rab, 2010).  This is particularly troubling because of the role community colleges play as the primary entry point for diverse learners and the traditionally underserved (Bailey & Morest, 2006). The piece is from the Community College Review.
POLL: MAJORITY WANT EDUCATION FUNDS PROTECTED FROM CUTS
A majority of Americans want education programs protected from the possible deep, mandatory spending cuts that will go into effect at the end of this year if Congress does not reach a budget deal, according to a poll released Friday by the Committee for Education Funding and the Foundation for Education Investments. The poll, conducted by YouGov, found 55 percent of Americans thought education spending should be protected from the cuts. The Pell Grant was considered among the most important education programs: 53 percent of respondents said it should be protected. (In fact, the Pell Grant program is not immediately threatened by sequestration, as the mandatory budget cuts are called.) Scientific research, another priority for many colleges and universities in the federal budget crunch, fared less well. Only 34 percent of respondents said they believed research should be protected from cuts. When asked about specific education programs, only 30 percent said it was very important to protect scientific and biomedical research at universities. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.


ABOUT HIGHER ED
HOW TO SOLVE THE COLLEGE DROPOUT CRISIS
The biggest hindrance to completing college isn't financial preparedness, but academic preparedness. Half of the students in community colleges need high-school-level courses when they enroll. Notably, half of the students in community colleges and 20 to 30 percent of those in four-year schools need a remedial, high-school-level course when they enroll; having to spend time and money without accumulating credits toward a degree prompts most of them to quit. Complete College America prefers the idea of "corequisites" that combine remedial tutoring, sometimes using software, with college-credit work. The article is in The Atlantic.
U.S. COLLEGE DEGREE HOLDERS SLIDING AMONG GLOBAL COMPETITORS
For the U.S. to improve on its No. 5 world ranking in the number of 25- to 64-year-olds possessing some form of college degree, it must boost the number of two-year degree holders by instilling a national focus on enrollment and success in community colleges and trade schools, according to a new report. America ranks 18th when it comes to two-year degree graduates.  The article is in the Huffington Post.
COLORADO CREATES MASTER PLAN FOR IMPROVING HIGHER EDUCATION
The Colorado higher education department released its expectations for each of the state's colleges and universities in the form of performance contracts signed by administrators. This master plan will measure areas such as retention and access, and it calls for school's results to be announced annually. In time, the hope is that schools will be rewarded financially by the state for reaching their benchmarks. The article is in the Denver Post.
ABOUT K-12
A LOOK AT MASTERY-BASED APPROACHES TO TEACHING
A new report from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation looks at schools in the Proficiency-Based Pathways Project (PBP), which implements mastery-based approaches to teaching in rural, suburban, and inner-city regions in New England. Competency education is rooted in mastering a set of skills and knowledge rather than simply moving through a curriculum. Students work on skills or knowledge until they demonstrate understanding and ability to apply them; they then move on. They cannot advance simply by showing up to class a sufficient number of days and earning a grade just above failing. The report finds time-based policies and systems -- from schedules to contracts to credit systems, at both the district and state level -- often impede implementation of competency-based designs, yet educators find ways to create flexibility, starting within familiar structures but locating strategies to support individualized pacing. The biggest logistical challenge to competency-based initiatives is the lack of high-quality data and technological tools to assess and monitor student progress. Expansion of competency education will likely be aided by evolving state policies that allow districts or schools to opt out of seat-time requirements. Adoption of the Common Core standards will encourage consistency in developing competencies grounded in high-quality college-readiness standards, and the assessment systems being developed for these by multi-state consortia will support the need to measure complex knowledge and skills. This information is from the PEN NewsBlast.
STUDENTS FALL FLAT IN VOCABULARY TEST
U.S. students knew only about half of what they were expected to on a new vocabulary section of a national exam, in the latest evidence of severe shortcomings in the nation's reading education. Eighth-graders scored an average of 265 out of 500 in vocabulary on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the results of which were made public Thursday. Fourth-graders averaged a score of 218 out of 500. The results showed that nearly half of eighth-graders didn't know that "permeates" means to "spread all the way through," and about the same proportion of fourth-graders didn't know that "puzzled" means confused—words that educators think students in those grades should recognize. The article is in The Wall Street Journal.