Some of the News Fit to Print
ABOUT HIGHER ED
THE END OF COLLEGE?
Online learning, once considered the Yugo of higher education, is now
sweeping through American academia faster than anyone thought
conceivable just five years ago. Almost every week, some elite private
college or public university announces plans to put professors on camera
and beam lectures to students half a mile or half a world away. For the
schools, the technology is a way to reach people they might not
otherwise engage and to experiment with a tool that could transform how
they dispense knowledge in the future. The article is in
The Christian Science Monitor.
GEORGIA COLLEGES LOOK AT NEW WAYS TO USE ONLINE COURSES
Georgia college leaders joined a new partnership to explore how they
can best use the fast-growing market of free online courses. The
University System of Georgia announced
Thursday
it is one of 10 public systems and universities taking a collaborative
look at how massively open online courses (MOOCs) could increase access
and make a degree less expensive. MOOCs started almost two years ago to
offer quality online college courses from elite schools, including
Georgia Tech and Emory University. Millions of people worldwide signed
up. The article is in
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
FLORIDA COLLEGES TO DROP REMEDIAL CLASSES FOR THOUSANDS
Florida Gov. Rick Scott recently signed a bill to overhaul college
remediation and allow a large segment of students to immediately enroll
in college-level courses, regardless of their academic abilities. The
goal is to allow more students to start earning college credits while
also offering them support services. Some researchers praise the
legislation, but college administrators fear that students are being set
up to fail. The article is in the
Orlando Sentinel.
THE NEW ‘NEW NORMAL’
Multiple public universities and state systems announced in recent
months that they will freeze tuition for at least the next year, with
some announcing multiyear freezes. In some states, politicians and
campus leaders have imposed the freezes without any new state
appropriations for higher education, presenting a budget challenge for
university leaders. In others, the freezes are the result of improved
state budget pictures and increased appropriations that obviate the need
for more tuition revenue. The article is in
Inside Higher Ed.
ABOUT K-12
SEQUESTRATION HINDERS RESEARCH FUNDING
The fallout of sequestration has made for some scrambling at the U.S.
Department of Education's research agency, with plenty of high-quality
research proposals that cannot be funded. The Institute of Education
Sciences budget is $31 million lower in fiscal 2013, or more than 5
percent lower than in fiscal 2012. IES Director John Easton reported at a
meeting of IES' advisory group, the National Board for Education
Sciences, that the agency is working to prioritize funding in its
remaining grants. The post is from
Education Week’s Inside School Research blog.
SWEEPING EDUCATION REFORMS BECOME LAW
Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad called the education reform bill he signed
into law "a turning point in Iowa history," but it lacks many of the
provisions included in the administration's initial pitch for improved
schools. The final bill, for example, failed to link student performance
to teacher evaluations or require high school students to pass
end-of-course exams in core subjects. The article is in the
Des Moines Register.
ABOUT K-12
LONG-NEGLECTED LAW ON TEACHER EVALUATIONS RISES TO THE FOREFRONT
LOS ANGELES – The road to an agreement on teacher evaluations has been a
long and costly one that is not yet finished. But recent litigation has
put the Los Angeles Unified School District on a fast track. The
spotlight on teacher evaluations widened last June when Los Angeles
County Superior Court Judge James Chalfant ruled that the district was
violating California’s longstanding teacher evaluation law, the Stull
Act, by not ensuring test scores were used. The article is from the
Hechinger Report.
NEW YORK TO EVALUATE TEACHERS WITH NEW SYSTEM
The New York State education commissioner broke a long and acrimonious impasse
on Saturday
by imposing a new evaluation system that would rate New York City
teachers in part on their students’ test scores and streamline the
disciplinary process. The new system, announced after three hectic days
of meetings, testimony and arbitration that involved the Bloomberg
administration and the teachers’ union, finally brought New York City
into compliance with state law — the last district in the state to do
so. The article is in
The New York Times.
POTENTIAL OF FLIPPED CLASSROOMS
In the flipped classroom, the teacher is available to guide students as
they apply what they have learned online. One of the drawbacks of
traditional homework is that students don’t receive meaningful feedback
on their work while they are doing it; they may have no opportunity to
relearn concepts they struggled to master. With a teacher present to
answer questions and watch over how students are doing, the feedback
cycle has greater potential to bolster student learning. The article is
from
Education Next.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
DIFFERING VIEW POINTS ON TEACHER PREP FEATURED IN NEW BILLS
Last week, federal lawmakers reintroduced a pair of bills relating to
teacher-preparation programs and accountability, in what gives an
interesting glimpse into what debates on this topic are likely to
feature in the coming weeks and months. The first comes out of a
philosophy of "disruptive innovation," or freeing up teacher preparation
from things like Carnegie units and faculty research requirements and
tenure; the second, an approach of working within the existing
structures and policies of teacher education. The first is supported by
advocacy groups and organizations typically lumped in the so-called
"education reform" camp; the second by groups that have tended to be
skeptical of such efforts. The article is from
Education Week’s Teacher Beat blog.
DOES GREAT LITERATURE MAKE US BETTER?
Philosophy professor Gregory Currie writes in
The New York Times:
We need to show that exposure to literature itself makes some sort of
positive difference to the people we end up being. That will take a lot
of careful and insightful psychological research (try designing an
experiment to test the effects of reading “War and Peace,” for example).
Meanwhile, most of us will probably soldier on with a positive view of
the improving effects of literature, supported by nothing more than an
airy bed of sentiment.
NEW DATA ON MOOC STUDENTS
New data on an early MOOC course offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are being released today in the journal
Research and Practice in Assessment. The data are about the course Circuits and Electronics, which already has been the subject of some analysis. In an
article in
the journal, researchers reported on the use of course resources by
those who earned certificates (greatest use on weekends, when students
presumably had more time and just before assignments were due), the use
of discussion boards (most students were lurkers, and viewed others
comments without adding any of their own), and the countries of origin
of students, based on IP addresses and perhaps not completely accurate
as a result (greatest enrollments from the United States, followed by
India, Britain, Colombia and Spain). The information is from
Inside Higher Ed’s Quick Takes.
ABOUT K-12
STUDENTS CAN LEARN BY EXPLAINING
Children are quick to ask “why?” and “how?” when it comes to new
things, but research suggests elementary and preschool students learn
more when teachers turn the questions back on them. In a symposium at
the annual Association for Psychological Science research meeting in
Washington this month, panelists discussed how and when asking students
for explanations can best enhance their learning. “Often students are
able to say facts, but not able to understand the underlying mathematics
concept, or transfer a problem in math to a similar problem in
chemistry,” said Joseph Jay Williams, a cognitive science and online
education researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. The
article is in
Education Week.
TEA PARTY GROUPS MOBILIZING AGAINST COMMON CORE
Tea party groups over the past few weeks have suddenly and successfully
pressured Republican governors to reassess their support for a rare
bipartisan initiative backed by President Obama to overhaul the nation’s
public schools. Activists have donned matching T-shirts and packed
buses bound for state legislative hearing rooms in Harrisburg, Pa.,
grilled Georgia education officials at a local Republican Party
breakfast and deluged Michigan lawmakers with phone calls urging
opposition to the Common Core State Standards. The article is in
The Washington Post.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
INCOME-BASED DIVERSITY LAGS AT MANY PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES
Opponents of race-based affirmative action in college admissions urge
that colleges use a different tool to encourage diversity: giving a leg
up to poor students. But many educators see real limits to how eager
colleges are to enroll more poor students, no matter how qualified — and
the reason is money. The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon in a
closely watched case over admissions at the University of Texas at
Austin, and the court could outlaw any consideration of race. Opponents
of affirmative action welcome that prospect, arguing that race-conscious
admissions favor minority applicants who are not disadvantaged, and
people on both sides of the issue contend that colleges should do more
to achieve socioeconomic diversity. The article is in
The New York Times.
ONLINE COURSES GET BIG BOOST, BUT DOUBTS PERSIST
Critics of online courses aren't sure MOOCs can do what their backers
hope. "Whether it costs a little less or a little more, I would not want
my child's education to be an experiment," says Eileen Landy, a
sociology professor at the State University of New York, Old Westbury.
She is with the union that represents the 35,000 faculty members in the
SUNY system. "We know MOOCs have about an average of 10 percent
completion rate and that's among very highly motivated students," Landy
says. "If you target MOOCs for incoming students, students who need
remediation, the chances are we'll lose them." The piece ran on NPR’s
All Things Considered.
