Category Archives: Education

Virtual Education

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My Mom sent me a link to an interesting article in the Washington Post about a company that is partnering with local school systems to set up online learning for kids who don't want the bricks and mortar experience.  There's a lot of info to digest there (graduation rates, varying experiences around the country, etc.) but to me what's of particular note is that while the classes are part of one county or municipality's offerings students from anywhere in the state can be enrolled.  The company appears to target systems from impoverished areas because they get more state money per pupil than if they partnered with more affluent systems.  From the article:

The Virginia venture was a partnership between the traditional schools of Carroll County — a rural county bordering North Carolina — and K12. Children who enrolled in the Virtual Virginia Academy were counted as Carroll County students no matter where they lived.

That was no accident.

State aid varies by school district and follows a formula based on poverty, among other factors. Affluent Fairfax County receives $2,716 per pupil from Richmond, whereas relatively poor Carroll County receives $5,421, according to the state Education Department.

This year, 66 Fairfax students are enrolled in the virtual school. Richmond is paying the virtual school twice as much for those students as it would if they attended neighborhood schools in their own county.

“Clearly, it’s not a logical or equitable system,” said state Sen. George L. Barker (D-Fairfax). “It’s a horrible deal for taxpayers.”

I'm a big believer in modernizing our education system to take advantage of what technology has to offer, and I think anything we can do to shake things up and get people serious about education reform is a good thing, but I think we need to think long and hard about the appropriate role of businesses in delivering that reform.  As a teacher once pointed out to me a business can "fire" a difficult client, but schools don't have that luxury except in the most extreme circumstances.  Education, much like health care, isn't a normal industry.  The consequences of failure are much more dire than they are in the real estate, retail, restaurant, etc. industries and so we have to be very careful to manage the role of private enterprise in delivering those services. I think we've all seen how imperfect our current system is and I think we can all agree there's vast room for improvement, but there's no guarantee that companies like K12 will succeed where public schools have failed and we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we didn't monitor them closely.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I think the single most effective thing we can do to reform our educational system is to fix the broken homes that are feeding broken kids into the schools.  If a child doesn't have someone at home holding them accountable and stressing the value of education then the odds are pretty good that the kid will have negligible success at school.  There just isn't an app for that.

Textbooks

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I have a thing about textbooks.  As I've written before I think the textbook industry is basically a crock and that our school systems need to seriously consider blowing up the current system and looking at innovative ways to use technology to serve students rather than requiring them to carry around 50-pound backpacks filled with dead trees. As you might expect I'd love to attend the panel discussion on textbooks tomorrow (Thursday, November 17)at UNC, but sadly I won't be able to make it so I'm hoping they post video or a transcript of the session online.

When Morons Are in Charge

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I'm thinking there's a new reality series to be had here – When Morons Are In Charge:

At Wolcott High School one morning this week, an urgent announcement crackled over the intercom: a threatening intruder was in the building and students were told to immediately take refuge in classrooms.

Doors were locked and police, with dogs, moved in. Students stayed huddled in classrooms where they were told to stay away from the windows.

But what sounded like a frightening situation was just a search for narcotics. Drug-sniffing dogs combed the school while students stayed in locked classrooms, believing that an attacker was roaming the halls.

As the columist points out in the rest of the piece there are all kinds of problems with this operation, but I'd like to point out the most obvious – if there's ever a real intruder in the school in the future the kids are now more likely to not take it seriously and to think it's some kind of drill or just another drug sweep.  Have the administrators never heard of Chicken Little?

Dull is Totally Underrated

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One thing about having three teenagers is that life never seems to be dull.  Yesterday's a perfect example.  Our daughter turns 18 today (Oct 23) so we had a birthday dinner for her last night.  Unfortunately our youngest, a sophomore at West Forsyth HS, couldn't participate because he's in the Marching Band and they had a competition at North Forsyth HS.  The party went as well as you'd expect a party with a gaggle of 18 year old girls to go, and after dinner my lovely wife, Celeste, and I settled down to relax a little.  We called a friend who was at the band competition to see how it was going (West performed well) and she offered to bring our son home when the buses dropped the kids off at West.

That's when the "life is never dull" really kicked in.  About an hour after the first call our friend called back to ask if we'd heard from our son, and to tell us that there'd been an accident involving one of the buses carrying the band (it ended up there were two buses involved).  Her son was on the bus, but she wasn't sure if ours was.  Celeste called our son's cell and he answered and said that he was on a different bus and that they were pulled over at the scene of the accident.  Celeste then traded calls with our friend and found out that her son was banged up, but was being released to them by the EMTs.  Unfortunately six students and the bus driver had to be sent to the hospital.

We've heard varying reports from our son and other folks about the accident (fuel was leaking from the bus, one of the sax players had his mouth piece driven into his arm, one girl couldn't remember where she was, etc.), and there was a brief story on WXII's website, but the best info I've seen came in emails from the band's director Mr. Kirkpatrick and West Forsyth's principal Mr. Telford.

Before I share them I want to tell you that our son's experience in Marching Band has been a revelation.  As someone who's spent many of his years on a variety of courts and fields playing and coaching different sports I thought I understood teamwork.  Honestly I think marching band is exponentially harder in many ways.  It's hard enough getting 11 kids moving in tandem on a soccer field, but the marching band pulls it off with 100 kids and to do it they spend innumerable hours rehearsing, often in stifling heat or brittle cold, and by engaging student leaders and dozens of parent volunteers. I'm also blown away by the camaraderie that the kids show – I've seen tight teams before but I've never seen a group of kids like this.  Like I said it's been a revelation, and it explains why I'm not surprised that things unfolded the way Mr. Telford and Mr. Kirkpatrick describe:

From Mr. Telford:

Good morning. It is Sunday morning and I want to take the opportunity to touch base with you. Last  night I was at the scene of the bus accident shortly after Mr Kirkpatrick called me. Six West students and a bus driver were transported to the hospital for treatment. They are all OK. This does not dismiss the emotional duress that your student may have experienced.

I am extremely proud of the students, parent volunteers and staff members. The students were cooperative and did all that was asked of them. The parent volunteers were level headed making sure all students were accounted for. Mr Kirkpatrick and Mr Spencer took charge making sure that appropriate steps were taken.

Work closely with Mr Kirkpatrick and Mr Spencer obtaining personal items that may have been left on the bus.  I am sure that all students are tired due to the late evening.

Have a restful Sunday.
Kurt Telford

From Mr. Kirkpatrick:

Parents and Students,

I want you to know how proud I am of each of you in how you handled last night's accident.  As you can imagine, this was a Band Director's worst nightmare.  Fortunately, injuries were minor and everyone is
going to be OK.  I am grateful to have an amazing group of parent chaperones who kept a level head and remained very supportive of the students throughout the ordeal.  Thanks also to Mr. Spencer for being equally helpful in assisting students.  Much appreciation also goes to Mr. and Mrs. Telford and Mr. and Mrs. Powell for coming to the scene immediately to assist.  Belongings can be picked up in the upstairs band room in the morning.

Students, you were amazing on the field and, in this case, especially amazing off the field in a situation that wasn't rehearsed. This was an amazing feat in teamwork from all people involved.

Get some rest, see you Monday.

Speaking as a parent I'd like to thank Mr. Kirkpatrick, Mr. Telford, all of the parent volunteers, the bus drivers and other school staff who did such a great job keeping a bad situation from getting worse.  I'd also like to thank Mr. Kirkpatrick for helping make Marching Band such a great experience for our son.

Max Student Loans at $2,000?

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Mark Cuban wrote the following in a blog post offering advice to the Occupy Wall Street protesters:

3.  Limit the Size of Student Loans to $2,000 per year

Crazy ? Maybe, maybe not.  What happened to the price of homes when the mortgage loan bubble popped ? They plummeted. If the size of student loans are capped at a low level, you know what will happen to the price of going to a college or  university ? It will plummet.  Colleges and universities will have to completely rethink what they are, what purpose they serve and who their customers will be. Will some go out of business ? Absolutely. That is real world. Will the quality of education suffer ? Given that TAs will still work for cheap, I doubt it.

Now some might argue that limiting student loans will limit the ability of lower income students to go to better schools. I say nonsense on two fronts. The only thing that allowing students to graduate with 50k , 80k or even more debt  does is assure they will stay low income for a long, long time after they graduate ! The 2nd improvement will be that smart students will find the schools that adapt to the new rules and offer the best education they can afford. Just as they do now, but without loading up on debt.

The beauty of capitalism is that people like me will figure out new and better ways to create and operate for profit universities that educate as well or better as today’s state institutions, AND I have no doubt that the state colleges and universities will figure out how to adapt to the new world of limited student loans as well.

Finally, the impact on the overall economy will be ENORMOUS. There is more student loan debt than credit card debt outstanding today. By relieving this burden at graduation, students will be able to participate in the economy.

We could argue about the $2,000 number, but he brings up some interesting points.  As I've mentioned in previous posts we are at the beginning of what will hopefully be 7+ years of our children attending college, and as you can probably imagine we're quite interested in how this all works. Last year when our oldest son was considering schools to apply for we had a few questions we asked him over and over when he was looking at private or out-of-state schools – "Is the difference in tuition between NC State (or any other state school) and Davidson (or any other private school) really worth it?  Will the curriculum meet your needs that much better? Is going to that school a necessity to get you into the grad school or job that you're considering?"

When you start crunching the numbers even a state school's tuition, fees, books and room and board add up to a hefty chunk of change. Without student aid you're looking at roughly $10,000 a semester and if a student graduates in four years that's $80,000.  Multiply that number by three or four and you have the total damage from a private school, and as they say in debates about the federal budget, "$10,000 here, $10,000 there and next thing you know you're talking serious money."

So how do people pay for this?  Some scholarships, some grants and lots of student loans. Unfortunately those student loans often lead to financial trouble, and in many cases students just can't, or won't, pay them off. In the '80s I worked as an intern for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) and back then delinquent student loans were a bigger problem than they are now.  As I made hundreds of copies of NASFAA's position papers and delivered them to the Hill I learned that schools were going out and hunting down students for whom they could secure government-backed student loans without regard for the student's actual ability to perform in the classroom.  As a result there were a ton of schools that were raking in the dough as huge chunks of their students dropped out. That means that in the worst cases people were accumulating huge piles of debt and not even getting a degree in return.  I seem to remember some reforms being implemented that helped reduce the drop out and default rates, but unfortunately loan default's are still a problem as highlighted in this Sep. 12, 2011 NY Times story:

According to Department of Education data released Monday, 8.8 percent of borrowers over all defaulted in the fiscal year that ended last Sept. 30, the latest figures available, up from 7 percent the previous year.

At public institutions, the rate was 7.2 percent, up from 6 percent, and at not-for-profit private institutions, it was 4.6 percent, up from 4 percent…

Although the new overall rates are the highest since the 1997, when they were also 8.8 percent, default rates peaked in 1990 at more than 20 percent…

Although for-profit colleges, which typically serve low-income students, enroll only about 10 percent of the nation’s undergraduates, Mr. Kvaal said, their students made up 150,000, or almost half, of the defaults…

The problem may be even greater. “Some research has shown that as few as one in five defaults at a for-profit college occur in the two-year window,” said Debbie Cochrane, program director at the Institute for College Access & Success, which runs the Project on Student Debt. “The extent of borrower distress is barely touched upon with these rates.”

The high default rate at for-profit colleges, the fastest-growing sector of higher education, has become an increasing concern for the government, since such institutions depend on federal student aid for more than 80 percent of their revenues. Last spring, in internal documents gathered from the publicly traded for-profit colleges for hearings on the student debt problem, the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee found that some companies estimated that their students had staggeringly high lifetime default rates — in one case, 77.7 percent…

Colleges with excessive default rates, either exceeding 40 percent in the latest year, or 25 percent for three consecutive years, can lose their eligibility for federal student aid programs. This year, five institutions — four of them for-profits — lost eligibility, Mr. Kvaal said.

In part because of the high default rates at the for-profit colleges, the department recently adopted regulations designed to curb recruiting abuses, and cut off eligibility for federal aid at programs that leave students with high debt loads and poor job prospects.

Reading this causes me to question whether or not capping student loans would actually lead to more for-profit schools stepping up to compete as Cuban suggests, but I do think he's right to call into question the whole higher education funding model.  If school's were suddenly faced with the loan spigot being turned off how would they adjust?  Would we see an explosion in affordable online learning initiatives?  Would we suddenly see the corporate world sending the message that alternative learning is fine by them, because quite frankly not enough students were coming from the limited number of schools left standing thanks to their massive endowments?  If so, would we see student's flocking to alternative forms of learning because they know that it could be the ticket to a brighter future?  Would they be happy without the keg parties at the Sigma Xi house?

Cuban's thrown out an idea that begs lots of questions and they're the kinds of questions I think we need to be seriously considering.

Is Your Kid’s Student ID a Debit Card?

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This morning I stumbled across this story about a community college student who was suspended for two semesters because he protested on the school's Facebook page the school's forcing students to use student ID offered by a debit card company. He was later reinstated after an advocacy group intervened on his behalf.  From the story:

Catawba Valley Community College student Marc Bechtol was suspended for two semesters earlier this week after complaining about the debit card on the school's Facebook page, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.  Bechtol's Facebook complaint included a suggestion urging readers to find "good viruses" to send to the school or register it for porn sites. On Oct. 4, Bechtol was pulled from class and told he was no longer allowed on campus.

After the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) intervened, Bechtol was reinstated. The school viewed Bechtol’s post as a threat, but FIRE argued that it was protected free speech and not a serious threat…

Bechtol complained last spring that school was forcing him to obtain a debit card issued by financial firm Higher One, and that his personal information would be shared with the company. When he did, he said he immediately began receiving credit card spam, which directly inspired his Facebook comment.

"Did anyone else get a bunch of credit card spam in their CVCC inbox today? So, did CVCC sell our names to banks, or did Higher One? I think we should register CVCC's address with every porn site known to man. Anyone know any good viruses to send them?" he wrote, according to the letter FIRE published.

I currently have one child attending a North Carolina university (UNCC), and will likely have two more attending NC schools in the next three years, and I can tell you I would be quite unhappy to discover that their only choice for student ID is a debit card.  I couldn't tell from reading the story if there was any way for students to get an ID that had a deactivated debit card feature, but even if there is I think the student raised a good point – why should they have to deal with their names being sold to marketers?

Something else that bothers me about this story is the school's reaction to the student's Facebook rant.  Granted he suggested students register the school with porn sites and/or infect the school's network with viruses, but you'd think the school's administrators would recognize hyperbole when they see it.  Or maybe not.  Any which way you slice it I'd say they overreacted just a touch.

The 93rd Year of Compulsory Education

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Seth Godin has an interesting post about public education in America.  While I'm not sure I totally agree with the statement "Large-scale education was never about teaching kids or creating scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system,"  I do find the following to ring true:

As we get ready for the 93rd year of universal public education, here’s the question every parent and taxpayer needs to wrestle with: Are we going to applaud, push or even permit our schools (including most of the private ones) to continue the safe but ultimately doomed strategy of churning out predictable, testable and mediocre factory-workers?

As long as we embrace (or even accept) standardized testing, fear of science, little attempt at teaching leadership and most of all, the bureaucratic imperative to turn education into a factory itself, we’re in big trouble.

The post-industrial revolution is here. Do you care enough to teach your kids to take advantage of it?

Alternative Housing

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Our son isn't the only one getting an education by heading off to college.  For instance Mom and Dad discovered last week that his school of choice has some communication issues.  As in the school was quick to let our son know that he'd been bumped off the housing list because they hadn't received a $200 deposit, but in the two months they'd had his registration and zero dollars they'd said nary a word about a deposit not being in hand.  That included two days spent on campus by our son and his mom for a mandatory orientation that ran a couple hundred bucks.  The result was that Mom and Dad ended up spending a Sunday looking at off campus apartments while their son was at work.  That led to the next lesson.

Off campus apartments are not what we had back in the dark ages of the 80s.  These apartments feature three or four private rooms (lockable) with private bathrooms attached to a common area that includes a living room, a full kitchen (granite counters and stainless steel appliances), and a laundry room. Free wi-fi comes with the cable and utilities that are all-inclusive.  The community's clubhouse has a game room (foosball, ping pong, pool), a computer lab, a fitness room (real weights and nicer cardio equipment than we have at our gym) and a pool.  In other words we're worried he won't come home.

BTW, the cost is comparable to the cost of the on-campus housing with the exception of the lowest end dorms. But since the lowest end dorms looking like something out of 60s-era Soviet Russia and smell like feet I'd say that's not a bad deal.

Maybe You’re a S***ty Cameraman!

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Matt Damon is one of my favorite celebrities.  Not that I have any deep insights into the man – I don't know any celebrities personally – but based on what I've seen, read and heard about him I like the way the guy rolls.  Check out this excerpt from a press event where he takes on a reporter and camera man.  You have to watch to the very end for the kicker:

Beer Money

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When I was attending college back in the '80s I had lots of friends who – how can I put this charitably – wrote papers that made me wonder if they'd been smoking crack for six weeks solid.  I just read a robo-comment spam on another post that reminded me of reading those papers and wondering how my friends could possibly believe that a six pack of beer was adequate compensation for helping them.  Here's the comment:

In order to purpose concerning trust, and provide any reasoned (and reason-responsive) security regarding trust as a possible added sounding opinion worthy of specific thought, Now i'm desperate to enjoy. My partner and i undoubtedly offer the particular lifestyle with the sensation regarding trust; just what I must notice can be a reasoned soil when planning on taking trust significantly as an easy way to getting for the fact, rather than, point out, merely as an easy way folks ease and comfort by themselves and also the other person (a worthwhile operate that we carry out acquire seriously). Yet you must not assume myself to be able to go with the protection regarding trust being a way to fact when with virtually any level an individual interest ab muscles dispensation you might be apparently wanting to rationalize. Prior to deciding to interest trust any time purpose provides an individual guaranteed in to a nook, think of whether or not an individual genuinely wish to get away from purpose any time purpose will be working for you.

Seriously, one guy showed up at my dorm room at 10 p.m. with a four page paper devoid of paragraphs or punctuation and asked me if I could help him get it in final draft form in time for his 7:30 a.m. class the next morning.  I got a case for that one.