Inventory Time

My kids and I decided that yesterday should be a day we spend in Manhattan.  We were already set to meet a terrific former student of mine/good friend and her daughter to go shopping on the lower east side (Canal Street) but we decided to go for the entire day. We started at the Museum of Natural History where the regular exhibits as well as the special exhibits always fascinate.  I have been a fan of Natural History all my life.  The dinosaurs have always fascinated me and so has the planetarium.  Even as a kid, when the dinosaurs hadn’t been extinct nearly as long as they are now, I was captivated by what the Museum brought to life.

We followed the Museum by buying lunch at Shake Shack (a popular local hamburger place) and eating it, sitting on the Times Square steps.  Times Square was crowded and within a few minutes of sitting down, a crowd began flash dancing right next to the steps.  Next we walked from Times Square to the High Line, which was also very crowded.  The High Line is an abandoned elevated railroad track that has been turned into an elevated park.  The plantings in the park are sustainable and views of the Hudson River and the ambiance is great.  What a great vision and demonstration of creativity to turn an eyesore railroad track into a park.

Back in the subway, this time for a ride to Canal Street.   On Canal Street, which similar to the Museum and Times Square and the subway, was also very crowded, the kids each bought a school bag as well as a $2.00 “bling” ring. A great in-person lesson for each of them into how barter works because on the lower east side the posted or asking price is merely an opening bid and the final sales price is always significantly lower.

Now here we were on Canal Street having just ventured into Chinatown for a snack and wanting to get back to the Museum of Natural History where my car was parked.  For so many of us, in areas with inadequate mass transit systems and an overreliance on automobiles, we never really experience an alternative that can efficiently move people from point A to point B, even if they aren’t going in a straight line. The NYC subways are that efficient alternative. To get from Chinatown to the Museum we took three trains—the “6” line to Grand Central, the shuttle to Times Square and the “1” train to 79^th street. Every subway came relatively quickly and in short order we were on 79^th street.

More and more colleges and universities realize that resources off campus can substantially increase the learning experience, and there are more and more organized opportunities to take advantage of those resources.  Often this happens because a faculty member or an administrator is familiar with the resource and how it fits well into his or her course or the broader curriculum. What would help even more is for each college and university to prepare a comprehensive inventory of what resources are readily accessible (including the costs involved) and see if and how going to these resources would enhance the educational experience.  Part of a transformative education is to have the students open their eyes to what is around them.  We all need to do our part to make that happen.

Demand and Supply

The 2010 Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce study of “Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2018” concluded that “by 2018 we will need 22 million new college degrees- but will fall short of that number by at least 3 million postsecondary degrees, Associate or better.”  Furthermore, the report states “we will need at least 4.7 million new workers with postsecondary certificates. “ The report comes to two other conclusions, all conclusions that will not surprise the higher education community.  First, the report notes that “between 1973 and 2008, the share of jobs in the U.S. economy which required postsecondary education increased from 28 percent to 59 percent.  And second that “as the economy evolved, postsecondary education gradually became the threshold requirement for access to middle class status and earnings.”

But there is a fundamental disconnect between the increasing need for higher education credentials and the support by government of students pursuing this education.  Be it on the graduate level or on the undergraduate level, financial support for students as well as for institutions is declining.  Consequently in a lackluster economy, with many families straining to afford the education for their children, the diminished support makes it more difficult to pursue added education and less likely that this investment will be made.

Education is first and foremost an investment, an investment in the personal growth of the individual undertaking the education as well as an investment in the economy.  Our economy needs workers with sophisticated skills sets to do the increasingly more complex jobs that are available in fields such as the sciences, healthcare, business and education.  In a global economy and in a highly technological time, there are no substitutes for such workers.  As one example, if we look at health care where we are striving, rightly so, to provide a health care safety net for all our citizens, how will we be able to vastly increase the services needed by this broader base of our population without expanding the supply of educated workers?  Laws can provide accessibility but without the necessary supply, the results will not be there.

Especially in those areas that are vital to our economic growth and to the well being of our population, there needs to be a well thought out policy that provides more, not less, resources for higher education.  We should highlight the areas with the greatest need for skilled workers, and I think we already know this information for at least the next decade.   Next, we should publicize where those areas are and what the required educational attainment is for a person to succeed in those fields.  This information needs to be conveyed to students in middle and high schools and also to their families so that it can be fully considered as part of the decision making process in regard to postsecondary education. And then to further make sure the supply of skilled workers is commensurate with our needs, we need to develop specific economic incentives.  These incentives should be targeted just to increase workers in areas of need; in a time of scarce resources we need to carefully and precisely allocate those resources.  Yes, this will cost money; yes, we will need to increase our support of postsecondary education; and yes, this will impact the decision making process of these students/future workers.  But we have no choice.  To allow a fundamental disequilibrium to exist between needed skills and the number of workers with those skills is to relegate our economy to clearly falling short of its potential.  And the more we fall short of our potential, the more we face an economy unable to do all we all need done.

Cheating

Six students from a top Long Island high school each hired the same recent high school graduate to take the SATs for them so that they could submit a higher test score than they would receive on their own as part of their college admissions profile.  I am pleased they were caught but I’m certain that these students are not the only students who have substituted other individuals in their place to take important admissions and other examinations.  What should happen to these high school students?  The punishment should be severe (though I wouldn’t advocate jail time).  How severe?  If they are guilty as charged, I would recommend they should be barred from submitting a SAT test score or a high school transcript for at least a year and during that time they should provide extensive mandatory community service. A course on ethics should also be required.  The test taker should also face at least as severe a punishment.  And if there were any parents that aided and abetted this effort, their punishment should be much more severe. Furthermore, it appears that we need to substantially improve test security so that every possible safeguard is in place to prevent anyone else from taking the place of the student who is supposed to be the test taker.

Academic honesty is a problem in many high schools and in many colleges and universities.  At times, especially since we are dealing with young adults, the plagiarism is unintentional.  At other times, the cheating is both intentional and on-going.  Many teachers and professors will react forcefully to cheating as it happens but at the same time intentionally moderate or eliminate long term consequences.  Often cheating is not reported so as not to tarnish the student’s record and often the punishment is determined based on this cheating being a once in a lifetime occurrence, not a pattern.  Once in a lifetime suggest that a moderate response is appropriate; a pattern suggests there needs to be an escalating response.  How do we know what response is appropriate if the tracking system throughout much of a student’s education is rife with omissions?  We really need to do better so that the message is more clearly and emphatically that academic dishonesty doesn’t pay.

Students are very aware of who cheats and students can help foster an environment where academic honesty is valued but at the same time, I don’t think we should count on students alone to play a lead role in moderating the cheating of other students.

What can we do?  Every incident of cheating—unless it is clearly not intentional—should be reported.  The penalty for an individual offense should be determined by the faculty member but there needs to be an additional penalty triggered by repeat offenses.  Every student can make a mistake and learn from his/her mistakes.  But more than one occurrence should be accompanied by a zero tolerance response that should, if it continues, result in suspension and, if justified, dismissal.

The penalty should also escalate as students advance in their education.  We should all be more tolerant of a high school student or a first year college student making a mistake and much less tolerant of an advanced undergraduate or graduate student having an ethical lapse.  And in certain fields such as law and medicine, the penalty for academic dishonesty, if proven, should be immediate dismissal.

All of us comment with dismay on the widespread culture where academic dishonesty is more or less prevalent.  But to change the environment we need to do more than comment and more than deal with individual occurrences.  We need as a community to work together, to report and to track academic dishonesty as it happens.  If we are determined to reduce academic dishonesty, our actions can help make it happen.

Teacher Evaluation

At all levels of education in the New York area, the key conversation at this moment in time revolves around the APPR (Annual Professional Performance Review) which will beginning now affect New York’s  K- 12 teachers and administrators.  Be it in public schools or in schools of education, the education community is focused on what APPR means and what the impact will be.  Nationwide, the equivalent of an APPR (and a more common curriculum)seems to be in various stages of development . For me, as a long time supporter of  comprehensive on-going evaluation of  faculty at the higher education level, including student course and teacher ratings, peer observations, ongoing support and feedback, I also support K-12 comprehensive evaluation of teaching . 

The major portion of these performance reviews will look a lot like the performance reviews already been taking place continuously in K-12 education.  Classroom observations are and will continue to be an important part of this matrix.  But there are differences between APPR and what has existed before.  An important factor in the new evaluations will be the progress demonstrated by students on standardized state or comparable local examinations. How much this component will actually be is still in dispute, and will depend on the results of litigation as well as collective bargaining negotiations before being fully decided.  What is not in dispute is that after 2 years of being evaluated as ineffective, a teacher’s job could be on the line.

As a school board member, I am more and more involved in discussions on APPR and I also know that our School of Education, Health and Human Services is fully involved in how to prepare our teacher education students for APPR as well as how to prepare local school districts to be as successful as possible with APPR.   I want APPR to work, but I am very worried as to how it will work.

The economics of K-12 public education is not in good shape. A tax cap with too little legislated mandate relief will clearly require we educate our students with less available dollars.  Class size, support services and other enrichment activities will likely suffer. At the same time, with the implementation of higher standards on statewide examinations as well as a transition to a mostly national common core curriculum, we will be expecting our students to do more and do better.  And our teachers will be judged individually on how successful they are in making this happen.

Even if our teaching becomes even more effective, the end result when all the other factors are included could be students doing no better than before or perhaps even worse.  How will that factor into the evaluation of teaching?  And for those of us in higher education, as our future students go through what could be a less robust K-12 education, we may end up with students who are less well prepared (even though the APPR and the common core curriculum was motivated by our wanting to more effectively prepare students for higher education).  And do we have the resources, if in fact that should happen?  I know that as an economist, I have a bias in terms of how important economics is in so much of what we do.  But here is another example of, with the best of intentions but with far from the best of economic times, the results may be in question.

Race To Nowhere

For almost a year, I have received a series of recommendations to see the film Race to Nowhere by filmmaker and parent Vicki Abeles.  Early last week I had that opportunity and I certainly agree that the film presents a powerful message on the state of K-12 education.  The film focuses on the over scheduling and then consequent stress (and possibly worse) we inflict on the current generation of students. Too many classes,   too much memorization, too much homework, too many after school obligations, too little downtime, too little sleep.  And much of what the film shows, I see firsthand in my kids, and in the kids of my friends and neighbors.

But in delivering a powerful and worthwhile message, the film also oversimplifies and distorts the answers to difficult questions and leaves out key facts that would help present a more complete and accurate picture.  For example, on the issue of too much homework, the film includes a relatively young teacher stating that when he reduced the amount of homework, test scores went up.  The inference is clear—if we reduced homework across the board, test scores across the board would rise.  I don’t doubt that this can happen in one case and perhaps in more cases.  But I have yet to see any proof of the strong correlation suggested and that the first happening (the reduction in homework) is the cause of the second happening (increase in test scores). This message from the movie actually gives me the opportunity to utilize the majority of my Latin vocabulary.   First, we have here a classic example (what could be better for Latin) of Post hoc ergo propter hoc.  In other words, it is a logical fallacy of that what comes second is caused by what happens first.  On very hot and sunny summer days, I tend not to open the shades of south facing windows until very late in the day, to cut down in the heat in the house.  Typically, almost immediately after the shades are opened, the sun goes down.  But no one would argue that this is cause and effect and similarly, it is difficult to argue that less homework leads automatically to better test scores.  My second use of Latin in this blog is perhaps the favorite Latin phrase of all economists: ceteris paribus which translates into all other things remaining the same.  Less homework and a more dynamic teacher or a less rigorous test, can lead to higher test scores.  Brighter students or better foundations courses together with less homework will still likely lead to higher test scores.   But because all other things did not remain the same, in no way did we prove that less homework equals higher test scores.

The film also doesn’t really take into account the stress that parents can place on kids.  We all know parents who consider any grade of less than an A to be failing, parents who want their kids to take every advanced placement course offered, as well as parents who want their kids to accomplish – in the classroom and out on the field—what they couldn’t accomplish.  There may be too much stress placed on our kids but in searching out the causes, looking in the mirror helps as well as looking at the schools.

But even with the concerns I have about this film, I consider Race To Nowhere worthwhile viewing for all educators.  To the extent that our kids are overscheduled and overstressed, we need to improve our educational system but at the same time not cut back on the important learning taking place.

Looking Forward

As I write this blog on Labor Day, I am looking forward to the next day when fall semester classes will begin. For me a campus during the time period after summer sessions are over and before fall student move-in/the first day of classes is lacking in energy. I’m not suggesting that administrators lack energy; they don’t, but without students and without faculty, a campus has lost its heart and soul.

This time of year is exciting to me for another reason. Despite hurricane Irene, my excitement has nothing to do with now being hurricane season or the fact that the end is in sight for the hot and humid weather. Instead it is because on the Friday before classes begin, I had the opportunity to address new undergraduate students and this is often my favorite speech of the year. What do I say to these students who are less than half my age? What do I say to this group of students who are so different from the Baby Boomers that I grew up with? What should my message be?

My message has varied over the years. Last year, I spoke about the importance of academic honesty and why cheating and plagiarism has no place on a University campus. We know that plagiarism is unfortunately part of the fabric of many high schools and often is also present in middle school. We know that often it can start with parents being overly zealous in helping with homework; or it can start with students looking for the easy way out—copying takes less effort than learning; or on occasion, it even can originate from teachers being overly zealous in this environment when more and more they are being judged by their students’ test scores. However it starts, the message must be clearly delivered that students will be judged on their own work and that academic dishonesty and plagiarism will not go unnoticed and of course there will be consequences. I also spoke last year about the importance of diversity, all kinds of diversity, in promoting the best possible education. We all benefit from the value of difference; different points of view, a multiplicity of voices, different backgrounds, different orientations, multiple perspectives all serve to broaden our horizons and help us better understand the world we live in.

This year’s speech once again had a focus on diversity. I just feel that the importance of a respect for diversity needs to permeate all that we do and all that we say. But my other main theme this year was the opportunities that higher education provides to expand horizons, discover new fields, and stretch outside of your comfort zone at what is an ideal time in a new undergraduate’s life to do so. Courses as varied as ballroom dancing and personal finance enlighten and shape students. Others such as interpersonal communication, stress management, LGBT studies, contemporary art, and animal ethics all serve to increase understanding and expand horizons.

And how do I package my themes so that I can more easily relate to our new students? What I share with many of our new students is a passion for the Harry Potter books and films. I begin with comparing my years of service with Dumbledore’s years as headmaster of Hogwarts and end with a comment that Dumbledore makes to Harry about the importance of the choices we make. In between I make the critical points noted above. Without a spell or a potion, I’m not sure that the message always gets through but I know the message makes a difference and I hope the students were listening.

P.S. Visit Hofstra.edu for a copy of the speech

Hats Off

I am writing this blog in a hotel in Seattle.  I picked the hotel because it has LEEDS certification and in this way I am supporting businesses that share my priorities.  I am here to attend the Bat Mitzvah of a close family friend's daughter and I am viewing the weekend as a nice change of pace.

In the temple for the Bat Mitzvah services, I am enjoying the music which comes with a piano, clarinet, and guitar accompaniment.  Both Bat Mitzvah girls are doing great and we are up to the sermon.  And what does the Rabbi talk about?  Something in the bible?  Something in today's Torah portion?  Not at all.  He is talking about the sad state of the U.S and world economy.

Now I recognize that in difficult economic times, everyone tends to give economic advice and that advice is often easier to give when you don't fully understand economic concepts and consequences.  The less you know the more sweeping the changes you can advocate simply because you are innocent of the consequences of what you advocate.  I often feel that many of our politicians on the local, state and national level should spend more time talking with economists and more time studying economics.  This is not designed to ensure full employment of economists as much as it is designed to  ensure the fullest understanding possible of complex alternatives to move our economy forward.

From my remarks above you can tell how sympathetic and receptive I was to this sermon when it started.  But hats off to the Rabbi (perhaps not the best suggestion when it is recognizing a Jewish religious leader) for his advice.  He made three critical points.  First, even in difficult times, we need to remember that so many of us have so much to be thankful for and so many reasons to be happy.  Second, we should never forget that our society and our world have many vulnerable people and that we should make sure their needs are met and they are protected.  And third, there are limits to what we can do, limits to what we can spend, and what we can commit in resources around the globe.

I appreciate the Rabbi's priorities. I appreciate that he decided to give this sermon on this Saturday and that I was there. Whatever economic solutions we ultimately implement will be better if we keep this advice in mind.