What's at stake for education in the fall elections?

With Election Day two months away, both of the major-party candidates for president have been largely silent about education policy. It's no surprise. President Obama and Governor Romney believe that their fortunes depend on whether people think the economy is getting better (or not), and how intrusive the government should be. Since most Americans have already made up their minds on those two things, the campaigns are targeting a sliver of swing voters in key states, trying to convince them that one of the candidates is likeable and the other is dangerous. Federal education policy is not a big enough wedge issue to move many swing voters this year. And yet this year's elections are crucial to much of what we do as educators. Billions of dollars will be spent in different ways for education based entirely on what happens in the November elections. What are the key races? Look very close to home. Nearly a million people (you read that correctly) will have their names on ballots this fall, and many of them care about education. They are our mayors, city councilors, school board members, and legislators of every type. We are a tremendously diverse democracy of more than 511,000 elected officials, representing voters in 3,033 counties, 14,561 school districts, and 35,949 cities and towns. Pause over those numbers for a moment and consider how education policy grows out of such varied places. The most recent (2009) numbers are impressive. State and local governments employ 6,260,224 in the education sector, including 86,417 professors and other instructors at public colleges and universities. By contrast, the federal Department of Education employs just 4,611 people nationwide, and less than six cents of every dollar spent on K-12 public education comes from the federal government. Six cents of every dollar. The rest comes from - and is largely controlled by - policymakers outside of Washington, D.C. In the K-12 world, there is a waning fiction that "No Child Left Behind"? (NCLB) dictated what teachers had to teach and hamstrung how they could do it. If that was true, it no longer is. Twenty-six of the 50 states have opted out of the formal NCLB targets since February 2012, and the remaining states will probably follow suit within a year. States - not the federal government - are taking the lead in deciding what grade-specific tests and targets are appropriate. Federal funds to higher education come in essentially three ways: loan subsidies and guarantees for tuition (mainly given to individual), aid to states that is then allocated to public colleges and universities (about $10 billion per year), and federal research support, primarily to large public and private universities (thank you, by the way). In two of these three categories - direct aid to states, and research dollars - federal money will be cut regardless who is elected in November. That is the reality that you should be preparing for. In Idaho, for example, Governor Butch Otter has already asked every state agency to brace for a 20 percent reduction of aid from Washington. Our long-term federal debt has become so burdensome that grants and aid will be cut, and it really does not matter which party controls Congress or the White House. Where does this leave you, and what can you do in the coming months? The numbers are fairly straight forward. Ninety-four percent of all money spent on K-12 education comes from state and local sources. More than 90 percent of all spending on public colleges and universities comes from state sources and endowments. The pull toward national standards imagined in NCLB has slackened, and federal money is getting harder to find. Since education policy is the work of state and local governments, then focus your energy there. If you have ever considered running for school board, then do it. If a local non-profit needs your help to redesign a curriculum, then pitch in. If you have never met your state representative, then make an appointment. If your mayor has never been in your lecture hall or your department, then send an invitation. There are more than 511,000 elected representatives in the United States. Are you one of them? Do you know someone who is? Democracy - like education itself - bubbles up through personal interactions at the individual level. Those are the kinds of relationships, and the kinds of elections, that need more of your attention between now and Election Day. Posted by David C. King

Ranking Web of World Universities

Since 2004, the Ranking Web (or Webometrics Ranking) is published twice a year (data is collected during the first weeks of January and July for being public at the end of both months), covering about 20,000 Higher Education Institutions worldwide.

Click link below for more info:

www.webometrics.info/about_rank.html

Three Key Lessons from Going Green on Campus

The path to a cleaner, healthier campus begins in the classroom, office and dorm room. Across Harvard's 12-plus schools and administrative units we are building a culture of sustainability in partnership with our students, staff and faculty. We hope the innovative and creative approaches, programs and projects put into place by our community will serve as a replicable model for change at other large, complex institutions including universities, businesses and government. We also hope to inspire our students, future global contributors and leaders to incorporate sustainability into their lives and professional endeavors.

We have found that a commitment to creating a sustainable community directly ties into our academic and research mission and it also helps our bottom line. Energy efficiency measures and green building techniques are saving us millions in utility costs per year, often with a relatively short payback. Beyond fiscal savings there are other significant benefits such as improved operations efficiencies, improved productivity, health benefits and a more engaged, collaborative community. We also work to constantly evolve our efforts based on feedback from the community and the experience of our peer academic institutions and increasingly other sectors.

Said Harvard University President Drew Faust, "As a university we have a special responsibility to address complex global problems, like climate change and environmental sustainability, both with academics and research but also by turning the findings of that research into action."

As part of this effort we struggle with the same questions many others do. How do we keep people engaged? How do we ensure we're on the cutting edge? Several key lessons have emerged that we keep in mind and I'd like to share with others working on sustainability initiatives (and hear your ideas too):
Strong Leadership That Sets Clear, Aggressive Goals. Harvard's goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2016, including growth unified our schools and units, requiring them to focus on very specific energy reduction targets. This goal was adopted by our senior leadership--President Faust and all of our deans, which has aligned the university in pursuit of this goal. In addition, our comprehensive Green Building Standards set clear energy reduction, resource conservation and LEED targets for all construction and renovation projects. As a result, Harvard saves over $9 million annually just from the over 800 energy conservation measures that have already been implemented in order to reduce emissions and save energy.
Engage the Entire Community. The Harvard Office for Sustainability acts as a centralized catalyst for change, facilitating opportunities for students, faculty and staff to come together to learn from each other and share best practices that makes us all stronger. The office led a strategic planning process for Harvard's GHG reduction goal that engaged over 200 faculty, students and staff from every level of our organization. Every major policy change or initiative is reviewed and approved by representatives from all our schools and units, giving everyone a say in the ultimate outcome. Likewise, our Green Building Standards require that occupants be engaged earlier in project development so that future design considerations and decisions include their concerns, feedback and ideas. We also create training and provide information about sustainable building operations for occupants upon move-in. And Harvard's annual Green Carpet Awards ceremony was created in 2009 as an opportunity for our entire community to nominate, recognize and celebrate our "green heroes"--the students, staff and faculty who play an exemplary role in helping Harvard achieve its sustainability goals.
Tools and Resources That Spark Action. Harvard has focused on developing tools and resources to empower our community to take action. A four-tiered Green Office Program encourages employees to conserve resources by providing them with tips and guidelines in nine topic or impact locations. This program also ties to our Green Teams--individuals who adopt green practices in their departments and units. A Life Cycle Costing calculator was created with input from administrators and facilities across the university to allow schools and project managers to prioritize building projects that are economically viable and environmentally beneficial. Our website -- www.green.harvard.edu -- is a university-wide resource providing stories and profiles of best practices, including LEED case studies, so the community can learn from each other.
At the end of the day the foundation for all of our work is our people -- from President Faust and the deans, to the facility directors, building managers and project managers at all of our schools and on to the faculty, students, and staff who work, live and learn in our greener, healthier buildings. Without action and involvement from everyone in our community our progress would not be possible. And that is perhaps the most important lesson for us all to remember -- you are only as strong as your people and your success depends on the level to which you empower and engage your entire community.
by Heather Henriksen, Director, Harvard Office for Sustainability

Prediction for 2012: Continued U.S. Decline in Education

About this time a year ago, Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, lamented the nation’s lackluster performance results in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study. Every three years, PISA measures reading, math, and scientific literacy among 15-year-old students around the world. According to Duncan, PISA “is fast becoming the measuring rod by which countries track trends in national performance and assess college and career-readiness of students as they near the end of their compulsory education and prepare to participate in the global economy.”

Duncan eagerly awaited the results, but was sorely disappointed when they came in. It turns out that the U.S. is not among any of the top performing countries in any subject areas tested by PISA. U.S. students lag behind kids in Canada, Finland, South Korea, Estonia, Japan, Australia, Singapore, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, and other countries. In reading, a category where U.S. students performed their best, they are tied with Poland (insert Polish joke here). The U.S. reading scores are closer to those of Latvia and Slovenia than neighboring Canada, where their students are better readers and more adept in math and science. That data is quite revealing: Students in the U.S. are less capable in accessing and retrieving data than those in some developing countries, and U.S. students struggle in interpreting and integrating information.

Some commentators immediately suggested that socio-economics pulled down the U.S. scores. In other words, poor kids from under-performing schools created an imbalance, which hurt the overall U.S. outcome. Some of this is racialized (i.e. pundits claim “poor black kids can’t read well and under-perform in math and science”). In part, that’s true, though clearly such generalities are over-inclusive and ignore what contributes to low student performance. Social promotion, including graduating students from high school without a 6th grade reading capacity, moving students along because they’re too old to be in elementary or middle school, high rates of mobility, and low verbal capacity upon entering first grade, are among the pitfalls and challenges in public education that undermine student success as well as the academic health of school districts. Typically there’s the debate as to who’s at fault—parents or teachers. Blame can be leveled at both groups, but let’s not overlook politicians who want to cut funding for education.

That said, pundits who blame poor, black public-school kids for these results miss the mark. Results from a different study conducted by an independent research firm debunk the notion that it’s the U.S. poor (alone) who drag down education. The 2009 Raytheon study sheds some insight on student behavior. For example, “seventy‐two percent of U.S. middle school students spend more than three hours each day outside of school in front of a TV, mobile phone or computer screen rather than doing homework or other academic‐related activities.” The study noted, “by contrast, just 10 percent of students spend the same amount of time on their homework each day, and 67 percent spend less than one hour on their math homework.”

Indeed, nearly 30 percent of the students surveyed could not name a career that requires math skills. This was not an inner-city survey. This is the state of “middle” America.

The US is in an academic crisis, but parents and their children don’t seem to know this. US students had more self-confidence in their knowledge and academic skills than nearly all other students in all the other countries included in the PISA study (about 64 nations and territories). The inflated notion of self is despite the fact that more U.S. students performed at a level “considered to be below the baseline level of reading proficiency needed to participate effectively and productively in life” than at the highest level. Urgent change is needed, but the problems will likely persist.

Indeed, what we witness in high-school performance now seeps into collegiate and graduate school aptitude and attitude. For example, universities seem as ill-equipped to address these issues as K-12 schools. Here, I’m not speaking of providing academic support centers. The students at the very bottom of the class likely realize their struggles with reading and math proficiency. It’s the middle group that poses the biggest challenge, particularly as they have been nurtured to believe that they are the best and the brightest.

This toxic mixture of overconfidence and under-performance has contributed to “limited learning” at college, according to Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. In their book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, the authors found that “in the first two years of school, 45 percent of college students had no significant improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing.”

On examination, it becomes clear that American students don’t buckle up when coming to college; instead, poor study habits follow—or perhaps worsen post-high school. In the Arum and Roksa study of more than 2,300 students, they found that U.S. students study about 12 hours per week, which is less than half of the hours college students devoted to studying in 1961. Graduate and professional schools are headed in the same direction, trading high academic standards and sometimes uncomfortable truths for appeasing students who pay high tuition.



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