What Happens When There’s No Public School Choice?

I marveled at the size of Trenton Central High School when I toured the facility on a public tour.

 It is 380,000 square feet; to put that in perspective, imagine three anchor stores in a suburban shopping center stacked one atop the other. Trenton Central High is the seventh most populous secondary school in the Garden State. With nearly 2,800 students, it has the fourth largest enrollment among urban high schools; among New Jersey’s high schools, only Elizabeth High, Dickinson High (Jersey City) and Eastside (Paterson) enroll more students.

 The 75 year-old building has character, as well as a theatre that might have been envied on Broadway half a century ago and a swimming pool that was probably state of the art in its day, but there are the problems that you might expect to find in a structure that’s lasted so long.

 The problems do not stop there; the building is just the tip of the iceberg for this troubled school.

 The Trenton public school system is “in need of improvement” district-wide under No Child Left Behind, and has entered the later years where the school board and administrators must consider options for restructuring elementary, middle school and secondary education. Trenton Central High School has failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under this federal act for the past five years. The Daylight-Twilight High School, also a Trenton public school, is in similar straits.

 Under No Child Left Behind, AYP is based on scores from standardized mathematics and English-language arts examinations. In New Jersey, the bar, or pass rate, is raised each year, with a goal towards 100% proficiency, regardless of race, special education or economic circumstances.

 When a school fails to meet AYP, No Child Left Behind implies several possible remedies: restructure the school, change the management, privatize the school or convert it into a charter school. Parents must also be offered the option to transfer their children to another public school within the same district that has made AYP, or to arrange for tutoring for their children at the district’s expense. 

That leads me to one major concern: what happens when students and their parents have no options–because their local public high school is the only one in town, or they have none that consistently met AYP?

I do not have to look far beyond the Trenton suburbs to find communities in a similar predicament. Three communities that surround Trenton: Ewing, Hamilton and Lawrence Township face the same dilemma. I am not naïve to believe this problem is unique to New Jersey.

The problem is not as much with the schools as it is with No Child Left Behind—the act uses proficiency as the basis for making policy and management decisions.

The measurement of the success or failure of any high school cannot solely be based on student performance on high stakes standardized tests.  High school students are not the same; they have different ambitions, they do not take the same classes, and they have the option of leaving school after they turn 16.

Proficiency can be one performance measure for a high school, but it cannot be the be-all, end-all, for-all. Moreover, No Child Left Behind offers no incentives for a school to perform better, only threats of embarrassment; the annual list of schools that fail to make AYP merely angers residents and parents, and it only validates that perception of a bad school is reality.

A better policy would recognize and reward students who have become more than proficient, and acknowledge a high school’s accomplishments on a broader set of measures that use the tests that their students already take, such as:

• SAT scores: Since people continually mock the intelligence of college football players, why not use their entrance standards as a baseline to find out how many students qualified for college admissions? The NCAA Clearinghouse guidelines for student-athletes could be converted into a performance matrix of grade point averages and test scores. The Clearinghouse guidelines are not only quantifiable; they are also more stringent, as more than 750 four year colleges do not even require the SAT for admissions. High scores and high grades would be assigned the highest point value, low scores and low grades would obviously be rated lower.  Such a matrix might give principals and school board members a sense of the students they are sending on to college.  
• The Armed Force Qualification Test (AFQT) within the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) scores for students who choose military service: according to Military.com, the AFQT is a test of arithmetic reasoning, math knowledge, word knowledge and paragraph comprehension. That sounds much like a standardized test.  Since schools are required to supply student information to the military under No Child Left Behind, the armed services should have no problem sharing the pass/fail rates of the students who take their test.
• Pass rates on licensing examinations, if the school offers pre-professional or vocational training. This is obvious, as the goal of the training programs is to help students pass.
• Proficiency/advanced proficiency on state-required high school examinations such as New Jersey’s High School Proficiency Assessment or New York State’s Regents Examinations.

I would add two other measures: the reduction in the dropout rate and a redefined graduation rate. Beyond age 16, the definition of grade level takes on different meaning depending on the high school.

While well-to-do school districts are likely to have a very high three or four-year graduation rate, others that serve economically disadvantaged students will have students who must juggle school, work and family responsibilities. They are less likely to graduate “on-time”, but it is completely wrong to label them failures when they are dealing with their own reality.

The important thing is that high school principals should have access to the graduation rates for each freshman and transfer class that enters their school, just as college admissions officers do. They should also know why students leave and whether they graduated from another school after they left.

These measures, when combined in some index, would do more than indicate whether a high school is “good” or “bad”; they would show the direction that their students were headed—and if they did, or did not succeed. If the school is the only game in town, then educators may use this information for curriculum development, or work out agreements that offer their students real choices, even if they must transfer to another school.

I doubt that there would be any argument between educators, parents and politicians that the SAT’s or professional and vocational test batteries are already high stakes tests for high school students.  

We need to know what our high school students want to do, whether it is college, employment, military service or family responsibilities, and help them get there. We do not need more standardized tests to give high schools pass-fail grades; their students already take enough of them to get ahead in their lives.

Colleges Make Web-Based Response to College Rankings

Americans love rankings; educated consumers want to know what’s the best on the market for autos, electronics, airline services, and hotels among other things. Educated businesspeople take high rankings seriously, loudly shouting independent praises through their advertising.

But college administrators dislike rankings. I understand some of the reasons why; it’s almost impossible to compare dissimilar schools and the formulas and methodologies are considered non-scholarly by academics. College presidents have said that peer assessment means little when their peers base their judgments on the past perceptions of their schools.

This year, according to U.S. News and World Report, a record low 51 percent of college presidents completed their reputational survey in which they rank their peer institutions. Eight years ago, more than two-thirds completed it. This peer assessment represents 25 percent of a school’s overall ranking. I could guess that the rankings would be less valid as more schools refuse to share information, as well as reliable statistics with the magazine.

However, you can’t keep a good journalistic team down. U.S. News and World Report has been collecting and compiling this information for 24 years. Data collection and compilation for these rankings have been refined nine times, partly in response to institutional concerns. They have plenty of incentive; the America’s Best Colleges issue and print guide are hot selling magazines. They would not be hot-sellers if they didn’t try to be ahead of the curve and become more statistically valid.

Like it or not, these rankings are not going away. Not as long as colleges advertise high rankings as if they’re a “good housekeeping seal” of approval. All educational institutions K-12, colleges and universities are operating in an era where parents and policy makers desire greater accountability and more statistical measures. Even if U.S. News quit publishing America’s Best Colleges, another source would step up in its place. College and university presidents should consider themselves fortunate if Congress does not support that source.

One association, The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) launched their own Web-based tool called U-CAN, which stands for University and College Accountability Network. U-CAN is a nationwide effort to provide consumer information to parents and students, including financial statistics, about privately supported institutions.

NAICU claims that U-CAN is not a reaction to published rankings; according to public content on their site, U-CAN was created in response to public demand for comparable, concise, relevant, and easily accessible information. But I scrolled down and noticed that NAICU acknowledges that if “consumers, Congress, and the administration decide that the information on U-CAN is self-serving and of little value, the likely alternative is new federal reporting mandates.”

So, NAICU is behaving much like a business association of firms in the same industry; let’s try to regulate ourselves before the government steps in. U-CAN is NAICU’s attempt at self-regulation. As someone who has been in the education site business, I was curious to see how U-CAN worked. I played with U-CAN, much like a parent or student would.

Here’s what I liked about U-CAN:

+ It’s free and there’s no need to register. If I were a student, I do not become part of a junk-mail database to schools that are of no interest to me.

+ Navigation is clear and simple—if your heart is already set on a very small number of private schools.

+ U-CAN has statistics that I cannot find in other published sources, specifically the tuition history, four-year and five-year graduation rates, diversity indices, student indebtedness, a price breakdown for tuition and fees, average net tuition charge (after grants in aid), residence life and direct access to campus safety information.

Some of this information is available on other sites, but not as easily searchable; in the case of U.S. News, you have to pay a fee for premium access to obtain more detail beyond the top schools on their lists.

U-CAN is comprehensive, and makes it an admirable effort; it is considerable work to secure cooperation from so many schools (approximately 450, as I write this piece), let alone organize the data in a user-friendly format.

U-CAN is useful, but less than perfect, for considering private colleges.

The first problem is unmemorable domain names. The host association uses a dot-edu in its web address instead of a dot-com, dot-net or dot-org; that’s an unusual practice because the sponsor is a not-for-profit association, not an academic institution. The domain for the U-CAN site is ucan-network.org. This surprised me when I typed U-CAN.org and got nowhere. They cannot use ucan.org; that domain belongs to the Utility Consumer’s Action Network.

So, my first suggestion to NAICU is to buy U-CAN dot-org, dot-com and dot-net before someone else does—or find a new name.

Two other problems come from searches. You cannot return to a list of search results if you want to look at more than one school in a state. For instance, I selected New Jersey and got a list of independent schools in the Garden State. After I finished viewing the complete profile of one school, I could not return to my list. I had to do the same search again. In addition, I could not do a search across schools in more than one state.

The search problems can make U-CAN quite cumbersome and, by comparison, they make the U.S. News print and online guides seem more user-friendly, if I want to compare schools.

That leads me to another suggestion: develop a print version of U-CAN that groups the schools by state and type of school using the available statistics. A print version of U-CAN confronts a major advantage of other guides—they’re also books—parents and guidance counselors are more techno-phobic than high school students.  The most difficult statistic to format in tables is probably tuition history. U-CAN lists tuition charges for each of the past five years; that can be converted into an average tuition increase.

U-CAN is an excellent site, if you have already whittled down your choices to a small number of private schools. It’s better designed to be your last stop for information gathering—after you’ve bought the U.S. News guide, read student school reviews and done your campus visits—instead of your first.

Tales of Two Harvards

Journalist Hanna Rosin has written God’s Harvard, a wonderful book about Patrick Henry College, a Christian school that its chancellor calls “a Harvard for the home-schooled.”

Rosin, who has covered religion and politics for the Washington Post, has crafted an insightful—some of more moderate or liberal political persuasions might find scary—story of a relatively new institution, one that has a mission of preparing an “evangelical elite” for political leadership.

Until I read God’s Harvard, I had not known of a religiously oriented school so driven in this mission. Historically religious institutions, including national universities such as Notre Dame were founded to train spiritual leaders. While they still take spiritual leadership seriously, such schools have long embraced a much broader academic agenda, including pre-professional training. Teachers do not need to be of the same faith as the order that leads the school. Notre Dame, for instance, boasts highly regarded business and law schools that welcome men and women of all faiths, so do sister institutions such as Boston College and Georgetown.

Patrick Henry College places literal interpretation of the Bible and approved classical literature front and center in its academic curricula. The institution seeks faculty who agree, in writing, to make that commitment. That does not make it different from the 105 schools in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities—of which Patrick Henry and well-publicized Christian institutions such as Bob Jones University and Liberty University are not members. The school embraces discipline, to keep young people from temptation, but so do other Christian schools. The drive to place students and alumni into the upper reaches of political and media power sets Patrick Henry apart.

Founded in 2000, Patrick Henry College is a very small school, only 300 full-time students, and very selective. SAT scores of enrolled students range just below Ivy Leaguers. Their students, it appears from reading God’s Harvard, are no less bright and inquisitive as their peers at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

For curiosity’s sake, I read Rosin’s book back to back with Excellence Without A Soul, a critical reflection of undergraduate education at Harvard, written by Harry R. Lewis, former Dean of Harvard College. While Rosin is a journalist and Lewis is a mathematician and college administrator, they both presented some interesting contrast between God’s Harvard and the nation’s oldest, and probably most academically recognized university.

 

Harvard, in Massachusetts, was interestingly enough, founded as a divinity school for the purpose of training ministers. Students who did not desire to become spiritual leaders took the same classes as those who did. While Harvard has such roots, it has long been thought to be a secular institution.

 

Dean Lewis touches on several concerns for Harvard: a struggle to define the school’s intellectual and moral purpose in a consumerist higher education marketplace; professors are hired for their scholarly accomplishments, and not to be mentors to the young and confused, while the school espouses otherwise, and, he adds that “colleges no longer do a good job of helping students grow-up” because they have had to become surrogate parents. He also discusses the need to incorporate civic values in undergraduate education.

 

Going on the stories in Rosin’s book, I’d say that Patrick Henry College has no such problems.

 

Harvard’s undergraduate school is a liberal arts school; there is considerable freedom to select courses and distribution requirements are not terribly confining. Dean Lewis appears to believe in the liberal arts and general education requirements that form “part of the student’s whole education which looks first to all his life as a responsible human being and citizen.”

Lewis appears, in his book, to say that a liberal arts education is no longer appreciated by Harvard students, or their families, although the value of the good name of Harvard is still respected. He talks of hovering or “helicopter parents” who expect satisfaction for their money and their child, and question the university’s practices and judgment, in name of value, to protect their investment.

Lewis also speaks of liberal education as “a period in which young people can be freed from the presumptions and prejudices with which they were once raised, freed by the power of ideas to pursue their own path in life.” Going on his writing, I have to be more impressed by Harvard students and alumni than I had been before I opened this book. They are bright, motivated and successful, even in a setting where there has been grade inflation and few pats on the back from the faculty.

By contrast, Patrick Henry, an institution that targets bright home-schooled students has little choice but to reach out to parents; their children have not been taught alongside peers in more traditional public and private schools. If I were a father who had home-schooled my children for several years, I would want to know about the academic program and student life of the prospective college that my son or daughter might attend. I would also want to know if my values would be carried forward away from home.

Harvard and Patrick Henry do share similar motives: to select students who will make a difference. However, Patrick Henry reminds them that they will; their faculty and administration will give their students a pat on the back, or a kick in the toukis when necessary.

I did business with colleges and universities for almost a decade, at a time of great technological change and values-driven politics—both family values and financial values. I am impressed by the institutions that find their niche and stick with it instead of trying to be all things to all students.

You’d be surprised which institutions do well to stick to their knitting. I can name names, and I can tell you that Harvard is not one of those institutions, but based on Rosin’s book, I’ll add Patrick Henry on my list.

I may not agree with the politics of the institution, but I cannot deny that their students, parents, faculty and administrators are joined in a common mission. Evangelical political leadership is not going away; those who served the departing administration will lie in wait as legislative aides, journalists, researchers and lobbyists until they have a new leader in the White House.

That does not mean that Harvard is not a great university—that has been proven statistically and otherwise, time and time again—and its community has been the impetus for its greatness. However, traditional colleges and universities have too often looked to Harvard as a benchmark or a model, even when it has not been Harvard’s mission to set the missions for other schools to follow.

That makes little sense; you might be able to duplicate the Harvard’s academic pressure, but you cannot duplicate the Harvard community. It’s better for colleges to find their own way, as Patrick Henry has done, and let Harvard be Harvard.

Age of Consent Laws: A Pandora’s Box?

The Christian Civil League of Maine has asked Maine’s attorney general to investigate “possible criminal activity” at Portland’s King Middle School, as result of a decision by a 7-2 vote of the Portland school board to allow distribution of contraceptives through the school’s health center. The group pointed to a Maine law that makes sexual intercourse between two persons legal only if both partners are at least 14 and the age difference is no more than five years.

The League has made no accusations, nor have they asked the school board to reconsider their decision, but their request for the attorney general to investigate is a more effective tactic. The wife of Maine’s attorney general, G. Stephen Rowe is the head nurse of the Portland public school system. I can only guess that by embarrassing husband and wife, the league will get what they want: a reversal of the school board’s decision, reporting of underage sexual activity to the state’s department of health and human services, and stricter enforcement of age of consent laws.

They should be careful what they wish for.  Strict enforcement of these laws can affect not only the children who engaged in coitus, but also their parents as well as public health providers.

The first issue is to figure out a fair punishment for the crime. A society that is serious about enforcement must decide the appropriate punishment and how offenders, and possibly their parents, would be “reformed.” The public health providers face no such problems; non-compliance could be punishable through fines, suspensions, loss of a professional license, or termination.

I do not believe for one second that even the most heartened conservatives want to send 11 to 13 year-old children to jail for engaging in a consensual act; that would also take children out of school for no reason. They are also too young to work, so a fine is out of the question—unless the fine is imposed on their parents.  Maine is one of 12 states that refused federal funds for abstinence-until-marriage sex education, so I doubt that re-education is a realistic option.

A literal interpretation of consent laws could result in parents being cited as aiding and abetting if they do not inform their local gendarmes or public health authorities of the illegal act.  I do not know a single parent who would want to be in that position; how would they prove they did not know about a sexual relationship?

Public health providers would be required to refuse to provide contraceptives to youngsters to avoid an accusation of aiding and abetting illegal sexual intercourse—even when the attending physician or nurse has proof of written parental consent. They must ask their kin how this will hold up against their professional beliefs, including the Hippocratic Oath, when they are faced with an underage pregnant woman in need or a young man or woman who has contracted a sexually transmitted disease.

Most important, the law must define sex, and a broad public must be empowered to define it. I have no doubt that the Christian Civil League, and similar groups, will want a say in that decision. Just as the consent laws vary from state to state, so do definitions of consensual sexual activity. Do we want to ask teenagers to offer graphic descriptions in court, to be tried by juries of adults, and subject to testimony of “experts” the very same zealots who would take political advantage of the situation? 

Today, such questions are more worthy of playwrights than politicians.

I only hope the Christian Civil League of Maine considers the answers very carefully.