366. College Access and Success News

Here are links to recent news on college access and success.
by
Joe Rottenborn
Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

1. Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily on http://paper.li/rottenbornj

2. SAT Essay Question Proves Prescient, Jacques Steinberg: http://nyti.ms/tiKkNa - "The test-takers were then asked to answer a question — “Is it often difficult for people to determine what is the right thing to do?” — and directed to use “examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.”

3. Seeking Your Questions on Scholarships and Student Loans, by Jacques Steinberg: http://nyti.ms/rwHDtl - "I’ve once again asked Mark Kantrowitz, a financial aid expert and founder of the Web sites finaid.org and fastweb.com, to spend a week in our virtual Guidance Office."

4. Latest Developments on Penn State Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/v6k4eS via AddThis - "For those seeking perspective on how the Penn State scandal compares to other major athletics scandals, Slate has assembled links to some of the better long-form journalism on such scandals in the past, as well as some more recent coverage."

5. HechingerEd Blog The new G.I. Bill: Big money, big challenges [podcast]: http://bit.ly/rDEFfU via AddThis - "In September, Hechinger Report writer Jon Marcus reported for The Washington Post that universities were heavily recruiting veterans to get a piece of the $11 billion made available through the new post-9/11 G.I. Bill, but providing little of the additional support that many veterans say they need."

6. Why Do Top Schools Still Take Legacy Applicants? http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/13/why-do-top-schools-still-take-legacy-applicants via @roomfordebate - "A recent article in The Times about the pressure felt by Ivy League alumni to get their children into their alma maters — and by those children to get into their parents’ colleges — demonstrated that legacy preferences are still a big part of the admissions process at top schools."

7. Affirmative Action for the Rich, by Richard D. Kahlenberg - http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/13/why-do-top-schools-still-take-legacy-applicants/affirmative-action-for-the-rich via @roomfordebate -"Legacy preferences provide the equivalent of a 160 point boost on the math and verbal SATs, not the “tiebreaker” that many universities claim. These preferences disproportionately benefit wealthy white students, providing, in essence, affirmative action for the rich."

8. How Do You Define Merit? Debra J. Thomas and Terry L. Shepard - http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/13/why-do-top-schools-still-take-legacy-applicants/humans-cant-be-ranked-by-merit via @roomfordebate - "Fewer than 100 of the nation's 3,500 colleges and universities -- less than 3 percent -- have so many qualified applicants that they have to choose among them. At this handful of institutions, legacies are only a small fraction of the candidates. Of these few legacies, not all are admitted, and many that are would have been accepted anyway."

9. Bad for Diversity, by John C. Brittain - http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/13/why-do-top-schools-still-take-legacy-applicants/legacy-preferences-are-bad-for-campus-diversity via @roomfordebate - "A study conducted by researchers at Duke University in 2005 found that underrepresented minorities constitute 28.2 percent of the U.S. population; 12.5 percent of the entire applicant pool of 18 national schools; but minority legacy applicants only accounted for 6.7 percent of the applicant pool. The researchers concluded that legacies today reflect the domination of whites that have in their words, “monopolized” higher education throughout history."

10. Respect for Tradition, by Stephen Joel Trachtenberg - Room for Debate
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/201...

- "More likely legacy admissions are a small number of a large group of set-asides, of special categories crafted and blended into a tapestry of talent that make up an incoming class: legacies, yes, but also musicians, athletes, veterans, minorities, students from all regions of the country and nations of the world, along with those who wish to study rare languages or STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)."

11. Hard-Core Economics, by Peter Sacks - http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/13/why-do-top-schools-still-take-legacy-applicants/hard-core-economics via @roomfordebate - "Elite institutions have struck an implicit bargain with their alumni. That bargain essentially says, “You give us money, and we will move your kid to the front of the line.” . . . The whole enterprise is brought to you by the generosity of ordinary American taxpayers, via tax breaks and subsidies. Their children are waiting patiently in the back of the line, buying into the myth that the system is fair and meritocratic, when in fact, the game is rigged, and the winners are pre-ordained."

12. Athletes Are the Problem, by Michele Hernandez - http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/13/why-do-top-schools-still-take-legacy-applicants/in-college-admissions-athletes-are-the-problem via @roomfordebate - "Like it or not, 40 percent of the class at most top colleges are reserved for "hooked" kids -- the largest group is generally recruited athletes (up to 20 percent), the rest are legacies, underrepresented minorities, development cases (donors) and V.I.P.'s (famous people's kids). It's hard for me to say legacy preferences are not fair because the truth is that the process isn't fair and legacies take up a relatively minor percentage of the class (typically 10 percent)."

13. Crime on Campus: Penn State Raises Question, Do Colleges Have Too Much Power? by Kayla Webley - http://ti.me/rZSq5p via TIME - "One of the few oversight tools the government has is the Clery Act. Named after a Lehigh University student who was raped and strangled by another student in 1986 in her dorm room, the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act requires all colleges and universities that participate in federal financial-aid programs to disclose each year the number of alleged criminal offenses, including sexual offenses, that are recorded on campus or in other areas that are under university control, such as remote classrooms and fraternity houses. In addition, schools must also issue timely warnings in cases in which the reported crime represents a threat to the campus community."

14. Proof there is no proof for education reforms, by Carol Corbett Burris- The Answer Sheet - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/proof-there-is-no-proof-for-education-reforms/2011/11/13/gIQAAeVWJN_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost - "Jonah Rockoff of Columbia University, who consults with the New York State Education Department on VAM (value-added modeling) scores and teacher evaluation, recently made a presentation at the Nassau Boards of Cooperative Educational Services. He included a slide, far more modest in its claims, regarding effective teaching and the achievement gap.When I questioned him about it, he was quite honest and admitted that there exists no empirical proof that three effective teachers in a row would close the achievement gap. It is merely a hypothetical extension of results from a model. He also honestly admitted that there exists no study that demonstrates that evaluating teachers using student test scores results in gains in achievement."

205. Unstack the Odds--Families & Access, Part 1

Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!
by
Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

2. How may a child’s family background correlate with their access to college?

“Families matter when it comes to the academic success of children, and
the social class background of children matters. That much is given.”--Peter Sacks, Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007, p. 14.)

What accounts for this unequal access to higher education and graduation? Many observers begin by examining children’s experiences in the family—indeed, the family is often viewed as the child’s “first school.” A recent study that examinined the correlation between families and access stated the following:

“Using longitudinal data, we analyze disparities in family background and potentially influential investments parents make (or are constrained from making) early and late in the high school experience, and then how the patterns uncovered shape the likelihood of college attendance. Findings confirm expectations. Specifically, racial inequalities in class background shape disparities in cultural, monetary, and parental interactional investments, with strong consequences for high school attainment/achievement. Background inequalities, and their implications for early and later family investments and achievement/attainment, explain the entire black-white gap in the likelihood of college attendance.” (Camille Z. Charles, Vincent J. Roscigno, and Kimberly C. Torres, “Racial inequality and college attendance: The mediating role of parental investments,” in Social Science Research 36, 2007, p. 329.)

That same study also commented on the importance of financial and educational status of families for students; it concluded:

“This literature suggests that household socioeconomic status (SES)—usually measured as parental income and/or education—is critically important for achievement (Alexander et al., 1987; Lareau, 1989; Mehan, 1992; Parcel and Meneghan, 1994.) Lareau (1989) suggests that this effect is partially a function of less disposable income and time for working class parents to intervene in their children’s schooling. Middle- and upper-class parents, in contrast, can invest in household educational resources, can hire tutors, are more likely to utilize ‘proper’ English in the household, and have time to meet with teachers.” (Ibid., p. 331.)

Further, these authors emphasize the importance of “cultural capital”—according to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, those “cultural habits and . . . dispositions inherited from” the family—which can help children to succeed. (from Elliot B. Weininger and Annette Lareau, “Cultural Capital,” p. 1) http://www.brockport.edu/sociology/faculty/Cultural_Capital.pdf

Of this process, Charles, Roscigno, and Torres say the following: “Higher SES parents likewise can more easily transmit cultural capital to their children: ‘high brow’ European cultural attributes, typically held in high regard in the classroom and, therefore, conducive to educational success (Bourdieu, 1977; DiMaggio, 1982; Lamont and Lareau, 1988; Roscigno and Ainsworth Darnell, 1999.)” (Charles, et. al., p. 331.)

In his recent online profile of Ronald Ferguson, Director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, reporter Michael Winerip observed the following about Ferguson’s findings:

“His research indicates that half the gap can be predicted by economics: even in a typical wealthy suburb, blacks are not as well-to-do; 79 percent are in the bottom 50 percent financially, while 73 percent of whites are in the top 50 percent. The other half of the gap, he has calculated, is that black parents on average are not as academically oriented in raising their children as whites. In a wealthy suburb he surveyed, 40 percent of blacks owned 100 or more books, compared with 80 percent of whites. In first grade, the percentage of black and white parents reading to their children daily was about the same; by fifth grade, 60 percent to 70 percent of whites still read daily to their children, compared with 30 percent to 40 percent of blacks.” (Michael Winerip, "Closing the Achievement Gap Without Widening a Racial One,” The New York Times, February 13, 2011)http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/education/14winerip.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hpw

As for the potentially-controversial topic of the effects of home environment, “ . . . Ferguson said that talking about racial differences in parenting is a social taboo and an obstacle that he often faces.” As he put it in a recent interview:
"People don't want to talk about it because they're afraid what is said will be misused," he said. "They're afraid that people will say it's their own fault, that members of low−achieving groups need to fix themselves. They're afraid that people will misuse information in bigoted ways. But if we can't have the conversation about things that we need to do differently, then we can't get around to actually doing them differently," he said. (Amelia Quinn, “Harvard lecturer spearheads movement to improve American education,” The Tufts Daily, March 2, 2011.) http://www.tuftsdaily.com/features/harvard-lecturer-spearheads-movement-to-improve-american-education-1.2502479

Ferguson’s view was then quoted to be as follows: "If we can give . . . the opportunities and help people from less advantaged backgrounds to spend more time in ways that contribute to their academic growth, in a few decades from now, we can get to a place where we're much more equal than we are now," he said. "But to do that, we've got to lay everything out on the table and work it through." (Ibid.)

202. Unstack the Odds--Set at Birth? Part 1

Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!

by

Joe Rottenborn
Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

1. Are the odds being stacked at birth against some kids going to college and graduating?

“Who gets a bachelor’s degree from college by age 24 is largely determined at birth.”

--Thomas Mortenson, “Family Income and Higher Education Opportunity, 1970-2002,” Postsecondary Education Opportunity 143 (May 2004): I-13 in Peter Sacks, Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007), p. 4.

On February 24, 2009, President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress. In that speech, the President said the nation must face “. . . the urgent need to expand the promise of education in America.” As President Obama put it: “Right now, three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma. And yet, just over half of our citizens have that level of education. We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation. And half of the students who begin college never finish.”

The President continued: “. . . it will be the goal of this administration to ensure that every child has access to a complete and competitive education – from the day they are born to the day they begin a career.” Then, he announced this national goal in unmistakable language: “That is why we will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal: by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. “ (Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery Address to Joint Session of Congress, Tuesday, February 24th, 2009.) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-of-President-Barack-Obama-Address-to-Joint-Session-of-Congress/

However, despite this presidential address—and the media attention in recent years given to the importance of continuing education beyond graduation from high school--many students are failing to matriculate and graduate from college—in no small part, it seems, because the odds are stacked against them. Simply put, when it comes to college access and success today, many American students are being left out.

As Peter Sacks put it in an interview about his book Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education, “Instead of a system of equal educational opportunity, we are creating a system of educational haves and have-nots that increasingly is based upon birthright. Yes, a system based upon class origins.”—Scott Jaschik, “Tearing Down the Gates,” Inside Higher Ed, May 9, 2007.-- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/09/sacks