TCCTA Blog

Don't Forget Legislative Contests

As early voting concludes, and with election day looming Tuesday in an historic presidential race, it's easy to forget that control of the Texas Legislature is also at stake. 

Although virtually no pundits are predicting that Sen. Obama will carry Texas, a high turnout for Democrats could topple a number of Republicans. There is great support among members of both parties for community and technical colleges and—at least officially—the Legislature is not organized along party lines. However, it's important to realize that partisan shifts can affect the race for Speaker of the House and, in turn, the appointed chairs of various committees that are important to higher education in Texas. Speaker Tom Craddick (R-Midland) is reportedly in little danger of losing his House seat, but significant turnover in the lower chamber could signal a trend toward someone else as speaker. In that event, a cascading effect would presumably ensue, the outcome of which is anybody's guess. 

There are also some interesting races for the State Senate. In that chamber the leadership is less likely to shift much, however, since the presiding officer is the Lieutenant Governor, who is elected statewide (and not on the ballot this year anyway).

Veteran journalist Dave Montgomery puts it all in perspective in a recent column for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (registration). Those residing in the North Texas area may wish to pay particular attention. 

From his piece:

North Texas has emerged as the hottest battlefield in the state. One of the mostly closely watched races is the Senate District 10 battle between Republican incumbent Kim Brimer of Fort Worth and former Fort Worth City Council member Wendy Davis.

Spending by the two candidates has reached a stratospheric $2.8 million, according to campaign contribution reports released this week.

Big-spending races are also being waged for two North Texas House seats: House District 96, where Republican incumbent Bill Zedler of Arlington faces an aggressive challenge from Democrat Chris Turner of Burleson; and House District 97, where Democratic incumbent Daniel Barrett of Fort Worth is fighting Republican Mark Shelton of Fort Worth to retain the seat Barrett won in a special election.

A river of cash is pouring into other hot races in Harris County, the Austin suburbs, parts of East Texas and the Gulf Coast. A half-million-dollar price tag in a single race, once considered unimaginable, is no longer a rarity. According to the Quorum Report, an Austin political newsletter, the total tab in Craddick’s race against Democrat Bill Dingus is nearly $2.2 million, with most of it – $1.8 million – coming from Craddick. It is the costliest House race in the state.

CC Alumni in California Get Organized

One of the distinct advantages many universities have in influencing policy makers is a pool of interested and enthusiastic alumni. Think of UT and A&M as obvious examples, but many other schools have formed alumni associations to publish newsletters, maintain Web sites, and participate in fund raising to support various efforts. Revenue raised by non-profit foundations cannot be used directly for lobbying or campaign contributions, but can help "get the word out" to interested alumni when their alma mater is up for consideration in the appropriations process. It's not just about football. 

Community colleges have traditionally had a tougher time of it. Some individual schools have active alumni associations, but statewide efforts generally have not been successful. 

California may be a recent exception. With 110 community colleges, the state is rich in alumni. A new magazine and Web site is attempting to reach out to them. The magazine, called Affinity, is published once a year. Reportedly the association's Web site will be updated frequently, including information about individual community colleges. According to a recent press release, the magazine can be customized for each school, and the project will provide marketing tools for colleges to reach alumni—tools such as templates for postcards, fliers, and Web pages.

Here's a link and press release for more information. 

Could such an effort catch on in Texas?

Fulbright Reaches Out to Community College Faculty

The Fulbright Program is highly prized by higher education faculty nationwide for giving opportunities to study and teach abroad. Recently, however, the State Department, which oversees Fulbright, announced its concern that scholarships were not being awarded to many teachers at two-year colleges. 

This year, for example, only seven of the nearly 760 American scholars come from community colleges, according to a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription). The agency is also concerned that students and teachers of color are rarely included in the ranks of Fulbright scholars. 

From the article:

On the community-college front, Mr. [State Department Official Thomas] Farrell says, the Fulbright Program must do more to encourage people from two-year institutions to apply, and it must be more open to their credentials. Only 1.8 percent of applicants for Fulbright scholarships this year came from community colleges.

"For a long time we've been talking about recruitment among community-college faculty," he says, "but not recognizing the fact that our requirements are out of sync with the qualification level of many members of the academy in that sector."

Those requirements, he adds, are actually more flexible than many people realize. Fulbright does not require all applicants to have Ph.D.'s. Equivalent experience is considered when appropriate. So the State Department is getting the word out — both to community colleges and to those reviewing applications — that scholars without doctorates can qualify for Fulbrights.

Community-college instructors and staff members who do not have doctorates may also apply for Fulbright student fellowships, Mr. Farrell says.

Community-college faculty members have a unique opportunity to teach others about their institutions, he adds. Russia, Turkey, Denmark, and Brazil have all asked for help in strengthening their vocational-education systems. And the State Department, he says, has been eager to promote the successes of the American two-year-college system.

Here's the link to the Fulbright program. 

Will Texting Be the Death of English?

Those who are concerned about the effects of text messaging upon the English language as we know it should read an essay by Louis Menand in the October 20 issue of the New Yorker (subscription). The article is a book review of David Crystal's Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, and contains insightful comments by Mr. Menand, a staff writer for the magazine and also a professor. 

It's interesting to note that text messaging has apparently created its own system of ethics, in addition to its truncated sentences and abbreviated words. It is just wrong, for instance, not to respond right away to a text message. Which may explain why many young people feel compelled to check their phones so often (such as during class)—like, to avoid being rude, Dude.

Also, Mr. Menand notes that English lends itself more easily to text messaging, since English words tend to the shorter than those of other languages. This could actually lead to the "Englishification" of language world wide. He compares text messaging to writing a sonnet, in the sense that there are rules of brevity, making it like a game for participants.

In other words, it's not all bad.   

A key passage from the New Yorker piece:

The obvious appeal of texting is its speed. There is, as it happens, a Ten Commandments of texting, as laid down by one Norman Silver, the author of “Laugh Out Loud :-D”). The Fourth of these commandments reads, “u shall b prepard @ all times 2 tXt & 2 recv.” This is the new decorum in communication: you can be sloppy and you can be blunt, but you have to be fast. To delay is to disrespect. In fact, delay is the only disrespect. Any other misunderstanding can be cleared up by a few more exchanges.

Back when most computing was done on a desktop, people used to complain about how much pressure they felt to respond quickly to e-mail. At least, in those days, it was understood that you might have walked away from your desk. There is no socially accepted excuse for being without your cell phone. “I didn’t have my phone”: that just does not sound believable. Either you are lying or you are depressed or you have something to hide. If you receive a text, therefore, you are obliged instantaneously to reply to it, if only to confirm that you are not one of those people who can be without a phone. The most common text message must be “k.” It means “I have nothing to say, but God forbid that you should think that I am ignoring your message.” The imperative to reply is almost addictive, which is probably one reason that texting can be not just rude (people continually sneaking a look at their cell phones, while you’re talking with them, in case some message awaits) but deadly. It was reported that the engineer in the fatal Los Angeles commuter-train crash this fall was texting seconds before the accident occurred. The Times noted recently that four of ten teen-agers claim that they can text blindfolded. As long as they don’t think that they can drive blindfolded.

A less obvious attraction of texting is that it uses a telephone to avoid what many people dread about face-to-face exchanges, and even about telephones—having to have a real, unscripted conversation. People don’t like to have to perform the amount of self-presentation that is required in a personal encounter. They don’t want to deal with the facial expressions, the body language, the obligation to be witty or interesting. They just want to say “flt is lte.” Texting is so formulaic that it is nearly anonymous. There is no penalty for using catchphrases, because that is the accepted glossary of texting. C. K. Ogden’s “Basic English” had a vocabulary of eight hundred and fifty words. Most texters probably make do with far fewer than that. And there is no penalty for abruptness in a text message. Shortest said, best said. The faster the other person can reply, the less you need to say. Once, a phone call was quicker than a letter, and face-to-face was quicker than a phone call. Now e-mail is quicker than face-to-face, and texting, because the respondent is almost always armed with his or her device and ready to reply, is quicker than e-mail.

“For the moment, texting seems here to stay,” Crystal concludes. Aun, as the Finns say. It’s true that all technology is, ultimately, interim technology, but texting, in the form that Crystal studies, is a technology that is nearing its obsolescence. Once the numeric keypad is replaced by the QWERTY keyboard on most mobile messaging devices, and once the capacity of those devices increases, we are likely to see far fewer initialisms and pictograms. Discourse will migrate back up toward the level of e-mail. But it will still be important to reach out and touch someone. Nok, though. Danke.

"Proving" Accountability Poses Problems

Community college educators all over the country are attempting to find new ways to measure their "success." A basic dilemma stems from the profile of today's two-year college students: first-generation, working, part-time, and often in precarious personal and financial situations. Using graduation and transfer rates, for instance, leaves out students who dip into higher education briefly to gain a new skill or enhance their knowledge, and then return to the workforce. There are a host of other difficulties in finding valid statistics.

The move toward more "accountability" is a national trend, of course. Almost always it is linked to sundry financial incentives designed to make higher education more efficient. 

College faculty express concern that, by holding schools accountable for "success," policy makers will create a culture that puts pressure on teachers to lower their standards—even if such pressure is never spoken. Also instructors have observed the perennial tribulations of public education on standardized testing and other forms of measuring "success." Higher education faculty ask: Is this the right way to go? 

A recent very thoughtful article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription) gets into all this. The piece points out various attempts by such organizations as the Lumina Foundation to arrive at a new consensus on the proper statistics.

From the article:

The federal government’s recent focus on making institutions prove their academic quality has left community colleges feeling highly vulnerable, unable to prove the value they give their students and therefore worried about losing critical taxpayer resources.

Community-college leaders are now setting out to fix that and hoping they haven’t waited too long. In the past few weeks, the heads of the nation’s major community-college associations began what they expect may be a yearlong process of developing voluntary standards in such areas as course-completion rates, transfer-readiness, and employer satisfaction.

And:

Many students attend a community college with no intention of graduating from the institution, said Judith S. Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Grades therefore serve as “the primary tool of faculty everywhere” in making judgments of student achievement, said Ms. Eaton, who is a former president of both the Community College of Philadelphia and what was then called the Community College of Southern Nevada.

But skeptics of a grades-based approach for evaluating colleges include Ms. Jones, who was an associate professor at the Community College of Baltimore County. She recalls working under a previous administration on campus that responded to budget worries by pressing its instructors to boost student retention by giving better grades.

The leadership of the college “didn’t have any malicious intent,” but was simply doing what it thought was necessary to protect an institution where many low-income students were trying to juggle many things in their lives, Ms. Jones said.

“There was clear pressure to inflate grades to make sure the students got through even if they didn’t successfully complete a class,” she said. Some of her students were planning to become medical professionals, like nurses and physical therapists, “and I felt pretty confident that they needed to really know their anatomy and physiology before they should move on,” she said.

Board Tables GPA Rules

The Coordinating Board has voted to table the controversial GPA proposals from Commissioner of Higher Education Raymund Paredes. Based on the changes discussed in the previous post, the board will take up the issue again at its next meeting. The next quarterly meeting in is scheduled for January, but the commissioner urged the group to take up the new rules at an earlier "called" meeting in December.

Board members noted that they were "inundated" with calls, e-mails, and fax messages on this subject.

Commissioner Agrees to Change GPA Rules

After abundant criticism, Commissioner of Higher Education Raymund Paredes has agreed to allow extra credit in the calculation of high school GPA averages for pre-Advanced Placement and pre-International Baccalaureate courses. The change was made just prior to today's (Oct. 23) meeting of the Coordinating Board. The commissioner has also reportedly agreed to allow certain vocational courses and classes in the arts to be included in the calculation. 

According to media reports, the board will also postpone final action until its December meeting. 

Here's an example of the media reporting on the subject today, from the Dallas Morning News (registration).

From the article:

Under his new plan recommended to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, students would get a half point of extra credit for pre-Advanced Placement and pre-International Baccalaureate courses in the 4.0 grading scale for all students. The earlier plan wouldn't have allowed any extra credit.

In addition, the commissioner eased his earlier stance against counting career and technology classes in GPA calculations, deciding to allow some of those courses as long as they are aligned with university programs of study.

Dr. Paredes also proposed a GPA advisory committee to monitor courses included in the calculations for student GPAs and to ensure that those courses are rigorous enough to warrant their inclusion. All of the changes will begin with incoming high school freshmen in the fall of 2009.

"We have made substantial adjustments in the proposal," Dr. Paredes told board members, referring to his earlier plan.

College Enrollments Rising

The final word isn't in yet for this semester, but it's clear that community college enrollments have risen significantly over the past five years. In fact here's a new chart from the Texas Association of Community Colleges, detailing the changes at every school. Some colleges have grown much more than others, of course, and some have declined.

Some are attributing cheaper tuition at community colleges (compared to universities) and, more recently, the downturn in the economy, which may produce legions of folks seeking to improve their marketability in a more competitive workforce. The five-year chart is instructive, since it gives a bigger picture than the year-by-year figures reported to the Coordinating Board.

The Austin American-Statesman (registration) recently published an article profiling the dramatic growth at several Texas community colleges.

The piece is also instructive because of a number of interesting passages and quotes, including:

Legislative appropriations haven't kept pace with community college enrollment growth, which is driven by lower tuition than that charged by four-year universities, an admission policy that by law accepts all comers and a culture open to part-time attendance. The package is well-suited to the rising number of students who are older, poorer, work or have families. The downturn in the economy could boost enrollment even more as families try to stretch scarce dollars.

"In tough economic times, folks tend to lean on community colleges to retool their skill set," said Rey García, president of the Texas Association of Community Colleges.

And:

As a group, the state's community colleges have relatively low graduation rates, with 31 percent of full-time freshmen going on to earn a bachelor's degree, associate's degree or certificate within six years, according to the coordinating board. By contrast, 49 percent of entering students at the state's 35 public universities earn a bachelor's within six years.

In addition, 60 percent of community college students are not college-ready, meaning they need to take remedial, or developmental, courses in English or math to learn skills they should have mastered in high school. Preparing such students for the workplace or for transfer to a four-year school is a significant challenge, Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes, the coordinating board's chief executive, said in testimony to the state Legislature in August.

"You're not comparing apples to apples" when you compare community colleges' graduation rates and other performance measures with those of four-year institutions that are selective in whom they admit, said John Roueche, a professor of educational administration at the University of Texas and director of its community college leadership program. "Community colleges are open institutions, with more at-risk students."

Coordinating Board Meets Today

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board convenes today for its quarterly meeting in Austin. Among the topics on the agenda are the College Readiness Standards, a preliminary head count for fall 2008, teacher preparation, and a legislative update.

Here's the link to watch and listen to the current broadcast, which begins at 8:30.

Commissioner Responds to Critics on GPA Proposals

As reported here earlier, Commissioner of Higher Education Raymund Paredes has gotten an earful on his proposal to create a uniform measurement for calculating high school grade point averages. He has recommended, for instance, that Advanced Placement, Dual Credit, and International Baccalaureate classes count extra, but that pre-IB and pre-AP courses should not. School superintendents have accused Dr. Paredes of "dumbing down" the curriculum.

Also, the commissioner thinks that many vocational courses should not be included in the GPA calculation, which alarms many community and technical college educators, who worry that students will be discouraged from taking such courses and hence entering certain careers.

The commissioner has posted a response, leading up to Thursday's (Oct. 23) meeting of the Coordinating Board, during which the board will take up the proposals. The entire press release is available here.

In one bit of news, the commissioner says in the statement that courses in the arts should be included in GPA calculation, and that other changes will surely be made over the next several months leading up to the Regular Session of the Legislature. A uniform GPA is mandated by a statute passed during 2007.