TCCTA Blog

Judge Backs "Truth-in-Grading" Law

A state district judge has upheld the 2009 Texas truth-in-grading law, handing a victory to public school teachers who contend they should be able to give students the grades they deserve, now matter how low. Several school districts argued in the case that they could require teachers to give minimum grades on student report cards, to provide a "safety net" to mitigate drop-out rates and disciplinary problems.

State District Judge Gisela Triana-Doyal said the statute is clear. School districts cannot enforce policies that require a minimum grade for students regardless of their achievement on report cards, class assignments, and homework.

Several urban school districts had filed suit against the state, claiming that the law applies only to class assignments, not progress reports or report cards. There was no mention of a potential appeal in various media reports.

The law was sponsored by Sen. Jane Nelson (R-Flower Mound).

Here's an article in the Dallas Morning News by Terrence Stutz, for more information.

Pennsylvania Enters Textbook Fray

Legislation passed by the Pennsylvania Senate last week requires faculty members at the state's community colleges and universities to choose "the least expensive, educationally sound textbooks." It's unclear at this point whether the House will take up the bill. Quite predictably, however, faculty groups around the country are criticizing the measure. As one would expect, part of the problem lies with the definition of "educationally sound."

Here's a statement from the American Association of University Professors.

As reported here frequently, state legislatures and Congress often get involved in the issue of textbook prices, as elected officials hear a lot of complaints from students and their parents. Here in Texas, witnesses have testified in House and Senate hearings that textbooks can cost more than tuition.

At the most recent meeting of the Senate Committee on Higher Education, a witness commented on the relatively new practice of renting textbooks by campus and online booksellers. One of the most popular online sites, as noted here before, is Chegg.com. Interestingly, major publishers are getting into the rental business, too. 

Another significant development is the availability of free online resources providing open source information. Many community college instructors, particularly in certain disciplines, now assign such material for students exclusively. Google is currently engaged in a project to digitize virtually all books that are not copyrighted or are available with permission. This pedagogical strategy assumes, of course, that students have access to the Internet when they need it. In order for it to work, institutions must provide computer labs that are available conveniently. Many entering freshmen don't have personal computers, particularly those from low income households—the very cohort burdened with the most obstacles to success.

Generally speaking, the laws of supply and demand are highly preferable to legislative regulation, in the view of most college instructors. Where the market is not driving down costs sufficiently, faculty organizations often set up funds to help needy students obtain the materials they require. Libraries can also hold desk copies in reserve for students to use on site or to check out. (As with computer usage, libraries must be open at convenient times, which can put a strain on institutional budgets.) Many faculty members encourage students to share textbooks.

According to media reports, the publishing industry is in turmoil right now. Electronic readers such as the Kindle and iPad may signal an entirely new era—one that truly can benefit students, if the competitive forces in our economy are allowed to flourish.

Prices may be headed in the right direction soon, and local remedies are increasingly available where they are not.

Are Men Necessary?

The post-industrial economy favors women—or at least the jobs females tend to seek these days. The phenomenon has been reported widely, in sundry articles with sobering titles such as "The Lost Boys." College enrollments are overwhelmingly female, and manly vocations such as construction, truck driving, and high-risk financial services have been damaged, perhaps permanently, during the recent recession.

Here's the weird part: The tilt toward females is incredibly rapid. After all, middle-aged Americans can recall when prospective parents rooted openly for a boy, and some couples experimented with wacky schemes to stack the cards biologically. The trend away from this sort of thing has been observed in other countries as well, where official policies were once (and in developing societies still are) geared to favor males. Normally one associates evolutionary change with gradualism, but this shift seems especially punctuated (as the late anthropologist Stephen Jay Gould once put it, comparing evolution to baseball, with long periods of routine, followed by spurts of creative activity).

Of course, aggregate female income is still behind that of males, but the gap is narrowing and, given educational projections, may close quickly.

A recent article by Hanna Rosin in the Atlantic gets into all this. One should read the entire piece, available here. Educational implications are scattered throughout. Here are a couple of excerpts:

Earlier this year, for the first time in American history, the balance of the workforce tipped toward women, who now hold a majority of the nation’s jobs. The working class, which has long defined our notions of masculinity, is slowly turning into a matriarchy, with men increasingly absent from the home and women making all the decisions. Women dominate today’s colleges and professional schools—for every two men who will receive a B.A. this year, three women will do the same. Of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most in the next decade in the U.S., all but two are occupied primarily by women. Indeed, the U.S. economy is in some ways becoming a kind of traveling sisterhood: upper-class women leave home and enter the workforce, creating domestic jobs for other women to fill.

And:

Yes, the U.S. still has a wage gap, one that can be convincingly explained—at least in part—by discrimination. Yes, women still do most of the child care. And yes, the upper reaches of society are still dominated by men. But given the power of the forces pushing at the economy, this setup feels like the last gasp of a dying age rather than the permanent establishment. Dozens of college women I interviewed for this story assumed that they very well might be the ones working while their husbands stayed at home, either looking for work or minding the children. Guys, one senior remarked to me, “are the new ball and chain.”

TCCTA President Testifies in Senate Hearing

Fred Newbury, TCCTA president, testified before the Senate Committee on Higher Education, Thursday, June 24, addressing an interim legislative charge to examine ways to improve developmental education in Texas. The committee is chaired by Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo).

Dr. Newbury, professor of economics at Richland College, was an invited witness before the panel. Members of the committee include: Sen. Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock), Sen. Dan Patrick (R-Houston), and Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas).

"We have a lot of work to do," Dr. Newbury told the committee, responding to testimony from previous witnesses, including Commissioner of Higher Education Raymund Paredes, who presented statistics on the low "success" rates in the field of developmental education. As the commissioner phrases it often, Texas has improved, but not fast enough.

Dr. Paredes, as reported here frequently, has called for a complete overhaul of developmental education in Texas. He stated during the hearing, however, in response to a question from the panel, that the statistics in our state are consistent with nationwide data in the field. The commissioner also testified that (1) we need the best teachers in the disclipline as instructors, (2) developmental reading and writing should be taught as one subject, (3) Adult Basic Education should be separate from developmental education, and (4) professional development for faculty in the field should be a priority.

TCCTA President Newbury praised the current programs that are showing promise, including the Achieving the Dream initiative. The nationwide program is concerned especially with students who traditionally face ethnic and income-related barriers to success. (Here's a link to their Web site.)

As noted by a perennial chorus of developmental education instructors, there are plenty of good ideas out there. What is needed is a centralized location for sharing the latest developments and best practices.

To that effect, Dr. Newbury told the Senate panel about The Network—an online resource initiated by TCCTA, and funded by the Perkins Foundation. President Newbury commented that, regarding the plethora of impressive developmental education initiatives described during the hearing, "We thought it might be a good place to put all these things together." (If you are unfamiliar with The Network, here's a link.)

At the conclusion of his testimony, Sen. Zaffirini asked Dr. Newbury for more information on The Network.

Below is a written statement offered by the TCCTA president, submitted prior to his remarks before the committee on June 24. 

MAXIMIZING STUDENT SUCCESS IN DEVELOPMENTAL EDUCATION

Dr. Fred Newbury, Professor of Economics, Richland College, Dallas County Community College District and President, Texas Community College Teachers Association (TCCTA)

We greatly appreciate the intense interest of this committee in the success of our students. It is an issue we as faculty have devoted our careers to. Community colleges have addressed a wide variety of priorities and purposes over the years, most recently the significant change in mission brought about by the state’s “Closing the Gaps” initiative. We strongly support the aims of Closing the Gaps, to bring high quality college education to a wider population of Texans.

But this initiative presents a number of challenges, most notably, the expectation that we be as successful with large numbers of under-prepared students as we were with the more limited number of better-prepared student we had prior to Closing the Gaps. This is an expectation we fully embrace and support, and have devoted countless resources to live up to. So I wish to state at the outset: far from being resistant to change and accountability, faculty at our institutions have been a primary source of solutions and have been constructively engaged in this issue for some time.

We have all heard the alarming numbers regarding the academic readiness of students entering our colleges in Texas. For community colleges, especially in urban areas, the challenge is even greater with 70% of entering freshman needing remediation in at least one area.

Community colleges have traditionally believed that a major part of their mission was to welcome any and all students, regardless of preparation or life experience, and help them to meet new educational objectives. To greet all students at this door and to assist them in improving their life opportunities has always been a very ambitious undertaking. We have—and we do—see this as part of out mission and it is a challenge that we accept. Given that community colleges have welcomed all students and realizing how many must now remediate, how do we ensure success in developmental courses and ultimately in degree completion? Our colleges have been deeply involved in efforts to answer that question. Among the promising innovations:

• Many of our colleges have developed new programs to increase communication with local school districts to help assess those students who are at-risk and need remediation. These programs encourage earlier remediation, which improves the chances of success.
• A great deal of important work has been done by the Center for Community College Student Engagement (CCCSE) at UT Austin in developing methods for assessing student engagement, along with ideas for improvement. For the at-risk student, engagement—and a culture of caring—is critical since rebuilding self-confidence is such an important element.
• Our schools support and participate in current programs of innovation. Achieving the Dream, which began in 2003, and supported partially by the Lumina Foundation, is an important initiative that is helping scores of at-risk students. It has grown to include 98 community colleges in 22 states. El Paso Community College was one of the first participants in Texas and has had outstanding results. A very new program has just been announced by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching—the Carnegie Collaboratory of Community Colleges. Currently, the Foundation is identify 16 high-performing community colleges who will partner in developing innovative programs for developmental mathematics. Richland College has been identified as one of the participants that will help begin a new program that will focus on curriculum and pedagogy. There are many more.

We believe with all this innovation occurring at our institutions, one crucial piece is missing. As an administrator at my college recently told me, really amazing things are happening at Texas community colleges, there’s just no way to find out about it. To drastically increase the velocity of innovation, we must create a repository to showcase these successful practices in a way that allows practitioners easy access to everything they need to replicate them at their institutions. If someone at Laredo Community College comes up with a great idea to improve a specific aspect of counseling and advising incoming students, that idea must quickly be made available to Tyler Junior College. And if someone at South Plains College is needing a solution to a vexing problem in developmental mathematics, they should have ready access to the answers their peers around the state have come up with.

The innovation is occurring already. What is missing is a vehicle to propagate these ideas in an effective and timely way.

Three years ago, our organization created, with the help of a Perkins grant, the Texas Network for Teaching Excellence, an online repository of professional development tools for career and technical educators. This resource provides state- of-the-art tools in a Web 2.0 environment that allows educators to stay current in their field. The content is provided by educators, for educators.

We believe this model is ideal for improving results in student success. Rather than hoping a small number of people, in Austin or anywhere else, will come up with a single solution to the problem, we see this open source framework as a more promising approach. The great ideas coming out of the various initiatives going on around the state—those funded by the Lumina Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Greater Texas Foundation, and others—need to be presented to faculty and administrators at our colleges in a clear and actionable format that allows schools to benefit immediately from this growing body of work, tailor it to their local needs, and put them into action.

Using a large and existing network of faculty and administrators can help ensure that the powerful ideas that can be real game-changers in terms of increasing student success actually are implemented in the classroom. There is a vibrant community of teachers and administrators eager to learn about the ideas that are getting results, and hoping to be included in the conversation.

We look forward to continuing our dialog with this committee and other leaders across the state who are seeking solutions and advocating change that results in the success of our students we have devoted our lives to.

Thanks for including me in this discussion today.

Building Named for Late TCCTA Leader Steve Dutton

On June 22 the Amarillo College Board of Regents approved a recommendation to rename the Biology Building on the Washington Street Campus in honor of the late Steve Dutton.

Mr. Dutton was president of TCCTA from 1991-92, and served the association as an officer and in committee positions for many years. His remembered fondly by all who knew him.

The recommendation was presented by AC president Paul Matney and championed by a joint resolution signed by AC’s three employee groups. The Biology Building will be known as Steve Dutton Hall. A dedicatory event is planned.

Below is information provided by the Amarillo College Web site. Thanks to AC's Danita McAnally (also a former TCCTA president) for sharing the news.

Dutton’s superlative 34-year career as a member of the AC faculty ended in 2007 when, while serving a third, non-concurrent turn as chairman of the Biology Department, he succumbed to cancer at the age of 61.

“It is a fitting tribute to a truly beloved, dedicated and remarkable faculty member,” Matney, who served 28 years alongside Dutton on the AC faculty, said.

A native Amarilloan, Dutton joined the AC faculty in 1973 and eventually served three terms as president of faculty senate. He also served AC at the state level by sitting on the Formula Funding Advisory Committee of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in 1991-1992.

From 1998-2006, he sat on AC’s Medical Laboratory Technology Advisory Committee. In 1995 he became a founding member of the AC Ex-Student Association.

In 1991 he was singled out for AC’s highest faculty accolade, the John F. Mead Faculty Excellence Award.

Texas "Reforms" Draw National Criticism

Stanley Fish writes an influential and provocative blog on higher education for the New York Times. Recently he held forth on the extraordinary push in Texas to treat students as consumers, pointing out the difference between a college curriculum and a car dealership.

You can probably expect more of this kind of attention, as Texas implements HB 2504, which requires all higher education institutions to formulate plans to post faculty information, including student evaluations, online. For background on the Texas law, see this previous post.

Dr. Fish is a noted scholar and professor of humanities and law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His blog appears in the NYT on Tuesdays. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, and Duke University. He is the author of 11 books, most recently “Save the World On Your Own Time,” on higher education. “The Fugitive in Flight,” a study of the 1960s TV drama, will be published this year. He is, by all accounts, a prominent public intellectual.

A key passage from the blog:

More than occasionally in these columns I have mocked the pretensions of those faculty members who cry “academic freedom” at the slightest infringement of what they take to be their god-given liberty. But academic freedom does in fact have a meaning and a legitimate purpose: it protects faculty members from external constituencies intent on taking over the enterprise for mercenary or political reasons. The Texas “reform plan” is just that; its so called reforms would be funny were they not so dangerous. And it all began with student evaluations, or, rather, with the mistake of taking them seriously. Since then, it’s been all downhill.

And:

Now an entire state is on the brink of implementing just that bite-sized style of teaching under the rubric of “customer satisfaction.” Texas, currently in a contest with Arizona and South Carolina for the title “most retrograde,” is signing on to a plan of “reform” generated by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank dedicated to private property rights and limited government.

And:

A corollary proposal is to shift funding to the student-customers by giving them vouchers. “Instead of direct appropriations, every Texas high school graduate would get a set amount of state funds usable at any state university” (William Lutz, Lone Star Report, May 23, 2008). Once this gets going (and Texas A&M is already pushing it), you can expect professors to advertise: “Come to my college, sign up for my class, and I can guarantee you a fun-filled time and you won’t have to break a sweat.” If there ever was a recipe for non-risk-taking, entirely formulaic, dumbed-down teaching, this is it.

Before reading the entire piece, available here, it is worth mentioning that Dr. Fish's article does not refer explicitly to community colleges.

A thought: Placing aside the ideological rhetoric inherent in these issues for a moment, a simple question is worth asking. If you were a promising researcher, scholar, or teacher from another state, would you want to move to Texas these days?

Study: Retention Suffers with Adjuncts

Freshmen who have many of their courses taught by adjuncts are less likely than other students to return as sophomores, according to a study of four-year schools in a state system. The measured impact of adjunct instruction varies by institution type and also the type of adjunct used, a published summary of the report explains. For instance, students taking courses from adjuncts who are "well supported" by their institutions appear to perform better than instructors in other self-identified categories.

The study does not involve community colleges, but it does raise interesting questions, since the majority of classes at many two-year schools are taught by part-time instructors. And, given the budgetary situation, that's not likely to change any time soon.

The report is covered nicely in an article by Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed.

The authors of the study are Audrey J. Jaeger, associate professor of higher education at North Carolina State University, and M. Kevin Eagan, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Higher Education Research Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles.

The two scholars say they aren't suggesting that adjuncts are bad instructors, or that the path to better retention is using fewer of them. They also stress that their findings appear to validate those who argue that adjuncts measure up well (1) when they teach for single institutions and (2) if they are provided with abundant support.

In the metropolitan areas of Texas, it is common for adjunct instructors to dash back and forth to an assortment of community colleges, using different textbooks and other course materials at each site. In this scenario, it is also difficult for the part-timers to advise students adequately.

Commissioner Addresses Higher Ed. Needs

Commissioner of Higher Education Raymund Paredes has proposed a number of significant changes to the way institutions are funded. As reported here frequently, his (and the Coordinating Board's) plan includes rewarding schools for advancing students along various Momentum Points of achievement.

The proposal is designed to help accomplish the goals of the Closing the Gaps initiative, which was launched in 2001.

"A decade later," according to the Texas Tribune, "multiple targets still haven’t been met and many higher education metrics remain less than encouraging: Only five public universities have six-year graduation rates above 50 percent, only three out of 10 full-time community college students earn any credential after six years, and only 22 percent of students graduate from high school college-ready."

It is worth emphasizing that the statistic for community colleges reflects full-time student achievement. Since most students at two-year schools are part-timers, the actual numbers are typically much lower.

The commissioner recently granted an interview to the Tribune, during which he spoke about the successes and shortcomings of the Closing the Gaps initiative. In terms of sheer enrollment, the program is succeeding for the most part, but has great difficulty keeping up with the rising tide of the Texas Hispanic population. The most problematic area is in math and science fields, where the goals for 2015 may fall considerably short, the commissioner states.

Dr. Paredes adds that, as open admissions institutions, community colleges have "an enormously difficult task."  In a comment that will ring true to community college instructors, he stresses that most students who graduate from Texas high schools are not ready for college academically. Perhaps in response to commentators who argue that a college education is not for everyone, he states that a better educated population benefits the whole state. Economics aside, educated people tend to be healthier and less likely to commit crimes, for instance.

Here's the link to the five-minute interview with Commissioner Paredes.

Budget Outlook Remains Grim

There may be hints of economic recovery nationwide, but the recession has been truly devastating to state and local budgets. For the most part (except for the use of bonds and a little creative accounting here and there), these governments are not allowed to spend money they don't have.

It might be a good idea to keep the following information in mind, as a snapshot of where Texas stands right now. Some current observations regarding the situation, according to a variety of media reports:

• The 2012-13 budget gap is estimated to be as much as $18 billion.
• Agencies have been told to find ways to reduce spending in the current budget by about $1 billion. Unpaid worker furloughs, a moratorium on new programs, and a four-day work week were all discussed at a recent House Appropriations Committee hearing.
• In the last Regular Session, the Legislature used $11 billion in one-time money to balance the $182 billion two-year budget. That amount includes $3 billion that was set aside to pay for the ongoing cost of the 2006 school property tax cuts. The major revenue source designed to pay for the tax cut, the revised business tax, "has come in woefully below expectations, and the set-aside is now gone," according to the Austin American Statesman.
• Another $6 billion in 2009 came from the federal stimulus package.
• The so-called Rainy Day Fund is expected to have about $9 billion available for the 2012-13 budget, which will be under consideration during the next Regular Session.
• Sales tax collections (which pay for about 60 percent of the state's basic functions, including education) are about $1 billion behind where they were expected to be at this point in the fiscal year.
• Speaker of the House Rep. Joe Straus (R-San Antonio) has instructed budget writers to cover the impending budget shortfall without raising taxes.

If this information makes you grumpy, it may be a good thing. A recent study found that grumpy people think more clearly and make better decisions. It's reported on the BBC Web site.

The blog will be off for a few days. See you on the flip side.

Online Education Scrutinized

The current expansion of online higher education is historic and monumental. Lately it is driven to a large degree by staggering enrollment at schools that are out of classroom space. Rural areas are also attracted to an off-campus curriculum, since it allows students in remote areas to take courses from home. In a different twist, at Lamar University, the institution is outsourcing distance programs to a private company, in an effort to beef up anemic enrollment. The company hires "coaches" to deal with student questions, while the faculty member is the "instructor of record."

So there is variety of motivation, but, judging from comments by policy makers, there are few valid reasons NOT to expand online instruction. It's all good.

If we go to the source, faculty members who teach online offer a handful of observations consistently.

First, distance instruction is more time consuming for the instructor than face-to-face instruction. One commentator said that her e-mails were "like Alfred Hitchcock's birds" every morning.

Second, online instruction works best with mature students (whatever their age) who take the initiative for doing work independently. This observation may explain why many teachers report that student attrition is higher with their distance courses. (Ironically, the phenomenon could mean that "success," in terms of completion rates, could decline as online instruction expands—not exactly what the Legislature has in mind.)

Third, faculty members who teach traditional classes report that they communicate much more frequently with students these days, via Blackboard, Facebook, Twitter, text messages, and e-mail. In this sense, therefore, all classes are assuming characteristics of distance education. Some professors even post their lectures on YouTube, or another online platform. Students then ask, "Um…do I still have to come to class?" At any rate, the distinction between online, hybrid, and traditional instruction is blurring.

A recent piece in the Texas Tribune by Reeve Hamilton examines the current status of distance education, both here in Texas and nationally. The entire article is worth reading, but here is an interesting passage, including quotes from a pair of important Texas lawmakers:

“At some point, the model may be that your prestige and your expansion is more like Nike,” says state Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, the chair of the House Higher Education Committee, who has been encouraging institutions to invest in virtual courses in order to get more productivity out of their limited human capital. “You have a really high-quality product, and everyone wants access to it.”

“Who is controlling the content? Who is controlling access? Who is controlling the integrity?” asks Branch's Senate counterpart, Higher Education Committee Chair Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, who says she disagrees “when people say that distance learning and virtual learning will replace traditional learning.” Still, Zaffirini believes that every available mode of delivery should be used to reach students. “They will each impact each other, and each can and should be improved based on the other,” she says. “But the interpersonal Aristotle style is still preferred by many.”

Unlike their predecessors, from the pupils of Aristotle to late-20th-century graduates, today's college students are basically web-native — and tomorrow's certainly will be. But the best method of providing an affordable online educational experience that is both satisfying for students and workable for professors, who may be less technologically inclined, remains a work in progress. While some institutions are pioneering different approaches with varying results, others are waiting and watching. Meanwhile, leaders from both parties at the Capitol are closely monitoring the evolving state of higher education and evaluating the options as they prepare for the next session.