Transcript
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Welcome and Introduction
Remarks by Marshall Smith
Remarks by The Honorable Chaka Fattah (D-PA)
Panel on GEARUP
Panel on LAAP and Distance Learning
Luncheon
Panel on Title II Teacher Quality
Wrap Up Session
A. Hauptman: My assignment is to wrap up a day long discussion when the temperature in the room, because of the camera lights, is twenty degrees hotter than the weather outside, which is already Washington summer. And it's especially nice to do it when so many of the people before you have been so eloquent and you have to follow them. So in order to avoid that assignment, I'm going to ask if anybody would like to make some comments on the day, and then I'll wrap up.
[Laughter]
That's what friends are for.
The forum began with how the three initiatives in the Higher Education Act — GEARUP and Distance Learning and Teacher Quality — represent a break in the tradition in relying on federal student aid as the vehicle for the federal government to support higher education. And I want to begin these concluding remarks on this theme of the change that these initiatives represent. So the first question is, how are these initiatives different from the student aid programs? What is the break in tradition here?
It seems to me there's three principle differences or contrasts. One is the importance of evaluation and feedback in the new initiatives. If I may say, the student aid programs have been notorious in not being performance based. There's almost been a gut reaction to not having to worry about whether or not, for example, students actually complete the programs they start as a function of the student aid programs. By contrast, the new initiatives are critically, in their essence, performance based. And as a result, evaluation and feedback will be much more key in these new efforts than it has been in student aid, and, as David Longanecker pointed out, you can't really reward performance if you don't measure it.
So the first point is that we have to have a commitment to measure it. And I think one of the reassuring aspects of the discussion today is that each of the new initiatives has that component built in. GEARUP has an evaluation component as part of the legislation. There also appears to be a critical need, and a recognition of a critical need, for identifying best practice and what works in terms of GEARUP, and to spread the word and to intervene while the process is going on, that is to find out what's working even as we're experimenting and to recalibrate. And in Distance Learning, the notion of evaluation dovetails exactly with a performance based orientation of especially competency based distance learning. And in the case of the federal student aid demo and distance learning evaluation is critical to see what's working with regards to these other models of student aid.
And in Teacher Quality, Terry Dozier mentioned that identifying best practice is critical. So in these initiatives, we have the foundation at least, if we follow up on it, for evaluation and for feedback, and that really is different from the student aid programs and their history.
The second difference is the importance of building partnerships. This was a persistent theme today, perhaps an over persistent theme, but federal student aid again, in contrast, has typically gone it alone and expects others to follow. The notion of partnerships in the federal aid programs really has been absent. In contrast, all three of these new initiatives are premised to the notion of partnerships that leverage change. Now some of these partnerships are the usual suspects — school/university, public/private, federal/state — but some are less traditional partnerships and those were the ones that were most interesting: Ray Orbach, in terms of the University of California, Riverside, the university community partnership — the fact that they have involved the community; Sally, in Louisiana, involving the community, something that seems obvious, but we don't tend to do it as much as we should.
One of the, I think, key issues today in terms of GEARUP and Trio was the notion of GEARUP and Trio as a partnership, not as competing interest for scarce funds. So there's a new kind of partnership that I think will be critical to success. And another somewhat less additional is consortia of institutions, particularly in the case of distance learning where it really doesn't make sense for one institution to provide distance learning. It makes sense for a number of institutions to achieve the economies of scale.
And David Mundell raised I think the critical issue, which is what's needed to make these partnerships happen? It's fine for us to talk about it, we always talk about it, but David I think argued persuasively that these — that having a partnership is tough work. It's tough sledding. And you need incentives to sort of keep you motivated to do it. And have we built the incentives into the system to do that?
And then the third major difference, I think between the new initiatives and the student aid programs is that the new initiatives are not student aid. There's an increasing recognition that student aid is not enough. Larry Glido [sp] and Scott Swail have made that case quite persuasively. That's been an argument that's been around for a number of years. The basic point is that student aid is necessary and not sufficient.
Do we have enough microphones now?
And because of these differences between the new initiatives and the student aid, it seems to me there's a need for change in two different directions. One is to use the new initiatives to complement the ongoing student aid effort, to recognize that student aid is not enough and to give it more umpf. But it's also important to consider changes in the student aid programs that will enhance the chances of success of the new initiatives.
So what needs to be done to help improve those chances of success? Is it ideas or is it money? We had that question today. And obviously the answer, preferably, is both.
In terms of adequacy of funding, we can't afford to starve the new initiatives, but unfortunately, this puts us in the familiar battle between existing programs with existing constituencies and new programs with future constituencies not yet heard from, but ultimately to be heard from. But we need to recognize that you have to fund a critical mass of partnerships, of projects, to give the new initiatives a chance. So how do we resolve this inevitable conflict between large needs and limited resources? The answer, at least a large part of it, is the partnerships and the collaboration and the matching elements. And this might be the critical difference between the new initiatives and the student aid, the notion that you match, that you get other parts of the community to get involved, and that you build the programs that way.
And then the other theme was the program design and implementation. So we have program funding on one hand, and we have program design and implementation questions on the other. And several principles, I thought, emerged today for guiding both the legislative design and implementation, and Steve Zwerling I thought was very helpful in offering the perspective of the Ford Foundation and the evolution that it's had over time. And he talked about that they have now shifted to what he called an aligned reform strategy rather than a constituency based reform. And he talked about cross-sectoral operation rather than sector specific as they initially started at the Ford Foundation in the 1950s and 60s. And he also talked interestingly about education reform not just about school reform. So I thought the experiences of one of the major partners was very instructive.
And Ray Orbach in his luncheon speech, when you boil it down, what's been the success of UC-Riverside in increasing the participation of traditionally represented groups? It really comes down to an integrated approach that includes extensive outreach, a rationalized student aid set of policies, centers on campus, and curricular reform and relevance.
And ultimately, all of this is all of this is how do you systematize and institutionalize what has worked in pockets, and how do you go to scale? That's been one of the big issues. And that's where we're really trying to get at here.
But beyond the principles of aligned reform and cross-sectoral focus and comprehensive approaches, what specific things should be done to increase the probability of success? And at least two areas were identified for specific steps, one was issues of simplification of student aid, and the other was possibly modifications in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In terms of the student aid changes it's important to move beyond the traditional discussion that we tend to have in talking about student aid of the need for more funds, and at least to start with the constraint — there are not new funds, what can we do within that constraint?
And I thought perhaps one of the most intriguing ideas today was Juliet Garcia's concept of eligibility zones rather than individual eligibility for student aid, similar to empowerment zones in the housing and inner city developments. Interestingly, that concept of an eligibility zone is very similar to a component of Congressman Fattah's initial proposal, which was to designate an entire cohort of students as eligible for student aid, an entire school if you will, an entire class, rather than to identify individual students. And unfortunately, in my opinion, that proposal seemed to get lost on the cutting room floor of the legislative process, but it has a tremendous potential for streamlining where it can be a very complicated situation. I mean, if you say to somebody, "You are eligible because of where you go to school or where you live, and you don't have to go fill out the financial aid form in order to qualify for this particular set of benefits," that might really change the nature of the debate. And no matter how hard we've over time to narrow down the student aid form, we always seem to end up with more items on it rather than less, so maybe we should think about going in a different direction.
And, in general, the suggestion to make student aid more student based than institution based, to be a mechanism to help students rather than to help institutions finance themselves I think is a concept we need to spend more time on. It was most noticeable today in the distance learning area, and in terms of student — Bob Albrecht's comment about student centered records of progress, and even one suggestion of a student based accreditation process rather than an institution based accreditation process. And finally, in terms of the ES, modifications in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act which was forthcoming or upcoming, let me go back with to what Mike Smith began the forum by noting, that there's already a built-in integration in the nature of these programs, but there can be carved out an additional role for the higher education initiatives in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
And Barnett Berry mentioned school-university partnerships as integrated into or as part of ESEA for purposed of improving teacher quality. And Sally raised a number of possibilities in terms of teacher compensation and incentives.
And I guess I'll conclude by saying that's in a sense just a start. I mean we really just scratched the surface about what we might do in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. And so we hope — Lois and I hope — that this discussion represents more of a beginning than an exclamation point, start for a conversation that hopefully will keep going. Now I'm instructed by her to thank everyone for coming, which is why we have co-collaborators here. And I will. Thank you for all coming. And Lois would you like to say something?
[REMARK INAUDIBLE.]
A. Hauptman: Today's proceeding are available and posted at the Brookings website, known as www.brook.edu. Really, thank you for coming.
[APPLAUSE AND END OF EVENT.]
Also Available:
Welcome and Introduction
Remarks by Marshall Smith
Remarks by The Honorable Chaka Fattah (D-PA)
Panel on GEARUP
Panel on LAAP and Distance Learning
Luncheon
Panel on Title II Teacher Quality
Wrap Up Session