Friday, September 28, 2018



Federal Education Programs Are Bloated and Failing. Now, Congress Wants to Give Them More Money

Here we go again. Congress plans to ignore the glaring education policy errors of the past five decades—and, worse, spend even more money on them.

As policymakers place the finishing touches on the Labor-Health-Education bill—a spending measure that funds education programs at the departments of Education and Health and Human Services—Americans stand to have more of their hard-earned dollars spent on policies that don’t work.

In fact, the entire spending package encompasses $178 billion in expenditures, $11 billion more than the Trump administration’s proposed budget.

Lawmakers should formulate good education policies that actually help students and protect American taxpayers, instead of seeking the approval of special-interest groups, such as teachers unions.

Although education spending skyrocketed in the past five decades, education outcomes remain the same. Instead of improved student outcomes, increased education spending has been accompanied by a lopsided increase in school staffing and administration.

For example, an 8 percent increase in the size of the student body since 1970 has been accompanied by a 138 percent increase in nonteaching staff over the same time period.

Instead of eliminating waste and bloat, federal policymakers propose to buttress bad policy by spending $71.4 billion on federal education programs—$2.6 billion more than in fiscal year 2017.

The federal government should eliminate duplicative and unhelpful programs instead of reinforcing them. For instance, the 21st Century Community Learning Centers are ineffective and failing to positively affect participants academically and behaviorally.

Even though the Trump administration’s budget rightly sought the program’s elimination, the Labor-Health-Education appropriations package would increase its funding to $1.2 billion.

David Muhlhausen, formerly of The Heritage Foundation, wrote, “Of the 12 behavioral outcomes assessed by the evaluation, six measures indicate that 21st Century Community Learning Centers produced more harm than good. Overall, teachers found participating students to have disciplinary problems that were confirmed by student-reported data.”

The Head Start program is another prime example of wasteful and poor policy. Although Congress plans to increase funding for the federal child care program to $10.1 billion (an increase of $200 million), research shows that Head Start has little to no lasting positive effect on participants. Moreover, despite funding boosts over the past few years, the program served slightly fewer participants between the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ own research found that Head Start participants performed lower than their peers in kindergarten math and “by third grade, Head Start had little to no effect on cognitive, social-emotional, health, or parenting outcomes of participating children.”

My colleagues Lindsey Burke and David Muhlhausen wrote: “[Health and Human Services] has released definitive evidence that the federal government’s 48-year experiment with Head Start has failed children and left taxpayers a tab of more than $180 billion. In the interest of children and taxpayers, it’s time for this nearly half-century experiment to come to an end.”

The federal government’s large footprint in education has failed to make lasting positive effects, in part due to its sweeping programs, which fail to address the needs of local communities.

Policymakers should work to reduce the federal government’s intervention in education, instead of increasing it and implementing policies that do more harm than good.

Where else is the federal education footprint getting bigger?

Title I funding will increase to $15.9 billion, which is $400 million more than the Trump administration’s proposed budget.

The Student Support and Academic Enrichment program was eliminated in the Trump administration’s budget, but funding was increased to $1.170 billion.

TRIO, which provides federal funds to enhance college readiness, stands to see its budget increased by $50 million to $1.060 billion.

In the past two years, Pell Grants, which service 8 million students, will have increased by nearly $300 per student to $6,195.

At the very least, if the federal government continues to supplement state education spending, states should be able to use federal dollars as they see fit, instead of being required to accommodate ineffective or duplicative federal programs. State policymakers are more aware of local needs and concerns than Washington officials.

Congress should eliminate ineffective and duplicative federal programs instead of boosting their budgets. The Trump administration recognized the need to do that in its budget proposals, yet Congress seems bent on going in the opposite direction, increasing taxpayer spending on programs of questionable effectiveness.

It’s time to end the federal education spending spree and restore state and local control of education.

SOURCE 






After less than 10 years in the classroom, Common Core could soon be on its way out

The Obama administration introduced Common Core in 2010, imposing burdensome new standards and tests in an attempt to create uniform educational content across the nation. Despite loud objections from parents, teachers, school leaders, and state officials, 46 states ultimately adopted the standards due to a combination of funding carrots and regulatory sticks.

But over the past few years, states have begun to reclaim their authority to set educational standards. Approximately a quarter of participating states have either downgraded their participation or withdrawn completely from the two new testing consortia introduced by Common Core.

One of those consortia—the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career—once had 20 state participants but now has fewer than four. Florida, for instance, an early adopter of Common Core, withdrew from the test consortium after finding that, among other issues, testing would occur over a 20-day period.

Maryland became the most recent state to roll back Common Core testing when officials there found that it overburdened teachers and didn’t help families.

How exactly? As The Baltimore Sun noted, it required schools to “clear their schedules for several weeks each spring, disrupting classes, and provide computers for students to take the tests in grades 3 through 8, as well as twice in high school.” Teachers lost valuable class time and encountered extensive disruptions.

Moreover, the test results were not delivered until the summer after the end of classes, thus limiting the ability of teachers to use the scores to improve classroom practice.

Maryland now plans to replace Common Core partnership tests with the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program—a shorter program that delivers test results sooner. While it remains an open question how much of a genuine departure from Common Core this represents, Maryland is at least taking the first step in reclaiming its autonomy by defining how it will assess student progress.

After all, states are much better suited to evaluate students according to standards that parents care about. National standards like Common Core give priority to national testing, but most parents typically ascribe little value to such large-scale assessments. According to an American Enterprise Institute study, parents rank school safety, values, healthy environment, and curricula as significantly more important than school performance on state tests.

In fact, national standards don’t actually help families or local schools improve their education—they only help number-crunching officials who distribute funding. My colleagues, Lindsey Burke and Jennifer Marshall, have written that parents can gain more useful information from classroom assessments and conversations with teachers about their child’s education.

Moreover, Common Core standards actually encouraged mediocrity rather than higher academic achievement. As Burke and Marshall have noted, “The rigor and content of national standards will tend to align with the mean among states” since the national standards will be plagued by “the same pressures that detract[ed] from the quality of many state standards.”

Educators also say federal standards and assessments limit their own autonomy and capacity to innovate in the classroom. In his book “The Tyranny of Metrics,” Jerry Z. Muller writes, “Many teachers perceive the regimen created by the culture of testing and measured accountability as robbing them of their autonomy and of the ability to use their discretion and creativity in designing and implementing the curriculum of their students.”

By returning education to the local level, teachers and parents can work together to create the system that works best for their children.

Rather than following Washington’s dictates, states should reassert their standards-setting and assessment authority to better enable schools to respond to local families and teachers.

Maryland’s decision to replace these tests is a step in the right direction as the state works to re-establish how it will conduct assessments. Freed from the constraints of Washington, states can then look to each other for best practices and innovations while working with local communities to produce results.

One way states can solidify their own educational standards is by strengthening school transparency measures modeled after the independent reviews that are common in higher education, such as the Princeton Review or College Board. This would empower parents with clear information about school performance, enabling them to hold schools accountable for meeting the needs of their children, particularly when empowered with education choice options.

Maryland has not yet released the costs of its new tests, but other states that have similarly withdrawn from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career paid a hefty price to replace it. For instance, Florida spent $220 million on a new test, meaning taxpayers there are still paying to get out of Common Core.

More states should follow Maryland’s path and extricate themselves from the massive federal overreach that is Common Core. Greater transparency coupled with real choice in education—not centralized government—will strengthen education in states across the country.

SOURCE 






Australian Catholic University moves up in rankings

Australian Catholic University (ACU) has been ranked in the top 500 of universities worldwide, in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2018, announced on Wednesday 26 September.

This is the third consecutive year ACU has risen in the rankings, indicative of its improving research strengths.

The University climbed from joint 30 position last year to rank 25 out of 35 Australian institutions.

The THE World University Rankings is an annual league table of the top universities in the world. It assesses universities under the criteria of teaching, research, citations, industry income, and international outlook.

ACU’s strong performance included improved scores for research and citations, with ACU positioned in the top 400 for research and top 500 for citations worldwide.

ACU Provost Professor Pauline Nugent said the results were a welcome acknowledgement of the commitment the University had made to priority areas in health, education and theology and philosophy.

 “It is very encouraging to see that our steady growth and a determination to focus on areas that are fundamental to our mission and core values are having an impact.”

“The University has set out to achieve excellent outcomes, by investing in quality research and programs that will deliver genuinely valuable results for others,” she said.

ACU is increasingly making its mark internationally, with other notable rankings such as:

Positioned 501-600 in Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)

A top 100 Asia Pacific (APAC) university, recognised as a leader in higher education in the region (Times Higher Education Asia-Pacific University Rankings 2018)

Recognised as one of the world’s top young universities, included in the top 50 of Generation Y and ranked 101-150 globally (Times Higher Education Young Universities Rankings 2018)

Ranked in the top 100 for a number of subjects:

sport science (26 ARWU)

nursing (41 ARWU)

education (51-75 ARWU)

theology, divinity and religious studies (top 100 QS Subject Rankings)

These results follow closely behind the University’s strong performance in the most recent Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) assessment – with 94 per cent of all ACU research judged to be at or above world standards, and ACU placed equal first in Australia in five Fields of Research.

ACU is a public, not-for-profit university funded by the Australian Government. It is open to students and staff of all beliefs. Its research institutes and faculties focus on the priority research areas of education, health, and theology and philosophy.

Media release from jen.rosenberg@acu.edu.au




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