Some higher education officials in Kansas already are using the term “state-assisted” rather then “state-funded.” Now, to deal with a state funding squeeze, officials at Colorado State University are debating whether to take the school partially private and go to a tuition system in which students would pay more for degrees that cost more to deliver. Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York also have versions of a public-private model for higher education. But it’s controversial. “Once you start charging more for some degrees, you’re going to price people out of the market,” Chapman Rackaway, associate professor of political science at Fort Hays State University, wrote in the Hays Daily News. “State governments across the country already are doing their best to prevent access to higher education for all but their wealthiest citizens. If we start making it harder to get necessary degrees like medicine and engineering, we’ll find ourselves with a shortage of people in those fields quickly.”
“Markets may be troubled, but that’s no reason to stop teaching our children. Yet that’s exactly what we’re doing,” wrote columnist Paul Krugman, noting that 29,000 jobs in state and local education were among the 273,000 jobs lost nationally last month. He blasted centrist senators for having trimmed from the stimulus bill more state aid that might have mitigated public education cuts, and he called on Congress to approve more aid for state government now. “Beyond that,” Krugman concluded, “we need to wake up and realize that one of the keys to our nation’s historic success is now a wasting asset. Education made America great; neglect of education can reverse the process.”
Hays superintendent Fred Kaufman, who is president of the Schools for Fair Funding group, told his school board last week that interest has been unexpectedly high among districts in joining the group in another school-finance lawsuit against the state. He had thought the group might end up representing a fifth of the K-12 enrollment in Kansas. But “it could turn out to be as much as half of the students in Kansas would be involved,” he said.
One weakness of many university teacher education programs is that the college students don’t spend much time in the school system. They have to observe some, and they must do student teaching for a semester. But that’s often not enough to prepare them for the rigors of managing a classroom — which is one reason so many new teachers leave the profession within five years. But a $6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education will help transform teacher training at Wichita State University. The five-year grant will establish professional development programs at 18 Wichita public schools. Education majors in the program will spend more time working alongside mentor teachers and will receive in-the-field training from professors. WSU has been an early innovator of such programs, which likely is one reason it received the grant.
Kansas’ three GOP House members voted last week against a bill that
would stop subsidizing private lenders that provide federally guaranteed
student loans, and would use the estimated $80 billion in savings over
10 years to increase student grants and funding for other education
programs. Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, criticized the bill as another
government takeover that would leave families with fewer options and
more red tape. “We need to turn toward proven, free-market principles
and encourage job growth within the private sector,” he said in a
statement.
But Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., argued: “We were paying these
exorbitant subsidies to bankers who were taking government money,
loaning it to somebody else, getting government guarantees that the
loans would be paid back, and then taking all these profits.” Washington
Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote that the loan program is “already a
government program. The bill simply eliminates corporate welfare.”
Leaders of the Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal districts are expected to meet today with the Schools for Fair Funding attorneys to discuss recent K-12 spending cuts and what to do about them. “The Legislature cut funding to education by 22 percent, and more cuts are expected in the coming session,” Wichita attorney Alan Rupe, who won more money for schools in 2005 in the Montoy case, told the Dodge City Daily Globe. “Nobody wants to go back to court, but those kinds of cuts leave districts with no choice.” One option, of course, is further litigation. “They can either fight the Legislature now to increase funding, or shift the burden to individual school boards,” Rupe said. “And if that happens, those districts that simply can’t afford to shoulder the huge burden will have no choice but to raise taxes.”
Good for Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., for renewing his push to get the federal government to honor its commitment to fully fund special education. Roberts and Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, reintroduced a bill to increase federal funding over six years until the federal government fully funds special education, as it promised to do when it approved the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act in 1975. This year, thanks to an infusion of one-time stimulus money, federal funding will pay for 34 percent of special ed costs. “Congress made a promise to our schools and our children to share the cost of special education,” Roberts said in a statement. “It’s time that Congress relieve our state and local governments of the financial burden they have been forced to shoulder, especially in these tough economic times.”
It was disappointing that more area schools, including 14 more in the Wichita school district, failed to meet their No Child Left Behind annual progress standards. But it wasn’t surprising. As the NCLB standards keep rising toward the statistically impossible mandate of 100 percent proficiency in reading and math by 2014, more and more schools will miss their annual targets — including high-performing schools. Administrators, teachers, parents and students need to work hard to raise achievement. But failing to meet an impossible standard doesn’t mean that schools are failing.
On the Daily Beast, Conor Friedersdorf suggested that presidents, whatever their politics, stay out of classrooms. “I object to the automatic elevation of presidents generally to the role of ‘trusted moral leader,’” he wrote, “so I wish President Obama and all his successors would eschew that role, rather than entrenching its precedent more deeply. America requires constitutional officers and moral leaders. We’d save ourselves a lot of unnecessary trouble if we established a bright line between those roles, rather than blurring them in accordance with our ideological affection for the person who happens to be in power.”
After all the drama over the Wichita school district’s contract to install artificial turf on the high schools’ football fields as part of the $370 million bond issue, the purchase already as paid off — not only for Texas-based Hellas, which got a bonus for its speed, but for kids and the community. Tuesday’s junior varsity and freshman games between Wichita Northwest and Kapaun Mount Carmel avoided rain cancellation by moving to Northwest’s new turf field.
Good for Newt Gingrich (in photo), Laura Bush and others for responding to complaints about President Obama’s speech to schoolchildren today on the importance of education and staying in school. Former House Speaker Gingrich said that the attacks on the speech are without merit. “It’s a good speech,” Gingrich said on NBC’s “Today” show,” adding that “I would love to have every child in America read it, think about it and learn that they should stay in school and they should study.” The former first lady told CNN that “there’s a place for the president of the United States to talk to schoolchildren and encourage schoolchildren” to stay in school.
The assumption that merely knowing a subject makes one a good teacher is foolhardy. Knowledge of subject matter is unquestionably necessary for good teaching, but it is insufficient for being a good teacher. Ed schools can make a difference. Teaching is an incredibly complex and difficult enterprise. Little about the job comes to people naturally. Prospective teachers need to learn such mundane but crucial skills as how to keep their classrooms orderly and centered on the topics at hand. Most important, at the same time, they have to learn how to make the subject matter of their content area accessible and worth knowing for their students, no easy task given the increasingly diverse backgrounds of these students. When ed schools are doing their job, these are the kinds of things prospective teachers learn so can they start their careers better able to handle the intense and unrelenting demands of teaching.
— Jeffrey Mirel, chairman of education and professor of history at University of Michigan
When I look for a teacher, I look for an educated person, someone who has been immersed in books, the arts, the sciences and philosophy through a liberal arts education. Our schools need teachers who have developed capacity for critical inquiry, for problem solving and for innovation. The art and skill of effective pedagogy is arguably equally critical to effective classroom instruction. While most aspiring teachers hope to develop these skills through university course work, in reality the most effective training is acquired through an apprenticeship at a high-performing school with a highly effective classroom teacher. As with most trades, the craft of effective pedagogy is one that is best developed in the context of the “workplace.” A liberal arts education, when combined with an empowering apprenticeship, unlocks the potential for a teacher to enter the classroom with passion, commitment and a sense of possibility for the community he serves.
— Linda Mikels, principal of Sixth Street Prep School, a charter elementary school in Victorville, Calif.
Partisan paranoia and fearmongering have hit destructive new lows with the protests about President Obama’s back-to-school speech to students next week on the importance of education. Talk radio hosts and some GOP leaders are claiming that Obama is going to try to brainwash kids into becoming socialists. Some angry parents are threatening to keep their children home if schools broadcast the speech.
But other presidents, including George H.W. Bush, have given similar speeches to students. And the White House has made very clear that the speech isn’t about policies or politics but about encouraging kids to stay in school and to work hard — which should be bipartisan goals. Whether or not you like Obama or agree with his proposals, any rational person should realize that Obama is uniquely able to inspire young people, particularly minorities, to set high academic goals.
Former University of Kansas Chancellor Robert Hemenway will earn $340,352 per year during the next two academic years, the Lawrence Journal-World reported. Hemenway, who will teach one course each semester, also will receive reimbursement for moving costs, a graduate research assistant to support his book project, and four season tickets to KU athletic events. Most of his salary would be paid by the KU Endowment Association, rather than with public funds. Lynn Bretz, a KU spokeswoman, said that Hemenway, who ably led KU from 1995 until last June, has “earned every penny” of the compensation package.
Newly requiring underage students to take an interactive online course about the risks and effects of alcohol won’t wipe out binge drinking at the University of Kansas. But after two alcohol-related fatalities last spring, KU needed to do something. And more education and awareness can’t hurt. KU also has made changes to encourage students to get help with alcohol-related emergencies and to notify parents when their students violate drug and alcohol policies. The father of one of the KU students put it bluntly in the Denver Post: “One week of fraternity living killed him. He overdrank. Kids have got to understand alcohol is the worst.”
“These are secular schools that will bring a new generation of kids that will have a broader view of the world,” Greg Mortenson, author of the best-seller “Three Cups of Tea,” told columnist Thomas Friedman about the schools for girls that he has built in Pakistan and Afghanistan villages. Friedman and Adm. Mike Mullen, the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently attended the opening of Mortenson’s newest school in a remote Afghan village. Mortenson said religious extremism flourishes in areas of isolation and conflict where there is little education. That’s why, Friedman wrote, “since 2007, the Taliban and its allies have bombed, burned or shut down more than 640 schools in Afghanistan and 350 schools in Pakistan, of which about 80 percent are schools for girls.”
It’s good to see the Kansas Board of Regents and the Kansas State Department of Education working together to share and compare data in a way that tracks Kansas student achievement long term and measures the effectiveness of education programs. Gov. Mark Parkinson furthered the collaboration with a June executive order “supporting a seamless education system.” As Parkinson later put it: “What we want to know is — are we preparing our kids for college? The best way to find that out is to look at the big picture, and compare students’ success in college to their success in public schools.”
Kansas Board of Regents president Reggie Robinson promised this week to make public the results of pending audits of five state universities. It took the intervention of Attorney General Steve Six last month to ensure that Kansans, and not just the regents, learned the troubling contents of an audit of Kansas State University. Audits of the University of Kansas and Pittsburg State University are expected to be completed this fall. The three others will come later. A subcommittee appointed by the regents also is exploring the idea of systematic audits of the universities, as Gov. Mark Parkinson has urged. State Sen. John Vratil, R-Leawood, expressed a worthy concern this week: that the audits under way not be whitewashed in anticipation of their public release. Because the universities are public institutions, the public deserves an unvarnished account of their finances and management.
Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal, R-Hutchinson, isn’t losing sleep about the state’s recent cuts to public school funding. Between the finance formula and federal stimulus funds, he told the Hutchinson News, “there are some school districts that actually will get more money this year than last year.” Another court challenge by school districts, he said, “would be very poor timing on their part. In terms of agencies that consume taxpayer dollars, they were dealt with in a better and more benign fashion than virtually anyone else. We are in a recession and everyone has to do their share.”
O’Neal also said: “We’re not failing our kids. If you go out and see what our schools are able to do, you’ll see that we’re doing a bang-up job. Does that mean that schools are going to be able to afford all the new bells and whistles or expand their curriculum? No. They’ll have to tighten their belts, but we’re not depriving the kids with these cuts of what is required under law for education. We’re actually doing pretty darn well.”
President Obama may steal another top-notch administrator from Kansas, darn him. This time it’s Kansas Education Commissioner Alexa Posny, whom Obama nominated for assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services. Posny has been a steady, capable leader at the Kansas Department of Education since 2007. “I’ve never known anyone more knowledgeable” on education issues, former State Board of Education member Carol Rupe told The Eagle editorial board. Rupe jokingly lamented, “The president can take our governor but not our education commissioner.”
Why is tuition going up from 3.9 to 8.5 percent at Kansas regents universities while Oklahoma froze tuition increases at its state schools? “The short answer is that the Oklahoma legislature treated its higher education system better than the Kansas Legislature treated its system,” the Lawrence Journal-World reported. It noted that, counting federal stimulus dollars, the Oklahoma higher education system experienced a 3 percent funding increase, while the Kansas system was cut 3 percent during the Legislative session — and then Gov. Mark Parkinson announced another 2 percent allotment cut last week. In addition, Kansas regents universities were told to direct two-thirds of the stimulus funds for deferred maintenance projects, the Journal-World reported, while Oklahoma has more flexibility in using the federal funds.
In 1989, a first-class stamp cost 25 cents and a semester of in-state tuition at the University of Kansas was $578. If the cost of the former had risen as fast as the cost of the latter, notes Topeka Capital-Journal columnist Ric Anderson, the stamp would go for $1.32 today rather than 44 cents. (An incoming KU freshman will pay $3,645 per semester this fall, as of tuition increases approved last week.)
Faced with a deep state spending cut, the Kansas Board of Regents and the state’s universities had to find more money somewhere for the fall. Unfortunately, the natural place to look was to students and their families, in the form of newly approved tuition increases ranging from 3.9 to 8.5 percent. Wichita State University is to be credited for trying to use stimulus money to offset the pain with automatic scholarships for in-state students. Still, there’s no telling how many wannabe students will be deterred by any tuition increase — and there have been many this decade. Put “more affordable tuition” on the lengthening list of things the state needs to work on once the economy improves.
The Kansas Board of Regents had help in deciding to do the right thing and release the results of its audit of questionable financial transactions at Kansas State University. The release came after the Manhattan Mercury filed an open-records complaint with Attorney General Steve Six (in photo), whose office decided the audit should be public. “Shedding light on the transactions outlined in the audit helps to inform the public about the practices employed by the athletic department and will help Kansas State improve in the future,” Six’s spokeswoman, Ashley Anstaett, told the Kansas City Star. It shouldn’t take another open-records complaint to convince the regents to release the similar audits of the University of Kansas and Pittsburg State University under way.
Undocumented payments. A questionable $500,000 loan. A bank account unreviewed by the university controller that was used to make more than $1 million in payments a year. These and other revelations in the Kansas Board of Regents’ audit of Kansas State University suggest, at best, that oversight of KSU’s athletic department needed to be tighter in recent years. As our editorial today concludes: “Winning sports teams are important to the state universities, boosting fundraising and recruitment as well as school spirit. But if an athletic department behaves unethically or worse, the taint spreads across and beyond campus, and starts to erode public trust in what is a public institution.”
