Should We Trust the Numbers? Good Question.

Iowa State is holding a symposium on Sept. 11 titled: Should We Trust the Numbers? A Workshop on Philosophy, Mathematics and Statistics in the Court of Law. What a just flat out awesome idea for a symposium. While the program is a bit philosophical for my tastes, the question nevertheless is extremely important and one that scholars across the country are wrestling with as more and more legal scholars are also being trained as researchers (ex: myself, Scott B., Neal, Scott M., Jon Becker, and that's just the tip of the educational iceberg that my readers are likely to know). What impact that mixing of traditional research with legal decision-making is likely to have is anyone's guess, but certainly one could argue that a very large percentage of the most important cases related to education in the last-half century have used research data to support the legal arguments (Brown v. Board, all the ed. finance cases, etc.). So, all of you Midwesterners that can make it to Ames, should attend and let's hope we see more of these types of formal discussions in the future.

More on Bearing the Costs of Education

Following up on my post yesterday on educational cost inflation, NPR today has information from a Sallie Mae/Gallup study (via The Atlantic) on how students are paying for college (there are lot of other very informative charts in the study and it is worth checking out): 

Sallie Mae/Gallup via The AtlanticThere are a couple of interesting points. First, in families that borrow, they borrow over $10,000 a year. That's a lot of borrowing when one considers the cost over the 2, 4, 6, or 8 years of college. Another interesting point is that the amount of scholarships and grants for the two groups are almost equal. One would think that the grants and scholarships would be more for the borrowing families. 

But, overall, the most surprising numbers are the top numbers of $17,143 and $22,821 spent on higher education in academic year 08-09. That's just flat a lot of bones to be dropping each year on education. Again considered over the 4 year span, the total cost of a four year higher education is now approaching the cost of a home. If you are a family that is attempting the bear this cost right now ... the crisis isn't coming ... its already here. 

Education Costs in Perspective

Niraj Chokshi: The AtlanticThere's a scary chart. The inflation in the price of education has consistently outpaced inflation in the medical world and, of course, inflation itself.  

Now, I am sure the numbers can be argued (although they are from the Department of Labor), but that's not the point. We all know the cost of a college education is rising substantially. The question is what impact will this have, and, as Niraj Chokshi asked, "Could education be our next health-care crisis?"

My answer is that we are already in a crisis, and have been for a while. Worst yet, the crisis is silent in that it doesn't wind up with someone dead in a hospital, but rather someone taking subsidized housing, or working three jobs, or ... going without health insurance. Yes, more students are going to college than ever before, but they are also taking bigger risks than ever before as the debt load on the students and their parents rise. Many Americans had trouble paying their mortgage because their son or daughter was in college, for instance. Further, our economic output is directly tied to our educational attainment, and so it is impossible to separate economic crises from educational crises. But, it is the acknowledgement among non-educators that is lacking. If changing healthcare is like grabbing the third rail for a politician, then messing with education is like standing in front of the train. No one wants to acknowledge the serious concerns facing education because no one actually wants to deal with them. But, our country's economic security depends much more heavily on controlling educational costs than it does on controlling health-care costs.  

The Rubber Room in the New Yorker

A lovely (long) article on the New York City Rubber Rooms (which I frequently get asked about) in the New Yorker worth checking out.

And, this is probably coming out pretty soon - which will keep the rubber room in the news. 

h/t Kishizuka

Defining "Civil Rights" for Curriculum Purposes

Mississippi is looking like they will make "civil rights" an essential part of the curriculum from kindergarten to 12th grade. The civil rights curriculum will be a part of the social studies course, but will be independently tested. 

This is a good idea, but "civil rights" should be defined broadly. Civil rights certainly means the struggles of the African American movement and that should be an essential part of any curriculum, but civil rights also means lots more. Bottom line, civil rights refers to the interaction of the individual with the state. And, as such, civil rights refers to individual freedoms, restrictions, agreements, arguments and how the government incorporates all of these into policy that impact the everyday reality of Americans, and/or, the good folks from Mississippi.  

In short, the proponents of civil rights education in Mississippi are really on a very close page to the proponents of civics education, like Justices O'Connor and Souter. These movements could team up to spread the idea of civics and civil rights more prominently around the country.  

California as the Prototype

If you haven't noticed, California is gearing up the wheels of education reform. The Governor has even called a special session to work on reforming some laws that conflict with the Obama Administration's demands for federal "Race to the Top" dollars. 

What I see happening here is that the Obama Administration intends to use California as a prototype for the kinds of education reforms that they want to push through in the coming years. The typical arguments that you hear from the federal government these days (merit pay, charters, transfers, tying performance data to evaluations) are the same kind of policies that are in the California reform package.

Of course, California also has the same kinds of teacher's union prevalent across most of the country, so how the fight plays out in California will be a precursor to how the flight will likely play out across the U.S. if the Obama Administration continues with their reform ideals. In fact, don't be surprised if the national unions begin devoting a lot of their time and resources to the California fight.  

So, long story short ... keep an eye on California over the next few months because how the national debate will play out will probably reflect the California prototype. 

Some Catching Up: Rose Event Details & New Website

I want to do a little catching up today. I had an extremely busy, but productive, summer. But, lately that has left little time for blogging as I have been traveling around the state and my college coordinating projects. And, I want to make some of those public:

First, I am coordinating an event in conjunction with the Education Law Association in Louisville, Kentucky on October 21 in the evening. The event is tentatively called "Rose at 20: The Past and Future of School Finance Litigation" and will be held in the Brown Hotel's Gallery Ballroom in Louisville. More details will follow, but I'll leak a little secret on the blog that a very high ranking Kentucky official is planning to be in attendance and speak at the event. We also have a lot of other dignitaries on board as well as several experts on school finance both in Kentucky and around the nation (Kern Alexander, Craig Wood, William Thro, Bill Koski, to name a few). The Kentucky Law Journal is doing a special issue for the occasion. And, Scott and our new colleague Neal Hutchens (who I hope to have another announcement about coming soon) have been helping out on the event. Anyway, you'll hear lots more about it in the near future, but thanks to Richard Day for helping to publicize it already.

Second, if you have been following my twitter feed, you'll know I have been working on a new University of Kentucky, College of Education website. It is in public beta right now (and we have said to be careful about releasing it to the public for the next month - but I think I earned the privilege of announcing it here), so there are still some tweaks that need to be made. Anyway, leading that effort was a challenging and rewarding experience, but it took a ton of time this summer. The biggest website I have built to this point was the one you are looking at, so the COE site was a couple magnitudes of scale bigger. But, I do a lot of talking about technology leadership, so I thought I should do some for my own college. I am starting a new blog for our department that is going to serve as sort of news and events source, so for those followers in Kentucky, that may be worth putting in your feed. 

Otherwise, things have been consistently busy. I taught special education law for the first time this summer and it was a blast. I tried out some complicated simulations of IEP, MD and Due Process hearings and the students seemed to enjoy it (although they were probably too competitive). This semester I am back to teaching my regular education law course to a new cohort of principal candidates, so I am glad to be back to my comfort zone. I am debating whether to put my course up on iTunes, so if I do, I'll pass that along as well.

And, all of that above is sort of my excuse for not paying as much attention to this space as I normally do. But, I plan to remedy that immediately. I am going to bring on new contributors, new content, new features, new EdjuristTV episodes ... just to basically be your online source for information on law and education.      

Special Ed. Teacher Instruction in Law

The big news making rounds today is the new GAO report on teacher education as related to special education. In it, the GAO finds that most schools of education require at least one course related to students with disabilities and only 20 percent offer instruction related to ELL students. One of the elements mentioned as a component of the special education training are the federal laws. 

Well, from my experience, this training is woefully lacking in quality. Every time I have undergrads or teach grad. level courses (at multiple institutions now) the story is the same - students don't even know the basics of special education law. Simple stuff like FAPE is a new concept to them. 

So, while schools of ed. may be devoting courses to special education, those courses are not conveying even a basic level of legal knowledge. I think there are probably several reasons for this, but chief among them are that people with no legal training are teaching these courses. As such, they simply require students to read a chapter on the legal basics and leave it at that - and that legal information is not soaking in. 

Thus, this is yet another reason to support the argument for a real law course in initial teacher preparation. Special education, ELL, and other neglected categories are not neglected in real ed. law courses, even at the undergraduate level. 

The Budget Cut Curve

I loved this graphic from a story on Stateline.org on state budget deficits:

National Conference of State Legislators via Stateline.orgWhat is really interesting is their curve projections in that the curve of this recession is steeper, both higher and more narrow. Looking at 2012, from their projections, we are back at very little deficit in state governments. Projections are always suspect, but it does strike me as overly optimistic given that the revenue being generated right now is what is going to largely account for those budgets because of the taxing cycles. 

If you look at the little note in the bottom corner, the "2011 and 2012 estimates are expected to grow" language is super interesting. The story finds that many states are plugging their budget holes for this year, like Kentucky, by using a lot of Stimulus money. If legislators are seeing rosy budget projections like these from groups like Stateline and NCSL, they may have been more likely to plug in Stimulus money rather than taking the harder step of actually cutting programs on the rationale that we are looking at a quicker recovery.

h/t Eduflack

The Louisiana Fall-Out

An outstanding new colleague of mine, Dr. Wayne Lewis (who blogs here on ed. policy - love to bring on these blogging faculty members!) brought me up to speed on the political fight that is going on in Louisiana right now between the State Superintendent of Schools and, well, just about everyone else. Today we hear that Gov. Jindal is being called in to try to mediate the situation.

First, this is what happens when you put a lawyer, who has not been a teacher, in a position like this. There are lots of lawyers out there that have also been teachers, so next time try one of them.

But, the point here is not lawyers in education positions, or even that the summer heat is flaring tempers in Louisiana, but for last few years I have watched Louisiana repeatedly go out on a limb. Just search Louisiana over there in the search box and see all the wild things that Louisiana was trying. Louisiana, through various political lines, has pushed its teachers pretty far and the byproduct of that kind of rapid change is someone's head on a platter. There is blood in the water now for Paul Pastorek, and he likely won't last much longer. There is always a price to be paid for change, for better or worse.

Congrats to Dr. Bauries (and UK)

Just got word from Scott, I mean Dr. Bauries, that his dissertation has been successfully defended. He is a newly minted Ph.D. from the University of Florida Department of Educational Administration and Policy with Dr. Craig Wood as his chair - one of the nation's leading school finance experts. Please join me in congratulating Scott, as writing and defending a dissertation is a once in a lifetime experience.  

THREE. That's now the number of J.D./Ph.D.'s in education policy here at the University of Kentucky, as we also just hired Dr. Neal Hutchens, who is a top flight scholar in higher education law and policy. Unless proven otherwise, we are going to say that we are the only place on the planet that can boast such a collection of educational law scholars - and, even though I am part of this deal, I simply cannot wait to see the kinds of projects that such a collection is likely to spurn.