Are Utah Students Prepared for College?

December 12, 2011

Before my daughter could read, she entered a competition and was awarded a blue “Participant” ribbon. She proudly showed it to me and said, “Look! I won!” It didn’t hurt anything to smile and say, “Yes! You did!”

But, in some things, it is harmful to confuse participation with victory. And, even worse, if we believe that our weaknesses are, instead, strengths, we will never work to eliminate those weaknesses, and they will persist.

I recently pointed out that the college readiness of Utah students is ugly. In other words, I didn’t hand out a blue Participant ribbon. My bad. Maybe I should have said that our college preparation levels are big-boned or have sweet spirits, because my candid (and accurate) assessment has caused that great guardian of the status quo – offense – to raise its wounded head.

Well, facts are facts. If we don’t examine them, we won’t improve. If we examine them, but merely take offense that we aren’t being handed a blue “Participant” ribbon, we won’t improve. In the case of education, if we ignore facts or if we take offense at facts, our failure to improve will have significant consequences for our students. So, I suggest we buck up, examine the data, determine whether we need to improve, and, if so, buck up again, and, then, chart a course for improvement.

Why does it matter? A student’s success in college correlates directly with that student’s preparation for college. In Utah, we see that a student with an ACT composite score of 16 has a mere 16% likelihood of graduating from college. But, a score of 32 suggests a whopping 95% likelihood of graduating. ACT scores between those low and high numbers produce a steady, upwardly trending line of likely college graduation. (See this Nov. 2011 Audit).

ACT data shows that only 27% of Utah high school students who take the test are college ready. As a result of this lack of preparation, very few of our incoming freshmen qualify to take required degree-oriented math courses. In other words, Utah students are so poorly prepared for college math that the Utah System of Higher Education (“USHE”) has embedded into the curriculum a credit bearing developmental class (Math 1010). Math 1010 counts only as an elective credit, not as an actual math credit toward any degree. Thus, even the students who avoid the 900-level remedial math courses, still mostly end up taking the developmental 1010 class and, then, also, the math class(es) their degree requires. Because they did not acquire basic math skills in high school, they must waste time in a 1010 class that could be spent taking a course that actually meets a degree requirement for math or taking another elective to explore an area of possible interest.

Anyone can take offense at anything. But these facts simply are facts. And, if left uncorrected – because people use the offense card to stifle critical conversations – these facts will inevitably lead to the continued failure of Utah students to complete college. Because I think that outcome is horrible for our students, I’m going to have the conversation.

And what does this conversation say about high school teachers and incoming freshmen? It simply says that they are trapped in a system that is not making sense. It is the status quo that should be criticized and changed, not the players. So, please note, I do not criticize the players. Instead, I criticize the status quo of an impersonalized curriculum. We teach the herd decimals. After a few weeks, we hand every member of the herd a decimals “Participant” ribbon. We then teach the herd fractions. After a few weeks, we hand every member of the herd a fractions “Participant” ribbon. We then teach . . .. But, wait. What if a student didn’t actually master decimals? Well, too bad. The herd has moved on to fractions.

My dastardly – and maybe offensive – plan is to assess what each student knows toward the end of high school and, then, tailor instruction to address that student’s specific deficiencies. Crazy, huh?

The vast majority of our public education teachers are hard working and wonderful. Their dedication inspires me! Combined, my kids have now had about 60 teachers in the Washington County School District. Excepting probably 3, I could not be more pleased with those teachers. 57 out of 60 – those are Hall of Fame numbers! I am forever grateful for the work they have done with my children. But, those great teachers work in a system that is not allowing them to properly prepare our students for college – simply because it does not allow for proper assessment and individually-tailored instruction for each student (as detailed here), not because of a lack of skill, effort, or dedication by the teachers. So, I’m not quite sure why a teacher would take offense at a call to assess/individualize instruction – unless the teacher is guarding the status quo of impersonalized curriculum.

Likewise, our students are far from dumb. In fact, I happen to think that the vast majority are brilliant, with unlimited capabilities. Their possibilities are tremendous! But, they are being set up for failure by a system that is not properly assessing them and providing individually-tailored instruction based on that assessment. So, again, I’m not quite sure why a student would take offense at a call to assess/individualize instruction – unless the student is guarding the status quo of impersonalized curriculum.

If my wording isn’t quite right, I apologize. But, I don’t think my vision is wrong. If we are going to improve Utah’s college completion rate, our incoming students must be much better prepared for college. This can be accomplished with proper assessment and individually-tailored instruction. The tools exist to do this affordably.

6 Comments

What Education Innovation Looks Like

December 9, 2011

Schmoop!

I can tell you about the future of education, or you can just look for yourself. Peck around on the Shmoop website, and ask yourself how much it would cost to deliver this awesomeness to Utah students.

Currently, Shmoop’s website is pointed toward AP and college placement testing, but don’t let that limit your vision. They are in the student-learning business. And, they are one of the innovators that is changing the rules and improving outcomes. In an engaging way, and in a stinking affordable way, they help students learn. They are finding their way into libraries and schools, and they are changing the dynamic.

I just had a fabulous meeting with Shmoop founder Ellen Siminoff, and I couldn’t be more excited!

I am recommending that the Utah System of Higher Education put together a product (1) to inform high school students (and their parents) whether they are college ready and (2) to remediate the specific deficiencies of students who are not ready. For too long, USHE has been accepting grossly unprepared students and, as a result, USHE has been taking lots of money from those students and lots of money from taxpayers but actually graduating few of those students. (Undisputable fact: a majority of unprepared students who enter college will not graduate college – no matter what the colleges do with those students. Once they start college, time and money are working against them. The delay of remediation stacks the deck against too many of the unprepared students.). Shmoop shows what remediation tools look like. Other businesses also show what the tools look like. The tools do exist.

So, did you hazard a guess how much this awesomeness costs? Answer: when it comes through a school, it costs a couple of bucks a year per student – as in $2/course. Or for all of Shmoop’s offerings, they get greedy and want $5.

Shmoop helps show that affordable answers exist to our most vexing problems in education – if we will brave enough to ask the right questions. We have educational opportunities today that mankind has never enjoyed, not even as recently as 4 or 5 years ago. The only thing in the way of racing forward is the incredible weight of the status quo.

1 Comment

My Plan to Double Utah’s Graduation Rate by 2020

December 3, 2011

I will introduce legislation to double Utah’s college completion rate over the next 8 years. Currently, our state system graduates about 40% of its students. By comparison, BYU graduates its students at twice that rate. With slight changes to existing programs, the institutions in the Utah System of Higher Education (“USHE”) can graduate 80% of their students by 2020. This legislation will fit well with Governor Herbert’s existing goal of having 66% of our population obtain a post-secondary degree, since that would be a mathematical impossibility with our current completion rate.

The reason for Utah’s low completion rate is poor college preparation. Students requiring developmental courses likely will not graduate college. Yet, the vast majority of students entering the USHE system do require developmental courses. Thus, it is to be expected that most will not complete.

Students who require developmental courses in college have less than a 25% likelihood of completing – no matter where they go to college. Some might want to dispute this statistic, by pointing to their own experience. They went to college unprepared, but managed to complete. The key is to understand that those individuals do not disprove the well-established rule. Rather, those individuals simply are part of the 25% of unprepared students who manage to complete. For every one of those individuals, there are three others who went to college unprepared and did not complete.

To increase college completion rates – and to reach Governor Herbert’s lofty 2020 goals – our task must be to increase the readiness level of students entering the USHE system. Do that, and completion rates will follow.

The good news is that Utah is tremendously well-positioned to accomplish this task. We have significant experience actually doing it. As I described in this post, we already know how to effectively remediate struggling students. We first determine their academic weaknesses. Then, we address those items with an adaptive learning program that constantly assesses mastery while teaching, so that students either master the task at hand and move on to the next task or, if they don’t master it, circle back and readdress the task. This kind of individualized assessment and instruction is a must for real progress. And, remember, this kind of remediation happens every day on our college campuses.

But that speaks to the root of our problem. We remediate our students too late. Once students hit college, they have a clock working against them. As Stan Jones from Complete College America points out, the longer it takes a college student to get through college, the less likely it is for that student to complete. Remediation works against the clock, and it adds significant expense to the cost of college. Thus, we are remediating our students after they have reached a point when their deficiencies likely will preclude them from graduating. Therefore, my plan is to have USHE work with our K-12 system, to package USHE’s remedial expertise for use by K-12 students and, to the desire they want to use it, Utah’s school districts and charter schools.

Under our current system, not suggesting fault by anyone, it is a nearly impossible for our hard-working K-12 instructors to individualize their instruction, without these adaptive instructional tools. Without these tools, we simply cram too many students in a classroom – with too wide a range of abilities – to expect individualized instruction. We teach the herd. Some students are bored, and others are lost. But, with these tools, all students can receive instruction appropriate to their level of understanding.

The assessment tool would be available online, free to students and their families. (Unlike the ACT/SAT testing, students could retake this test as many times as they want, each time learning the specific things they need to work on). On a strictly voluntary basis, students could take the test and, on their own, work to complete the individualized instruction. However, the experience of our colleges suggests that the remedial education works far better with accompanying classroom instruction. Thus, Utah high schools should offer the remedial courses as part of their curriculum. However, some school districts might not want to deliver the courses or might want to address college readiness in other ways. Thus, the decision whether to offer the courses as part of the high school curriculum would best be left to the discretion of each school district and charter school. Where public schools decide not to offer the courses as part of the curriculum, it can be expected that private providers would step up and offer the classroom component of the course for families that are able and willing to pay for the extra advantage.

USHE institutions spend tremendous sums of money dealing with the effects of unprepared students. Were an effective program to eliminate many of those remediation costs, USHE institutions would benefit from the savings. Thus, it can be expected that each institution would provide financial incentives to encourage incoming students to utilize the assessment and, if necessary, the remedial tools, before enrolling at the institution.

Development of an effective remediation program for high school students, while still in high school, will significantly boost college readiness and, as a result, college completion rates. But, the goal, of course, is not to remediate high school students, but, instead, to have them acquire core competencies as they progress through the K-12 system. We also can do that, and we are working to do that. I have tremendous faith in the leadership being provided by Superintendent Shumway and our State Board. But, it will take more time and money to address the systemic issues than it will take to develop the USHE remediation program. Thus, if handled properly, the USHE remediation program that I outline here will provide a bridge, with one-time money, to allow public education to move forward with the college/career readiness program that it currently is developing.

My plan is to start with a USHE remedial math program, because this is our area of greatest need. I will seek a one-time appropriation of $5 million, which I believe is a realistic sum, based on USHE’s experience developing concurrent enrollment classes. In developing these assessment and instruction tools, Utah will benefit from the significant baseline resources USHE currently has – specifically, the experience of our USHE institutions in providing remedial courses – and we benefit from USHE’s experience in delivering concurrent enrollment courses to Utah high school students.

As soon as we have learned valuable lessons from our remedial math courses, we will utilize those lessons to improve our USHE math remediation program and to add a remedial English course.

We can do this. And, by doing this, we will significantly improve our State and the lives of thousands of our citizens. Governor Herbert called a moonshot. This is his rocket.

8 Comments

To Significantly Improve Education in Utah

December 1, 2011

Man! Did Rep. Ipson and I see something amazing today!

We visited Southwest High School – the Washington County adult education high school. Anyone 16-years old or older can attend, as long as they are not enrolled in a traditional school. About 1% of the student body is there because they want to accelerate their graduation. The other 99%? I’m glad you asked.

Southwest gets some self-referrals, it gets students who have been kicked out of traditional schools, and it gets students from the abused women’s shelter, Vocational Rehabilitation, homeless shelters, “lost children” from polygamist communities, Juvenile Justice Services, Drug Court, Adult Probation & Parole, and Purgatory. That last place is the name of the local prison, but it also could serve as an apt metaphor for the educational status of many of the students. Though most students have completed 10th or 11th grade, they have the academic functioning level of 8th grade.

Let’s skip to the chase. What are the results? Last year, the 462 enrollees achieved 496 grade-level gains, and 313 graduation diplomas were issued. And – to make those numbers truly jaw dropping – those gains and diplomas were outcome based, meaning that they represent mastery of assessed competencies, not mere endurance of enough seat time. These numbers are off-the-chart amazing!

Let me give you a bit of perspective. By way of comparison, consider the students from Utah’s traditional high schools who go on to college. On average, this group enjoys tremendous learning advantages over Southwest H.S. students. We should expect much higher academic outcomes from the college-bound group. But, we get worse results. Tragically, only 27% of the more-advantaged group manages to graduate high school actually ready for college, meaning that, unlike the Southwest H.S. students, these students did not progress a grade level per year.

Let’s drive the point home a bit more. Let’s isolate just the Southwest High School students who are locked up at Purgatory. They, too, significantly outperform our more-advantaged Utah students. Last year, the 114 inmate students achieved 94 level gains. This is an 82% grade level achievement rate for prisoners, compared to the 27% grade level achievement rate for our traditional college-bound students. How can that be?

Unlike the Southwest H.S. students, the progress and promotion of the more-advantaged group has been based on sitting in a chair for an amount of time, not on assessed competency. It never mattered whether the more-advantaged group actually learned anything; so, they didn’t learn much.

These results speak to a lack of educational seriousness in Utah. How about we change that?

A quiz for anyone who remotely follows public education discussions in Utah: what will be the response to my call to improve educational outcomes? C’mon, this one is easy. The response will be that more money is needed. It’s Pavlovian – talk about results, salivate money.

Well, let’s look at the financing for Southwest High School. To achieve these results, the public dialogue has trained us to assume that we must throw a mountain of cash at Southwest’s challenging students, right? Wrong. Southwest achieves its superior results with 1/10th the money spent on the more-advantaged traditional students.

Did you catch that? Superior results, for a much more challenging student population, with 1/10th the money.

We focus on many things in our traditional schools. Unfortunately, educational competencies are not one of them. At Southwest, students are individually assessed. It first is determined what an individual student knows. Then, it is determined what an individual student needs to learn. Lastly, the student is taught those things and actually learns them. But, surely, this costs a fortune? Well, okay, but only if 1/10th of what we spend on traditional students counts as a fortune.

The assessment and the instruction are delivered online (A+nyWhere Learning System). Students go to the physical high school, when they can work it into their schedule. Teachers are in the high school’s 3 classrooms, to help when a student needs a live, flesh-and-blood helper. And it works. For 1/10th the cost, students gain actual, assessed competencies. Lives are changed. How cool is that?

14 Comments

Higher Education Success for Latinos

November 15, 2011

At each of my visits last week to WSU, USU and the U of U, students or faculty brought up the need for a success strategy for Latinos. Latinos lag behind other ethnic groups in terms of higher education attainment. That is an issue – a compounding issue, given that the U.S. population increases by four people each minute and that two of the four are Latino.

I believe the first three points of my white paper – improving college readiness, cost, and flexibility – form the foundation of a success strategy. This morning I read a good article on Latino higher education success published by the National Conference of State Legislatures that seems to agree. Some highlights:

Raymund Paredes, Texas Higher Education Commissioner, stresses that “access without preparation is not opportunity. If you’re not well-prepared, your chances of succeeding in college are very, very low.”

UTEP President Diana Natalicio says that “you must do the following: raise aspirations, prepare students for academic success in college; make sure education is affordable; allow students to participate on their own terms – such as on weekends, evenings and online; and ensure everyone can participate, regardless of family and work obligations.”

Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro says that “developmental or remedial education is ‘the graveyard of higher education, where many dreams die.’”

Thoughts?

5 Comments

Online Mtgs re the Future of Higher Education in Utah

November 9, 2011

I am holding meetings to discuss the future of higher education in Utah. Here is a link to sign up for the online meeting to be held Thursday, 11/10, at 10 a.m.:

http://worldfunction.com/event-registration/?regevent_action=register&event_id=5

We are discussing ideas to improve higher education in Utah. I’ve posted my ideas here. Join the discussion!

Leave a comment

Senator Stephenson: Instigator of Occupy Protests?

November 5, 2011

Edward C. Pease and D. Whitney Smith,

In your Deseret News op-ed of 10/25/11, you purport to challenge Senator Howard Stephenson’s “degrees to nowhere” argument. That could have been a meaningful contribution to on-going discussions regarding the cost, role, and performance of higher education. But, you didn’t do that. Instead, you created a straw man and, then, you attacked it.

A reader of your piece likely would think that liberal arts are under attack in Utah. As one who feels enormous gratitude for his liberal arts education, your op-ed inspires me to join you at the barricades to defend the institution. But, applying the critical thinking skills you trumpet, I realize that there is no such attack. Rather, you saw a 3-word Rorschach, and you unthinkingly sounded the alarm.

Though less dramatic, a better approach would be to address the substance behind Senator Stephenson’s “degrees to nowhere” statement. To wit: many Utah graduates with liberal arts degrees cannot find work; yet, many jobs that require STEM degrees are going unfilled; thus, we should encourage more students to get STEM degrees. That is the supposed “attack” that sent you to the barricades.

Howard is concerned that so many of our graduates are out of work. Howard speaks to enough students to realize that future employment is one of the primary reasons they go to college. Howard understands that graduates are concerned about satisfying the obligations of their college-related indebtedness and recouping the financial investment they made in college. I get that you are focused on other important aspects of the college experience. But, you don’t totally discount the validity of Howard’s concerns, do you?

Though it is difficult for me to decipher the messages coming from the “occupy” protests, a common theme seems to relate to college degrees that don’t lead to jobs. If that is the case, don’t your critical thinking skills suggest it odd for you to deny the relevance of a point that is a stated basis for actual riots in the streets? It seems that you might be rushing to barricades already manned by folks who don’t completely agree with your perspective.

If Howard wants to discuss how we might better prepare our students for the world, you two should consider joining that discussion, instead of retorting the whisperings of your imagination. The real evils of poor college preparation, rapidly escalating college costs, low completion rates, and indebted-but-unemployed graduates give us plenty to battle, without wasting our time and energy on fictional battles. Honor the best traditions of the academy and the liberal arts, and engage in dialogue — even on topics that disturb you — rather than attempt to shut down difficult discussions through the subterfuge of a straw man.

If you think I have missed the mark and care to correct me, I would welcome the exchange, and I will publish your response on my blog. Thank you for your obvious concern for the students of this state.

Leave a comment

Reducing the Cost of College

November 3, 2011

We are having wonderful discussions about improving higher education in Utah. I’ve tried to give some focus to the discussions by preparing a white paper. A meeting schedule for future discussions can be found here.

Based on these discussions, I’d like to suggest modifications to one aspect of the plan – reducing the cost of college.

College costs too much. The high cost prevents students from going to college. The high cost prevents students from completing college. Like a metastasizing cancer, our own system is working against itself, by producing cost increases that deny access and prevent completion. No one should want to sustain a model that yields such runaway costs. Fortunately, solutions exist. We can reduce costs, and we can improve quality.

A year of college at a Utah pubic institution costs about $10,000 – roughly half of that paid by tuition and half paid by the taxpayers. By way of contrast, a private provider, StraighterLine, can provide a year of college instruction for $1,000. Is the education provided at our public institutions better than that provided by StraighterLine? I’ll say that it probably is. Is it 10 times better? I grow less sure.

We all drink from wells that others have dug. The citizens of this state have inherited a system that began in the living room of my childrens’ great-great-(etc)-grandfather. That system has been tended and improved by the wise and patient labor of several generations. It is not our place to rip up that system from the roots. Rather, it is our job to use available tools to do what we can to improve our system. And, fortunately, the tools at hand are incredible.

Technology is not a silver bullet. And it brings its own costs and challenges. But, technology brings us potent tools to drive down costs and drive up quality. One popular and wonderful example that many people are discussing in education is KhanAcademy. (Check it out, to see its wonderful story). Another great example is Utah’s Imagine Learning, which is using technology to rapidly bring second-language learners to grade level in reading. Both examples relate to K-12 education, but I use them because they are approachable (and so dang cool).

Regarding technology in higher education, I’ll limit my examples to our own system of higher education – because Utah is not a stranger to technological innovations in higher education. Quite to the contrary, we’ve always been at the forefront. So, to let you in on my little secret, after these “reforms” work so well, I’m happy to hog ALL the credit. The truth, though, is that we’re already doing these things, and we’re doing them quite well; we’re just not adequately coordinating our efforts among our institutions.

I want students at one Utah institution to be able to take courses at other Utah institutions through video conferencing. The institutions should collaborate on development and delivery of the courses. Students should not be forced to enroll (or go through any type of paperwork hassle) at the other institution. The institutions should develop a cost sharing arrangement. Impossible? Nope. It already exists.

The University of Utah (and Chuck White) has been very good to Dixie State College. The U has developed some courses and provided some openings, so that DSC students can attend those U of U classes and interact with the professors and other students. The U and DSC have worked out a cost-sharing arrangement for those courses. Likewise, UVU and SLCC have worked out similar arrangements for a few courses. Let’s multiply these efforts. Yes, it costs money to develop classes that can be delivered excellently online. So, let’s cut those development costs. Each institution doesn’t need to develop its own courses for every subject. Let’s collaborate, and build lower-level general education courses that can be used at each institution. Do it at the system level, so we’re not paying licensing fees. Speaking of which, . . .

. . . concurrent enrollment is financially unfair to Utah colleges. When Gov. Huntsman vetoed Sen. Dayton’s bill that would have allowed colleges to charge up to $30/credit hour for concurrent enrollment, no viable funding stream was left for concurrent enrollment courses. Utah colleges have eaten the bulk of the costs for concurrent enrollment, but they can’t keep doing that. So, our system of higher education is innovating. Currently, they are working together to develop 6 general education courses that will be appropriate for concurrent enrollment of high schoolers. Our excellent colleges will develop these courses so that delivery costs will decrease, AND they will develop them so that quality does not suffer. Yes, more please. Let’s do this for many more general education courses. (I will convene a meeting in December to determine whether Legislative action is needed to encourage such cooperation). And, fyi, if open textbooks aren’t being contemplated for these courses, somebody should call me right away to start explaining. If we really care about the costs our students are paying, we’ve got to stop marching them over the bookstore to have a limb severed.

So, in a nutshell, that’s how we reduce the cost of college in Utah. One, we pool resources to develop quality general education courses for the system that can be delivered affordably, like we currently are doing for the 6 concurrent enrollment classes. Two, we use open textbooks for those general education courses, to save our students hundreds of dollars each semester. Three, we share professors/courses across campuses, like the U of U and DSC and like UVU and SLC currently are doing.

If you don’t like these ideas, propose some of your own. Because sticking with the current model is a pretty bad idea when it comes to cost.

6 Comments

  • Twitter