It’s tragic that our country — home of Silicon Valley and countless technology innovations — lags in broadband penetration and speed. The new National Broadband Plan, released today, tries to offer solutions. Importantly, the plan focuses not just on technology, but the actual uses of that technology. It includes an entire section for education-related recommendations, with a nice set of ideas to improve the E-rate program. The plan’s big three recommendations:

• Expand access to broadband with common sense reforms (E-rate)
• Improve access to high-quality, online instruction
• Unlock the power of educational data

I’m particularly fond of this component of the data recommendations:

Privacy and data protection laws for students and their families need to be modernized to reap the full benefit of improved information flow about student performance while still fully protecting student data. For example, organizations offer tutoring and supplemental services to students, but the legal status of the data they collect is unclear. Issues include whether parents and regulators have the same rights to the data as they have with school records. A relatively small change in the law to allow parents to combine data from outside sources with school data would provide a richer picture of students’ learning needs so all providers can support them effectively. There may also be cases in which fine-grained levels of privacy control are appropriate. For example, students should be able to select and share their best work with other educational institutions, the military or future employers from within their digital portfolios or other materials linked to electronic educational records.

Privacy protections are essential. But if we are serious about serving highly mobile students and want a variety of school, afterschool, and community organizations to work together in an integrated, cohesive fashion to support student learning, we have to find a way for those closest to our students–teachers, parents, tutors, youth workers, etc.–to share information, insights, and align actions.

President Johnson signs the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. (Image from Harvard Gazette)

ESEA: Is it just a series of vote-buying programs and failed top-down control of schools? (Cato@Liberty)  Or will a new version of the federal education law help drive innovation and experimentation? (Center for American Progress)

Which teacher evaluation reforms did an L.A. Unified task force recently recommend?  Will the school board sign on? (Los Angeles Times)

Can a private college go for-profit while maintaining its traditional structure (i.e., no online salesmanship)? (Inside Higher Ed)

Should teachers unions be eligible to run charter schools? (Eduwonk)

Michael Lewis’ latest book “The Big Short” was released on Tuesday. As a Lewis fan, I was looking forward to getting the book. But not the big, heavy, expensive hardback version. I wanted to download the book to my Kindle.

But alas, no Kindle version was available. And consumers are getting testy–the book now has 37 one-star reviews, most of which are from Kindle owners who want an e-book version.

For a long time, publishers have followed the formula of releasing a more expensive, hardback version of a book before finally releasing a paperback version. Readers have accepted this as the way things are and either sucked up the cost of the hardback or patiently waited for the paperback version.

But not anymore. Amazon released pent up consumer demand for a new, electronic book option with the Kindle, including demand from people like me who didn’t even realize they wanted an e-book three months ago. So what does this have to do with education?

The Kindle illustrates how demand can be created by better, innovative products, and how it can snowball. It’s not hard to imagine a technology that changes when, how and where people learn in the same way the Kindle has changed book reading: making it cost effective, broadly available,  convenient. After that, demand could snowball to the point where students guffaw at being told they must sit in a chair for a certain number of hours to officially have learned something.

Igniting demand isn’t just limited to fancy new technology and online learning. You can also see it in neighborhoods were new brick and mortar school options start opening–parents and students who didn’t realize there could be something better suddenly see something better–and then they start to demand it.

Diane Ravitch’s new book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, has been getting a lot of attention lately. This morning, she and I debate the book over at The New Republic. Preview: I don’t like it very much. See earlier entries in the discussion from Ben Wildavsky and Richard Rothstein here.

Private student lending has gotten more creative and tech savvy.  Will this online market benefit students, investors, or both? (Bucks)

Why is Andy Smarick oh-so-torn over the Obama Administration’s ESEA/NCLB reauthorization blueprint? (Flypaper)

Can health care reform and student loan reform pass simultaneously?  What are the political risks? (Politics Daily)

Shrinking rubber rooms in NYC? (Gotham Schools)

Last week, we received a classroom “view” from Sarah Garb, a second grade teacher from Two Rivers Public Charter School here in D.C.  We’re thrilled to revive our “View From Your Classroom” series with Sarah’s view. Sarah wrote a whole post about her classroom view (excerpt below) on her blog “Dead Class Poets.” (Sarah’s blog is great and well worth checking out, btw).

A while ago I came across a website where teachers could send in a snapshot of the views from their classrooms. Many of the views feature trees, playgrounds, grass, and parking lots. I’d actually kill for a view of a staff parking lot, but alas, we have no such thing at which to look through a window or otherwise, and I park in a much-coveted alley that gets filled up very quickly. We are on the second floor and overlook busy Florida Avenue, a Chinese food restaurant, a warehouse, and a corner lot covered with stones where the gas station used to be. Talk about not getting much done in class–they removed the underground fuel holding tanks one year and productivity in the third grade took a dramatic downturn for a solid week….

We’re still collecting classroom views, so send yours in! Our flickr pool is also filling up and we’ll feature a few “repeat customers” in the coming weeks.

The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators has a great post up this morning highlighting the status and predicted content of the joint health care/student loan bill that is now working its way through Congress. It also has this really helpful chart to plot the progress of the legislation:

NASFAA Reconciliation Tracking

While progress on the bill is good news, other reports are pretty disappointing. As promised, the bill would eliminate subsidies for the bank-based student loan program and turn to 100 percent direct lending—a move that would save $68 billion according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Of that, about $6 billion would go to covering increased administrative costs for the direct loan program and an unspecified portion will have to go to deficit reduction.

After that is where the real changes show up. While the bulk of savings will be directed to increasing Pell Grants, earlier versions of the legislation included exciting programs aimed at improving college completion, helping community colleges, ensuring quality early childhood education, and a number of other purposes. Now, it’s looking like savings will only be used for Pell Grants, providing formula funding for minority serving institutions, and some health care spending.

The potential for enacting better loan policy and increasing grants is certainly a welcome move, but I have to admit feeling somewhat disappointed at the potential loss in funds aimed at postsecondary completion and community colleges. (Others have also expressed some disappointment here and here.) It’s a shame because these two programs were in effect Pell Grant insurance—initiatives that would improve the utility of federal dollars by doing more to help recipients earn a postsecondary degree. The graduation rate among all students, including Pell recipients, is unacceptably low and this was really an opportunity to change the federal role in helping colleges and universities do something about that issue.

At times like this the saying about making lemonade out of lemons is apt. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a slightly bitter outcome.

UPDATE: In rereading this a few hours later it struck me that my original intent in the last line did not come through. From a policy standpoint, removing subsidies for student loan companies is a smart move, one that makes the entire system operate more efficiently, with less waste, and in a way that creates billions of additional dollars for students. That’s the overwhelming majority of the bill. My concerns and frustrations are more to do with the leftover parts and how they could have been put to use versus what will emerge as a result of political realities and negotiations.

Working on federal policy and keeping your wits about you requires a pretty high tolerance for cognitive dissonance and general b.s.  But I’m having a really hard time wrapping my head around this: In September 2009, the House of Representatives passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, or SAFRA. The bill was designed to save $87 billion over ten years by moving students from the more-expensive FFEL progam, in which the government subsidizes private banks to make loans, to the Direct Loan (DL) program, in which the government lends money directly. The plan was to use the $87 billion to boost Pell grants, improve community colleges, and help more low-income students earn degrees.

When the bill passed the House, it looked very likely that it would pass the Democratic-controlled Senate. Colleges can switch from the FFEL program to DL quickly, but not instantaneously. Seeing the political handwriting on the wall, and with encouragement from the U.S. Department of Education, many colleges begin to make the switch, so they’d be ready in time for the incoming class of 2010. Meanwhile, the Senate decided to slot student loan reform for after health care, partly to focus on health care, and partly because they knew they could pass student loan reform via the budget reconciliation process, which only requires a simple majority and is thus un-filibusterable.

Then health care proceeded to drag on. And on. And on. Finally, it looks the whole thing is going to come to a decision, perhaps this week.

But time has passed since the original $87 billion cost savings estimate was calculated. So they ran the numbers again, using more up-to-date data, and came up with a lower number. Why? In part, because the  number is based on the savings realized from the projected number of colleges switching from FFEL to DL, calculated from the day the estimate is made to the point at which all of the switching is done. Thus, all of the colleges that made the switch over the last year don’t count in the estimate of future savings, because the savings aren’t in the future anymore. The savings have already occurred. Confronted with the smaller number, and with the political window for student loan reform closing rapidly, Congress is reportedly working to radically scale back their efforts to improve community colleges and help more low-income students earn degrees.

That is insane. Crazy. The FFEL-DL conversion savings haven’t changed! They’ve just already happened! The total amount of money available isn’t any different than it was! I understand that there are rules and procedures in place for making and adhering to budget and revenue estimates, etc., etc. but such rules are meant to enforce rationality on the budgeting process, not throw rationality out the window.

Image from Wikipedia

Should the NCAA ban schools from March Madness for low grad rates? (US News)

Montessori schools are great at teaching children to communicate and count. But can they overcome gangs? (Independent of London)

Stanford has one of the best schools of education around, according to some rankings. But why is a charter school affiliated with the university a “persistently lowest performing school?” (The Educated Guess)

Should the next version of ESEA offer incentives to schools and colleges that effectively use virtual learning? (Education Next)

College basketball is the crown jewel of the NCAA. For three weekends in March and April, people across the country tune in to watch thrilling upsets, Cinderella stories, and big-time performances that will live in highlight reels for years to come. Unfortunately, the quality on the court is not matched by academic success off of it.

According to data released by the NCAA, the average six-year graduation rate of the 65 teams in this year’s field was just 46 percent. That’s 20 percentage points below the overall average graduation rate of the schools these teams represent. (Both figures exclude Cornell, which does not publish team-specific graduation rates.)

The fact is, 46 percent may be a good three-point shooting percentage, but academically, it’s embarrassing. Even worse, there are large gaps in the outcomes for white and black athletes. Among tournament teams, the average graduation rate for white athletes was 60 percent; for their black peers it was just 39 percent. Thirteen teams had a white graduation rate of 100 percent, only Wake Forest and Vermont posted similar figures for black athletes.

Some schools are failing their athletes regardless of race. Maryland and Houston’s first round matchup has the distinction of being the worst academic pairing in the tournament, as the two have basketball graduation rates of 9 percent and 13 percent, respectively.

Fortunately, the academic news is not all bad. Butler, for example, had a graduation rate of 89 percent—well above its overall school mark of 71 percent. Kansas, the tournament’s top overall seed, was the only team to post a perfect score of 1,000 on its academic progress rate, a measure kept by the NCAA that tracks if students are both enrolled and academically eligible.

So what would the tournament look like if we took academic characteristics into account? To help answer this question, I asked Education Sector’s Abdul Kargbo to help me put together different brackets that rank teams based upon the three major academic indicators used by the NCAA: federal graduation rates, graduation success rates, and academic progress rate. Abdul’s handiwork is presented after the jump, along with some interesting bits of information.

A Note on tiebreakers: A few games in the various brackets had opponents with identical scores. In those cases, tiebreakers were determined using a school’s overall graduation rate, which is denoted in parentheses.

Federal Graduation Rates

The only metric that also collected by the school overall, federal graduation rates reflect the percentage of first-time, full-time students that graduated from an institution within six years of enrolling. Because each team only has a few new players every season, the figures presented here are an average rate for the four classes of student-athletes that entered from 1999-2000 to the 2002-03 academic years.

Click the Image for a Larger Version

With one obvious exception, determining winners by federal graduation rates produces a somewhat believable final four of Kansas, Butler, Villanova, and Wofford. The championship game would then feature Butler vs. Wofford, with the former prevailing thanks to a graduation rate of 89 percent vs. the latter’s 83 percent mark.

Here are a few quick hits about the bracket:

• Smartest Region: The West region has far and away the best average graduation rate at 57 percent. That’s 9 percentage points ahead of the South, which is the next best.
• Worst Region: The Midwest region performed poorly, posting an average graduation rate of just 41 percent. It’s the only region without a team at 80 percent or above.
• Best Combined Graduation Rate Matchup: Tied between Kansas vs. Lehigh and Purdue vs. Siena, which have an average graduation rate of 70 percent.
• Worst Combined Graduation Rate Matchup: Maryland vs. Houston with an average graduation rate of just 11 percent.

Graduation Success Rate

The Graduation Success Rate (GSR) is calculated by the NCAA and is designed to not punish schools for having players that leave early. As a result, players who transfer, dropout, or turn professional are not counted in the school’s rate so long as they are in good academic standing when they leave. Players who transfer in are counted as part of a school’s GSR.

Click the Image for a Larger Version

Unlike federal grad rates, the GSR produces a pretty unlikely final four of Lehigh, Brigham Young, Wake Forest, and Notre Dame, which would win it all thanks to the tiebreaker. Because the GSR is a more forgiving measure than the federal figures, six schools had marks of 100 percent.

Here are a few quick hits about the bracket:

• Best Region: On average, the West region performs the best with a rate of 75 percent. But the East deserves notice too for being the only region with three teams at 100 percent.
• Worst Region: The West again comes up short, with an average rate of just 59 percent. It’s also the only region without a team with a 100 percent GSR.
• Best Combined GSR Matchup: Wofford vs. Wisconsin is the academic first-round showcase, with a combined average GSR of 89 percent.
• Worst Combined GSR Matchup: Maryland vs. Houston again comes up short with a combined GSR of just 50 and an average mark of 25 percent.

Academic Progress Rate

Another special measure created by the NCAA, the Academic Progress Rate (APR) provides the most up-to-date information about teams. Each athlete can earn up to two points for a team—one for being academically eligible to compete, the other for staying enrolled. The APR represents the total points earned by the team divided by the maximum possible points (for example, a basketball team with 13 players and no seniors would have a maximum score of 26). It is then multiplied by 1,000 to avoid decimals. Teams with an APR below 925 may face penalties and a loss of scholarships.

Click the Image for a Larger Version

Using the APR would produce a final four of Kansas, Brigham Young, Texas, and Duke. Kansas would win the championship as it is the only school with a perfect score of 1,000 in the field. Nineteen schools, meanwhile have APRs below 925.

Here are some quick hits on the bracket:

• Best Region: At 951, the South has the best average APR, though the East and West are only a few points behind at 948 each.
• Worst Region: Despite the best combined matchup, the Midwest again comes up way short, with an average APR of just 931. That’s largely thanks to sub-900 figures posted by UC Santa Barbara and New Mexico State. In fact, New Mexico State’s APR of 848 is the worst in the field.
• Best Combined APR Matchup: Kansas vs. Lehigh. One has a perfect score, the other is six points away. The average of 997 is tops in the bracket.
• Worst Combined APR Matchup: Ohio State vs. UC Santa Barbara. The Buckeyes’ APR of 911 is not enough to make up for UC Santa Barbara’s 872. The result is the only first-round game with an average APR under 900.

Clearly picking games solely based on these academic measures is likely to result in a poor showing in the office pool. But these results show that academic performance and athletic achievement are not mutually exclusive. Elite teams such as Kansas, Villanova, and (as much as it pains me to say it) Duke have shown that their student-athletes do well both in the classroom and on the hardwood. On the other hand, places like Houston, New Mexico State, and (as much as it pains me to say it) Maryland, clearly have a lot more work to do.