The Dog Days

It's that time again, "the Dog Days of Summer." I don't know where that phrase came from, but I remember it from my childhood as a way to describe the long, languishing, hot days when dogs would lie on their backs in the middle of the lawn and doze away the day. Otherwise known as August. In the capitol city we are anticipating the hiatus that will come when Congress finally succumbs to the pressure to get out of town with work either done, partly done, or undone. The city will languish and those of us still here will dress down and saunter to work. So, as we approach the lax month, where are we?


Its hard to say where we are, as most of the key legislation for education has moved forward in one body of Congress, but not in the other. For instance, the House is busy moving forward on ther reauthorization of NCLB, but the Senate has yet to act. The Senate has passed its version of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, but the House has yet to act. In the Senate version there is more money for students in the financial aid package, and there is a clarification of accrediation rules. On the latter, institutions are responsible for establishing what student success looks like in relation to their mission, and the accrediting agencies need to monitor that. Also, the institutions must be clear about their policies for transfer of credit from other institutions. The heavy hand of control has been reduced to the appropriate role of oversight. While this looks good, we need to wait to see what the House does.

The pressure, of course, is to try to get both the major pieces of education legislation, reauthorization of NCLB and HEA, passed before the end of the Congressional year. Much good work has gone into the reauthorization process, but if it is not passed and becomes law, we will have another continuing resolution, which leaves the old law in place.

The same is true for funding humanities issues. The House has passed its version with an increase for NEH and funding for Archives and Public Records. The Senate HELP committee has passed increased funding, but the full Senate has not voted, yet. Here is the full update from the National Humanities Alliance.

The good news is that both bodies are working to move legislation forward, and they feel the heat of summer's breath on their necks. With that, we hope the dog days of summer will provide the respite and lassitude to prepare us for the needed burst of energy to make the fall productive.

Campus Accountability; Or, Assessment for "Them"

When the Commission on the Future of Higher Education's report, "A Test of Leadership," called for accountability, they were suggesting the idea that institutional success ought to be easily compared to other institutions--you could then "buy" an education, kind of like buying a car. Of course I am oversimplifying, but oversimplification is what the report did as well.

Assessment has always been a central part of education, but it has most often been the formative kind of assessment that we used in the classrooms and offices to see how we were doing, where we were slipping, and figure out how we could do better. That kind of assessment, however, seldom tells others how good our stuff is. And that telling others is both what the Commission called for, and what the Department of Education is striving for.

In the meantime, the two big public institution organizations, NASULGC and AASCU, have banded together to offer a voluntary program for their institutions to use. It works like this. Using a template devised by NASULGC and AASCU, institutions will post information on the web that allows parents and students to figure out cost, program availability, graduation rates, enrollment continuance, value-added learning outcomes (through CLA, MAPP, CAAP--all national tests that measure aspects of critical and broad-based thinking), engagement levels (through the NSSE family of assessments) and other bits and pieces of information to allow prospective students and their funders to see what they will get.

This is a step for transparency. If it stops here, it will do more harm than good, as it will begin to be reductive, and we will learn how to use this data for all the wrong purposes. What we need to do is continue to find more and better methods and processes to assess student growth and learning in our courses and across our courses and institutions. We must clearly indicate what is good formative work and what is good summative work. And we must articulate very clearly when those two kinds of assessment come together to give us a more complete picture. We must interpret the data.

Here is what I mean. I do believe that data ought to drive decisions, but, too often, raw data is incomplete. I have gone from drinking caffeinated coffee to drinking non-caf tea, to non-caf coffee, and now I am happily back on the drug. All because of the reports of the effects of caffeine on my system. What we need to remember is that all assessments give us information. The next step is to take all that information from as many assessments as possible and build an interpretation that is clear, articulate, meaningful, and trusted.

Otherwise, the assessment tool will drive the system, rather than the assessment tool informing the interpretations which will drive the system. When I go to my doctor, and he says that my last blood test showed something that he isn't sure about, but he would like me to take more tests, I comply. At our next visit, he tells me that he read the results, talked to so-and-so who is a specialist in this, and their conclusion is that maybe we should think about modifying my prescriptions. I feel good that he is using multiple assessments to gather data, and that he and his colleagues are using their best professional judgement to interpret that data, and that the interpretation may be different when we have more sophisticated tests. That is good assessment.

Good assessment begins with multiple tools, provides trustworthy data, ensures consistency, and is interpreted by professionally competent and knowledgeable people.

FIPSE Earmarks

If it quacks, flies, looks like a duck . . . I suppose could be said of earmarks. In 2005, congressional earmarks for higher education out of the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) eliminated the grant competition. Since then, congressional earmarks funded by FIPSE have disappeared, but that does not mean that the whole FIPSE budget will be in the open grant program for the next year. As the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, Secretary Spellings has set aside almost half of the money budgeted for this year for FIPSE.

It is completely within the Secretary's purview to do this, but it is unusual. The original intent of the program is to promote the improvement and innovation of higher education without particular limitations. However, the Secretary has made it clear in several instances that she wants to move forward on the recommendations from the Commission of the Future of Higher Education's report, "A Test of Leadership." The two areas receiving the most attention from the Department of Education have been accountability, and you should spell that a-c-c-r-e-d-i-t-a-t-i-o-n, and K-12 to college alignment. Expect to see programs addressing transparency in accountability and high school to college alignment privileged in this round of applications. Not exactly an earmark, but still quacks a bit.

National Humanities Alliance Convention

I have mentioned in recent blogs that the National Humanities Alliance annual meeting and Humanties Advocacy Day would be held on March 26-27, 2007, the Monday and Tuesday after CCCC. While most of us were scrambling to contextualize the CCCC convention with our campus work and ongoing scholarship, the NHA meeting combined with Humanities Advocacy Day was a great success. The shift to holding the annual meeting in conjunction with the visits to congressional representatives worked very well. The discussions we had with humanities agencies, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, at the annual meeting were good priming occasions for our visits on the hill the next day. Here is the report that the Associate Director of NHA, Erin Smith, posted. And, as Erin says, come back to the NHA site later to see more about the meeting.

March Updates

For those of you getting ready to head to New York for C's, hope to see you there. Cheryl Glenn has put together an excellent program, which you can access online to customize your own schedule. As you know from my reporting, assessments and accountability are high on my list, and there are sessions addressing those issues, as well as the multiple sessions addressing all our issues across the membership of CCCC.

The National Humanities Alliance has published its March update on humanities activities. You can find it here.

And the American Council of Learned Societies has just announced that their History E-Book is going to become the Humanities E-Book. All the details can be found here.

See you in New York.

Pell Increase?

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has announced that President Bush will request a signficant increase in the Pell grants for the FY08 budget, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education's special report. The 14% increase will raise the grant to $550. As the story mentions, no one is talking about where this money will come from, but the federal budget will be released February 8. We may even know before then as more details of the budget become available over the next week.

While it is all political at this point, with one party trying to trump the other, what is obvious is that the Commission on the Future of Higher Education's Report is having an effect. Both Congress and the President have moved on the affordability issue by asking for an increase in the Pell grant. The Department of Education has been pushing for change on accountability and accreditation that the accrediting groups are taking seriously.

Where does this lead? We will have to see. After all, this is the political year of posturing before the political year of campaigning.

To Tenure or Not To Tenure

Two new reports on tenure came out in the same week--the long-awaited report from the Modern Language Association, and the AAUP's report on what kind of positions, tenured or non-tenured, are actually being filled in our institutions.

The MLA report is good. It thoroughly reviews what is happening with tenure in English studies and language programs, and its recommendations for where we need to go are good. If institutions and the academy accept and work toward the recommendations, the tenure process will be much improved.

But, as their report acknowledges, and the AAUP report confirms, it will speak to less than half the faculty. According to the AAUP report, up to 65% of faculty jobs are off the tenure line. That, to me, begs the question, "What is the value of tenure?" In a report in Inside Higher Education, reversing the full-time, part-time hiring pattern at Georgia State has had a positive impact on the faculty. This situation, while not the norm, is not unique. It also raises the question, is tenure necessary? Is it a good? I am not arguing that we should eliminate tenure. Instead, I am arguing that we must find a compelling case for tenure. Otherwise, the recommendations of the MLA report will be meaningless.

Humanities Updates

The National Humanities Alliance has posted its December update on its site. Lots of announcements. And they have now posted the registration information for the National Humanities Alliance Annual Meeting and Humanities Advocacy Day. You can download the pdf and fax or mail your registration, or you can wait for the online registration form that should be up shortly. Previously, the NHA Annual Meeting had been held in conjunction with the ACLS Annual Convention, but this year NHA decided to hold its annual meeting in conjunction with Humanities Advocacy Day. Because the Advocacy Day has become such a good gathering time for Humanities advocates, this all makes sense.

It's the Part-Time Thing

The recent Community College Survey of Student Engagement shows that part-time community college students are not as engaged in their in-class and out-of-class work as full-time students. I think most of us would have postulated that without the survey, but the survey gives evidence.

And, as reported in Inside Higher Education, a higher rate of part-time faculty results in a lower completion rate for community college students. Does anyone see a pattern here?

Students will continue to be part-time, and the percentages will grow, at both community colleges and universities. We will probably not see a reversal in the hiring patterns in higher education either. Which leaves us with the challenge: To design and shape a culture of engagement and learning in a culture that is not engaged. I am open for suggestions.

Issue One--Accreditation

The Department of Education has already begun to move forward on the recommendations of the report, "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U. S. Higher Education." Secretary Spellings' action plan listed three issues she would address; accessibility, affordability, and accountability. The first issue on her agenda is accountability, and the first item under that umbrella is accreditation. On November 29, 2006, the DOE held the "Accreditation Forum" to begin the discussion. Secretary Spellings emphasized when she charged the commission in the fall of 2005 that this would be the beginning of a dialogue, and that was reinforced both by the Forum's organizer, Vicky Schray, Senior Advisor, Office of the Undersecretary, DOE and Secretary Spellings at the Forum. Schray said that we are not here to lay blame or to come to consensus, but to spell out the issues that we should address. Spellings said that she was heartened by the response to the Forum and the work of the members, and that she wanted the higher education community to address the issues.

I must confess that I was initially ambivalent about this meeting, as I assumed accreditation would only include accreditors. But the roomful of invited participants, and Schray's opening comments, showed otherwise. She said that the Forum was convened to address the accreditation process with all the players, not just the accreditation agencies. In attendance were about 70 higher education professionals from around the country representing some of the major accrediting agencies, university/college system officers, institutional officers, policy/think-tank associations, and some of the higher education associations.

If you have not already read the Inside Higher Education and Chronicle of Higher Education stories on the Forum, they give a full picture of the meeting. I will comment on where our place is in this discussion.

Jane Wellman, a Senior Associate at The Institute for Higher Education Policy, in framing the day’s work, emphasized that the accreditation process is an evolved process, not a designed one. Peg Miller, the Director of the National Forum on College-Level Learning stated that one of the conclusions she has come to is that campus assessment cannot serve accountability. Peter Ewell said this in a different way when he said that there is a tension within the accreditation process between three roles: improvement-based peer review, quality assurance, and public information. He contended that current accreditation processes are pretty good at the first of these roles, but they diminish through the other two. Ewell’s concluding point was that maybe the assessment process is being asked to do too much, or if it is to fulfill all those roles it is woefully resource-poor to do it.

The working structure of the Forum was two sessions of discussion tables for the invited participants to address two issues: 1) student learning outcomes, and 2) institutional inputs (resources) and process standards. Not being an invited participant, I had to wait until the groups had worked through their questions and reported out. Kind of like watching student group work.

The report-out revealed that the discussions had been complex and generative. On the issue of student learning outcomes, the groups called for multiple measures, complex processes, establishment of clear outcomes, external audits, clarification between student achievement and student learning, need for common definitions and comparable data systems, clarification of expectations of learning for various degree levels, and the question of whether institutions or student learning should be the center of accountability. Like most good group work, the process prompted strong discussions.

The input or resource issue discussion, coming at the end of the day, still elicited good responses. First off, most of the groups argued with the question, saying that inputs cannot be established until outcomes are clarified. In that light, almost all of the groups said that outcomes trumps inputs. One group said that if the institution can document good outcomes, who cares what the inputs are. Another group said that institutions should be able to make the case for varying from input standards if they can achieve good outcomes. The argument, and we have heard it before, was that by establishing very strong input standards, you stifle creativity and innovation to achieve outcomes. One group did remind us that it is a balance between inputs and outcomes. You cannot have good outcomes if you do not have good inputs. The tension between inputs and outcomes is, of course, problematic. Too often we have agreed to focus on results, and the result has been an incomplete outcome clarification that shortchanges us. On the other hand, too strict an adherence to input standards increases the bureaucratic stasis too often found in our work.

Coming out of this discussion was a stronger and stronger argument for establishing outcomes, particularly in the core expectations for a degree. Writing, reading, and numeracy were specifically cited. Interestingly, no one from any of the discussion groups said we need to talk to disciplinary folks. When I said at the beginning of this report that it was a mixture of higher education professionals and stakeholders, two major groups were not at the table--faculty representing disciplines, and students.

The Forum did succeed in placing good stuff on the table. DOE will sift through all the notes, do a report, and then, in the words of Ms. Schray, "see what comes next."

So, where are we? There was a strong call for more meetings on this issue, and DOE heard that, loud and clear. The discussion raised come good issues, but a full explication of the issues and a clear articulation of progress will require that more stakeholders are at the table. If standards or outcomes are going to be articulated for reading and writing, we need to be part of that discussion.

National Humanities Alliance

The National Humanities Alliance publishes a monthly update on activities in the Humanities across agencies, institutions, and policy boards. The November update, composed before the elections, is a nice collection of news items from around the country.

AAUP Statement on Part-Time Academic Appointments

The American Association of University Professors has just approved and published its newest document on institutional practices for part-time faculty. Faculty rights and responsibilities are deeply embedded in the culture of higher education. The AAUP statement reinforces that those rights and responsibilities must be guaranteed for all faculty.

November Update

"Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul . . . I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can," says Ishmael, describing one camp of followers after a November election. The other camp celebrates with the ecstatic glee that now we will, indeed, finally have sanity in government. I awoke to the damp, drizzly gloom of a November morning and a new Congress. What does that mean for higher education? Well, here are a couple of takes.

The Chronicle of Higher Education filed their report suggesting that financial aid would increase, and we would have more scientists and engineers. Inside Higher Education agreed with more aid, but said accountability is here to stay.

And, while state measures appear to only impact that particular state, one might read all the results to see if there is a trend. Here is the Chronicle's rundown of state ballot inititatives.

Rather than Melville or Pollyana as our political seers, perhaps we ought to turn to Thoreau. "Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star," and turn our attention to building the New Academy, regardless of the weather.

Resources

In spite of, or maybe because of, congress heading back to the hills for the elections, there is a nice variety of stories from the National Humanities Alliance. The October update chronicles everything from congressional action (or lack of) to Center for the Book Literature Awards.

Speaking of books and libraries, another good resource is the American Library Association's Association of College and Research Libraries website for resources and discussion lists. If you scroll down the page, you will find many different sites that may interest you. For instance, here is the one for Literatures in English.

For those of you who have not yet found the Carnegie Foundation website, their Perspectives page provides good essays about our work. This month it is about opening up dialogue between student teachers, teacher educators, and supervising teachers to create a "sharing of wisdom" around the practice of teaching.

TYCA Guidelines Document

With the publication of the Guidelines for the Academic Preparation of English Faculty at Two-Year Colleges, TYCA stepped forward to say that faculty work in two-year colleges requires more than just preparation for research in areas of English studies. Not only must two-year college English faculty have a thorough grounding in the field of lower-divsion English studies, primarily composition and introductory level literature courses, but they must understand the culture and student population of these open-door institutions. As the academy recognizes that we need to review our graduate programs to prepare future faculty for the complex work of the professoriate, we need to remember that institutional diversity is another part of that complexity.

At the two-year college level, more promotion of our guidelines comes from the National Council on Instructional Administrators. They have included an abstract and link to our guidelines in their Instructional Leadership Abstracts for September of 2006. Our thanks to them for promoting our guidelines.

Faculty Support for Student Success

The notice that a new study on the effect of adjunct appointments on student success brings with it the news that is not a real surprise, those schools who rely more heavily on adjunct faculty appointments lag behind institutions with fewer adjunct appointments in terms of traditional models of student success.

The study will be published in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Higher Education. While the study confirms what we have suspected (known might be a better word), it also identifies what some of those factors are. It is not adjunct faculty per se, but how faculty are supported and made part of the institutional structure. It is the faculty members involvement in the institutional life--office time, committee time, advising time, and even just the time to socialize with other faculty. If it takes a village to educate a child, then we might expand that metaphor and recognize that it is the institutional community that educates our college students. In short, our students do better when they are taught by members of the community. What we need to do is figure out how to ensure that all faculty are members of the institutional community.

Grounded in Reality

I just returned from a visit to the TYCA PNW annual conference. For those who don’t know the acronym, that is the Two-Year College English Association, Pacific Northwest Regional. Continuing for those of you unfamiliar with the TYCA family, these regional conferences are vibrant demonstrations of teacher-scholars at work. It was good to break bread and share ideas with them. For those of you familiar with the TYCA family, you know it was like "old home week" for me.

Let's get this straight--I enjoy my work down here. There is something wonderfully heady and exuberant about joining the throngs of people weaving through the sidewalks to work, to come out of the metro tunnel into the sunlight at the Capitol South Metro Stop and realize I am in the center of the most politically powerful city in the world. But it isn't always real, and I know that. But it is easy to be sucked into the vortex of rumor mills, top story of the day, winners and losers on the national scene, and the playing with people to gain power.

But at TYCA PNW (and other regionals) I find myself amongst real people who are real teachers working with real people who are real students in real spaces--their home classrooms, hallways, benches on campus, email exchanges, and the other constant, human work of education. Let me give one example. I attended a session on critical inquiry in writing classes. The presenters included a seasoned faculty member (is that politically correct?) a mid-career faculty member, a relatively new faculty member, and an adjunct faculty member who balanced two community college assignments. All had the excitement of kids in the park who had found a new game that gave them a sense of life. They showed how critical inquiry could free students in a) an advanced or honors-type writing class, b) a typical first-year college composition class, and c) developmental English courses. They were honest about their work, questioning what was problematic and showing how what worked really helped their students. Different stages of their careers, and different assignments in different institutions, they were all working together. What was really impressive is that they kept coming back to, not their work, but their students' struggles and successes. And they did it with a degree of collegiality and respect between each other, regardless of their stage in their career or their institutional affiliation, that demonstrated the ideal academy.

As I left the conference and headed back east to the adult Disneyland we call Washington, I was rejuvenated--not with what I could take to the classroom I have abandoned, but with the need to ensure we have policy in place to allow these real teachers to work with real students in real environments. And for that, I thank you all out there who wake on Monday morning, excited to face the most important challenge--giving voice and therefore life to our students.

The Secretary's Plan of Action

Department of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced her plan of action for the Commission on the Future of Higher Education Report. When she created the Commission, she identified four areas of study for the Commission; accountability, access, affordability, and quality. Her plan of action addresses the first three.

HEA Rauthorization

It looks like Congress will follow the time-honored process of deciding not to decide on the Higher Education Act Re-authorization. No news is no news.

Digitized News

Over the past two years, the American Council of Learned Societies has conducted a study of the cyberinfrastructure for the humanities and social sciences. That report is now available on their website. The report is intended to clarify the definition of cyberinfrastructure as the collective of information, expertise, standards, policies, tools, and services that are shared broadly across communities of inquiry. It is not just the hardware that is available, but the totality of technology that changes the way we work, think, and create new knowledge. It is hoped that this report will be foundational in developing the rest of the protocols necessary for continued humanistic and social science work.

Anticipating, or developed in concert, is a new program from the National Endowment for the Humanities. NEH has just released its Digital Humanities Initiative. Chairman Bruce Cole, in introducing the program to a group of us, used the example of the change in scientific work because of digital technologies by referencing the mapping of the human genome. This is possible only with digitization. He said that we need to explore and demonstrate the same in the humanities—what digitization allows us to do that we would not otherwise be able to do. With that, NEH is introducing two new grant programs, the digital humanities fellowships and the Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants. These two programs would be reviewed within the Digital Humanities Initiative, but all the other traditional programs in NEH also welcome digitally emphasized work.

So there you have it. A framework for how we will be working, and some grant opportunities to explore it. Gee, I make it sound so easy!