STATE HIGHER EDUCATION EXECUTIVE OFFICERS

ANNUAL REPORT FOR 2010-2011 and

WORK PLAN FOR 2011-2012

Common Core State Standards for College and Career Readiness:

An Opportune Moment

In July 2010 the members of SHEEO and of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) met concurrently. The meeting was unprecedented, perhaps because the differences between K-12 and postsecondary educationtend to be emphasized more than their interdependence. While relevant differences in mission remain, it has become increasingly obvious that closer collaboration between K-12 and postsecondary educators is essential for increasing educational attainment in the United States.

“School reform” has been an American preoccupation for more than a quarter century, but few if any would claim the reform movement has made significant progress towardthe goal of widespread, authentic educational achievement. Roughly 30 percent of high school students fail to graduate in four years, and the number of students with high school diplomas who require remedial work in college is far too high. We clearly must do something different in order to achieve better results.

If used as a lever onother systemic issues, the recently developed Common Core State Standards in mathematics and English by CCSSO and the National Governors’ Association could become a powerful catalyst for significant improvement. In part the Common Core State Standards emerged as a matter of economic necessity – K-12 leaders have found it prohibitively expensive to develop and implement unique standards and assessments for each state. A collaborative approach to standards and assessments can achieve economies of scale.

But the educational benefits of the Common Core State Standards may become far more significant than their economic benefits. Whilethe important dimensions of human knowledge and skill cannot be exhausted by any compendium of learning objectives and assessments, the abilities to use language and quantitative analysisare fundamental to everything else. The Common Core State Standards initiative aspires: 1) to define the knowledge and skills in English and math that, at the end of high school, would signify that a student is ready for success in college or a career; 2) to define the learning progression through elementary and secondary education needed to achieve college and career readiness; and 3) to provide valid, formative and summative assessments of student progress toward college and career readiness through each stage of elementary and secondary education.

The guiding principles behind the standards have been “fewer, clearer, higher, evidence based, and internationally benchmarked.” Virtually all who have studied the Common Core State Standards agree that the capabilities of U.S. high school graduates will be dramatically higher if these learning objectives are widely achieved. Significant educational progress may be within our grasp if educators in the United States can stay tightly focused on these learning objectives and develop curricula and instructional approaches that will help students achieve them in far greater numbers. The absence of clear, common, and parsimonious learning objectives as well as accepted metrics for assessing achievement surely has contributed to a reform movement dominated by contention, rather than the pursuit of common purposes. Shared learning objectives, supported bya widely accepted “yardstick” for assessing student achievement, could become a constructive, enormously powerfultool.

Of course, standards and assessments have been prevalent for some time without yielding systemic improvement. Consistent objectives and uniform assessments will not automatically generate more student learning. The potential contributions ofcommonK-12 standards and assessments can be realized only if several other requirements are in place. First, the assessments must be widely credible in the postsecondary community, routinely used to qualify students for enrollment in entry-level credit bearing courses. (Ideally these assessments, along with other indicators, could also help inform decisions concerning placement in more advanced courses.) Second, elementary and secondary teachers must have the capabilities and the curricula necessary to enable students to achieve these learning objectives. Excellent curricular materials and more effective professional training and in-service professional development are critically important. Third, all those with a critical role –policy makers, teachers, school leaders, and colleges and universities– must work together more effectively in implementing the standards and promoting continuing quality improvement.

The imperative for P-20 collaboration is not new, but without displacing other matters of importance to the SHEEO community,it has becomean even more urgent priority. The Common Core State Standards offer a compelling opportunity to achieve significant educational progress. The following review of the year’s activities will outline our efforts on this agenda and a wide range of other issues – finance, tuition and fees, increasing productivity, expanding completion, advancing student learning, sustaining and enhancing our national capacity for discovery and innovation, quality assurance, improving data and information systems, and more.

Significant Activities 2010-2011

The past several years have been unusually active and productive in educational public policy. While theglobal financial crisis which beganin 2008 has made life more difficult and uncertain, it has also focused attention on bedrock issues. What public policies and private practices are required for sustainable well-being and a healthy national and world economy? Fundamental policy questions involving commerce, health care, pensions, education, as well as underlying questions of taxation and fiscal policyall are very much in play.

The drive to increase educational attainment in the United States has been building for more than twenty-five years since A Nation At Risk was released in 1983. AllSHEEO members and your association have been in the middle of the educational policy dialogue. The scope and intensity of recent efforts is conveyed by the selection of publications and initiatives from the period 2004 to 2011 listed in AppendixA.

The sections immediately following in SHEEO’s annual report will discuss the past year’s activities of the Association and our colleagues in the higher education public policyarena under the three broad, interrelated categories of our Peer Consultation Networks: Productivity, Student Learning, and Data Systems.

Productivity and Money

Pursuing productivity gains: The debate about the capacity of higher education to become more productive is not over, but the questions are changing. Few are still asking whether productivity gains are feasible; instead most are askinghowcan they be achieved and how extensive might they be without unacceptable trade-offs in access and quality.The current financial situation of most states is clearly requiring hard choices and creative responses to these issues.

The pathways to increased productivity in higher education include:

  • Increasing the number of students who enroll,complete courses,andpersist in attaining a degree or other valuable credential;
  • Reducing the time students take to complete a degree or credential;
  • Reducing the number of credits taken beyond those necessary to complete an academic program;
  • Revising budgeting incentives to provide greater emphasis on completing courses and degree programs;
  • Reallocating resources away from lower priorities (low enrollment, low-productivity degree programs, unnecessary services or costly, unproductive administrative procedures, etc.) to higher priorities;
  • Increasing curricular coherence, with more-clearly defined pathways toward completion;
  • Employing technology to deliver information, identify gaps in knowledge and skill, make student effort more efficient and successful, and make better use of sophisticated faculty talent;
  • Achieving economies of scale and more efficient means of delivering routine administrative services such as payroll, purchasing, and accounting; and
  • Reducing energy consumption and costs through retrofitting existing systems and making more efficient use of facilities.

Toward these ends the SHEEO staff has been directly and indirectly involved in the Lumina Foundation’s Productivity Initiative, the National Governors Association’s Complete to Compete initiatives, and in Complete College America, which is assisting many states in designing and implementing strategies to increase the number of Americans who complete a postsecondary degree or certificate.

Expanding participation: While many of these productivity initiatives involve getting better results from existing enrollment levels and resources, reaching national attainment goals also requires expanding access and participation in postsecondary education. Toward that end SHEEO has also been working together with the Council of Chief State School Officers, the American Council on Education, the Department of Education, and others to encourage each state to declare November 14-18, 2011 as College Application Week. On April 25, 2011 Gene Wilhoit and I sent a joint letter to each SHEEO and Chief State School Officer urging them to work toward this goal. This national initiative, based on several successful state programs, has been designed to provide enough flexibility for every state, regardless of local circumstances, to find a strategy within its means to participate in a national effort to encourage students to apply for postsecondary education. While this effort has not moved forward as rapidly as we had planned, we hope to make further progress in the coming months.

The availability and productive use of resources: Increasing productivity is not fundamentally about spending less, but about getting more value for money. Both the adequacy of available resources for achieving desired outcomes and the uses of existing resources are part of the productivity equation. A proper balance among appropriations, tuition revenues, and student financial assistance is necessary to assure that institutions have the resources required to provide quality instruction and services. It is also essential for assuring that students are able to afford and devote adequate time and effort to academic study. The effective use of both appropriations and student assistanceresources is essential for achieving desired results.

Through its annual survey of State Higher Education Finance (SHEF)and the State Policy Resources Connection (SPRC) initiative, SHEEO will continue to provide comparative data on the resources available for higher education in the states, the uses of those resources, and the outcomes generated. Two years ago the SHEF data collection of past year enrollments, net tuition, and appropriations, was consolidated with Illinois State University’s historical Grapevine collection of current year appropriations as a means of improving data consistency and reducing collection burdens. These financial surveys have become an increasingly important and widely cited resource to policy makers and the public.

The SPRC initiative has aspired to provide frequent and continuously updated comparative analytical studies for SHEEOs. Over the past two years this initiative has generated reports on the productivity of degrees and certificates, an analysis of existing unit cost studies in four states, an analysis of staffing trends, and an upcoming analysis of degrees and certificates by academic discipline. We continue to expand our files of “scrubbed,” policy relevant data, and we are pursuing opportunities to give state leaders wider, faster access to information to guide public policy and improve institutional performance.

Advancing Student Learning, assuring academic quality

Additional degrees and certificates achieved through productivity gains have meaning only as they reflect authentic knowledge and skills acquired by students. Several important initiatives to advance student learning and assure academic quality have moved forward during the past several years.

Common Core State Standards Initiative–As discussed earlier, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for mathematics and English language arts developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association (NGA) has been a centerpiece of SHEEO activities in 2010 and 2011. Following the 2010 Minneapolis annual meeting, the SHEEO staff obtained support from the Hewlett Foundation to support the engagement and involvement of postsecondary leaders and faculty in the implementation of the CCSS.

With Hewlett support SHEEO has established strong working relationships with both of the consortia developing assessments for the CCSS. As an indication of the depth of our involvement, Charlie Lenth accepted an invitation to serve as a member of the Executive Committee of the SMARTER Balanced consortium. SHEEO sponsored a seminar in Boulder for state leaders to learn about the CCSS, and in collaboration with The James B. Hunt, Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy, organized a meeting on CCSS in Chapel Hill, North Carolina which was attended by about ten SHEEOs and leaders from virtually all the Washington D.C. higher education institutional associations.

In collaboration with AASCU and CCSSO, SHEEO also formed the College Readiness Partnership to pursue the successful implementation of the CCSS. Led by a steering committee of fifteen members (five SHEEOs, five Chiefs, and five institutional presidents or system heads), this partnership has a grant proposal pending approval from the Hewlett and Lumina Foundations to support implementation and shared learning about the implementation of CCSS in five to seven states. Appendix B includes more information on the partnership; sessions on its work are on the agendas of both the Annual Meeting and the Higher Education Policy Conference this year.

Teacher and School Leader Capacity –The development of Common Core State Standards for college readiness has an important corollary – What must schools do in order to help students meet these standards? Enhancing teacher and school leader capacity will be an important priority for the College Readiness Partnership as well as a SHEEO focus through several other activities.

Clearly, teachers must have a firm grasp of content and the skills necessary to motivate and engage students in learning – including classroom management, the capacity to help students with diverse needs achieve their potential, and the ability to use assessments and data to guide their work. In addition, school leaders–principals and superintendents–must have the skills and knowledge necessary to lead a community of learners–teachers and students– in working together successfully to achieve these goals.

The task facing education in the United States clearly requires innovation in the preparation and continuing professional development of teachers and school leaders. We now recognize that students must learn more than ever before, and many of our students require more skillful teaching in order to overcome the challenges of poverty and meet the more rigorous educational demands confronting them in the global economy.

Mastery of content, requiring the substantial dedication of arts and sciences faculty to teacher education, is the initial challenge. Some practicing teachers never had opportunities to master what they must now teach. But mastery of technique also is required. Successful teachers need masterful coaching and supervision, the help of more experienced peers, and the support of a professionally competent community of colleagues and school leaders.

Since 1984, with the support of the Eisenhower Professional Development Grants and Title II of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) authorized in 2001, state higher education agencies have made important contributions to teacher capacity through in-service professional development competitive grant programs. These programs have engaged arts and sciences faculty, especially in math, science, and English;they have nurtured teaching capacity; and they have builtauthentic partnerships between universities (both public and private) and public schools. The intensity and quality of these very modestly funded efforts have stood out in the field of teacher professional development. They should be expanded substantially where they have been most successful, and states that have not effectivelyutilized these funding streams should be challenged to do more.

In addition, pre-service teacher and school leader preparation must be redesigned to incorporate and inculcate the skills of successful teachers and school leaders. Medical education and business education are useful models. Both incorporate the wisdom of successful practitioners, who have mastered content, the theory of practice, and the hard knocks of real experience. Both incorporate the rigor of disciplined inquiry, decision-making based on data, and research on successful practice. The leaders of the national associations for teacher education and accreditation are working to promote the widespread implementation of professional teacher education models based on such approaches.

The redesign of teacher and school leader education will require deeper and far more extensive partnerships between schools and postsecondary institutions. It also will require rethinking credentialing requirements and the allocation of faculty time and talent in colleges of education. Both policy (funding as well as regulatory policies) and practice must change in order to effect such changes. SHEEOs, Chief State School Officers, school leaders, institutional presidents, deans (education and arts and sciences,) legislators, and governors all must play a role in the changes required to recruit, develop, and retain the human resources required for student success in the 21st century.