Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Supports Postsecondary Retention Policy Research Initiatives

Over $6.4 million in grants to leading national policy organizations were announced today by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. These grants support new efforts to identify why many young Americans drop out of college and to propose new policies and practices necessary to help low-income, African American, and Hispanic students complete their educations.

Grants Announced Today:
• American Enterprise Institute (AEI) will receive $1.25 million to launch a significant new research project, which will include commissioned papers, major conferences, and a book about accountability in higher education. These projects will be data-driven and non-ideological, and will be designed to encourage a national conversation about postsecondary accountability. Founded in 1943, AEI sponsors research, conferences, and publications on issues of government, economics, and social welfare. The Institute is committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise. www.aei.org

• The Center for American Progress (CAP) will receive $800,000 to study and report on more than a dozen topics related to college completion. CAP’s work will result in policy recommendations that would bring coherence to a fractured national system of higher education institutions, give low-income students the targeted assistance they need to complete their educations, and bring accountability to institutions that are receiving evermore public money but graduating fewer and fewer of their students. CAP was founded in 2003 and is headed by John D. Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. CAP is designed to provide long-term leadership and support to the progressive movement. www.cap.org

• Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) will receive $1.5 million to support a new Center on Postsecondary and Economic Success within its organization. The Center will promote federal and state policy innovation to help low-income students, including working students, out-of-school youth, and other nontraditional students earn marketable postsecondary credentials through research, analysis, educational activities, and technical assistance to states and anti-poverty organizations. CLASP develops and advocates for policies at the federal, state, and local levels that improve the lives of low-income people. www.clasp.org

• The College Board will receive $675,000 to create the Center for Innovation and Advocacy. The Center will study policies and programs that increase college access and success, with a focus on increasing college completion among traditionally underrepresented students. For example, the Center will support the College Board’s ongoing Rethinking Student Aid project, which aims to redesign the federal student aid system to make it simpler, more efficient, and more focused on encouraging college success. The College Board is a national not-for-profit education association comprised of more than 5,600 college, university, and school members driven by a simple but powerful mission statement: To connect students to college success and opportunity. Each year the College Board serves 7 million students and parents, 23,000 high schools, and 3,800 colleges through major programs in college admissions, guidance, assessment, financial aid, enrollment, teaching, and learning. www.collegeboard.org

• Excelencia in Education will receive $600,000 to raise awareness about the significance of accelerating Latino college completion rates to meet the country’s human capital needs through a new campaign, Enhancing America’s Future. This campaign will be developed through high-level meetings with postsecondary policy leaders, benchmarking national and state level Latino college degree completion, and an outcomes-driven focus on dissemination of promising practices. Launched in 2004, Excelencia in Education is a national not-for-profit that links research, policy, and practice to support higher educational achievement for Latino students and all students. www.excelencia.org

• Institute for Higher Education Policy will receive $1.58 million over three years to support research to improve policies related to academic excellence and degree attainment by publishing reports, issue briefs, and fact sheets as well as connecting that research to policy and practice. Key beneficiaries of this work will be federal and state policymakers, media, higher education funders and organizations, institutional leaders, and researchers. The Institute for Higher Education Policy is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving access and success in postsecondary education around the world. www.ihep.org

Virginia's Pre-K Initiative...Gathering Steam

We’re going to keep working to give every Virginia child a world-class education, and we’re going to start sooner, by offering prekindergarten to every Virginia four year old. –Governor Timothy Kaine, November 7, 2005 (Samuels, 2005).

Universal pre-kindergarten was a core element of Virginia Governor Kaine’s election platform, and he reiterated this policy position during his election-night speech in 2005. While the governor has not been able to implement his policy of universal pre-K, he has been able to serve as an “issue catalyst” by raising the profile of preschool education in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
One of the Governor's early acts after taking office was to issue Executive Order 7, which established the Start Strong Council. This advisory council has played an important role in policy definition and agenda setting. The council includes approximately 25 leaders from business, schools, the faith community, private child care, Head Start, and state- and local-elected officials. The Council was given several responsibilities, including developing statewide goals and best practices for “expanding opportunities for 4 year olds to access quality pre-kindergarten programs” (Executive Order 7, 2006). The Council’s first report, issued in December 2006, included several policy recommendations to the Governor, including the development of a quality ratings system for preschool settings and a proposal for grant-funded preschool pilots to test innovative program strategies.

The Governor has attempted to build support for his pre-kindergarten policy initiative in other ways as well. The Governor’s Early Childhood Summits, which have been held twice during the past two years, are designed to inform business and community leaders, elected officials, and other stakeholders about the benefits of investing in early childhood education,.

Response to the Governor's pre-kindergarten initiative have been decidedly mixed. For the most part, organizations such as the Virginia Metropolitan League, the Virginia Association of Counties, the Virginia Association of Elementary School Principals, the Virginia Education Association, and the Parent Teacher Association have been very supportive. Other groups, including the association of superintendents and local school boards, have expressed strong opinions about various aspects of the initiative. While these two groups were generally supportive of pre-kindergarten, they have had concerns about the governance structure and the delivery mechanism of the initiative. In addition, while many private providers have been enthusiastic about the Governor’s intention to incorporate both public and private providers for preschool delivery, there have been a few vocal opponents from this constituency. There has been growing interest nationally in early childhood education as a future workforce investment, and state-level economic development and workforce development interest groups have followed suit by demonstrating support for this policy issue.

Virginia's preschool pilot initiative, which is in the starting gate, is considered a critical component of the Governor’s policy setting activities, since the Governor undoubtedly hopes to demonstrate through this experiment the feasibility of the innovative strategies recommended by the Start Strong Council, such as the diverse delivery network (including both public and private partners), incorporating a parent tuition component, and utilizing local school readiness councils to ensure systemic planning at the local level. Each of the pilot sites will receive strong support from the Department of Education, including technical assistance and start-up funds in addition to the per pupil funding, in order to optimize the conditions for success. An external program evaluation will be conducted on all pilots to assess how well their partnerships and other strategies worked, the level of quality in the various public and private learning settings, and the outcomes for the participating children. Formative and summative evaluation data will provide the Start Strong Council and the Governor’s office with critical information to evaluate this policy.

The preschool pilot initiative had a bumpy start earlier this year when the 2007 General Assembly made substantial changes to the budget language for the preschool pilots, reducing the budget by $2.1 million, limiting participation in the pilots to at-risk children, and adding evaluation requirements for selecting providers. Considering this was a mid-biennium budget, however, the initiative should be viewed as successful for having secured any funding at all. I take this to be a positive sign that the preschool policy issue will not only remain on the state agenda but will pick up additional support over time as the legislators and the public realize the effectiveness of pre-kindergarten in preparing children for success in school.

Homeland Defense - No Child Left Behind the Lines?

Chris Whittle, founder of the Edison Schools, weighed in on education reform in "Homeland Offense," a policy brief published by WestEd. Whittle uses a military metaphor to call for radical school redesign and business approaches to education. It's a strange, offbeat work of fiction drawn from Whittle's equally odd "Crash Course." There's a link to the policy brief below. You've been warned.

Who's Who in Education Policy: A Primer by Christopher Swanson

Thank you, Christopher Swanson, for identifying the movers and shakers in US education policy in Influence: A Study of the Factors Shaping Education Policy. Swanson asked leading education policy experts to identify and rate highly influential agents or “Influentials” across four different categories – Studies, Organizations, People, and Information Sources. Topping the list of studies was the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), while the US Congress, US Department of Education, and the Gates Foundation were top contenders in the Organizations category. Top-ranked person? Bill Gates, of course, who kept company in the People category with Mike Smith of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Chester Finn, Jr., of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and Kati Haycock of the highly influential Education Trust. NAEP took the top spot in the most influential information source, followed by Education Week. Other information sources viewed as influential include the New York Times, the Washington Post, Public Education Network’s PEN Weekly NewsBlast, the Fordham Foundation’s Education Gadfly, and Eduwonk.

Recommended: This Week in Education Blog

One of my favorite ed policy blogs is by Alexander Russo, a former Senate education staffer and journalist now part of Education Week's strong stable of writers. He covers the major education news and trends with a political edge and slightly offbeat sense of humor. Check it out sometime at http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/thisweekineducation/.