Harvard Doesn't Matter

Let's Talk About Test Scores, Flagship Public Colleges, and Permanent Dropouts

Photo by Emily Karakis on Unsplash

As someone who has written about schools and colleges for twenty years (or more if you include my academic stuff), I often feel obliged to add my two cents on the education topic du jour. For the past month, the punditry has been fixated on Harvard, college presidents, plagiarism, and all that — topics that I know a lot about. Where was my think-piece?

I let the topic go by. Frankly, I struggled to care. I wrote one piece on antisemiticism on those elite campuses and sent out some tweets, but that’s all I could manage. Harvard only educates 7,000 students per year, so it is insane that this one school sucks up so much of the education intellectual energy. Outside of an elite group of writers and thinkers, who all attended Ivy League schools, people are talking about other stuff.

People are talking about test scores. Republicans have smartly pivoted from culture wars in schools to America’s massive reading and math problems. Nikki Haley in the last Republican debate talked about test scores, too, but I can’t find the quotes now.

In a opinion piece for NJ Education Report, a former Republic governor challenger, Jack Ciattarelli writes:

Too many students — more than 50% in many school districts — are not on grade level for reading, writing, and math. As many as 50% of the students attending our county colleges require remedial courses (i.e., classes students must take to build skills before they are allowed to take regular college courses). One out of every two high school graduates can’t name the three branches of government, nor can they name our fundamental rights under the First Amendment.

In contrast, Democrats in my state want to hide our embarrassing reading and math scores with adjusted passing rates and lower diploma requirements. This is a strategic error.

People are talking about colleges. While Harvard might be out of reach for almost all students, even in the well-heeled suburbs like mine, the next tier of colleges has always been certainly within the grasp of smart kids in the Jersey suburbs. Here, the back windshields of the BMWs and Audis have always had stickers for Colgate, Hamilton, Drexel, and Bennington.

After those second-tier colleges got too competitive and the price tags too high, parents honed in on flagship public colleges. That was my strategy for Jonah in 2017. We spent our vacation week driving around New England, looking at several flagship public colleges — UVM, Binghamton, URI, UConn, and UNH. He applied to all of them, plus Pitt, UTenn, Rutgers, and a four more than I can’t remember. I even wrote an essay about our decision process:

But we’re a practical-minded group today. With fingers crossed that our kids can manage in the sea of tens of thousands of students, we’ll forgo quaint Gothic buildings and 60-year-old traditions in order to launch our children into the job market with as little debt as possible. Right now, large flagship public colleges are doing that best.

Now, the flagships have gotten way more competitive, and those families have been closed out of the elite private colleges, too. From an article in New York magazine:

… chances of admission are lowest for children of the top 5 to 10 percent, who earn $158,200 to $222,400 a year. These applicants fare worse than both kids who are richer than them and kids who are poorer than them, all with similar test scores.

Suburbanites are ticked off. And suburbanites vote. People should be paying attention to these problems.

Meanwhile, efforts to diversify colleges aren’t working either. “Test optional” policies might be out the door soon. SATs predict college performance much better that GPAs or other metrics. And turns out, it doesn’t even benefit poorer students in the admissions process.

People are talking about dropouts. While upper middle families are freaking out about college admissions, lower income kids have given up on school all together.

In Pro-Publica, Alex McGillis continues his excellent journalism on the fallout on kids from pandemic. This week, McGillis focused on chronic absenteeism, which he explains is being blamed on a host of social ills - falling school achievement, deteriorating mental health, and elevated youth violence and even car thefts.

Nationwide, the rate of chronic absenteeism — defined as missing at least 10% of school days, or 18 in a year — nearly doubled between 2018-19 and 2021-22, to 28% of students, according to data compiled for The Associated Press by Thomas Dee, a professor of education at Stanford.

Read the whole piece for the lovely writing.

So, ignore Harvard. Let them do their thing and know that the Harvard headlines have nothing to do with the real issues on the ground that impact millions of people and will make a difference in our elections this year.

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LINKS

Tonight, we’re taking Ian and some autistic boys to a vintage video game joint and dinner. I loved this Instagram Reel by an autistic comic.

The growth mindset problem: A generation of schoolchildren is being exhorted to believe in their brain’s elasticity. Does it really help them learn?

As Enrollment Declines, Districts Consider Closing Schools

Personal: Last weekend, we were grounded as Ian was all hooked up with electrodes for a 48-hour EEG. But we still kept busy. Pictures and words on the blog.

Travel: Tomorrow, we’re going into NYC to go to Katz’s Deli and the Tenement Museum.

Enjoy the long weekend, folks!