​​That college grades have risen over the last fifty years is not in dispute. The average course grade in college was 2.5 in 1960 (on a 4.0 grading scale) and had risen to 3.1 in 2006.

I often hear two reasons offered for the increase. During the 1960s, Professors ​were eager to help students stay in the school, so as to avoid the draft and the Vietnam war. (The lax standards were extended to female students for verisimilitude.)

In more recent years, increases in grades are attributed to the consumer era of higher education. Students see college courses as a commodity they purchase, and professors, hoping for high enrollements and good course evaluations to boost their tenure prospects, hand out the A's.

This student-as-consumer account seems to be bolstered by the fact that grade inflation has been higher at private colleges and universities than at public ones. 

Both accounts propose that grade inflation is solely due to changes in professors' grading policies, and that students have not changed. A recent paper challenges that assumption, and offers some persuasive data. 

​Rey Hernández-Julián and Adam Looney brought economic models of inflation to bear on the question. As they point out, higher prices don't always signal inflation. For example, price may increase as quality increases. 

They examined 20 years of transcript data from 90,000 students at Clemson University over the years 1982-2001. During that time grades increased from 2.67 to 2.99, comparable to the increase observed elsewhere. They also had data on the characteristics of these students. 

The researchers observed shifts in student characteristics and course-taking behavior that accounted for a little more than half of the increase in grades.

First, the students coming to Clemson were better prepared, as measured by the SAT. Math scores increased by 29 points over the period, and Verbal scores by 15 points.

Second, student enrollment drifted towards departments that tend to assign higher grades. More students took courses in Speech and Communication, Spanish, Graphic Communications, and yes, Education; all these department assign average grades above the means of other departments. Tough-grading departments--Math, Accounting, Physics, Mechanical Engineering--saw drops in enrollment.

Third, the percentage of women at Clemson increased, and women earn higher grades than men do. This increase was modest (4% points) and accounts for little of the grade increase, but the authors point out that the increase in women enrollment is high nationwide (from 41% to 56% between 1970 and 2000) and so may account for more of the grade increase at other institutions. 

The upshot is that a little less than half of the increase in grades is attributable to grade inflation. The authors identify possible contributors to grade increase, and whatever they cannot account for is labeled "inflation." They point out that the actual value of grade inflation could be lower.

I would add that the actual value could, in theory, also be higher. Unobserved variables like course difficulty and student effort could be decreasing. Obviously measuring such variables at broad scale is difficult if not impossible. 

There's plenty of research on homework and the very brief version of the findings is probably well known to readers of this blog: homework has a modest effect on the academic achievement of older students, and no effect on younger students (Cooper et al, 2006).

In a way, this outcome seems odd. Practice is such an important part of certain types of skill, and much of homework is assigned for the purpose of practice. Why doesn't it help, or help more?

One explanation is that the homework assigned is not of very good quality, which could mean a lot of different things and absent more specificity sounds like a homework excuse. Another, better explanation is that practice doesn't do much unless there is rapid feedback, and that's usually absent at home. 

A third explanation is quite different, suggesting that the problem may lie in measurement. Most studies of homework efficacy have used student self-report of how much time they spend on homework. Maybe those reports are inaccurate. 

A new study indicates that this third explanation merits closer consideration. 

The researchers (Rawson, Stahovich & Mayer, in press) examined homework performance among three classes of undergraduate engineering students taking their first statics course. The homework assigned was typical for this sort of course; the atypical feature was that students were asked to complete their homework with Smartpens. These function like regular ink pens, but when coupled with special paper, they record time-stamped pen strokes.

The researchers were able to gather objective measures of time spent on homework, as well as other performance metrics.

A few of these measures proved interesting. For example, students who completed a lot of homework within 24 hours of the due date tended to earn lower course grades.

But the really interesting finding was a significant correlation of course grade and time spent on homework as measured by the Smartpen (r = .44) in the face of NO correlation between course grade and time spent on homework as reported by the students (r = -.16).

The relationship between homework and course grades is not the news. This is a college course and no matter what the format, it's only going to meet a few hours each week, and students will be expected to do a great deal of work on their own.

The news is that students were poor at reporting their time spent on homework; 88% reported more than the Smartpen showed they had actually spent. The correlation of actual time and reported time ranged from r = .16 to r = .35 for the three cohorts. 

In other words, with such a noisy measure of time spent on homework, there was little hope of observing a reliable relationship of homework with a course outcome. This finding ought to call into question much of the prior research on homework. 

Please don't take this blog posting as an enthusiastic endorsement of homework. For one thing, this literature seems pretty narrow in focusing solely on academic performance outcomes, given that many teachers and parents have other goals for homework such as increased self-directedness. For another thing, even if it were shown the certain types of homework led to certain types of improvement in academic outcomes, that doesn't mean every school and classroom ought to assign homework. That decision should be made in the context of broader goals.

But if teachers are going to assign homework, researchers should investigate its efficacy. This study should make us rethink how we interpret existing research in this area.

We are one week away from May 1, which is National Candidates Reply Day. That’s the date by which college admission offers must be accepted or turned down. If your child is fortunate enough to have more than one offer of admission, what should go into this decision?

Often, the choice is easy. One school stands out as a favorite, or one is more economical, or one has a program of study that’s a good fit for the student’s interests, or perhaps a visit to one campus prompted a strong emotional attachment. But if a student has made it until April 24 without deciding, it’s possible he or she is torn. He may have overlooked one aspect of college life that could be worth factoring into his decision.

We are all of us more influenced by our social world than we like to think. We believe our actions are a product of our life experiences and personality. But the history of social psychology shows that the situation can make us more cruel, more helpful, more conformist, or more honest. When I taught at Williams college, I was struck by the fitness obsession among students; many students jogged, but those who didn’t regularly engaged in some sort of exercise. I commented on this to a student once, and he said “Yeah, I never jogged before I got here.” I asked “what made you start?” He shrugged and said “Everybody jogs.”

How can you put that principle to work in a college decision?

It’s natural for a student to think that she should pick a college that’s a good fit for her personality and interests. For example, people who are into fitness should attend Williams. Those who aren’t will feel out of step.

I suggest the opposite is true. Think of the social environment as a support to your personality and interests. The student who doesn't exercise should think of Williams as a place where it’s easy to start exercising. Similarly, if a student thinks of herself as social—no problem making friends, enjoys going to parties, etc.—then she doesn't need much support from the college environment to ensure that that aspect of her life will thrive. But going to a school with a reputation for nerdiness might help ensure social support for some focus on academics. Likewise, the socially awkward, perpetual studier (Dan hesitantly raises his hand) might consider closely a school known to have a strong social life.

More generally, encourage the student to consider this: which aspects of your life are you satisfied with? What do you know you’ll make time for, what do you feel confident about. Then in contrast, which aspects of your life do you feel need work? Which ones give you trouble, and you feel uncertain about how to improve? Select a college which you think provides a supportive environment for those aspects of your life that you most want to improve.

This factor will not be determinative, but if the decision is coming down the wire, you might include it in the mix. More generally, encourage the student to consider this: which aspects of your life are you satisfied with? As you contemplate entering college, what do you know you’ll make time for, what do you feel confident about? Then in contrast, which aspects of your life do you feel need work? Which ones give you trouble, and you feel uncertain about how to improve? Select a college which you think provides a supportive environment for those aspects of your life that you most want to improve.

This factor will not be decisive, but if the decision is coming down the wire, you might include it in the mix. 

This article was originally published at RealClearEducation.com on July 15, 2014

Teacher tenure laws were adopted by most states during the first half of the 20th century. To advocates, tenure provides a guarantee of due process should a teacher be dismissed, and thus offers protection from capricious firings and personal vendettas. To critics, tenure is granted too readily to teachers of marginal skill, and the “due process” is so arduous, time-consuming, and expensive that it constitutes a de facto job guarantee. Thus critics see tenure is a primary reason that poor teachers stay in the profession. Which interpretation is closer to the truth? It’s been very hard to say. Tenure laws have been in place for so long, we haven’t had a counterfactual; guesses about the impact on the teacher labor force subsequent to a change in tenure procedures have been just that—guesses. Now, we’re starting to have some data on the matter (Loeb, Miller & Wyckoff, 2014)

New York City’s Department of Education changed its procedure for granting tenure in the 2009-2010 school year. Some features of the old system were retained. As before, teachers were evaluated at the end of their second year, based on the results of classroom observation, evaluations of teacher work (e.g., lesson plans), and an annual rating sheet completed by principals.

Starting in the 2009-2010 year, new information was available about student progress (including value-added measures calculated from state tests). Another new wrinkle was that principals would be required to write a justification for their decision if the superintendent would draw a different conclusion about a teacher’s case.

In the following years, some small change were added, the most interesting of which was the addition of data about teacher effectiveness based on surveys of students and parents, and feedback from colleagues.

So did these changes affect tenure decisions?

There was a sizable impact. Not in teacher dismissal at tenure decision time, but in extending the time for the tenure decision. In the two years prior to the new system, about 94% of teachers got tenure, with 2 or 3% being terminated. For about the same number, principals elected to delay the decision for a year, so as to have more time and data with which to evaluate the teacher.

As shown on the graph, under the new system, the number of teachers denied tenure remains very small, but there has been a huge increase in the number of teachers for whom the decision was delayed.



Most interesting was the response of the teachers when the decision was delayed. More of them transfer to a new school or exit the profession altogether.



The probability of a teacher transferring schools is 9 percentage points higher if the decision was extended, compared to if they were approved. The probability of exiting the profession is 4 percentage points higher.

So on the one hand, the changes to tenure review which were meant to make the process more rigorous are not prompting principals to deny tenure any more frequently. On the other hand, principals are making much greater use of the option to delay the decision for a year. That, in turn, is having some impact on the workforce. A straightforward interpretation is that teachers rightly interpret the delayed decision as a sign that things are not going as well as they might, and some teachers figure that’s because the school they are in is bad fit (and so transfer) or that the profession is just not for them (and so they exit).

What are we to make of the fact that the more rigorous criteria did not lead to more recommendations that teachers be fired? Although it’s possible that’s a sign of principals being reluctant to fire teachers, I doubt it. I think it’s more likely that the large number of delayed decisions reflects the belief that two years is just too early to tell. Certainly we know that teachers are still on the steep part of their learning curve at that point. They are improving, and how much more they will improve is tough to know.

It’s always tempting to think that one’s own training was optimal, but I do think higher education has a more sensible approach to tenure, simply because we take longer to make the decision. At most universities professors the tenure decision is made in the sixth year (based on the first five years worth of performance data.) There is a less rigorous review at the end of the third year. That review provides useful information to the candidate to know where he or she stands and what needs to be improved in the next few years. It also gives the university a chance to fire someone if things are going really poorly.

Whether tenure makes sense at all today and the possible consequences of eliminating are viable questions, but ones I’m not tackling here. But if you’re going to continue offering tenure, it’s a decision that ought to be made on more data than can be gleaned from the first two years.

Reference:

Loeb, S., Miller, L. C., & Wyckoff, J. (May, 2014) Performance screens for school improvement: The case of teacher tenure reform in New York City. Downloaded from http://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/NYCTenure%20brief%20FINAL.pdf July 13, 2014.

This piece originally appeared at RealClearEducation.com on March 18, 2014

Because I teach in higher education but spend a lot of time thinking about K-12 education, the differences between the two naturally stand out to me. Perhaps most striking is the extent to which college students are responsible for their own education. Not only do they pick their classes and major (with few restrictions), they are fully responsible for regulating their own study time, and for showing up to class. At most colleges no one is aware that a student is experiencing academic trouble until things get pretty bad.

Students arrive at college with different levels of preparation to handle these responsibilities. Unsurprisingly, family background makes a difference. Students who are the first in their families to attend college (first-generation students) earn lower grades and drop out at higher rates than students with at least one parent who attended college (continuing-generation students), controlling for high school GPA (Pascarella et al 2004). (Otherwise-successful charter schools are struggling with this social-class achievement gap.)

What fuels the gap? Partly the access that continuing-generation students have to advice from parents on how best to navigate college—access that first-generation students obviously lack. Colleges try to make up for this difference by offering programs to aid first-generation students; programs that offer advice on how to select a major, how to manage one’s time, and so on.

But first-generation students don’t take colleges up on their offers of help. They are less likely to take advantage of college services than continuing-generation students.

That may be because first-generation students are unsure whether or not they really belong at college, whether they can succeed.

Taking a cue from similar studies examining race (e.g., Walton & Cohen, 2011) a new study Stephens et al, in press) sought to change how freshmen students thought about their family backgrounds by exposing them to stories of successful upper-class students, who described how their family backgrounds could be a source of challenges and of strength.

First-generation (N=66) and continuing-generation (N=81) freshman students attended a panel discussion by college seniors on college adjustment.

For half of the freshman, the panelists’ answers were linked to their family backgrounds. For example, a first-generation panelist pointed out that his parents couldn’t provide much advice about selecting classes, so he learned that he had to rely on his advisor more than other students. The continuing-generation students highlighted that they faced challenges as well: a panelist mentioned that she had attended a small private school that offered a lot of one-on-one attention, and that she felt lost in large lecture classes.

The other half of the freshman served as the control condition: they attended a different panel discussion in which challenges of college life and how to address them were discussed, but the answers were not directly linked to family background.

At the end of the year, this brief, one-time intervention had significantly reduced the social-class gap, as measured by cumulative GPA.

End-of-year surveys also indicated that the intervention had reduced student anxiety and led to better adjustment to college life. (Note: these outcomes were observed for both first-generation and continuing-generation students.)

Anytime you hear about a one-hour intervention that has such a profound and long-lasting effect, it’s natural to be suspicious. Certainly, we’d like to see this effect replicated, but there is at least a plausible explanation for the profound effect; the intervention provides a new way for students to think about difficulties. Instead of evidence that they don’t really belong at college, set-backs become a normal part of college life, and one that can be addressed.

References

Pascarella, E., Pierson, C., Wolniak, G., & Terenzini, P. (2004).  First-generation college students: Additional evidence  on college experiences and outcomes. Journal of Higher  Education, 75, 249–284.

Stephens, N. M., Hamedani, M. G., & Destin, M. (in press). Closing the Social-Class Achievement Gap A Difference-Education Intervention Improves First-Generation Students’ Academic Performance and All Students’ College Transition. Psychological science.

Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. A brief social-belonging intervention improves academic and health outcomes of minority students. Science, 331, 1447-1451.

Today in the New York Times Nick Kristof writes that university professors have “marginalized themselves.” We have done so, he suggests, by concerning ourselves with very specialized topics that are removed from practical realities. (Old joke: the secret to academic success is to dig an intellectual trench so narrow and so deep that there is only room for one.)

The second part of the problem, Kristof suggests, is that academics write inaccessible prose, isolating their knowledge from others.  He quotes approvingly Harvard historian Jill Lapore, who says academics have created “a great, heaping mountain of exquisite knowledge surrounded by a vast moat of dreadful prose.”

Kristof’s solution is that academics do more writing for the public, on topics of practical concern. To make this change possible, universities would need to change the systems by which they evaluate faculty for promotion.

I think he’s partly right.

Kristof did not distinguish between faculty in Arts & Sciences and those in professional schools such as law, medicine, education, and engineering. These latter have practical application embedded in their mission and I think are therefore more vulnerable to his charges.

I started writing about the application of cognitive science for teachers exactly because I thought that too many teachers were not learning this information in their training at schools of education.

But for typical Arts & Sciences faculty, application is not part of the mission. I think two factors render impractical Kristof’s suggestions that it be part of the mission. I’m a scientist, so I’ll write from that perspective, and won’t claim that the following applies to the humanities.

Universities and the professors they employ are best seen as part of a larger system that includes government and private industry. The seminal document envisioning that system was written by Vannevar Bush in 1945. Bush was the director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II, through which virtually all of the scientific research for the war effort was funneled.

It was plain to all that science had played a lead role in the war. The Federal government had funded scientific research at an unprecedented scale, but what was the government role to be in the coming peace? President Roosevelt asked Bush to write a report on the matter.

Bush argued research can either be basic (“pure science,” which boils down to describing the world as it is) or applied (research in service of some practical goal). He argued for two points: First, that basic research lies behind the success of much practical research; e.g., the Manhattan project was a grand practical application made possible by advances in basic physics research. Second, applied research would inevitably crowd out basic research for funding because it offers short term gains.

Bush concluded that the Federal Government should continue its funding of science in peacetime, and that it should focus on basic research. Industry could fund research and development for application, and it was reasonable to expect that industry would do so. The federal investment was justifiable via the pay-off in economic productivity. That’s how the National Science Foundation was born.

Basic research has been housed primarily in the university system. That’s our role in the system. We’re not really here to work on applied problems. If a drug company wants to know the latest findings from molecular biology, they should hire a molecular biologist who will do the translation.

This arrangement actually makes a lot more sense than academics trying to do it.

Translation is more than explaining technical matters in everyday terms. It requires knowing how to exploit the technical findings in a way that serves the practical goal. For example, in education you can’t just take findings from cognitive science and pop them into the classroom, expecting kids will learn better. You need to know something about classrooms to understand how the application might work.

It makes more sense for the translators to be close to the site of the application because application can take so many forms. Cognitive science has applications throughout industry, the military, health care, education, and beyond. You really need to be embedded in the locale to understand the problem that the basic science is meant to solve.

So that’s why so many academics, when asked why they don’t make their work more accessible to the general public, say “that’s not my job.” We might add (and this is relevant to Kristof’s second point) that most of us are not very good at describing what we do in non-technical terms. It's a different skill set. Adding “writes well” to the criteria for promotion won’t get much traction among scientists. (The technical language that comes with any specialization adds to the problem, of course.)

But again, I think Kristof’s blade is much sharper when applied to university schools that claim a mission which includes practical application. Schools of Ed., I’m looking at you.

We are in the midst of an effort to explore what the new technologies enabled by powerful computing and reliable long-distance connection will mean to higher education. (There is, of course, a parallel effort in K-12, but that’s another topic.)

A new entrant is poised to make a bid, and it’s worth some study.

The Minerva Project was initiated by Ben Nelson, the man behind Snapfish (a photo website). His vision is of a university that offers an “uniquely rigorous and challenging university education." (At a price, we might add, that is a relative bargain--reportedly, the target cost is something like half of what the Ivys charge).

The idea is that classes will be delivered via video, and students will then engage in discussion and debate. Importantly, and in pointed contrast to MOOCs, class size will be limited to 25.

Because the university is virtual, students can live anywhere, but they will be encouraged to live in a different world city each semester, perhaps living together to gain some of the face-to-face interactions that many observers consider a significant advantage of bricks-and-mortar university life.

The curriculum will not rest on traditional academic subject divisions (some English, some math, some science) but rather on four essential skills: critical thinking, use of data, understanding complex systems, and effective communication. If that sounds squishy, be forewarned that the courses are planned to be demanding, and students who do not perform well will (gasp) fail the course.

Minerva is trying something quite different than other online higher ed options. Online universities exist, but their appeal has been their low price and low academic standards and, to a lesser extent, flexibility in scheduling. They claim to offer a degree that is comparable to a traditional degree, though few believe that they do.

It’s still not completely obvious how MOOCs (as implemented in Coursera and edX) will evolve, but no one thinks the long-term purpose is to give away courses. The interpretation I hear most often is that they will not seek replace standard degrees, but will offer more of an a la carte education; you take, say, 12 engineering courses (earning certificates showing that you’ve done the work) in the hopes that the reputation of the participating institutions will be enough to persuade an employer that passing the courses means you’ve got the chops for a job—and you’ve paid just a tiny fraction of what a traditional engineering degree would have cost.

Minerva seeks a third way. It promises an elite education, comparable to the most selective schools in the US. They are gambling that this option will appeal to students who were qualified to attend a big-name university, but didn’t get in.

It’s a darn good bet that there are plenty of frustrated students who thought they had the record for admission to Big-Name U; these places reject 75% or more of their applicants.

It’s no accident that the Minerva website notes that admissions decisions will disregard “lineage, state or country of origin, athletic prowess, or ability to donate.” In other words, "if you fear that you will be jostled by affirmative action targets, athletic admissions, legacies, etc., apply here."

The question is whether these students will see Minerva as a viable alternative to traditional schools.  

Naturally, that will depend on the quality of the courses and the curriculum. Minerva has not hired any faculty yet, but Nelson has some high profile members on his board (Larry Summers, Bob Kerrey) and they just hired Steve Kosslyn as the founding Dean of the College. Kosslyn has been a Dean at Harvard and was most recently Director of the Center for Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. To lure someone that capable to devote all of his energies to Minerva bodes well for the project.

We may be seeing the first of new wave of elite colleges. In the colonial era and following, this country saw elite colleges founded to train clergy (Harvard, Yale, Princeton). Better than a century later there was another spate, as wealthy industrialists founded new schools or heavily endowed existing ones (U of Chicago, Stanford, Vanderbilt).

There may well be room for a new model of elite higher education, and Minerva, as the first one out of the gate, holds a significant advantage.  

Note:  Thanks to Chris Chabris, whose Facebook post made me aware of Minerva.