Another Problem with Standardized Tests

I loved this article. Todd Farley writes about the grading of standardized tests in an op-ed piece in the New York Times yesterday.

He points out the arbitrary nature of how writing samples are graded for standardized tests.

When I was a graduate student, I spent a couple of months grading MCAT essays. It was a horrible experience. (I imagine I signed a non-disclosure agreement. I hope it has expired!) What I discovered was just what Farley is talking about--scoring was, it seemed to me, completely arbitrary. I spent my summer trying to guess what score (1-6) the bosses would give the essays I was reading.

I could never discern exactly how to interpret their criteria. I usually could get close, but much of my summer was taken up by conferences trying to figure out why my scores were so far out of whack with others. I wonder if my students today would say that about my classes?

I suppose you could chalk it up to me being a 22 year old graduate student who didn't know what good writing was. You could also blame it on poor training by my supervisors. I don't know why I couldn't understand the rules, but I stuck it out because it paid pretty well.

It also gave me an immense amount of skepticism when it comes to looking at test scores. It made doubt their ability to tell us much about a person's competence.

$99 a month to replace us

Washington Monthly runs a piece hyping a new internet startup company that promises a college education for $99 a month.

I've seen this company hyped in a few other places recently. The argument is that education is just another commodity that can be traded on the internet. He argues that we are caught in a "debt fueled tuition spiral" and that we only traffic in information.

It hardly seems worthwhile to refute the ridiculous assumptions that underlie these claims. Whoever the PR people for straighterline.com are, they are doing a good job getting their message out.

We have always known that there is room for on-line courses in higher education. To imagine that there will be only on-line courses is a vision of education that promises a truly uneducated world.

We need a little content!

I have been meaning to post more often, but as usual, these first few weeks are always hectic.  

For example, I really wanted to sit down and write something about the COLS strategic initiative.  Koker talked about it on opening day.  I discovered that 65 people went on the retreat this summer to discuss it.  65?  I want to know how 65 people can get anything done, especially a room full of academics with agendas of their own!

I suppose we will hear more about it at the upcoming COLS meeting.

Anyway, I logged in to post this article from the Boston Globe.  It is an education professor complaining that knowledge has again gotten lost as the latest "skills" movement takes hold.  How can you "critically think" if there is nothing to think about?  

I feel this way myself -- students love to discuss, as long as it doesn't involve any preparation or careful analysis.  If you ask them to critically analyze an article, they balk.  If you want to talk about something without data, they are good at that.

Colleges 'failing' to graduate students

The New York Times ran a story criticizing US College graduation rates.  They note that the national average at public universities is abysmal.

This isn't particularly new, as our own 6-year graduation rate is just over 50%.  However, the article notes that many good students are not going to the best schools they could, with high graduation rates.  Instead they opt for the nearby choice, thereby greatly diminishing their chances of success.

The example would be, I suppose, that an excellent student would decide not to go to UW Madison (graduation rate 78%) and choose to stay nearby, say at Oshkosh.  They would then be much less likely to finish.

The article goes on to note that better finances would help, as low income students drop out more often when tuition increases.  There is even a suggestion that colleges don't mind, because freshmen are cheaper than upper-class students, because they get stuck with pit-classes.  Failure generates more income--a perverse incentive!

They also raise the issue of culture, in that failing out of college has become acceptable.

Read and contemplate as we begin our new semester.

Opening Day 2009

Get ready for a new year!  Opening day ceremonies have wrapped up and we are starting tomorrow!

A few observations:  number of the day:  13.6 million cut from our operating budget over the next two years.  Pretty traumatic, but seemingly manageable.

Wonderfully short speeches from the administration today.   Art Rathjen didn't offend anyone. Petra didn't do her "I'm so hip" schtick.  No hoohaa from Tom Sonleitner. 

In the COLS meeting, John compensated for the lack of humor with his stories about probability and his mom.

It was also nice to see all the new hires this year.  John said there were 25 new tenure-track people starting this year.  

Finally,  a little reading.  The New York Times ran short comments by professors to introductory students about how to prepare.  

My own addition for UWO:

1. Make your own education.  Take the initiative and find the hidden gems at a place like ours.  The faculty do great work, but you have to work harder to make the kind of contacts that you need to be really successful here.

All advice is welcomed in the comments!

Stanley Fish likes a Core Curriculum

Welcome back! With school starting soon, I am spending more time on the internet again and find much interesting to read. Here are just a few:

This morning's NY Times has Stanley Fish calling for a core curriculum so that students and faculty can have a common conversation.

Yesterday, I was reading the interesting discussion about whether teachers need an education degree.

And finally, Maureen Dowd writes about anonymity of bloggers. With the beginning of new year, I wonder if I should continue my own anonymity. . .

Student Sues Her Alma Mater

This is too good of a story to pass up.  A student who hasn't found a job three months after graduation is suing.

It seems like a nice case of litigation out of control, but at least no real lawyer took the case.

I haven't been posting much this summer, but this made me laugh!

Students DO drink more than we did!

When we talk about student parties and drinking on campus, I often fall back on the idea that I was a fairly big partier in college myself.  I think I survived and have done alright.  

However, a new study suggests that problems have actually gotten worse in the last decade.  Higher binge drinking, drinking and driving, and alcohol-related deaths make me think that this is a problem beyond those of my day.

When we think about educational reform, standards, and accountability, we have to think about this huge problem.  How can we break the cycle of drunkenness and disrespect for education that is becoming every more pervasive?

Figuring out Furloughs

The Journal-Sentinal has an article today about how confusing the Governor's furlough program is for universities.

It outlines the complications that come from trying to furlough those of us who do not punch a time clock, are paid only 9 months out of the year, and deal with the pay cuts.

Most interesting is that the state is demanding the universities give back 2% for all employees, including unionized members who have not agreed to the cut.  I don't know what percentage that is for us, but it is another base budget reduction, according to the article.

Legislators agree to cut our pay

Just in case you haven't been paying attention, the legislators have officially rescinded our promised pay increase and voted to increase our health insurance premiums.

Although the media seems to be reporting it as a pay freeze, it is really a cut.  

As our last paycheck for the academic year is on the horizon, enjoy it!  You won't see as much when we finally get paid again on October 1.

$7 million more in cuts for UW system

The Joint Finance Committee decided today to take $7 million more back from UW auxiliary funds.  They already had taken $16 million, so the new total is $23 million.

Unfortunately, I don't have the budget figures that were circulated last month in front of me, but this will surely mean another significant cut here on campus.   Our share of the $7 million will go up because UW-Lacrosse's share was reduced.

It is a nice way to start our summer, knowing that the state is stripping even more from higher education here.   What more will we lose before the semester starts again in the fall?

e-cheating ahead?

The NY Times loves these stories, and so do I.  They report on the websites that are now specializing in class notes and tests.

I haven't checked to see if I am up there, but it is an interesting new electronic twist on the fraternity test bank.

Sad Saga of a Georgia Professor

As the semester winds to an end, I am taking a break from grading to mention one of the interesting sagas of the last few weeks.  

Only if you live in a hole could you have failed to notice the media reports of the man in Georgia who apparently shot his wife, a couple of her acquaintances, and then himself.

The story itself is sad, but I have been fascinated by the fact that we heard endless about the story because the shooter was a professor.   It shows us something about professors strange place in modern culture.

The fact that the suspect was a professor drove this to the newspapers -- after all how often do you see the headline "Police manhunt for plumber underway . . ."  

The fixation obviously has to do with the seeming incongruity between "professor" and human being.  In the same way that students seem surprised to run into us in the grocery store or mall, the fact that a professor might be driven to fits of murderous rage caught the media's fancy.

At the same time, how often are we ridiculed by legislators and others because we aren't in front of students 40 hours a week?  How many times can they cut our pay in Madison and then insist we have no grounds to complain?  How often are we lampooned by radical right activists as communists in cardigan sweaters?

My father always insists that professors also carry special respect in society because of our position as experts and scholars.  

The case of the murderous Georgia professor crosses all of these stereotypes and cultural images.  Here is the erudite, liberal, respectable, wimpy professor shockingly acting out in rage and violence.

Professors lie at a strange intersection of respect, fascination, and derision.   If only there weren't so much grading to go with it. . . .

Furloughs on the way!

Gov. Doyle just announced big new cuts to the state budget, including over 3 work weeks (16 days) of furloughs over the next 2 years.  

It is sort of a joke to call it a furlough, since it really is a temporary 3% pay cut.  I wonder if it won't be even bigger for us since technically we are paid on a 9 month schedule.  That means it could be almost 5% [updated from higher figures, because I did my math wrong].

He also is cancelling our small pay raise and raising health insurance premiums.   

There will most likely be bigger cuts in the overall budget too.

State revenue has dropped at a precipitous rate, they tell us, for 2009.

It is going to be an ugly couple of years around here.  

Faculty Advocacy Committee Tries to Create Buzz

I was looking at the Northwestern this morning to see if any schools had closed because of swine flu, and noticed that the Faculty Advocacy Committee has created a blog on that website.

So far, it contains interviews with Merlain Angwall and B. S. Sridhar.   They are, of course, very nice profiles of two interesting members of our community.

I don't know whether these blogs gather much attention, but it looks like a nice beginning foray into the world of electronic promotion for this group.

Change the University?

I read this op-ed piece in the NYTimes yesterday.   A religion professor from Columbia proposes completely rethinking the university.  Although much of his focus is on graduate education, he proposes sweeping changes:

1. Change curriculum to make it like the web, cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural

2. Abolish permanent departments.  

3. Stop overlap between universities

4. Get rid of dissertations

5.  Change graduate training

6. No tenure and forced retirement

The core of his argument is that universities produced graduates, both undergrad and PhD, that nobody wants.  He thinks that current training and scholarship in the humanities is basically worthless.  For him, it won't be worth anything until it is "relevant."

On top of that, he believes that old faculty are useless.   In his vision, everyone gets tenure and then never changes.  He obviously doesn't think much of younger faculty either, because of their over-specific research agendas. He describes newly minted PhD's as clones of their advisors.

Since we are in the midst of our own discussions about reform, centered around LERT and general education, this article does give us something additional to ponder.

Reform and adaptation are important, but eliminating the entire system?  Expecting everyone to be generalists who change topics every 7 years?  Increasing the pressure on faculty and strengthening the hands of administration?  

The religion professor seems to have gotten business, rather than the other way around! 

UW Steven's Point chancellor resigns -- Earn headed North?

This article appeared in the Journal-Sentinel yesterday.  The Stevens Point chancellor, Linda Bunnell resigned, primarily because she was involved in an accident in a state car.  She didn't report it and had been drinking at a private club before it occurred.

She had apparently already made plenty of enemies, so this was the straw that broke the camel's back.  

I doubt Provost Earns will be leaving again, since they appointed their own provost to be the interim chancellor.  It seems like a good way to tie the story into our own campus.

The incident, however, raises the continuing question as to why these leaders think they live in a different world than the rest of us.  Dr. Bunnell didn't feel like laws applied to her.  I have complained about the way that academia has aped the worst of wall street in insisting that their leaders have to be grossly overpaid to be effective.  They also seem to have imbibed the spirit of being untouchable, no matter what they do to their institution.  

The average pay for presidents is $427,000 a year.  Now I know that UW system does not pay nearly that much, but they insist that they need to increase the range to "stay competitive."

Perhaps the economic downturn will bring some sanity back to the pay scale for administrators and a bit less arrogance. 

Finally, I might put in a good word for our own Chancellor Wells.  He has avoided such crazy scandals and has worked hard defending our insititution in Madison and in public.   There are things that could be better, but thus is life.

Facebook linked to lower grades in college

I just had to post this link.  An education researcher at Ohio State found that facebook users haver lower GPAs than non-users.

Facebook has been getting all the hype lately, as old folks are flocking to it.  Now, we find a connection between facebook and performance in college.

I have a feeling that heavy facebook users would not be doing better without it, as they would find some other way to avoid studying.  It is fun nonetheless!

In Wisconsin, all professors are below average. . .

The Journal-Sentinel is on an education kick and published an article today about how we are all paid much less than the national average.

A nice chart accompanies the article and you can see that UWO's average is about 90% of the national average.  We are, however, in the top half of UW system schools.  

There is really no news in this--even the regents acknowledged how far we were behind other comparable institutions--before they reneged on our small pay increase.

In these budgetary times, nothing is going to change, but I like to see our situation appear in the newspapers.  

Grades at UW-Milwaukee

The Journal-Sentinel ran an story examining the grades given at UWM from 2006-2008.  They filed an open-records request and present the data.  

The average grade at UWM is apparently a B.  The lowest grades given were in math classes, the highest in education.

The paper also gives also sorts of charts, even by name of professors, with top 10 highest grades, lowest grades, GPAs, etc.  I think we actually collect data like this, but it has never run in the newspaper.  We might expect this coming soon from the Northwestern.

The J-S particularly goes after the school of education, whose average grade given is an A-.  It is fun reading about the squirming ed. profs trying to explain why every student they teach is excellent.  They claim that their national ranking  (96th--is that actually good?) justifies their easy grading policies.

We have had our own discussions of this topic, but it takes on a new dimension when grades are the lead story in the local newspaper.