A Criminal Matter?

I hope the U.S. Attorney’s Office has more evidence than I suspect it has to justify calling the Marshall University provost and a professor before a federal grand jury in the Emily Perdue grading matter.

As best I can determine, the only scenario that would produce an indictable federal crime is this: Someone made it easy for Emily Perdue to earn grades for her independent study because her father is the State Treasurer AND he or someone close to him somehow exerted influence inappropriately (not just as a concerned parent) to obtain a favorable outcome on behalf of Miss Perdue.  I can’t imagine the second half of the equation being satisfied in the absence of some clear quid pro quo, which no one has suggested publicly to date.  Furthermore, the quid pro quos available to a State Treasurer, unlike a Governor, Senator, or Congressman, truly are very limited.

While certainly worthy of internal examination by Marshall University’s provost and faculty senate, the Perdue matter hardly seems worthy of CRIMINAL investigation. To an outsider, these subpoenas appear to be political.

 

The Race to the Bottom

The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) published an interesting report last week that compares state proficiency standards to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scale.

Some basic information for those of you who may not know:

• Federal No Child Left Behind legislation allowed states to establish their own student proficiency standards and measure performance against those standards, so there are as many proficiency standards as there are states.
• The NAEP is a national test given to a sample of students in each state and provides the only ready means of comparing student performance across states.

The report’s executive summary states disingenuously that the report is not intended “to imply a judgment about state standards,” but rather “to be descriptive of state-to-state variation in the location of the state standards on a common metric.”  Don’t be fooled!

What judgment does NCES want you to make?  ”States are setting the bar too low,” says U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Interestingly,

• The report finds dramatic differences between the proficiency standards of the five highest and lowest NAEP-scale-equivalent states.
• Significant numbers of states set standards below NAEP basic performance cut points.  In fourth grade reading, for example, 31 states (including West Virginia) set proficiency standards below the basic cut point.
• The rigor of state standards has a positive correlation to NAEP proficiency at the 4th grade level, but not at the 8th grade level – which should cause someone to ask whether we spend waste too much time setting these standards if they seem to have no impact on student achievement … but it won’t, I assure you.

How did West Virginia fare among the 48 states for which data were reported for 2007?

• 43rd at Grade 4 reading and a whopping 26 points below NAEP basic and 56 points below NAEP proficient.
• 44th at Grade 8 reading and 14 points below NAEP basic and 52 points below NAEP proficient.
• 36th at Grade 4 math and 3 points above NAEP basic and 32 points below NAEP proficient.
• 41st at Grade 8 math and 9 points below NAEP basic and 46 points below NAEP proficient.

Lake Wobegon anyone?

Journeyman Career Pathway: A Good Thing

The West Virginia Community and Technical College System, U.S. Department of Labor West Virginia Office of Apprenticeship, and West Virginia Joint Apprenticeship Training Council recently entered into an agreement whereby individuals who have completed apprenticeship programs that require a sufficient combination of classroom and on-the-job training can receive up to 43 hours of academic credit toward an associate of applied science degree.  As a practical matter, this means that a journeyman need only take seven general education courses to earn an associate’s degree.

Creating an education pathway from apprenticeship training to associate’s degree: It’s a good thing.  Creating an additional pathway from associate’s degree to bachelor of applied science degree?  That would be a really good thing.

I-PASS: A Good Thing

Congratulations to the West Virginia Community and Technical College System for winning a prestigious $635,000 U.S. Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) grant.

Given to organizations pursuing promising higher education innovations, the FIPSE grant will support the System’s Integrated Pathways for Adult Student Success (I-PASS) initiative aimed at addressing the need to expand high-need enrollment, particularly among adults; strengthening Adult Basic Education and Developmental Education; and improving persistence and completion rates.

Major initiatives focus on educational pipeline expansion and leakage reduction, with resources being devoted to an accelerated I-BEST exploratory curriculum involving early career planning, expanded learning support center services, and counselor/ coaches as primary points of contact for adult students, as well as improved recruitment strategies.

It’s a good thing.

Dumb and Dumber

The New York Times reports that the court-appointed trustee responsible for recovering assets for victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme has sued four members of Madoff’s family for almost $200 million they received over the years.

Who are these four people?  Brother Peter Madoff and his daughter Shana, both lawyers, who were chief compliance officer and compliance director, respectively, in a business that was in blatant non-compliance with all kinds of securities trading laws and sons Mark and Andrew Madoff, co-directors of trading for a business that never really executed the trades it claimed.

Does the trustee allege they were co-conspirators with Bernard Madoff?  No, just stupid.  His legal theory in not-so-legalese: These people shouldn’t be allowed to profit as a result of being dumber than a box of rocks, if that truly was the case – recognizing, of course, that willful ignorance is not ignorance at all.

If only it were always true that people were not allowed to profit from being dumb ….

Gambling With Students’ Futures: Part II

Higher education endowment fund managers have not been the only people gambling with students’ futures.  So have investors for some Section 529 College Savings Plans.

Several weeks ago, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a report on 529 plans in which it disclosed that such plans had lost about $25 billion.    How much is that?  Well, to put that amount in perspective, it’s a lot more than the $16.4 billion the United States spends annually on the nation’s largest financial aid program: the Pell grant program.

Why all the losses?  Fund managers were investing in some of the same kinds of investments in which higher education endowment fund managers were investing.  If you think the endowment fund investment strategy was crazy, consider how crazy it is to place money you know you’re going to need in just a few years in high-risk investments.  It’s no different than placing your retirement savings in high-risk investments right before you retire, something any credible financial advisor would tell you not to do.

For a masterful undressing of 529 plans and their investment strategies, please read a commentary by Kevin Carey, policy director with Education Sector, in The Chronicle of Higher Education last May.

As tax-free 529 plans primarily benefit the rich, this is a case where the rich have gotten not richer, but poorer.

Gambling With Students’ Futures: Part I

Last week the New York Times published yet another article about the decline in university endowments.  The second paragraph of that article is just plain scary:

But as the schools, one by one, disclose their numbers, the managers of these endowments are indicating their continued support for a diversified portfolio chock full of alternative investments like hedge funds, private equity and real estate — the very things that have caused so much trouble.

None of these managers would want me on their Boards of Trustees.  In my humble opinion, the goals of non-profit investing should be to ensure that the corpus is maintained, while making a conservative return.  Why?  Well, Harvard University and Yale University, as well as West Virginia University and Marshall University, are just too important to have their endowments (our donations!) frittered away on high-risk, high-reward options, even if the returns generally will be higher over the long term.  Non-profit higher education institutions also need consistent revenue, not obscene profits.  These high-risk strategies should be considered breaches of fiduciary duty.

Making (Up?) the Grade

West Virginia higher education faculty sure are prickly when it comes to allegations of making up grades for students who happen to be the daughters of powerful public officials.  The latest allegation is that West Virginia State Treasurer John Perdue’s daughter Emily had two incomplete grades changed to A’s by a dean at Marshall University without Miss Perdue’s professor’s knowledge and approval.

In yesterday’s newspaper, Miss Perdue and her father talked to a reporter about the story.  For those of you who were saturated and satiated with coverage of the WVU-Bresch degree scandal, stop reading the newspaper for a few more days.

Interestingly, there appear to be some significant similarities and differences between this story and the Bresch story.

Significant similarities:

• The daughter of a powerful politician;
• A fairly quick investigation/decision by the provost (vulnerable to second-guessing as a “rush to judgment”);
• A decision that favored the daughter; and
• FERPA (privacy law) violations by an individual or individuals seeking to expose the “truth.”

Significant differences:

• We are talking about grades in two classes, not a full-blown degree.
• Miss Perdue actually can produce work that she completed.  She also claims to have met with the dean on multiple occasions recently, which should be easily verifiable.
• Miss Perdue has a reasonably good GPA and appears to be a fairly conscientious student.
• This professor may have an axe to grind with the dean.
• To date, there’s no evidence whatsoever that the State Treasurer or friends of the State Treasurer did anything to influence the outcome.
• To date, there’s no evidence of presidential involvement (beyond, I would hope, his being apprised of the results of the provost’s investigation) or connections to Miss Perdue or her father.
• This issue appears to have been treated as the truly academic matter it is.

Predictions:

• You’ll be learning about several things you probably should not, given federal student privacy laws, as this story unfolds.  This is a serious downside to being a politican’s daughter; you are a public figure whether or not you want to be.
• This story will not have the “legs” that the Bresch story had because of the “axe-grinding” issue and the evidence that work actually was completed.