The College Ratings – ESEA Reauthorization Pickle

Blogs, Letters & Testimonials

April 13, 2015

By Michael Dannenberg

Here’s a pickle.

If, in carrying out its college ratings system, the Obama administration takes student demographics into consideration (what some college groups call “risk adjustment”), how does the administration justify not doing the same in the ESEA reauthorization K-12 accountability context?

And if the Obama administration embraces risk adjustment (what President George W. Bush used to call “the soft bigotry of low expectations”), how do Congressional Democrats not lose support of civil rights groups for an ESEA reauthorization bill?  In the past, that loss has doomed reauthorization efforts.

A Machiavellian education policy political operative might suggest that the Obama administration simply continue to hold off releasing its college ratings system until after an ESEA reauthorization bill is passed.  Then it can release its college ratings system embracing so-called risk adjustment – intellectual consistency be damned.

The college groups would celebrate accountability for results being watered down, the administration would lessen criticism from college leaders, and advocates would bemoan – what let’s face it – already all too often exists. Either:

(i) Colleges hold a different, lower set of expectations for racial minority students and students from low-income backgrounds in postsecondary education programs, or

(ii) Colleges have the same degree completion expectations for all of the students they admit regardless of race or family income, but don’t really care or do much if they end up with poor results or wide gaps among subgroups (psst, among others we’re talking about you Michigan State).

We have a better idea.  The Obama college ratings system should measure four-year degree granting colleges against peer institutions where the only student characteristic taken into consideration is the incoming level of student academic preparation.  That allows for a fair comparison among groups of colleges that serve students with similar SAT/ACT scores and high school GPAs. SAT/ACT data is already reported to the Department of Education through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).  And GPA data can be gleaned from Peterson’s databases, not to mention from individual colleges for those that publish it.

This is the kind of rating you likely would see:

Nine times out of ten, a college with a graduation rate below 15 percent falls in the bottom of its institution peer group. Coincidentally, four-year schools with graduation rates below the 15 percent mark also happen to equal the bottom 5 percent of four-year colleges overall in terms of completion – precisely the same demarcation the Obama administration has used in the elementary and secondary education context for identifying persistently poor performers in need of intervention.

Now the Obama administration could take the cowardly way out on college ratings and brush over poor institution performance with racial minorities and students from low-income families.  It could just publish a list of top performers on completion, return on investment value, and economic opportunity.  Instead though, without ceding any moral high ground, the Secretary of Education should identify bottom-performing four-year degree granting colleges for students overall and for disaggregated subgroups of students.

Just as in the gainful employment context, folks should be warned about specific low-performing colleges.  The non-profit schools among the low-performers should get help to improve, but should also be put on notice that they have to shape up by a certain date or begin to lose out on federal aid.  The pocketbook tends to focus energy and the mind.

Colleges and universities have existed in a near accountability-free zone for too long.  That needs to change.  We need higher education investment and reform.  Now.