Growth & Justice Blog

Erasing boundaries between K-12 and higher education

Last week South St. Paul Public Schools superintendent Dave Webb announced a partnership with Inver Hills Community College (IHCC) that will allow high school seniors to graduate with an associate degree at no cost and without ever leaving the high school grounds.

Growth & Justice has long been advocating for more seamless transitions all along the education pathway, with high-quality early childhood education aligning with early grades, for instance. And this kind of innovation at the other end of the pipeline is the kind of effort needed to achieve the goal of a significantly higher postsecondary completion rate by the end of this decade.

At least three distinct advantages stand out.

• Cost: Saves students and families more than $10,000 in college tuition and fees.
• Convenience: Allows students to remain on the high school campus.
• Curriculum: Strengthens curriculum offerings and retains high-achieving students.

Doug Binsfeld, Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at IHCC, attributed the success of the alignment to South St. Paul’s challenging International Baccalaureate (IB) program, noting that initially almost all of the IB courses met the “higher-order" thinking that is expected from college students. The IB Diploma Program is an internationally recognized, comprehensive, two-year pre-college curriculum, requiring students to study six subjects and take exams at the end of each course.

Offering students the chance to earn an associate degree while still in high school can help Minnesota increase the percentage of students who complete a postsecondary degree. Cliff Adelman’s study for the U.S. Department of Education shows that if a high school student completes 12 college credits while in high school, they are 80% more likely to persist in college and complete a degree. This is especially important in Minnesota because we need a highly trained workforce. According to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, by 2018, 70% of jobs in Minnesota will require a postsecondary education, yet only about 50% of the current population meets this demand.

In our Smart Investment Agenda for Education in Minnesota, Growth & Justice recommends academic offerings that allow students to earn college credits while in high school like Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, Post Secondary Enrollment Options, and College in the Schools, as a strategy to increase the higher education attainment rate to 75% by 2020.

We know other promising efforts are underway that will get all of us thinking beyond high school as the optimum destination, and toward a mindset around grades "11 through 14." Gov. Dayton's administration is working on just such a framework. And at least two local efforts are noteworthy:

• Central Lakes College in Brainerd partnered with Long Prairie-Grey Eagle High School to create the 4 for 2 program.
• Anoka-Ramsey Community College is teaming with Irondale High School in New Brighton to launch the Early College program for 9th and 10th graders this fall.

We support MnSCU’s continued work in this area. There is great opportunity here to expand partnerships and get and keep more Minnesota students on the pathway to college.

--Colin O'Keefe (Growth & Justice Education Policy Intern)

 

Wonkish Ryan's budget specifics take center stage

Congressman Paul Ryan is routinely described as a "wonk." And all of us policy enthusiasts have to like the new focus on substance--budgets and taxes and who gets how much--that's likely to occur with the naming of a fellow wonk as Mitt Romney's running mate.

Conservative and liberal commentators also agree that the choice of Ryan signals a harder turn by Romney toward a more specific anti-tax, anti-government policy agenda. It reflects an even more pronounced valuing of private interests over public interests on the GOP side, and perhaps the strongest attack since before the 1930s on our federal government's fundamental role in providing economic security for all Americans.

The best and most comprehensive critique of Ryanism, and the spectacular claim to be able to reduce the federal deficit by cutting taxes, can be found at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) blog post headlined "Everything You Need to Know About Chairman Ryan's Budget.''

Here's how CBPP President Robert Greenstein summarized the Ryan blueprint: "It would likely produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history and likely increase poverty and inequality more than any other budget in recent times (and possibly in the nation’s history)."

The ramifications for Minnesota of the Ryan budget were teased out of the CBPP studies late last week by the Minnesota Budget Project (MBP). The MBP reported that "Minnesota would lose an estimated $420 million in federal funding for education, law enforcement, clean water, and other state and local priorities in 2014 under the House-passed Ryan budget...The total impact from 2013 to 2021 would be a loss of $3.8 billion in federal funding to Minnesota and local communities."

Meanwhile, on the libertarian end of the spectrum, the Cato Institute is much more bullish on Ryan's budget, but Cato also faults him for inconsistency and for not taking a similar whack at the huge military-industrial complex that taxpayers support through military spending.

It's common knowledge that Ayn Rand, the novelist and amateur philosopher who worshipped capitalists as godlike Atlases to whom everything was owed, has had strong influence on Rep. Ryan. The New Yorker reminds us that her novel, Atlas Shrugged, once was required reading for his staff. But Ryan has since attempted to disavow Rand, in large part because of her militant atheism and utter contempt for religion and the altruistic values of Ryan's Catholic faith. The American Values Network offers an intriguing challenge to Christians to choose between Ayn Rand and Jesus Christ.

--Dane Smith