Three students from Friendship Public Charter School have been awarded Posse Scholarships. This year’s winnersn — Kendra Spruill, Phillip Pride, and Kirk Murphy — will receive full four-year tuition scholarships from colleges that partner with the Posse Foundation.

Spruill will attend Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa., while Pride and Murphy are will enroll at Sewanee: The University of the South, located in Tennessee.

Since 1989, the Foundation has identified, recruited and trained 4,237 public high school students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential to become Posse Scholars. Posse Scholars graduate at a rate of 90 percent and make a visible difference on campus and throughout their professional careers.

In 2011, the Foundation received more than 14,000 nominations for 560 scholarship slots nationally.

This study used the gold standard of research by using a randomized experiment to compare students who received the voucher with those who applied but did not receive one. The data show that African-American students who received a voucher were 9 percentage points more likely to enroll in college than those students who did not receive a voucher, an increase of 24 percent. For Hispanics, impact was much less positive at 1.7 percentage points.

The variance may be explained by reasons for attending Catholic private schools. Hispanics are predominantly Catholic, so families may have chosen a Catholic school simply not because they found it more academically successful than their local public school. African-Americans in this study, generally were from an area with a lower-performing school and would not have chosen a Catholic private school if not for a voucher, so their reasons for attending were purely academic.

This study, in conjunction with recent research on the DC Opportunity Scholarship, and the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, makes a strong case that are producing long-term results for students that receive them.

Breaking down college readiness by subject yields better numbers. For instance, 67% of students tested met English college readiness benchmarks. However, that means 33% of students taking the ACT have not been sufficiently prepared by their schools for learning at the next level. And that’s just students taking the ACT.

The number of 2012 ACT test takers underprepared for colleges and careers gets worse by subject — 48% failed to meet Reading benchmarks, 54% failed to meet Math benchmarks, and a whopping 69% failed to meet Science benchmarks.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently released data indicating that America continues to lose ground internationally when it comes to producing college graduates. Well, it’s not hard to see from these ACT statistics why this is the case. Ensuring students can graduate college means ensuring that students are first adequately prepared.

So just how do we get U.S. high schools to do a better job preparing students for post-secondary success? Try choice.

School choice research indicates that options are helping educational attainment, and our nation’s economic security depends on giving students a quality education that ensures they are prepared for life after high school.

A new study suggests that private school vouchers can have a positive impact on the rate at which African-American students attend college.

It should come as no surprise that the sleeper issue of student loan interest rates took on a life of its own as soon as President Obama began touting it. People are worried about paying for college. Tuition has more than doubled over the past 20 years, and Pell Grants are offsetting the lowest share of college costs in history.

Maybe it’s time for the government–state, local, even federal–to step up and pay. Obama hinted at this concept last Friday. “Some of it is not actually the fault of the universities,” he told a group of students and parents. “If it’s a state school, the state legislatures across the country have been cutting back on the support for public colleges and universities.”

Need-based student loans, which are set to double on July 1, are just the jumping off point for a broader conversation about college costs. As I wrote in National Journal last week, a typical financing plan for a low-income student includes a Pell Grant, a subsidized loan, and often a supplementary unsubsidized loan. Some colleges reduce tuition based on a student’s financial need, but state budget cuts have hurt public universities so much that those scholarships barely help.

There are a host of tax breaks aimed at helping middle-class families pay for college, but a recent report from the Education Sector notes that tuition tax breaks in recent years have gone to households with much higher incomes. Maybe it’s time to let those tax breaks go and use the money for Pell Grants, the paper provocatively argues.

Student loan interest rates or Pell Grant levels only dance around the heart of the problem–tuition is rising and wages are stagnant. If higher education is truly a priority for the country, should the taxpayers commit to making it happen? Should the states dramatically increase funding to public universities and community colleges? Should local governments be chipping in? Should the federal government subsidize post-secondary education more than it currently does? Would government subsidies, even substantial ones, simply make it easier for universities to charge more?

Response — Three Fs: Food, Frats, and Facilities
by Jeanne Allen

In this day and age of blamelessness, every problem is ascribed to anyone but those with whom it originates. So I should not be shocked that the President is suggesting that sky-rocketing tuitions are not entirely the fault of the institutions that set them (and buy the food, the people, the facilities, and the like) but instead of is the fault of states that don’t support the institutions that buy the food, the people, the facilities and the like.

Skyrocketing costs with little accountability is nothing new in higher education. I spent four years in the US Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education nearly 25 years ago and this topic was as big then as it is now. It was very well publicized, and the response by then Secretary of Education Bill Bennett was to suggest that higher education take a hard look at costs. He implored universities to start controlling costs and to not expect the federal government to raise its support levels every time a school broke ground on a new building or and chose not to dip into endowments for that new arts center it “needed.” Bennett questioned whether America’s college kids were getting the education that all that money represented, and was trounced for doing so. That Education Department also attacked loan defaults, suggested aid be tied to accountability for results (what a concept) and all sorts of other things that are well documented in the history books.

From a personal standpoint, I have now spent the better part of the last five years negotiating college choices for four kids and been privy to the choices of ten times that many more of their friends. I’m shocked (as they’d say in Casablanca) as what masquerades as good education in many of the schools who cry poverty. Parties, football, fraternities, fitness facilities and food are the most important aspects of the choices kids are making today. These are their differentiators for 90% of the college bound who will draw considerably from the federal and state aid packages we fund in this nation, not whether their political science department can teach or their science department will advance them into truly exceptional realms of understanding.

College done well need not be a luxury item. But as long as the colleges feel the have to compete for students on the non-academic differentiators, they will continue to spend aimlessly, and raise their prices, knowing that sympathetic ears in Washington will support them in the name of education for all. The middle class is hardly helped by this — instead they are indebting their children and their own pensions to pay for this, along with whatever aid they can beg and borrow from our government backed lending institutions. And the less advantaged among us are thus deterred, unless they have advocates at their schools helping them find aid and great bargains in schooling, as is the case, for example, with Friendship Public Charter Schools graduates who are going to college in droves, heavily subsidized by their chosen institutions and by generous scholarships.

The answer is not — as legislators even a generation ago on Capitol Hill thought — to raise the aid available. The answer is to pressure higher education to lower costs and stop relying on taxpayers to pay for them regardless of their effectiveness. In a time when technology is playing an increasing effective role in delivering education K-12, why don’t traditional colleges and universities engage in blended learning models as well? The for-profit institutions that are doing precisely that continue to get battered by lawmakers, despite their service to kids who are not able to pay for expensive four-year institutions. They deliver education at a fraction of the price and their quality is comparable to that of most others, regardless of tax status.

Instead of isolating those doing it well for less, and continuing to push for increasing financial support for traditional colleges and universities, it’s time for America to draw the line on what and how much it will pay for education. Increasing Pell Grants and the like doesn’t open up the market to more students, it increases the cost of education and further distances this as a dream for all!

Freeze the loans and Pell grants as is, but give middle and lower-middle income families tax-credits so that they can make better decisions about what’s worth the cost of admission. Give US business tax incentives to fund scholarships for those with little or no income to spend on college, so that colleges and universities can vie for the business and become truly competitive. That’s when we’ll solve the financial higher education crisis we have today.

Is President Barack Obama a snob? A brief look at his personal education might make you think so. He attended the prestigious Punahou prep school in Hawaii. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. If I had seen that resume at age 18, I would have rated him high on the snob meter knowing nothing more about him. (I was starting college with lots of prep-school classmates, which made me acutely self conscious about my public school education.) Personally, I don’t know if Obama is a snob, and I don’t care. I figure that as president, he’s entitled either way.

I am intrigued, though, with Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum’s use of the sassy slur to lambast Obama for his efforts to increase college attendance and graduation. “What a snob,” Santorum said, railing about “liberal” college professors “trying to indoctrinate” impressionable teens. The huffy reactions to Santorum’s rants are to be expected. He’s good at eliciting them. An essay from the Harvard Crimson entitled “In Defense of Snobbery,” which is quite well written, is just one sample of the many people who disagree with Santorum.

But I wonder if Santorum is on to something. It has become increasingly clear over the last 20 to 30 years that college is a necessary component of a middle class lifestyle in America. Should it be that way? Do we want to be the kind of country where a mortar board is a de facto requirement for being a part of the community? Perhaps Santorum is simply expressing the frustration many people feel that the achievement goal posts keep moving.

It’s certainly easier to get a job with a college degree. The unemployment rate for high school graduates with no college is almost double that of people with at least a bachelors degree. Even if some jobs don’t technically require B.A., many businesses use college degree as one of their first hiring screens to make sure they get competent candidates. Obama has made a point of advocating shorter-term community colleges and technical degrees in his higher education campaign, but there is still a paucity of alternatives to college for kids who want to work sooner or are not interested in four years of dorm life and campus politics.

What are the current, viable alternatives to college? In a perfect world, what alternatives should there be? Could employers be more open to looking at different kinds of job candidates? If so, how? Can the K-12 education system improve enough to make college less of a necessity? Are we becoming a snob nation?

Response: Meaningful Thoughts Underneath
by Jeanne Allen
National Journal

Great question, and well outlined. I have not spoken to Rick Santorum about this, but I suspect his gaffe actually did have a meaningful thought underneath, which no one yet has articulated. And that is, that the individuals and families that currently make up working-class America, who do not have the density of college degrees as the professional business class, have an unbridled work ethic and put their all into their work resulting in tangible products and services. Conversely, and sadly, I would argue that the college-bound kids and graduates believe that their intellect and effort make them superior. We see this in government; we see this in Academia. They do indeed act like snobs.

Friends and I bemoan how privileged our own college kids act. We taught them hard work, or so we thought. They look down on people without college degrees. And frankly, what many of them go to higher education to learn is entirely subjective, often pablum and rarely the stuff we thought college was for. Courses such as “Discover NY”, ” The Five Lies George Bush Told You About Iraq;” “Sociology and the Beatles;” “Making Sense of the 1040″ cost the parent, the taxpayer, millions every year.

As the trains run, the cars get fixed, the bars open and close and our every needs are met, I too wonder if we haven’t made Higher Education just a tad bit elite. I want every child to have the opportunity to be well educated – in substance – from the early years through college age. They should all have the chance. I can only imagine that Senator Santorum was looking out at a sea of “real” people who are a mix of high school, GED, Associates and Bachelors who have no time to decipher the BS parading as discourse today when he made that statement. It was not wise, nor did it make sense. But it is perhaps those little non-sequiturs that should make us all think a little more about how those with fewer years of education and perhaps no pedigree for higher Ed might think about these challenging times.

We might also consider that no matter what the president suggests, a good higher education is out of the reach of most Americans and a struggle for those of us who even make good money.

Feed your family, or “Discover NY?”

Depending on what you do everyday, the answer is clear. Maybe if K-12 were worth a little more in terms of proficiency “dollars,” higher ed would not need to be so expensive. There could be fewer courses but more focus. Perhaps the entitlement of government support has, as many economists argue, created the inflation of higher Ed that puts it out of reach of most Americans, making higher ed a luxury for the those with disposable income, the so-called snobs.

It wasn’t always this way. The proliferation of sophisticated eating spaces, gyms, dorms, frivolous courses and more has built a public perception that only the elite go to college, and those who are subsidized make up the bulk of defaults.

It is not right. It should not be this way. But it is. Maybe the candidate was onto something.

Well, get ready to go backward … again. Analysis of college-bound seniors’ 2011 SAT scores shows that student improvement is going nowhere, and that Hispanic and African-American students continue to face a wide achievement gap.

When you take into account this year’s SAT analysis and recent ACT scores, which reveal that only 25 percent of the 2011 class could meet the benchmarks for college readiness in all four core subjects, it’s no surprise that we’re dropping back.

The United States has slipped from 12^th to 16^th globally in college education attainment, according to a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

How much more writing needs to be on the wall before we reach a consensus that how we continue to educate our kids is not working?

We’re not adequately preparing our K-12 students for college and therefore we’re falling behind other nations both educationally and economically. It’s time that we all step back, admit it’s not working, and then work to reform our education system to emphasize student achievement.

We, and especially our kids, need a system that puts students first and rallies against the backward trends evident in our education system.