Get financial aid to the neediest

Decrying financial aid trends that are leaving poor students out in the cold, a blue-ribbon panel of prominent education leaders has criticized the rise of tax-supported programs that award grants and scholarships based on merit at the expense of need. Such programs, the educators say, threaten the promise of equal opportunity and access on which the federal financial-aid program originally was based.

The criticisms of federal financial-aid policy emerged from an initiative launched by the College Board in 2001, when it appointed prominent policymakers and researchers to a panel to form a National Dialogue on Student Financial Aid (NDSFA). In January, it released "Challenging Times, Clear Choices: An Action Agenda for College Access and Success" (a copy of the report and supporting documents are available online at www.collegeboard.com).

Although the panel began its work more than a year ago, its recommendations come as Congress prepares to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. That act has at its heart the $58 billion aid programs that represent the federal government's major contribution to higher education in the states. Every five years (since the act was first reauthorized in 1972), the debate has focused on how to address the growing imbalance between funding for straight scholarships--or Pell grants--and loans.

This year, the debate seems likely to shift direction, as financial-aid experts raise questions not just about the amount of help given to the middle class in the form of subsidized loans for college but also in the forms of tax credits and need-blind merit scholarships.

"If we do not turn the national conversation back to investment in education access and away from tax reduction, 'No Child Left Behind' will become just an empty phrase, representing broken promises, broken aspirations and broken dreams," said College Board president Gaston Caperton at a conference announcing the release of the report. Caperton co-chaired the NDSFA panel with Michael McPherson, president of Macalester College.

The panel's 10 major recommendations (see box) are addressed to federal and state governments, colleges and universities, and the private sector. The recommendations grew out of a series of hearings held in different regions of the country and reflect the testimony of 700 people and the research and suggestions of 170 organizations.

Report shows little help on teacher-quality front

The high-needs schools that could get hit hardest under accountability provisions included in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) are the same ones that currently get short shrift from policymakers when it comes to fulfilling the law's mandate for teacher quality--a proven component in raising student achievement. That's the picture that emerges from Quality Counts 2003, Education Week's annual survey of standards-based reform around the states.

The latest installment of the report, released in January, focuses on efforts to recruit, prepare and retain qualified teachers. The issue is a pressing one since the NCLBA, the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, requires states to ensure that all teachers in core academic subjects are "highly qualified" by the end of the 2005-06 school year.

Meeting that mandate will be challenging at best--particularly in schools serving high-poverty, high-minority communities. These schools receive almost no focused assistance when it comes to staffing classrooms with highly qualified teachers even though the concerns they face in this area are staggering.

"About 70 percent of secondary students in low-poverty schools have teachers who have both majored in and become licensed in their subjects," the survey points out. "Only about half of secondary students in high-poverty schools can say the same." The problem is greatest at the middle school level, where more than half of the students in high-poverty schools take a class with a teacher who hasn't acquired at least a minor in the subject taught.

Despite these problems, states have done little to target teacher recruitment and retention efforts to the schools that need them most. For example, "only New York prohibits the practice of hiring teachers with emergency licenses in its lowest-achieving schools," the report notes, adding that the ban will extend to all New York schools next fall.

Quality Counts 2003 also surveys 30 large school districts across the nation and finds few teacher recruitment and retention efforts are targeted at high-poverty, high-minority or low-achieving schools within each system.

What is more, states have shown lackluster initiative in addressing how teachers are trained. This year's report provides data on how states are holding teacher education institutions accountable. Federal law requires states to provide pass rates and rankings of their teacher education institutions to the federal government; and 24 states make the information available to the public. Thirty-five states and the District of Columbia report that they identify low-performing teacher-preparation programs, but only 13 of them have actually identified a teacher ed program as needing improvement, suggesting a disconnect between policy and enforcement.  And only five states--Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Washington--hold the programs accountable for the performance of their graduates in the classroom.

"The link between teacher quality and student achievement is well-documented. Nonetheless, there are far too many classrooms with teachers who are underprepared, uncertified or teaching a subject without the proper content expertise," the AFT stated following release of the report. "Teacher quality is no place to cut corners when you are working to improve schools. Common sense, and now federal law, both dictate that all children should have teachers who meet a high standard."

Quality Counts 2003 is available online at www.edweek.org.