WA State Legislative News of Relevance to Higher Education

From Sherry Nelson, SBCTC:

Please enjoy this final edition of the SBCTC Legislative News for the regular 2012 session.  If you see last week’s edition, refresh your browser [F5].

Take the next two days off.  And if there is budget progress or other news related to Washington’s community and technical colleges, we will bring you updates in occasional special session editions of Legislative News.

Open Education - Educators' Pledge

At the winter 2012 Assessment, Teaching and Learning Retreat faculty and faculty development leaders created the Educators' Open Licensing Pledge, which reads:

"We, as educators employed by schools, colleges, and universities, pledge to honor the spirit of the Open Educational Resources Movement by designating the materials we create at our institutions with a Creative Commons License."

Please join us in our commitment to openly sharing educational materials, by adding your name to the pledge: http://bit.ly/openedpledge

Leading from the Middle - SBCTC and Legislative Process

Understanding the SBCTC and Legislature MODULE

 March 30, 2012   9:00-4:00

 SBCTC

1300 Quince St. SE

Olympia, WA

4th Floor, Cascade Room

 Previous participants said:

 “It more than met my expectations.”

“It was informative and thought provoking”

Topics Include:

·         SBCTC Board and State Board Staff

·         CTC System Structures –

Associations, Commissions, Councils and Committees

·         Legislative Issues and Processes Affecting Higher Education

·         Interagency Relations in Higher Education

      This affordable one-day training is presented by State Board for Community and Technical Colleges professionals, Noreen Light and John Boesenberg.

      You may participate in the SBCTC/Legislative Module alone or as part of the four Leading from the Middle modules (Professional Development, Budget and Finance, and Human Recourses) which will be offered quarterly in your region.

      Fee for individuals is $90.00 per module – includes coffee and lunch
  
      This comprehensive training is intended for CTC employees who are:

*new to a leadership position

*new to the Washington CTC system

*making a transition from faculty to exempt position

*have never had training for a leadership position

*any community or technical college employee wanted to expand their knowledge

 For more information, contact Kati Hays chays@columbiabasin.edu

REGISTER: 

http://www.regonline.com/leadingfromthemiddlesbctcmodulesbctcolympia

Brought to you by The ASSOCIATION of Community and Technical College Administrators and Exempt Staff
www.theassociationctc.org

Placement Practices

From Bill Moore, Policy Associate, SBCTC:

The research studies referenced in this news article from Inside Higher ED (and another article in the New York Times) reinforce the case that multiple measures, including indicators related to HS performance, are more useful than a single standardized test score. We’re already talking about those issues as part of our system efficiency work, but of course the capacity challenges we face make taking that kind of approach daunting at best. One encouraging possibility on the horizon, at least for students coming into our colleges more or less straight from high school, is the potential of using the new Smarter Balanced 11^th-grade assessment, currently in development, in conjunction with HS course-taking (transcript information) and perhaps GPA in lieu of the current placement tests. This tool will be a college-readiness assessment for math and English Language Arts based on the Common Core State Standards, and we have the opportunity through our new Core to College project to explore whether or not the standards and the assessment will in fact be useful to us in this process. We’ll be starting this work in the spring and hope to engage a number of faculty and colleges in the work that runs between now and December 2014; I’ll post more details very soon on how to get involved!

Open Education: $25,000 top prize for video

From http://whyopenedmatters.org/ (via Tom Caswell, Policy Associate, SBCTC):

Today Creative Commons, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Open Society Institute launch the Why Open Education Matters Video Competition. The competition will award cash prizes, provided by the Open Society Institute, of up to $25,000 for the best short videos that explain the use and promise of free, high-quality open educational resources and describe the benefits and opportunities these materials create for teachers, students and schools.

The Why Open Education Matters Video Competition coincides with the first annual Open Education Week. Open Ed Week is a global event that seeks to raise awareness about the benefits of free and open sharing in education. While Open Educational Resources have been around for 10 years now, the benefits and promise of a the global Open Education movement needs to be known to all. We need your help.

We're honored to have U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan provide the introduction to the Why Open Education Matters Video Competition. Your videos must be submitted to the competition website by June 5, 2012, and winners will be announced July 18, 2012. Cash prizes include $25,000 (first), $5,000 (second), and $1,000 (Public Choice Award). Judges include Davis Guggenheim, Nina Paley, James Franco, and many others. We can't wait to see your creative videos.

Legislative News - March 2, 2012

Keep up with news and happenings related to Washington’s community and technical colleges during the 2012 session with SBCTC Legislative News.   If you see last week’s edition, refresh your browser [F5].

Only one more week to go, for those who are counting down to sine die.

For-Profit Postsecondary Schools: Nimble Critters or Agile Predators?

A February 2012 report by the Center for Analysis of Postsecondary Education and Employment, The For-Profit Postsecondary School Sector: Nimble Critters or Agile Predators?, uses the 2004 to 2009 Beginning Postsecondary Students (BPS) longitudinal survey to assess a recent cohort of first-time undergraduates who attended for-profits relative to comparable students who attended community colleges or other public or private non-profit institutions. The report depicts the value of for-profits to certain students, and indicates that for-profit schools do better in terms of first-year retention and the completion of shorter certificate and degree programs. However, the data also show that first-time postsecondary students at for-profits wind up with higher debt burdens, experience greater unemployment after leaving school, have modestly lower earnings six years after starting college and end up with higher student loan default rates than do observationally-similar students from public and non-profit institutions.

The report is available at http://capseecenter.org/for-profit-nimble-critters/.