Marne Einarson, Cornell University (mke3@cornell.edu)
This month’s book review was contributed by Gayle Fink, Associate Editor of E-AIR and the Director of Institutional Research, University System of Maryland (gfink@usmd.edu). Gayle reviews Minding the Gap: Why Integrating High School with College Makes Sense and How to Do It, edited by Nancy Hoffman, Joel Vargas, Andres Venezia and Marc S. Miller and published by Harvard Education Press in 2007 (ISBN 978-1-891792-45-8).
The imperative for a more educated citizenry and linking K-12 and higher education into a P-20 continuum is taking hold. As reported recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education (March 10, 2009), President Obama stressed shared responsibility for improving education and urged better systems of accountability in a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. The President “reiterated his belief today that America’s long-term prosperity rests heavily on the nation’s ability to do a better job of educating its people. The president urged states and school districts to create better data systems to track students’ educational progress from childhood through college, told colleges and universities they needed “to control spiraling costs,” and said individuals have a responsibility to themselves and to their country to “walk through the doors of opportunity.”
The notion of linking K-12 and higher education data is taking hold. The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/ has been working in many of our states helping K-12 systems establish longitudinal data systems. Over the next three years, the priority of DQC is to “expand the ability of state longitudinal data systems to link across the P–20 education pipeline and across state agencies.”
At the same time, higher education is involved in dialogue with high schools about aligning high school graduation expectations with college readiness. The American Diploma Project (ADP) formed by Achieve, Inc http://www.achieve.org/ has a network of 34 states participating in policy discussions to align high school standards with knowledge and skills required for success after high school.
At some point in the near future, IR professionals may be asked to participate in researching the alignment issue and linking longitudinal data system at their sector and/or at the state level. I recommend reading Minding the Gap: Why Integrating High School with College Makes Sense and How to Do It as a way to prepare for these discussions.
Minding the Gap is a collection of contributed works that clearly lays out the necessity for aligning high school and college and describes where the holes are in the education pipeline. The challenges and successes involved in creating a P-20 education are shared by highlighting and describing the multiplicity of policy issues which need to be addressed to create “one” system. The pieces about early placement testing will be of particular interest to community college researchers since many two-year institutions are already engaged in this activity.
The editors acknowledge that there is not a "one size fits all" approach to creating pathways across the high school and college transition. A number of examples are provided demonstrating the variety of approaches for early college access currently in place. But more needs to be done. The authors outline the policies needed to build, sustain and further develop pathways across 9-14.
The final section addresses the need for integrated state-level data and accountability systems and financing. This is where IR professionals can add their expertise to state level policy discussions. Anyone participating in these discussions needs to have a basic understanding of the work in Texas and Florida on this issue, and the authors outline these data systems in a clear and concise manner. Elements of design specifications are also outlined by Peter Ewell. Finally there are discussions on integrating budgeting across sectors and financial aid barriers to early college access.
As someone who has spent the good part of a year discussing the issue of creating a longitudinal data system linking P-20, I wish I had read this book earlier. It clearly lays out the issues involved in aligning these two very independent systems and offers the reader the framework for moving forward. Minding the Gap also helped me gain a better understanding of the differences in culture between K-12 and higher education. I would like to thank the staff of the Montgomery County P-20 Council (of which I am a member) for supplying this book as mandatory reading for our discussions on alignment.