Mixed News on State Student Aid

Doug Lederman | Insider Higher Ed

July 11, 2011

State spending on financial assistance to students increased by 3.8 percent in 2009-10, even as many governments struggled with recession-driven cuts in many programs. But nearly half of all states cut back on their all-important spending on need-based financial aid, even as enrollments boomed and as many students and families struggled to keep pace with tuitions that public colleges (or their legislatures) raised sharply.

Those are among the key findings of the annual report on state financial aid spending by the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs, released today.

In all, states raised their spending on student financial assistance of various types -- need-based and non-need-based grants, and nongrant aid -- to $10.8 billion in 2009-10, up about 3.8 percent from $10.4 billion in 2008-9.
In a break from recent trends, state spending on aid based purely on students' financial need grew at a faster pace than did other kinds of aid. States spent $6.444 billion on need-based aid in 2009-10, 4.6 percent more than the $6.16 billion they awarded in 2008-9. (Aid awarded at least in part on non-need-based factors grew by 1.2 percent in 2009-10, but over a five-year period, merit-based aid has grown at a 36.7 percent clip, compared to 31.3 percent for need-based aid. The gap widens even more examined over a decade, with states raising their spending on merit-based aid by 162 percent since 1999, compared to 99.8 percent for need-based grants.)
But the 2009-10 growth in need-based aid was uneven, revealing significant differences in how states weathered the first full year of the downturn and how much they prioritized student financial aid as they allocated their constrained funds. Slightly more than half the states bolstered their need-based-grant spending -- with states such as California, New York and Pennsylvania among the 10 that did so in double digit percentages. In some of those states, though, tuition rose much more sharply; California's two public college systems raised their tuitions by more than 30 percent in 2009.
Others, however, responded to the rush of students returning to college in the downturn by curtailing their financial aid awards. Ohio slashed its spending on need-based aid by two-thirds (from $225 million in 2008-9 to $76.3 million in 2009-10), and Michigan cut its in half (as did Alaska, but from very little -- $1.97 million -- to virtually nothing).

State Spending on Student Financial Aid, 2009-10 (in millions)
 [Click to view full table]
Source: National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs

Plan to Restructure British Higher Ed

Here's access to the full report, Students at the Heart of the System Consulting on the future of Higher Education

-Patricia


John Morgan and Simon Baker, Times Higher Education | Inside Higher Ed
June 29, 2011

LONDON -- The British government released its long-awaited "white paper" on the future of higher education, offering a sweeping set of proposals that would produce dramatic changes in how the country would educate students and fund institutions.

Under the plan, for example, a quarter of all student places are to be open to full competition in 2012-13, in a government bid to force higher education institutions to vie for the brightest and best applicants at one end of the sector, and to compete on price at the other. And for-profit providers of higher education would be given full access to the student loan system on condition that they agree to follow the same rules on standards, quality and fair access as publicly funded institutions.

The reform plan released by British government's Department for Business Innovation and Skills says that in the first year of the new funding regime, around 65,000 high-achieving students will be able to go to whichever university will have them. This represents a change from the present strict controls on the number of students each university can accept. It raises the prospect of some elite institutions expanding their intake to vacuum up more top students.

The government’s aim is to ensure that students with very high grades -- AAB or above -- on the country's college entrance exams will have a better chance of reaching their first choice of university.

The white paper has also set out plans to make a further 20,000 student places contestable in a different way, allowing institutions that charge tuition fees of less than £7,500 to bid for them on the basis of “quality, value for money and student demand.”

These institutions could include not only further education colleges (roughly equivalent to American community and technical colleges), but also private providers, with the government taking steps to ensure that such institutions are operating on a more “level playing field” (see below).

Taken together, the government expects the changes to make a total of 85,000 student places open to competition between institutions -- around one in four of the total number. It has indicated that this proportion may increase over time.

However, this new contestability will sit within an overall cap on the total number of student places in the sector. Consequently if some elite institutions expand their intake, it will be at the expense of others, which will necessarily have to shrink.

It also means that highly selective institutions, such as those in the 1994 and Russell Groups (consortiums of elite universities), will have to compete for a large proportion of their students, many of whom already achieve AAB or above on the "A level" exams.

Speaking to Times Higher Education, David Willetts, the government's universities and science minister, said the aim was to "dynamize the [British higher education] system."

“It’s a very fine judgment we’ve had to reach," he said. "On the one hand I was very keen … not to break down the old quota system, [but] we wanted something that was more open and liberal. On the other hand, there’s quite a lot of change happening in 2012, and the last thing I want is a kind of change so disruptive that our universities can’t handle it.

“We think that these two proposals, adding up to 85,000 places, get the balance about right. And then, after we’ve seen how it works in the first year, we aim gradually to increase that.”

Willetts denied that the government’s aim was to create an elite set of institutions in which all the top-achieving students were concentrated.

“I’m not trying to plan the system. The whole point about this is we’re taking some steps back and it will be the choices of students and the reaction of institutions – I have no view on that,” he said.

He argued that with funding following the student, and universities and colleges forced to compete for those students, the quality of teaching and learning, and the student experience, would rise.

“We’ve got very strong incentives to reward research, and the intense competition through the [research excellence framework] and research councils has yielded an incredibly strong research [base]. We haven’t had comparable incentives on teaching,” he said.

Expanded Role for For-Profit Providers

In addition to changing how students compete for spaces in British universities, the White Paper would shake up the regulatory regime governing higher education in the country. All providers, including those with for-profit status, would be subject to the same oversight if they have loan-funded students.

The new regime is likely to include a transformed, but not renamed, Higher Education Funding Council for England, which would become a “consumer champion” with beefed-up powers to act on concerns raised by other bodies such as the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, which is designed to regulate institutional quality and student qualifications.

Meanwhile, the QAA would move toward a more “risk-based” approach to inspection that makes it easier for student complaints to trigger an audit, as well as reducing the burden for universities with a good track record.

Willetts, the universities and science minister, said the “conceptual shift” was that the whole framework of regulation needed to focus on “the student in receipt of the loan, rather than a group of institutions in receipt of [a government] grant.”

He said: “You have to think of a regulator protecting students as consumers, ensuring they have access to what is still a very significant amount of public money and being clear about what happens in return.”

There are no plans to create a single “super quango” to regulate the sector -- as proposed in another government review released last fall -- but Willetts envisaged that the government funding agency could ultimately have the power to stop institutions accessing the student loan system if they run foul of the rules.

“I would say that [HEFCE’s] powers will be linked ultimately to whether it will [allow money to be loaned] to students to pay the fees to go to institutions.

“Some of the conditions that are currently attached to [teaching] grants -- in a modernized, light-touch way -- will be attached to eligibility to student support,” he said.

There are also proposals to allow the Office for Fair Access to impose new fines if a university or other provider fails to keep to agreements on helping poorer students.

Meanwhile, the white paper says the government will look at the rules governing degree-awarding powers and university title, which could make it easier for companies, further education colleges and providers from overseas to enter the market. On university title, the government aims to look at the rules specifying how many students an institution must have before applying for use of the term.

With degree-awarding powers, there are proposals to remove the barriers that can prevent non-teaching institutions such as examining boards from offering degrees that can then be taught by institutions such as further education colleges.

The Case for More College Grads

Doug Lederman | Inside Higher Ed
June 27, 2011

Anthony P. Carnevale and his Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce have released another report aimed at making the case that the United States needs 20 million more college-educated workers by 2025.

The work of Carnevale and other economists reinforces -- and in many ways has influenced -- the Obama administration's push to have the United States return to the top of international rankings of countries with the largest proportions of citizens with college credentials.

That campaign has been threatened by the country's economic woes, which have forced the federal and state governments to impose or consider cuts in spending on higher education and student aid, and by ever-rising tuitions that have pushed college out of reach for more students and families. The administration's policy approach has also been challenged increasingly by skeptical commentators and policy analysts (many on the right, but some on the left), who cite the large numbers of unemployed bachelor's degree recipients now to question the historical assertion that education is the key to economic success, for individuals and nations.

In their new report, "The Undereducated American," Carnevale and his co-author, Stephen J. Rose, acknowledge that "with many college graduates unsuccessful in finding work in the current economic climate, the temptation to reject postsecondary education as a viable economic option grows stronger, especially among working families for whom college costs are always a stretch." But they aim to use historical data to show that the analysts (and parents of recent graduates who may feel that way) are engaged in short-term thinking.

At its simplest, their argument goes like this: Up until about 1980, the United States produced college graduates (at the bachelor's degree level, with some associate degrees mixed in) roughly in proportion to the demands of employers. But beginning around then, and accelerating around 1990 (as the number of retiring workers grew and the academic credentials of those replacing them began to ebb), the report shows, the rate of increase in the number of college-educated workers slowed, to 2.0 percent from 1990 to 2000 and 1.0 percent from 2000 to 2010.

As it did so, it failed to keep pace with employers' demand for skilled workers, which grew at a 3.6 percent clip through 2005.

The gap between supply and demand drove up what employers were willing to pay for college-educated workers, Carnevale and Rose assert, creating an ever-rising "wage premium" -- the gap between what college graduates and high school graduates earn. College graduates earn 74 percent more than do high school graduates today -- a gap that is up from 40 percent in 1980. That wage premium is one of several factors driving income inequality in the United States.

If trends stay on their current course, Carnevale and Rose argue, with the number of college-educated Americans growing by 1 percent a year, the country will produce eight million more postsecondary-educated Americans by 2025, pushing the wage premium up to 96 percent.

Instead, the scholars assert, the country needs to propel the college-going rates so that the rate of educated workers grows by 2.6 percent a year instead, which would mean adding a total of 20 million (instead of 8 million) -- 15 million with a bachelor's degree, and 5.3 million with associate degrees or certificates of various sorts. That would not only allow the wage premium to shrink to 46 percent, much closer to what it was in 1980, but increase the gross domestic product by about $500 billion over what it would be without those better-educated, higher-earning workers.

Achieving such a goal is "not beyond our capacity" -- but it will be difficult, Carnevale said in an interview about the report Sunday.

There are two main ways to increase college going rates, he said -- with additional money for students and/or institutions, or increased efficiency in the higher education system.

With states cutting back on their fiscal support for institutions, and the push for deficit reduction likely to compel limitations, if not cutbacks, in spending on Pell Grants and other student aid, significant new investment in higher education is unlikely unless or until politicians agree on some combination of increased taxes and spending reductions to reduce the deficit.

Both are probably necessary over the next several years, Carnevale said, with changes to Medicare at the core. "There is no little green pill for our budget problems."

Higher education has not historically been inclined to look for efficiency, but it is likely that "as money slims down, there will be kicking and screaming, and higher ed will move toward efficiencies," he said.

If not, he said, "individuals are going to lose massive amounts of opportunity, and the economy will lose" much-needed revenue. "There is a problem here."

Andrew Gillen of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, which has produced several critiques of Carnevale's analysis in the past, questioned the report's assertion that college attainment itself drives economic growth.

"Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann have numerous studies showing that it is not attainment that boosts growth, but [instead] increases in cognitive skills," he said via e-mail. "In other words, increasing college attainment will only boost growth if it increases cognitive skills, and recent research (such as Academically Adrift) calls into question how much college boosts cognitive skills. The main takeaway is that if you are worried about growth, the focus should be on quality rather than quantity."

Highly rated instructors go beyond teaching to the standardized test

Some Southern California teachers are finding ways to keep creativity in the lesson plan even as they prepare their students for standardized tests.

By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times

July 11, 2011
Even as the annual state testing season bore down on her this spring, fourth-grade teacher Jin Yi barely bothered with test prep materials. The Hobart Boulevard Elementary School teacher used to spend weeks with practice tests but found they bored her students.

Instead, she engages them with hands-on lessons, such as measuring their arms and comparing that data to solve above-grade-level subtraction problems.

"I used to spend time on test prep because I felt pressured to do it," said Yi, who attended Hobart in Koreatown herself and returned a decade ago to teach. "But I think it's kind of a waste of time. The students get bored and don't take it seriously and it defeats the purpose."

Yi's approach seems to work: She is rated "highly effective" in a value-added analysis by The Times based on her students' standardized test scores in English and math. She also ranks among the Los Angeles Unified School District's top 100 third-, fourth- and fifth-grade teachers in English in that analysis.

Who says students need "drill and kill" exercises to raise their test scores?

The pressure to improve student test performance in California and across the country often meets with disdain from teachers who say they are compelled to throw out creativity and "teach to the test." The phrase is usually code for teachers who are forced to abandon creativity and focus exclusively on areas tested — reading, writing and math. That, critics say, shortchanges students of such other important subjects as art, history and even science in some grades.

A.J. Duffy, former president of United Teachers Los Angeles, for instance, dismisses the weeks before spring testing as "Bubbling-In 101," a reference to class time spent teaching students how to select correct answers.

Visits with Yi and other successful teachers around Los Angeles County, however, suggest that innovative teaching and rich classroom experiences need not be sacrificed in the quest for better test scores. But it's not easy to have it all. Several teachers interviewed said they spend hours of extra planning time and hundreds of dollars to create more interesting lessons. They say they must be supremely organized and strict enforcers of classroom rules. And some quietly skirt official district schedules to run with their own approaches.

Next door to Yi, Hobart fifth-grade teacher Rafe Esquith has cut down L.A. Unified's prescribed reading program from three hours a day to 75 minutes, saying his students can work on reading comprehension, vocabulary and other skills through other subjects. That opens up time to learn physics by building model roller coasters and rockets and to grasp history with Ken Burns documentaries. His students work on long-term art projects, perform Shakespeare and learn musical instruments.

"To teach all of the lessons they want us to teach using the official district schedule is impossible — it can't be done," said Esquith, who is rated "highly effective" by the Times and has won numerous national teaching awards. "Teachers have to finagle the schedule."

Esquith and Yi also bemoaned the increasing focus on testing and sympathized with frustrated colleagues.

At Los Angeles Elementary School in the Pico-Union neighborhood, fourth-grade teacher Maria Duarte lamented the loss of time to teach science — her favorite subject and one that she said most interests her students. Over the years, the time for that subject has dropped from 2.5 days a week to 1.5 days a week in favor of language arts and math. One casualty was a popular experiment growing radishes that Duarte said taught critical thinking and research skills.

Duarte was also rated highly effective in the Times analysis. Under value-added, a student's past test performance is compared with his or her current progress to measure whether teachers added — or subtracted — value to their students' academic growth.

"Painfully, I decided I had to let that go," Duarte said of the experiment. "There's just not enough time — or we need to think of better ways to use our time."

In Monterey Park, eighth-grade teacher Janice Pirolo said she no longer has time to delve deeply into the curriculum or stray much from it. When she does, she falls behind.

When her school, Monterey Highlands, received funding to visit the Japanese American National Museum, Pirolo prepared her students by teaching them about the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. She also spent time on Martin Luther King Jr. before the national holiday named for the civil rights leader .

But none of that is part of eighth-grade social studies standards, and Pirolo fell behind. For a month before the testing in May, she abandoned the textbook entirely to focus exclusively on test prep. As a result, she got through only the textbook's fourth chapter by year's end.

"We have stopped reading the textbook, sadly … but you live and die by the test," said Pirolo, a 34-year veteran who teaches social studies and language arts.

The nation's enhanced focus on testing began under the 2001 No Child Left Behind federal education law, which attempted to hold school districts accountable for student progress through mandatory annual tests. The law, which is under review in Congress, requires that by 2014 all students meet 100% proficiency levels in math and English — a target no one expects schools to meet.

Many educators see an upside to the national focus on student achievement, as measured by test scores, and have unapologetically instilled intensive preparatory programs. Alvarado Intermediate School in Rowland Heights conducts a concentrated test-prep program before the state exams, using assessment data to identify students who need to strengthen specific skills. The sessions are held after school to preserve electives, such as computers, art and music. Attendance is mandatory, with detention for those who miss and prizes for those who participate.

Principal Ying Tsao said she supported the move toward state standards and regular assessments. In earlier times, she said, teachers might skew toward language arts, say, while ignoring math.

Bruce Clark, Los Angeles Elementary principal, said testing has robbed educators of some flexibility, but he said the benefits of higher student achievement are worth it.

Not that there's no time for fun. Clark sheepishly said he "sold out" and held pep rallies to excite his students about the tests. Duarte motivates her students with a party and movie, bringing in treats to entice them to do well. Monterey Highlands has "March Math Madness" every year to pump up students with math-related scavenger hunts and "problem of the week" contests. To kick off the testing this year, Principal Joe Cash donned an apron and chef's hat to serve pancakes at a school breakfast — while asking math questions(How many pancakes does Johnny eat if he gets two pancakes each of the three times he comes up?).

Los Angeles Elementary aims to avoid last-minute cramming by requiring 15-minute skills sessions at the start of the day throughout the year, featuring questions similar to those on the state test. Duarte prepares her students at the beginning of the year with intense work on Greek and Roman roots of words and multiple-meaning words — areas of student weakness identified by testing data.

A different model is the UCLA Community School, a pilot school launched last year by the university and L.A. Unified in Koreatown. Teachers there are free to develop their own assessments. Kate Beaudet uses an individualized reading test that she said is more sophisticated, allowing her to pinpoint a child's actual reading level and areas of weakness.

Beaudet and two colleagues, who joined the staff from other L.A. Unified schools, said district testing requirements had taken weeks of instructional time, skewed teaching toward what was tested and led many teachers to rely heavily on worksheets.

"Teachers only want to teach reading, writing and math, because that's what's assessed," said Beaudet, who teaches a second-and-third-grade class.

To prepare for state exams, Beaudet incorporated practice questions into work she did all year with literary genres, a third-grade reading standard. Using a test reading passage from an African folk tale, she read the book with her students and helped them analyze the elements and write their own test questions — which both conveyed needed skills and boosted their confidence, she said.

At Hobart, Yi figures she has spent up to $1,000 a year designing more creative lessons than those offered by L.A. Unified. The district's fourth-grade reader presents only one chapter of "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH," C so Yi bought copies of the whole book to enable her students to read the entire story. She also bought materials so students could make stuffed rats.

Meanwhile, the project helped Yi's students practice a state standard: to read a set of directions and answer questions about them. She also wrote related vocabulary and comprehension questions. And Yi said that being able to read entire books has instilled in many a love of literature.

Not all teachers are willing to go to such lengths. Some of her colleagues have simply used test prep books all year, Yi said. But that's not for her.

"I enjoy challenging myself to think of better, different and fun ways to teach," she said. "I love to see the light of learning go on."

A Smoochy Way to Help a Kid…Art Heals!

This post is a departure from typical Grant Savvy conversation. I hope readers will allow the exception. Maybe this is a new topic for Grant Savvy?! Back to more grant stuff next week...

*Muah* 

It’s Friday. Life is worth celebrating. I want to do something awesome with my day. Will you help? Yes...great! Meet the Smooch! Project.

Have you ever had an experience when a photo, a painting, a color or a sound helped you manage your pain or just made you feel better? Has a song ever lifted your spirits? Have you been swept away in a painting to the point that you lost all sense of where you were standing? Pretty wonderful—right? This is the stuff that helps kids feel better. Art heals.

All week I’ve been tweeting about the Smooch! Project from Minneapolis, Minnesota. They are partnering with Children’s Hospitals and Clinics Minnesota to bring art to kids in the hospital. It’s a beautiful project and part of the hospital’s larger Arts & Healing and Urban Renewal Project. I believe with all of my heart in the value of art, music and the human touch in helping people heal. I have no doubt it works for the patient or that it creates a connection between illness and the greater world that makes healing possible. I’ve seen it. 

Here's the scoop! I’ve cleaned out my car, my purse(s), couch cushions, and junk drawers to make a donation and I want to know if you will help. I will match donations of up to a total of  $100 for the Smooch! Project if they are made today, Friday, July 15th. Your donation of $10 becomes $20, just like that! Magic! Gather the coworkers, dig through your pockets, pass on the Starbucks (gasp!)...every penny counts today! Smooch! is trying to reach the big goal of $1,000 by July 31st. **If $100 worth of matching donations don't reach Smooch! by 8pm EST, I will still donate $50**

If you can’t donate, but want to help…please spread the word!

You may not have kids who directly benefit from Children’s Hospitals and Clinics Minnesota, but this project is more than just reaching Minnesota families and sick kids. It’s also about inspiring other hospitals, families and organizations to think about the way art heals. Less pain. More smiles. It's pretty universal.

Today would be a red-letter, banner-flying kind of day if we can get one step closer to having this photography in the hospital....so that even just one kid can get lost in its beauty and simplicity enough to feel better and maybe, just maybe, start giving away more smooches of their own! 

If you donate to Smooch!, leave a comment on this blog post or send Grant Savvy an email and I will work with Bonnie to make sure the donation is made by the end of the day!

The Smooch! Project is sponsored by Springboard for the Arts, a nonprofit arts service organization. Contributions to Springboard (via GiveMN.org) on behalf of the  Smooch! Project are tax-deductible. 

You can donate to Smooch! and Children's through Razoo and GiveMN.org!

~Cheers!

*In respect to full-disclosure, I was not paid to write this post for the Smooch! Project. I was not paid to endorse them and did not receive any form of compensation for my mention of their site, organization or fundraising efforts. I just love them. That is all. Thank you.*

Improving Latino Education to Win the Future

Check out the full report, "Winning the Future: Improving Education for the Latino Community"

-Patricia

Alejandra Campoverdi | The White House Blog
April 27, 2011

Today at a community conversation at Miami-Dade College, the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics and the U.S. Department of Education released the report Winning the Future: Improving Education for the Latino Community. The President will be delivering a commencement address at Miami-Dade College Friday evening. To view the report, click HERE.

The report shows that Hispanic success in education and in the labor market is of immediate and long‐term importance to America’s economy. It also shows that Hispanics have the lowest education attainment level overall of any group in the U.S. Hispanics are by far the largest minority group in today’s American public education system, numbering more than 12.4 million in the country’s elementary, middle and high schools. Nearly 22 percent, or slightly more than 1 in 5, of all pre‐K-12 students enrolled in America’s public schools is Hispanic, but they face persistent obstacles to educational attainment. Less than half are enrolled in any early learning program. Only about half earn their high school diploma on time; those who do complete high school are only half as likely as their peers to be prepared for college and only 4 percent have completed graduate or professional degree programs.

As part of the community conversation in Miami today, Senior Obama Administration officials met with dozens of educators and community leaders, to exchange ideas and outline strategies to meet President Obama’s goal for the nation to have the best-educated workforce in the world by 2020.

Higher Education Coalition attack on Perry raises eyebrows

William Lutz | Lone Star Report
7/8/2011

The Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education – a group that supports higher education reform ideas offered by the state’s university presidents and chancellors and has expressed concerns with some higher education reform ideas offered from outside academia – fired a rhetorical howitzer at Gov. Rick Perry yesterday. Political observers in Texas are left wondering why the organization chose to attack Perry by name and how this will play out.

The coalition’s main communications consultants used to work for U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and former president George W. Bush, two elected officials whose political interests have not always aligned perfectly with those of Perry. A member of the coalition’s operating committee, former ambassador and Higher Education Coordinating Board Chair Pamela Willeford, said she has supported Perry, and the organization is bipartisan and is about higher education, not partisan politics. She also said that decisions about what statements to issue are made by the organization’s operating committee, not its consultants.

Wednesday, the University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts Dean Randy Diehl issued a report blasting “7 Breakthrough Solutions for Higher Education” proposed by Texas philanthropist Jeff Sandefer and supported by the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The coalition issued a statement supporting the report and calling on elected officials to distance themselves from the 7 Solutions.

Perry’s communications director Mark Miner issued a statement expressing disappointment that University of Texas administrators are so resistant to the governor’s cost control and reform ideas. "University faculty and their allies should join the reform efforts and recommend ways to innovate, improve graduation rates, and enhance accountability and efficiency at Texas colleges and universities,” Miner said. “We all have an obligation to meet the needs of Texas students, employers, taxpayers and our fast-growing economy. Resisting reform and accountability is an unsustainable recipe for mediocrity and stagnation. Texas deserves better."

Some Austin observers thought that finished that story.

But then on Thursday, the Coalition sent out a response to Miner’s statement that has grass-roots conservatives scratching their heads. The statement both attacks Perry by name and also attacks the Texas K-12 education system. This marks one of the first examples of this higher education debate, which previously centered on TPPF and comments made by University of Texas Regent Gene Powell, venturing into K-12 education. The attack on Perry and his K-12 education record comes right as conservatives nationwide are encouraging the governor to throw his hat into the presidential ring.

“It's unfortunate that the same week that the University of Texas at Austin’s President Powers announced a major initiative to improve college graduation rates, Governor Perry's spokesman chose to denigrate Texas universities rather than support their efforts to improve and reform,” read the Coalition’s statement forwarded to the press by Julie Shussler, a public relations official with the firm of Burson-Marsteller.“… If Governor Perry truly wants to reduce costs and improve productivity of higher education in Texas, he should start by focusing on improving the college readiness of Texas students. Unfortunately, Texas ranks a dismal 36th in the nation for high school graduation rates and 50th for percentage of Texans with a high school diploma. Today, Texas taxpayers are being double-charged—first to fund high school, then to fund remedial programs when students are unprepared to succeed in college.”

Willeford said the coalition worked hard to recruit a bipartisan base of support and that the group is focused on higher education. "Volunteers have come forward because they believe the discussion and the process is not what we want it to be," Willeford said. "I think that trying to throw it into a political statement; it's just not true."

When asked about the statement attacking Perry by name and why it was issued, Shussler replied, “The statement was a response from the Coalition, which includes more than 200 leading Texans, including many supporters of Governor Perry, who are concerned about the negative impact of some of his higher education proposals.”

Some grassroots conservatives are troubled. “I know that Perry’s uncompromising commitment to fiscal and social conservatism doesn’t always sit well with some of the more moderate members of the Republican Party,” said State Republican Executive Committee member Jason Moore, a talk radio talk show host on KWEL in Midland. “But I’m surprised that some of the business leaders who have joined this coalition would condone these kinds of cheap shots at Perry.”

Most of the coalition’s press releases are distributed by Jenifer Sarver, who used to work on Hutchison’s staff. Sarver is chief of staff to Karen Hughes, who used to work for Gov. and later President George W. Bush. Both currently work at the Austin office of Burson-Marsteller.

Willeford said that the Burson-Marsteller firm is a paid consultant to the coalition. “As far as what is put out by the coalition and what is posted on our website, all that goes through our operating committee,” she said. Willeford said the operating committee included herself, C. Patrick Oles, Jr., Kenneth Jastrow II, Melinda Hill Perrin, Gordon Appleman, and Charles W. Matthews. Willeford later added that “I have supported the governor [Perry] as long has he’s been running. “

But some Republican activists hope that this coalition will avoid messages that might be perceived as political attacks. “I sure hope that this coalition doesn’t allow former staffers for Hutchison and Bush to use the organization to attack Perry personally by name or harm his presidential chances in any way,” said Toby Marie Walker, a tea party activist in Waco, Texas. “Given the problems President Obama has created for our nation, the stakes are too high for that.”

When asked directly whether Perry’s presidential ambitions had anything to do with the statement the coalition issued attacking Perry by name, Willeford said, “Absolutely not. We are a group that is concerned with the debate about higher education and the direction higher education is going. We want to be sure that it’s a transparent process, as far as ideas that are being brought forward, and that is our focus.”

LSR also asked Willeford about the organization choosing to highlight the shortcomings of Texas’s K-12 education system. After all, when Hughes worked for Bush, she was one of the most passionate defenders of the state’s K-12 education system. (For example, Hughes told The New York Times Oct. 25, 2000: “indisputable independent data all show without a doubt that Texas leads the nation when it comes to improving student performance.”)

“This is a statement by the coalition. This is not a statement by Karen Hughes,” said Willeford when asked about whether a coalition whose communications consultant is Karen Hughes is in a position to highlight the shortcomings of the state’s public schools.

“We talked about K-12, because a lot of the problems that we have in higher education as far as graduation rates [are because] we’re getting kids [who] are not prepared coming into the system, and it’s taking a lot of remedial education,” added that she hoped the governor will focus on improving college preparation.

Later, LSR asked why – given that much of this debate has focused on the University of Texas at Austin – did the coalition choose to talk about the high number of students in developmental education. (State law requires students who do not achieve college-ready test scores to take developmental courses.)

Community colleges have many students in developmental education. But UT accepts only the best from Texas high school students. According to the School of Undergraduate Studies annual report, a mere 83 UT students required assistance in 2010 for failure to meet state college readiness standards.

“We’re talking about all of higher education in the state,” Willeford said, noting that Miner’s statement referenced the statewide four-year graduation rate, not the University of Texas at Austin graduation rate, which is substantially higher.

Many grass-roots conservatives, meanwhile, are praising Perry for taking on the higher education bureaucracy. “Those of us who are attending our state's universities or who have recently graduated know that our current system of higher education is morally bankrupt,” said Tony McDonald, senior vice president of the Young Conservatives of Texas. “The system puts undergraduate education on a back-burner in favor of the mass publication of largely useless scholarly articles. The system consumes large sums of tax revenue, while saddling graduates with massive student-loan debt. It is refreshing to see Governor Perry take the bold step of calling out our universities and demanding that they implement reform and accountability measures which will serve to protect both students and taxpayers.”
Here’s one thing we do know: the Coalition, and its supporters some of whom are prominent members of the Texas business community, has upped the ante by singling out Perry by name and responding to his chief spokesman in that manner.

\When asked about this issue by LSR, the governor’s office replied that the purpose of the statement was merely to underscore the governor’s priorities for Texas public colleges and universities. “[The governor’s plan] for higher education is to improve accountability, affordability, transparency, and accessibility,” said Catherine Frazier with the Governor’s Press Office. “Where we are right now is not cutting it … The governor is simply calling on university leaders to adopt these goals and work towards finding the best way to accomplish them for their respective universities. And he will continue holding those universities accountable to pursuing those goals until progress is made.”