Education forum: Performance of early learning, community colleges and more

I’m at the GMAP forum, where Gov. Chris Gregoire and others in her cabinet are hearing about education performance.

First up, Bette Hyde with the Department of Early Learning. She said ECEAP is among the department’s most important efforts because it focuses on 3 and 4 year old children who are low-income or have other risk factors.

Gregoire said she was concerned that the department can’t really track whether ECEAP is prioritizing the right children. She said the department has “the ability to track how many that are enrolled meet that criteria, but you don’t know who they turned away at the door… is there a way for us to be able to make sure that these contractors actually are putting those children who have high risk factors in as a priority?”

Hyde said yes, in the future she thinks they will be able to do that. Gregoire said she wants DSHS and DEL to work together to make sure if a 4-year-old foster child, for example, is not in ECEAP, the state knows why and can address it.

Now for Charlie Earl with the state Board of Community and Technical Colleges. He said they’re working to elevate student achievement via the Student Achievement Initiative. “Though completions — graduations — are very, very important, we do a lot of good other than just completions,” he said. People may attend community or technical colleges for one class or for continuing education, and even though they don’t graduate, it’s still a benefit.

He said they don’t want to be only held accountable for degrees for that reason. He said they’ve started tracking results and appropriating money based on results, not plans.

“I can’t tell you how excited I am about this. I think we ought to be doing this in early childhood education. I think we ought to be doing this in K-12. I know we should be doing it” in four-year colleges, she said, but added she’d need some luck to get that done.

Earl said they’ve been able to reward performance despite budget cuts, in part due to grants and in part from their existing funding. He said they need to find out how to fund the program in the long run because it has affected big change in a short time and he wants to continue to improve performance.

Gregoire said performance agreements with four-year universities have resulted in no change. She said she will “desperately” try to get a similar program in place there.

Earl said in the community college system, the schools were given $31 per point improvement in each area.

Now for Eleni Papadakis with the Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board. Papadakis said they were doing well for “quite some time” with workforce training and employment — until the recession hit.

Gregoire asked how the department would improve. She said she thinks people who don’t complete workforce training probably get a job offer and drop out. But, she said, they’re probably often taking a lower-paying job that is not in the field they’re retraining for. “These rates are not anything to cheer about.”

Her idea: Tell workforce retraining students that the state will pay for the retraining. But: “If you don’t complete it in a certain time frame, you owe us,” she said. “If you’re going to enroll, be serious.”

Papadakis said there are two primary reasons people don’t complete workforce training: time and money. She said childcare is often not available or is too expensive. “The biggest issue by far is money,” she said.

She said they’re looking at a “co-investment” model, called LiLA — Lifelong Learning Accounts — where employers and employees contribute to a savings account that can only be used for the employee’s education. “Employers are so enthusiastic, they’re seeing the benefits right away,” she said.

On the time side, she said they tried evening and weekend classes, but that didn’t work. Their new plan: Turn employment locations into satellite learning facilities.

“There are reasons — good and valid — why these folks are dropping out, so I don’t want to penalize them,” Gregoire said, but there should be an incentive to keep them in the program.

Now for higher education.

Gregoire started out with a question: “Why can’t we say, we’ll give you this education at this rate for four years. If you’re not done in four years, you pay the full freight… how do we get away from these, we have a nice number at six years. We should have nice numbers at four years.”

“Let me just tell you what I do with my kids. They went to a private university,” she said. And she told them if they didn’t finish in four years, she wasn’t paying another penny. “If I put a kid in that college today and they know they gotta get done in four years,” she said, and they don’t get a class they want, they’ll be “knocking on that president’s door” to make sure the class is offered.

“What’s wrong with Eastern?” Gregoire asked. She said their six-year graduation rate is 47 percent, which is unacceptable.

The representative from the Higher Education Coordinating Board said some majors — like Engineering — are essentially five-year programs because of accredidation.

Gregoire said that’s not likely the problem at Eastern.

Tags: GMAP