The House Education and the Workforce Committee today approved a bill that would change the financing of college student loans and, according to the Congressional Research Service, make it more expensive for students to borrow.

The Smarter Solutions for Students Act (H.R. 1911), supported by House Republicans, would tie student loan interest rates to the 10-year Treasury note, plus 2.5 percent for both subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford Loans. (For more background, see Politics K-12.)

The proposal is intended to address the automatic interest rate hike from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on subsidized student loans that will kick in if Congress fails to act by July 1.

On Wednesday, the nonpartisan CRS issued a memo analyzing the impact of the bill and described the additional cost that students would face if the proposal were to become law. The CRS outlined examples of the costs with different scenarios. It found, for instance, that students who borrow the maximum amount of $27,000 of unsubsidized and subsidized Stafford Loans over five years would pay $12,374 in interest under H.R. 1911, or $10,867 in interest under current law if rates are allowed to double to 6.8 percent, or $7,033 if rates stay at 3.4 percent.

The new proposal would also impact borrowing fees for loans parents take out. The CRS estimates that a parent who borrows the maximum amount of $40,000 in PLUS loans for their child would pay $27,680 in interest under the Republican bill, more than the $21,654 in interest under the current law.

During the markup today, committee Democrats Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., and John Tierney, D-Mass., offered amendments to keep interest rates at 3.4 percent and give lawmakers additional time to seek a long-term solution to address student loans and college affordability, but the proposals did not advance.

Today, the committee also approved The Improving Postsecondary Education Data for Students Act (H.R. 1949), which would establish an advisory committee to study what factors would be useful to students and families in the college-search process.

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Starting the college talk as early as 9th grade can make a big difference in students' likelihood of enrolling, yet just 18 percent of high school freshmen had spoken to a counselor about college, a new report by the National Association for College Admission Counseling shows.

The Arlington, Va.-based professional group of high school and college counselors discovered a strong connection between the percentage of time that counselors spent on college-readiness activities and students' belief that their family can afford college, even when controlling for several other factors. Students were also more inclined to take the SAT or ACT if they had talked about it with a counselor.

The influence of a counselor was especially critical in influencing the behaviors of first-generation college students, the NACAC report found.

A family member talking to a counselor or teacher about postsecondary admission requirements was positively related to first-generation college students' plans to enroll in a bachelor's degree program, as well.

The report is based on analysis of new, nationally representative data from the 2009 High School Longitudinal Study of 24,000 9th graders at 944 public and private high schools that year, along with their parents, math and science teachers, school administrators, and lead school counselors.

Outreach is often a matter of time and personnel. Half of all high schools reported a student-to-counselor ratio of 250-to-1. Counselors were stretched more at public high schools. While 39 percent of public high schools reported this relatively low ratio, 89 percent of private high schools did.

Counselors also have a range of responsibilities. NACAC found that about 13 percent spent more than half their time counseling students on college readiness, and 38 percent spent between one-fifth and half their time preparing them for college. Another 20 percent of all counselors spent no more than 10 percent of their time and 30 percent spent no more than a one-fifth of their time on college readiness with students, the report found.

Nearly half (48 percent) of counselors reported that helping students "prepare for postsecondary schooling" was their counseling program's primary goal. Other goals included helping students improve their achievement in high school (23 percent), work on personal growth and development (21 percent) and prepare for work goals after high school (7 percent).

Another way to boost college enrollment is by offering rigorous courses in high school. NACAC reports that 86 percent of high schools had dual-enrollment programs, where students can earn college credit in high school; 67 percent offered Advanced Placement classes on site; and 3 percent had an International Baccalaureate program.

To improve college-going rates, the NACAC report recommends that counselors devote more time to college-readiness efforts and the application process. The report encourages counselors to initiate discussions with 9th graders and their parents about college.

"We recognize that high schools and counselors do not only serve ninth graders and that the actions of high schools and counselors may have different effects on students' attitudes, aspirations, plans, and steps actually taken later on in their transition to college," the report says, noting the need for further research on these relationships. A better educated workforce is critical to the economy, it says. "Perhaps never before in our nation's history has helping Americans successfully transition into and complete postsecondary credentials been more important."

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Closing the achievement gap should be about more than raising the performance of struggling students, says a new report from the Education Trust that calls for more effort to help low-income and students of color succeed at the highest academic levels.

While fewer black, Hispanic, and low-income students are scoring "below basic" in reading and math national assessments, the report, Breaking the Glass Ceiling of Achievement for Low-Income Students and Students of Color, shows those same students aren't making similar progress at "advanced" levels and the problem is even more pronounced in high school.

The Washington-based research and advocacy organization reviewed recent trends on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in it analysis.

The percent of white and higher-income students scoring at the advanced level has increased significantly in recent years, but the gap is widening compared with students of color and from low-income families. In math, for example, in 2011, about one in 10 white 4th graders reached advanced in math, compared with one in 50 Hispanic students and and one in 100 black students in fourth grade.

This gap-widening trend at the advanced level also occurred in 4th and 8th grade reading, but only between lower- and higher-income students, not between students of color and white students, the report says.

In 2004, among students in 12th grade math, 62 percent of low-income students and 34 percent of higher-income students performed at the below basic level on NAEP. By 2009, those numbers had dropped to 55 percent and 29 percent, respectively. At the high end, the same progress was not met. About 3 percent of white and higher-income students reached advanced in 2005 and 2009, while so few students of color and low-income students reached that benchmark in math that estimates were rounded to zero, according to the report.

The report shows gaps in high-end achievement for disadvantaged students was greater in 12th grade than in 4th or 8th grades.

The Education Trust report highlights some schools that have closed the achievement gap among students groups at all levels by setting data-based goals, creating individualized student plans, and raising expectations for all students.

"If we are going to get these gaps behind us, once and for all, we have to bring our middle-achieving low-income students and students of color higher, and move our higher-end students higher still," writes Kati Haycock, the president of the Education Trust, in the report. "If full racial equality is our goal, getting more black, Latino, and American Indian students into the highest reaches of achievement—the top 25 percent or top 10 percent—is especially important. This is where many local and national leaders in government, business, and the nonprofit sector are drawn from. And having leaders who look like the country is crucial, especially to children looking toward their own futures."

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After a policy brief last week called into question the effectiveness of federal college-prep programs, the GEAR UP community defended its work and called for resources to conduct more rigorous evaluations.

The National Council for Community and Education Partnerships, a Washington-based nonprofit that provides training, technical assistance, and advocacy support to the GEAR UP program, issued a written response to a brief by researchers from Princeton University and the Brookings Institution. That brief proposed an overhaul of college-access programs for disadvantaged students. It called the current programs "mostly failed" and "interspersed with modest successes."

The researchers advocated rolling the $1 billion spent annually on TRIO programs and GEAR UP into one pool that would be awarded through a competitive-grant process. To keep their money, entities would have to prove their programs had a positive impact on college access and completion.

GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Program), established 14 years ago, provides six-year grants to states and partnerships to provide services at high-poverty middle and high schools, serving students beginning no later than the 7th grade and following the cohort through high school.

In the rebuttal statement, NCCEP and the GEAR UP community said they believed the evidence presented in the brief was inadequate to support a broad conclusion that federal college-access programs are not effective. They did agree that additional resources are needed to evaluate federal education programs and ensure tax dollars are spent wisely. In 2012, the GEAR UP community decided on its own to undertake a national longitudinal evaluation of its impact.

The statement argues that programs such as GEAR UP are vital to leveling the education playing field. It adds that taxpayers have a right to know that federal investments are producing measurable outcomes, and practitioners can benefit from learning what approaches work.

"In the absence of government-sponsored research to independently verify the success of college-access programs, NCCEP calls into question the report's broad implication that federal college-access programs do not work," the statement says. "This implication may lead others to falsely conclude that funds invested in GEAR UP have been wasted."

The statement quotes GEAR UP grantees as committed to greater accountability and notes that earlier this year, the New America Foundation named GEAR UP "the most promising" of all federal college-access programs.

Martha Kanter, U.S. undersecretary of education, issued a statement Friday in response to the Brookings brief that underscores the administration's view that boosting college access and completion rates, especially for disadvantaged students, is a necessity if the United States is lead the world in the proportion of college graduates. "Improving accountability and leveraging innovations with evidence to produce better student outcomes from college-preparation programs are key elements of a comprehensive postsecondary education reform agenda as we begin discussions to reauthorize the Higher Education Act," says Kanter's statement.

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Latino students have reached a new milestone in the United States: A higher percentage who graduate from high school are enrolling in college than white students.

In the class of 2012, a record 69 percent of Hispanic high school graduates went on to pursue higher education, compared with 67 percent of white graduates, according to a report released today by the Pew Research Center in Washington. In 2000, just 49 percent of Hispanic high school graduates enrolled in college the following fall.

While Latinos made up just 11 percent of high school graduates in the Class of 2000 (or 300,000 students), they comprised 22 percent of the most recent class (or 697,000 students) in 2012.

Overall, 66 percent of high school graduates in the class of 2012 enrolled in college, including about 63 percent of black students and 84 percent of Asians.

More young Latinos are staying in high school. In 2000, nearly 28 percent of Hispanics age 16 to 24 had dropped out of high school, but in 2011, the figure was just 14 percent, Pew reports. The dropout rate for white students was 7 percent in 2000 and 5 percent in 2011.

Still, Latino students tend to have a different experience once they leave high school from their white counterparts.

While 56 percent of Hispanic high school graduates study at a four-year college, 72 percent of white students do. The Pew report found that Latino students are less likely to attend a selective college or enroll full time—78 percent of Hispanics vs. 85 percent of whites.

Those factors have led to lower completion rates for this growing minority group. Among white Americans age 22-24, about 22 percent have a bachelor's degree compared with 11 percent of Latinos in that age group.

The Pew report notes that recent high school graduates are only a subset of youths, and the findings don't imply that young Latinos are more likely to attend college than young whites. Some students drop out of high school in earlier years or never enroll in U.S. schools.

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Just because students get a Pell Grant—federal aid that goes to families who generally earn $30,000 or less—doesn't mean their college gives them much of a break on tuition.

A new analysis of college aid by Stephen Burd, a senior policy analyst at the New America Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit public-policy institute, looked at the share of undergraduates receiving Pell Grants and the net price they paid. It found hundreds of public and private nonprofit colleges expect the neediest students to pay an amount that is equal to or even more than their families' yearly earnings.

Nearly two-thirds of the 426 private institutions Burd examined charge students from the lowest-income families, those making $30,000 or less a year, a net price of more than $15,000 a year.

Although public universities are more supportive of low-income students, the paper notes that state funding cuts for higher education have led many public colleges to reduce aid as well.

"Overall, too many four-year colleges, both public and private, are failing to help the government achieve its college-access mission," writes Burd. "They are instead using their financial resources to fiercely compete for the students they most desire: the 'best and brightest' students—and the wealthiest."

In his paper, Undermining Pell: How Colleges Compete for Wealthy Students and Leave Low-Income Ones Behind, Burd says the unequal situation leaves many disadvantaged students taking on debt and more likely to work full time while in school, which can reduce their chances of completion. There have been historic increases in Pell Grant funding, but as schools raise their prices and don't provide more aid, the college-going gap between low- and high-income students is a wide as ever, he writes.

Many small colleges don't have large endowments to cover the tuition costs for those with the greatest need, yet Burd found that some of the country's most prosperous private colleges are the stingiest with need-based aid.

Colleges give nearly $30 billion in institutional aid each year, but how that money is distributed by campus varies.

Burd notes that many colleges are extremely generous, such as Amherst College in Massachusetts. On that campus, 22 percent of students receive Pell Grants and pay an average net price of $448 per year, while Amherst's published cost of attendance is about $54,000. Vassar College in New York and Grinnell College in Iowa also led the list of the best schools at enrolling the highest percentage of low-income students and offering them financial support.

Other schools that didn't have a high percentage of disadvantaged students, but did offer those that attended substantial aid, included most of the Ivy League Schools and other prestigious institutions, such as Washington University in St. Louis and Bates College in Maine.

Private colleges with few low-income students, yet high prices, included Washington and Lee University in Virginia, where 8 percent of the students received Pell Grants and were charged an average of about $14,000. Leading this list of private schools with lots of Pell Grant students and high net prices was Texas Christian University, where 16 percent of the students get Pell Grants and pay an average net price of $22,000.

The analysis also includes public institutions. The least expensive schools for low-income students include Georgia Institute of Technology, which charges no tuition for Pell Grant recipients. California State Dominquez Hills charged about $1,000, and Cal State Fullerton $1,300.

The most expensive schools for disadvantaged students are Rowan University in New Jersey ($20,000), Pennsylvania State Altoona ($18,000), and University of Southern Maine ($18,000).

The message to those who need financial assistance: Generosity varies tremendously by institution. Students should look closely at their options before committing.

To remedy the situation, the New America Foundation's Education Policy proposes a federal solution that would offer Pell bonuses to financially strapped public and private four-year colleges that serve a substantial share of Pell Grant recipients. The extra money could be used to bring down the net prices of attendance for the neediest students and create support programs to increase retention and graduation rates for those students. For wealthier colleges that use their aid for merit awards and generally enroll a relatively small share of low-income students but charge them high net prices, Burd proposes they be required to match at least a share of the Pell dollars they receive.

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Students are more than twice as likely to attend and complete college if they come from a wealthy family compared with a low-income household.

Researchers gathered for a discussion on the issue at the Brookings Institution in Washington Tuesday said if the country is committed to equity in education, more should be done to support disadvantaged students, and the current federal programs designed to help are not effective.

In a policy brief, Time for a Change: A New Federal Strategy to Prepare Disadvantaged Students for College, co-authors Ron Haskins and Cecilia Rouse, propose that the college-prep TRIO programs, such as Upward Bound and Talent Search, along with GEAR UP be folded into a single grant program and be subjected to more rigorous evaluation.

These intervention programs use a mixture of instruction, tutoring, and counseling to prepare at-risk students for college and cost about $1 billion a year. A close review of these programs shows most had little detectable impact on college-going rates and completion, except for the Upward Bound Math-Science program, according to the brief.

"Half a century and billions of dollars after these federal college-preparation programs began, we are left with mostly failed programs interspersed with modest successes," the paper says. There are indications that in some programs summer learning, mentoring, tutoring, and parent involvement make a difference in college enrollment. "These may be the threads from which we can begin to weave together a new kind of intervention programs," the authors write.

Haskins, a senior fellow and co-director of the Center on Children and Families at Brookings, said the enormous difference in college success by income is a big problem not only for students but also for society. While 79 percent of students from families in the top income tier enroll in college, just 34 percent of adult children in the lowest income brackets do so. The completion rate for students from low-income backgrounds is about 11 percent, while 53 percent of the wealthiest students earn a degree,the researchers note.

Students need better academic preparation and the best hope, by far, is in improved K-12 education, but the wait for change will be long, said Haskins. In the meantime, he suggests more be done to improve school counseling and support programs.

Building on the Obama administration's penchant for competitive grant programs, the paper proposes the creation of a new competition to encourage research and demonstration projects that receive grant money based on their ability to affect real outcomes of increasing enrollment and graduation rates for low-income students.

"I know it's controversial," said Haskins. "But to keep the money, programs have to continue to be effective."

Rouse, an economist from Princeton University, said while the move to evidence-based program funding may be hard, it is necessary to encourage innovation. She added that evidence can only be part of the decision to fund programs, and the aim is to generate more efficiency, but not at the price of quality.

Panelist Andrea Venezia from California State University in Sacramento agreed that stronger outcomes are needed from the federal college-prep programs, but cautioned that many of the grantees have small staffs and limited resources to provide such high-level evidence. Rather than dismantling the TRIO network, she suggested supporting those programs that show glimmers of success and to build on those.

Also, Venezia discussed the need to help students with more than academics and also focus on the noncognitive skills so they are ready to learn and are able to navigate the college landscape.

Along with examining the $1 billion college-prep programs, the panelists said, reform efforts should also be focused on the Pell Grant program, which provides nearly $36 billion annually in federal support for low-income students in college.

The brief appears in the Spring 2013 issue of the journal The Future of Children.

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Community colleges have low academic expectations for first-year students, many of whom are still not getting the right preparation in high school to match the demands of college, says a report released today by the National Center on Education and the Economy.

Unlike other studies that ask faculty members what they would like students to be able to do, researchers reviewed tests, assignments, student work, and teacher grading to analyze what is actually expected of incoming freshmen in the report, What Does it Mean to be College and Work Ready? by the Washington-based research organization.

NCEE researchers discovered that many new college students do not have a solid grasp of basic math concepts often taught in middle school. Rather than taking higher levels of math, such as Algebra 2 and calculus, the report says high school students are better off focusing on a mastery of the fundamentals of equations, ratios, and proportion.

The report notes that many community college career programs demand little or no use of math, and high school students are taking math courses they will likely never use. The current push in secondary curriculum is for students to complete geometry, Algebra 2, precalculus and calculus. "Fewer than five percent of American workers and even a smaller percentage of community college students will ever need to master the courses in this sequence," the report says.

Despite the gap in alignment between high school preparation and the reality of college, placement tests in community colleges are based on the assumption that all students should be proficient in the math-course sequence leading to calculus. "This is a very serious problem," the NCEE report says. "It is clear that many students are being denied entry to credit-bearing courses at our community colleges who are in fact prepared to do the mathematics that will be required of them in their applied programs."

The NCEE also found the reading and writing required of incoming college freshmen are not very complex or cognitively demanding. Again, there is a mismatch in preparation and expectations. College textbooks required a reading level of 11th or 12th grade, yet reading assigned in high school was often at lower reading levels, and students were not asked to read for in-depth subject-matter comprehension. To compensate in college, the report notes, professors rely on Power Point presentations and other, simpler ways to convey the information to students.

Very little writing is required of community college freshmen, and when it is, the bar is low for presenting a reasonable argument and grammar usage, the NCEE review reveals. Student competency in literature needs to be raised if students are going to succeed in college and work, the researchers write.

The logical conclusion might be for community colleges to raise their expectations and for high schools to step up the rigor, the NCEE notes, but that would not help today's large proportion of high school graduates who do not meet the criteria to enroll in credit-bearing college courses.

Researchers propose the priority should be to enable high school students to meet the current very low standards before the standards are ratcheted up. The Common Core State Standards will address some of the mismatch between skills demanded in college and work and current school curricula, the report points out. The standards are a promising step, but the NCEE cautions that implementation will be a "heavy lift" for schools.

The report is based on a two-year review from 2010-2012 of graded assignments from seven community colleges (urban, rural, and suburban) in seven states, with enrollments ranging from 3,000 to 30,000 students.

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Concern over high school graduates being unprepared for college-level work has educators and policymakers looking for ways to identify learning gaps earlier.

A new review by the Community College Research Center finds some form of early-college-readiness assessments are offered in 38 states, and 29 states have structured interventions to help reduce the need for remedial coursework for incoming college freshman. The paper, Reshaping the College Transition by Elisabeth A. Barnett, Maggie P. Fay, Rachel Hare Bork, Madeline Joy Weiss of Columbia University suggests that the number of state and local initiatives employing these tactics is widespread and growing.

To measure college readiness in 11th grade, schools are using a variety of assessments: ACCUPLACER or COMPASS, commonly used for community college placement; ACT or SAT college-admissions exams; and state-developed accountability tests, such as California's Early Assessment test. Many states not testing now are expected to use the new assessments developed for the Common Core State Standards, the researchers note.

When interventions, or transition curricula, are needed to get students up to speed, schools are using both in-person instruction and online tutorials. In 21 states, courses were developed by individual high schools or districts, sometimes in partnership with local colleges. Another eight states had statewide efforts with transition curricula, more often led by K-12 state agencies than postsecondary agencies, according to the paper.

It includes a chart by state of early assessments, transition curricula, and whether the initiatives were led by the state or districts, or if the program is in progress.

The analysis of states was done by a combination of scanning information online and conducting a survey of 53 state agency officials in 46 states in late 2012 and early 2013.

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The May 1 deadline to commit to a college has come and gone, but many schools want students to know that they still have room in the fall.

The National Association for College Admission Counseling released the results of its annual Space Availability Survey Thursday, and at least 210 colleges and universities still have openings and financial aid to offer qualified freshman and transfer students. Of the institutions surveyed, 28 percent are public colleges and 72 percent are private. Nearly all (99 percent) responded that they have housing space for incoming students.

The information is helpful for students who missed the application deadline or did not get into the school of their choice, but still want to go to college.

The survey results and contact information for schools with openings are on the NACAC website and will be updated as availability changes through June 28. The survey is voluntary and is limited to 1,350 U.S. NACAC member four-year colleges.

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