At its meeting on Tuesday, July 7, the Board of Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic – West Virginia elected Dennis Taylor as one of its newest members. RFB&D-WV makes audiobooks available to students with visual impairment, dyslexia and other disabilities.
8 July 2009
7 July 2009
Community College Times reports that Louisiana lawmakers are preparing to enact legislation to create a second “career option” high school diploma for students. Under the legislation, parents could allow students 15 years-old or older to skip out of the pre-college curriculum. If they did and earned a “career option” diploma, they could attend community college, but not a four-year college or university.
Many education organizations, including Achieve, Education Trust, and Jobs for the Future, oppose this legislation. Why? Two reasons: First, there is substantial education research about the benefits of a rigorous academic curriculum. Indeed, it is one of the best predictors of later academic (and logically economic?) success. These groups suspect the “career option” will be anything but rigorous. Second, these groups worry that poor students will take the “career option” and find themselves unprepared for good careers down the road.
But is every student truly “traditional” college material? What happens to that student for whom the “traditional” college track is not working? Does he or she drop out before graduating high school? How do you maximize that student’s future career options?
One possible answer being explored nationally is early college or middle college. Middle college places struggling high school students on a college campus for a combined high school/college experience. The theory is that certain struggling students can succeed if presented with a different environment and a different approach to education.
West Virginia Northern Community College is in the process of launching a middle college for West Virginia high school students. WVNCC President Martin Olshinsky’s efforts to make middle college a reality for Northern Panhandle students should be applauded … supported financially … evaluated rigorously … and transplanted elsewhere IF the model proves successful.
6 July 2009
Eric Eyre continued his investigative reporting of Comar, Inc. for the Charleston Gazette over the weekend. Mr. Eyre’s latest discovery: the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine awarded Comar a $212,000 no-bid contract to send unsolicited emails to prospective students, a service that some companies supposedly offer for as little as $250 per month. The school then paid Comar an additional $19,864 to improve its online reputation. Why? Apparently to try to bury a story about a $90,000 sexual harassment lawsuit settlement, which kept popping up in Google searches of the school’s name. (Yes, I found the article through a Google search – and thus did not help WVSOM’s efforts to bury it. Sorry, President Rafes.)
This reminds me of another technology procurement story a few weeks ago. In that story, Phil Kabler revealed that the West Virginia Office of Technology was trying to issue a sole-source contract to 20/10 Consulting to provide consulting services for the state’s massive new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. I had seen the sole-source documents earlier and thought it funny that anyone would assert with a straight face that only one vendor could possibly provide the requested services.
It wasn’t until Kabler’s column that I realized that 20/10 Consulting was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Steptoe and Johnson, a large local law firm, which made the claim all that much more absurd. The Office of Technology’s sole-source effort ultimately was rejected, and it appears to have placed the human resources portion of the consulting services contract out for bid this week.
I do not know what it is about technology, but I have repeatedly watched state agencies and higher education institutions be taken to the cleaners by vendors selling the latest and greatest technological wonder. Indeed the State spent at least $20 million in the late 1990s and early 2000s on ATM communications technology, which left the state with little to show for the effort besides a multi-million dollar billing mess that took years to clean up. I’ve been told West Virginia University has spent more than that trying to make its Oracle financial system work.
I also can’t begin to estimate how many millions of dollars higher education and state government have spent on “glorified websites” (a term coined by Senator Helmick, as I recall). If you call your website a “portal,” I’ve discovered, the going rate for website development triples, so everyone now has “portals.”
Imagine my amazement last month when I was able to create my own portal/glorified website without paying anyone the $2,500 I had budgeted for it. I’ll be glad to build a comparable “portal” for someone else for a cool $7,500 ($2,500 x 3 for calling it a portal).
If the State successfully implements an effective ERP system with the $60 million in pocket change that the Legislature so kindly provided, I will be very surprised.
5 July 2009
A very important debate is occurring at the national level over health care reform. I must admit that I do not know as much as I should about the issues. I, however, do have a few observations based on personal experience:
- Employer-Subsidized Health Coverage. Am I the only person who thinks this is a crazy way to fund health care? I believe this development dates back to World War II when wage controls prevented employers from increasing wages, so large companies began providing the benefit in lieu of wage increases. If my understanding is correct, employer-subsidized health coverage is an accident of history, not a carefully thought-out policy decision.
- Free Agents. The United States has significant numbers of independent contractors and small businesses for whom health coverage is difficult – or impossible – to fund. Everyone from Daniel Pink (author of “Free Agent Nation”) to Tom Friedman (author of “The World is Flat”) is predicting that there will be more and more free agents in coming years. It is not good public policy to have a system that doesn’t work for 45 million people.
- COBRA. I would like to thank the people who championed the original COBRA legislation that makes health care coverage affordable (debatable, I know) for those who recently left employment. Having said that, I am sitting here staring at my COBRA forms now, and I can’t even figure out how much I’m supposed to pay – and I’m a lawyer.
- Medicare. I would like to heckle the people who came up with the idea that old people should have to choose from among various health care and prescription drug plans. Many people my age have had to make these decisions for their bewildered parents. It’s all well and good to preach the benefits of “choice,” but any system that confuses and worries the elderly is a bad system.
- Medicaid. I appreciate the Medicaid safety net, but it’s unfortunate that people basically have to bankrupt themselves to benefit from it.
- Government-Sponsored Health Plan. As I understand it, President Obama wants one of your options to be a government-sponsored health plan. I don’t understand why so many people are up in arms over this proposal. If the private sector can do it more competitively and efficiently, people will choose their plans. As for me, I’ll probably bet on the government if I’m given a choice.
- Cost and Rationing. I think government should ensure that somehow – someway everyone has the opportunity to acquire the basics of food, clothing, shelter, a certain level of education and a certain level of medical care. Having said that, I think it’s reasonable for government to draw lines somewhere. In the education arena, the line typically is drawn at post-secondary education. I have no objection to the government saying that it will ensure that I receive a treatment that might lead me to live cancer-free, but not a very expensive treatment that, at best, will give me six more months to live.
The health care debate is complicated, and I don’t pretend to know any answers, much less all of them. But I am thankful that intelligent people are out there looking for reasonable solutions. I don’t expect our leaders to come up the perfect system, but I do expect them to try.
4 July 2009
It is humorous to watch Penn State University try to have it both ways on the public/private institution front. A few years ago Penn State and its allies took a case all the way to the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court to keep from disclosing the salaries of several employees – including a little-known football coach by the name of Joe Paterno. They also have not cooperated with several state higher education efforts, including a transfer/articulation program and the statewide data system, and their tuition is twice that of other state institutions of higher education in Pennsylvania.
In hindsight, Penn State may have been too clever by half. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has turned the tables on Penn State and its “state-related” sisters Temple University, the University of Pittsburgh and Lincoln University. Governor Rendell has decided that none of the federal stimulus dollars made available to Pennsylvania should go to these four schools, which works out to about a $20 million loss for Penn State alone.
According to Penn State’s spokesperson, the loss of this $20 million would be “devastating” to the University. Apparently not devastating enough to cause the institution to reconsider its “state-related” status. Instead Penn State is trying to do an end-run around the Governor by making its case directly to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Despite enjoying this amusing turn of events, I do not think the amount of power given to governors to determine who does and does not receive federal stimulus funds is a good thing.