The Most Important Actions for Improving Higher Education in Missouri

The Most Important Actions for Improving Higher Education in Missouri: Question 9. What are the three or four most important actions Missouri can take to improve productivity and serve more students?
One: cross-sector accountability. This is an idea that was generated years back but hasnt gotten as much traction is it can and should from my perspective. What does it mean? It means that those in the K-12 system, especially at the secondary level ,should feel responsibility and have some consequences and accountability for how well students are doing in higher education. And higher education should have some responsibility, accountability and consequences for how well students are doing in K-12, especially students at the secondary level.
Thats not an idea people take to easily and its much easier to point fingers and say, Thats not my job. Well, its our collective responsibility. We provide teachers to the K-12 system, the K-12 system provides students to higher ed; its time we felt a responsibility for each others activities and focus on teacher quality and performance through P-20. Too often in P- 20 discussions, the mantra comes down to simply P- 12 schools, teachers and student performance.
The time has come that we must look at the quality of higher ed faculty -- not just faculty teaching future teachers and K-12 schools, but all faculty -- the math and science faculty, and not just teaching math and science future teachers, but the future mathematicians and scientists throughout all industry and business in our communities, or the future citizens who may be in the arts but need some math and science literacy to be productive citizens in their community.
So we need a focus on the quality and performance of all faculty, all educators, K-20. Take a long-term view. We need to not simply get quick fixes and quick data and not see it from a long-term perspective. Some things take awhile to bring about the change we need:
•Longitudinal studies that can begin to report systematically the long-term impacts of strategies that were trying to accomplish
• We need to have early childhood at the table even though we are higher education. Early childhood is an extremely important partner. The years pass and when those years pass, if we havent focused on early childhood, we have missed a crucially important piece of the pipeline. Not only that, but we place the professionals who are responsible for interaction with young minds. We also were part of the discussions about the kinds of qualifications professionals should have who are charged with the care of infants, three-year-olds and four-year-olds. Those are learning environments that higher ed should have at the table.
•We need intervention strategies for poor performance. We cannot simply say everybodys got to do well and you only get rewarded if you do well. We need to understand that its OK to place a spotlight on our vulnerabilities and its not gotcha mentality. How do we then focus appropriately when we need intervention strategies and put appropriate resources with accountability to try to bring about change where weaknesses exist?

Category:

Education

Tags:

• The
• Most
• Important
• Actions
• for
• Improving
• Higher
• Education
• in
• Missouri
• financial
• aid