EKU appeals tax-exemption denial

This from the Richmond Register:

The question of whether the Grand Campus student housing complex leased by Eastern Kentucky University is tax exempt has reached the second level of appeal.

At stake is more than $253,000 in revenue that local taxing districts would collect if the exemption is finally denied.

In March, Madison County Property Valuation Administrator Billy Akerman refused to exempt the property, assessed at $26 million, from taxes. EKU then took its case to the county’s Board of Assessment Appeals. After a public hearing July 17, the board upheld the PVA’s decision.

A state statute requires local assessment boards to follow the “advice” of the state Revenue Department. But the board concluded the “opinion” EKU obtained from the department was not binding on it or the PVA.

In the recording of a conversation with Revenue Department officials, board chair John Gilliam can be heard asking for the department’s advice. After first saying its “advice” was to exempt the property, David Gordon, Office of Property Valuation’s executive director, backtracked and said, “That is our opinion.”

The recording was played before the board went into closed session to deliberate.
In a decision mailed after the meeting, the board concluded EKU’s agreement with the Grand Campus owners resembles a conventional triple-net lease and does not constitute the “equitable interest” the university asserts is tantamount to ownership. Because state revenue officials continued to offer an “opinion” rather that give “advice,” board members said they did not believe it was binding, their statement added.

At the hearing, Jerry Gilbert, attorney for the Madison County School Board and the county library board, argued against exemption, calling the lease unexceptional.
In its Aug. 7 appeal to the state assessments board, the university notes its expressly asked the Revenue Department in July 2014 if the property would be tax exempt. EKU also informed the board it submitted the lease to state revenue officials and told them the property would not be leased without assurance it was tax exempt.

In its opinion to EKU, the Revenue Department stated the agreement between EKU and the Grand Campus owners was “inconsistent with those of a convention lease. Rather the agreement reflects an intention to transfer practical ownership of the Property to EKU.”
Also under the agreement, “virtually all present rights of ownership … vest in EKU,” the opinion stated. And “the fact that Grand Campus will retain bare legal title poses no obstacle to this interpretation.”

The opinion noted EKU had first refusal rights if the property were to be sold. And insurance proceeds would be shared with the university’s in proportion to its remaining “equitable interest” if the property were destroyed by fire or other disaster.
By Friday, the school and library boards had not responded to the university’s appeal. After the state board’s decision, either party may take the issue to a court of law.

KBE chair: No talk of making finalists’ names public until after pool reduced at Aug. 25 Lexington meeting

This from KSBA:

At the end of a marathon, two-day series of interviews, the Kentucky Board of Education Saturday directed its search consultants to conduct in-depth background and reference checks on an unannounced number of semifinalists to become the state’s sixth commissioner of education.

KBE Chairman Roger Marcum told eNews after the meeting that other candidates still could be added to the 12 semifinalists interviewed. He declined to say whether all 12 remain under consideration. A state Department of Education news release simply noted that “leading candidates” would undergo further scrutiny by Greenwood/Asher & Associates, the Florida-based search firm assisting the state board.

When asked what issues KBE members raised during the interviews, Marcum’s response confirmed that the pool includes at least one Kentuckian.

“We have a mixture of Kentucky and national folks, so we want to know why they are interested in this position,” Marcum said.

“We want to know their ability to lead the work that’s being done in Kentucky – work around college and career readiness and future initiatives like Kentucky Rising,” he said. “We also want to know about their ability to build relationships with our partners, do they have the capacity to manage a state agency – some folks have more experience with that than others. And then why are they interested in Kentucky.”

Marcum said he was impressed with the quality of the candidates and their responses to questions. After what he called a “difficult two days with 12 interviews,” he assessed, “We are where we wanted to be within our timeline.”

The next stop on that timeline will be a meeting Aug. 25 in a Lexington hotel, where the Greenwood/Asher representatives will share the results of the background checks. Then KBE members will discuss whether they’re ready to pare the field to a set of finalists for a second round of face-to-face interviews in Lexington Aug. 28 and 29.

“We hope to be conducting some final interviews on the 28th and 29th. We hope on the 25th, we can hope to move in that direction,” said Marcum, a former Marion County Schools superintendent who was recently re-elected as KBE chairman.

When – or if – the public will know the identities of the final candidates to replace retiring Commissioner Terry Holliday remains undetermined.

“That’s still a discussion on the 25th. We still haven’t gotten that far at this point. I don’t want to speak to that because we haven’t had that discussion yet. I don’t think we’re ready to do that,” Marcum said. However, he added that he doesn’t envision a scenario in which the state board wouldn’t announce its final candidates prior to making a decision.

Education’s Merchant of Doubt

One man’s deceitful mission to undermine fair and adequate school funding

This from Bruce Baker at School Finance 101:

Back in 2012, I opined: “It is hard to imagine a time in the history of American public education when there has been such a widespread political effort to argue that improving the quality of schools has little or nothing to do with the amount of money spent on public education. That is, that money simply doesn’t matter.”[1] It seemed as though at some point, discourse might begin to turn the corner on this question. That it might become more publicly acceptable and even acceptable in some political circles to acknowledge the relevance of money for improving the quality of schooling, and creating more equitable and adequate schools for achieving modern outcome goals.

But that rhetoric persists as strong as ever both in political circles and in the pseudo-academic policy research which informs that rhetoric. Further, even as the economy has begun to rebound state school finance systems have continued to lag, perhaps in part due to the persistent rhetoric regarding the irrelevance of school funding, and preferences for not merely revenue neutral, but revenue negative reforms.

In reference to a legal challenge brought against New York State, by small city school districts, New York’s Governor Cuomo opined:

“We spend more than any other state in the country,”
“It ain’t about the money. It’s about how you spend it – and the results.” [2]

In conversations regarding Federal education spending priorities, Virginia Congressman Dave Brat proclaimed:

“Socrates trained Plato in on a rock and then Plato trained in Aristotle roughly speaking on a rock. So, huge funding is not necessary to achieve the greatest minds and the greatest intellects in history.” [sic][3]

And so it is: we need only provide sufficient collection of rocks to ensure educational adequacy. That is, setting aside the modern-day competitive wage required to recruit and retain philosophy instructors of the quality of Socrates and provide them 1:1 student/teacher ratios.

In recently published analysis, I found that during the recession, state school finance systems took a substantial hit, both in terms of total state and local revenue and in terms of equity between districts serving lower and higher poverty student populations:

The recent recession yielded an unprecedented decline in public school funding fairness. Thirty-six states had a three year average reduction in current spending fairness between 2008-09 and 2010-11 and 32 states had a three year average reduction in state and local revenue fairness over that same time period. Over the entire 19-year period, only 15 states saw an overall decline in spending fairness. In years prior to 2008 (starting in 1993) only 11 states saw an overall decline in spending fairness. [4]

A more recent report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities revealed that through 2014-15, most state school finance systems had not yet begun to substantively rebound:

At least 30 states are providing less funding per student for the 2014-15 school year than they did before the recession hit. Fourteen of these states have cut per-student funding by more than 10 percent. (These figures, like all the comparisons in this paper, are in inflation-adjusted dollars and focus on the primary form of state aid to local schools.)

Most states are providing more funding per student in the new school year than they did a year ago, but funding has generally not increased enough to make up for cuts in past years. For example, Alabama is increasing school funding by $16 per pupil this year. But that is far less than is needed to offset the state’s $1,144 per-pupil cut over the previous six years. [5]

In short, the decline of state school finance systems continues and the rhetoric opposing substantive school finance reform shows little sign of easing. Districts serving the neediest student populations continue to take the hardest hit. Yet, concurrently, many states are substantively raising outcome standards for students[6] and increasing the consequences on schools and teachers for not achieving those outcome standards. Some positive signs include recent structural reforms, possibly involving new revenue in California and Pennsylvania, in each case focusing on districts serving high poverty student populations. But other states which cut substantially during the economic downturn, even under the pressure of prior and ongoing judicial review and oversight, have continued to cut (Kansas) or largely freeze state aid (New York).

From the cloud of doubt to a rock of certainty

Eric Hanushek

In my 2012 report Does Money Matter in Education? I explained how one man’s mission to create a cloud of uncertainty surrounding the relationship between school quality and available funding has distorted public policy discourse over school finance reform.

One might characterize Eric Hanushek as education’s own “merchant of doubt.”
I explained the evolution of Eric Hanushek’s frequently reiterated assertions of “no systematic relationship between school expenditures and student performance,” [7] originating in the 1980s, to more recent, bolder claims that substantial funding cuts cause no harm.

While compelling evidence has continued to accumulate regarding the importance of funding for improving school quality, Hanushek in various outlets and public testimony has continued to drift from the cloud of doubt to a rock of certainty. That is, certainty that money has little or no role in improving school quality and that school finance reforms which infuse additional funds only lead to greater inefficiency, having little or no effect on either equity or adequacy of schooling.[8]

To summarize, the current Hanushekian dogma includes the following core principles:

1. Because schools already spend so much and do so with such great inefficiency, additional funding is unlikely (read “will not and cannot”) to lead to improved student outcomes;
2. How money is used matters much more than how much money is spent;
3. Therefore, some schools and districts having more or less than others is inconsequential, since those with less may simply make smarter spending decisions.

According to the recent rhetoric of Hanushek, these principles are ironclad, in in his own words they are “conventional wisdom,” on which “virtually all analysts” agree. They are “commonly believed,” “overall truth,” and backed by an “enormous amount of scientific analysis” and “substantial econometric evidence,” and “considerable prior research.”

For example, in the winter of 2015, in the context of school funding litigation in New York State, Hanushek opined:

“An enormous amount of scientific analysis has focused on how spending and resources of schools relates to student outcomes. It is now commonly believed that spending on schools is not systematically related to student outcomes.”[9]

Yet, the enormous amount of scientific analysis to which Hanushek referred in his expert testimony was primarily cited to a 2003 summary of much of his prior work from the 1980s, work which has been discredited on numerous occasions, [10] not to mention, research that has occurred in the last 12 years.[11] Similarly, in the same context (Maisto v. State) Hanushek proclaims:

“There has been substantial econometric evidence that supports this lack of relationship.”

Backed again (in footnote 6 of his report) by the same short list of dated self-citation.[12] In an even more recent attempt to rebut a new, major study finding positive effects of school finance reforms,[13] Hanushek (2015) makes the following version of the same claim:

“Considerable prior research has failed to find a consistent relationship between school spending and student performance, making skepticism about such a relationship the conventional wisdom.”[14]

This time, anchoring that claim only to his 2003 piece (by hyperlink to the “prior research” phrase) on the Failure of input based schooling policies,[15] choosing to ignore entirely the considerably larger body of more rigorous work I summarize in my 2012 review on the topic.

The extension of these claims that nearly everyone agrees, and all (or, a veritable shit-ton of) research says that there’s no clear relationship between spending and student performance is the assertion that there is broad agreement that how money is spent matters far more than how much there is. As phrased by Hanushek in the context of New York State school finance litigation:

“Virtually all analysts now realize that how money is spent is much more important than how much is spent. This finding is particularly true at the upper levels of current U.S. spending.[16]

As with the prior declarations, this one is made with the exceedingly bold assertion that virtually all analysts agree on this point – without reference to any empirical evidence to that point (a seemingly gaping omission for a decidedly empirical claim about a supposedly empirical truth). Put bluntly, if you don’t have it, you can’t spend it. Thus, the two issues – how much you have and how you spend it – are inextricably linked.
Perhaps most disconcerting is that Hanushek has recently extended this argument to declare that equity gaps in funding, or measures of them, aren’t an important policy concern either. They are, by his proclamation “vacuous” and “lacking any scientific basis.”[17]

Put differently, what Hanushek is opining by declaring calculations of equity gaps to be vacuous and lacking scientific basis is that it matters not whether one school or district has more resources than another. Regardless of any spending differences, schools and districts can provide equitable education – toward equitable outcome goals. Those with substantively fewer resources simply need to be more efficient. Since all public schools and districts are presently so inefficient, achieving these efficiency gains through more creative personnel policies, such as performance based pay, and dismissal of “bad teachers”, are easily attainable.

Of course, even if we assume creative personnel policies to yield marginal improvements to efficiency, if schools with varied levels of resources pursued these strategies with comparable efficiency gains, inequities would remain constant. Requiring those with less to simply be more efficient with what they have is an inequitable requirement. This argument is often linked in popular media and the blogosphere with the popular book and film Moneyball, which asserts that clever statistical analysis for selecting high productivity, undervalued players was the basis for the (short lived) success of the low payroll in 2002 and 2003 Oakland A’s baseball team. The flaws of this analogy are too many to explore thoroughly herein, but the biggest flaw is illustrated by the oft-ignored subtitle of the book – The art of winning an unfair game. That is, gaining a leg up through clever player selection is necessary in baseball because vast wealth and payroll differences across teams make baseball an unfair game. Put bluntly, public schooling should not be an unfair game.

The Eroding Soil under the Rock

From judges to scholars, critics of evidence (other than myself) used by Hanushek to support the above claims have characterized that evidence as “facile,” based on “fuzzy logic”[18] and “weak and factually tenuous.”[19]

Two recurring examples used by Hanushek to illustrate the unimportance of funding increases for improving outcomes, are the “long term trend” or “time trend” argument, and anecdotal claims of the failures of input-based reforms in New Jersey. Baker and Welner (2011) tackle in depth, the fallacies of Hanushek’s New Jersey claims.[20] Here, I point to Hanushek’s own, albeit facile, unacknowledged self-debunking of his New Jersey claims. But first, I address the “long term trend” claim.

Again from recent testimony in New York State, Hanushek provides the following exposition of the “long term trend” assertion:

The overall truth of this disconnect of spending and outcomes is easiest to see by looking at the aggregate data for the United States over the past half century. Since 1960, pupil‐teacher ratios fell by one‐third, teachers with master’s degrees over doubled, and median teacher experience grew significantly (Chart 1).4 Since these three factors are the most important determinants of spending per pupil, it leads to the quadrupling of spending between 1960 and 2009 (after adjusting for inflation). At the same time, plotting scores for math and reading performance of 17‐year‐olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, or “The Nation’s Report Card”) shows virtually no change since 1970 (Charts 2 and 3).5[21]

This claim like many others is made with language of astounding certainty – the “overall truth” as it exists in the mind of Hanushek. This claim is commonly accompanied by graphs showing per pupil spending going up over time, pupil to teacher ratios going down, and national assessment scores appearing relatively flat, much of which is achieved via the smoke and mirrors of representing spending and outcome data on completely different scales, and failures to adjust appropriately for changing costs and related obligations of the public education system, and changing demography of the tested population.[22] Oversimplified visuals are used to make the proclamation that student achievement shows “virtually no change,” a statement discredited on closer inspection.[23] Jackson and colleagues provide additional examples of how such facile analyses lead to fallacious conclusions (ironically using cigarette smoking data).[24]
Hanushek extends his use of the long term trend argument in his recent critique of findings from Jackson and colleagues that court ordered infusions of funding to select schools and districts led to long term gains in educational attainment, income and poverty reduction for those subjected to increased funding. Hanushek asserts:

If a ten percent increase yields the results calculated by Jackson, Johnson, and Persico, shouldn’t we have found all gaps gone (and even reversed) by now due to the actual funding increases?

Thus, if the massive average spending increases reported by Hanushek as the actual long term trend did not lead to elimination or reversal of gaps, Jackson, Johnson and Persico’s findings must be wrong? Right?

Of course, this assertion is complete and utter nonsense, because Jackson and colleagues don’t assert, and Hanushek’s own national average long term trend data do not show that all low income children, lower performing subgroups and/or those in low wealth communities were subjected to dramatic funding increases. In fact, if Hanushek’s average spending increases were driven as much by increases in wealthy (low poverty/minority) districts as they were by increases in poorer districts, then gaps would likely remain constant, all else equal.  That is, the average level of funding, and changes in average level say nothing of gaps or distributions in funding or changes in gaps or distributions. Put bluntly, the average level of funding, and the distribution of funding are two different things. Conflating the two is intentionally deceitful.

As explained by Baker and Welner (2011)[25] Hanushek for years has cited the failures of New Jersey’s school finance reforms as the basis for why other states should not increase funding to high poverty schools. In litigation in Kansas in 2011, Hanushek proclaimed:

“The dramatic spending increases called for by the courts (exhibit 34) have had little to no impacts on achievement. Compared to the rest of the nation, performance in New Jersey has not increased across most grades and racial groups (exhibits 35-40). These results suggest caution in considering the ability of courts to improve educational outcomes.”[26]

Hanushek reiterated these claims in the context of the even more recent New York school funding challenge. [27] This is a surprising claim to preserve when one’s own recent (2012) marginally more rigorous analyses of state achievement growth rates on national assessments (from 1992 to 2011)[28] find the following:

“The other seven states that rank among the top-10 improvers, all of which outpaced the United States as a whole, are Massachusetts, Louisiana, South Carolina, New Jersey, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Virginia.”[29]

The same report by Hanushek shows impressive reductions in the share of students scoring “below basic” in New Jersey, especially for 8th grade math (Figure 4).
To be sure, there are others in academe and policy research that raise questions about the most effective ways to leverage school funding to achieve desired outcomes, and do so via more rigorous, thoughtful analyses.

There are others who opine in the public square[30] and courtroom[31] that school finance reform – specifically infusing additional funding to districts serving high need student populations – is neither the most effective nor most efficient path toward improving schooling equity or adequacy. But empirical evidence to support claims of more efficient alternatives remains elusive.

Nonetheless, the “facile” and “factually tenuous” illustrations above must be put to rest, and the divisive, manipulative (intellectually insulting) and damaging rhetoric of education’s merchant of doubt cast aside once and for all.

NOTES
[1] Baker, B. D. (2012). Revisiting the Age-Old Question: Does Money Matter in Education?. Albert Shanker Institute.
[2] http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2014/02/11/cuomo-on-education-funding-lawsuit-it-aint-about-the-money/
[3] http://thinkprogress.org/education/2015/02/13/3623158/brat-education-plato/
[4] Baker, B. D. (2014). Evaluating the recession’s impact on state school finance systems.
Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22(91). http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v22n91.2014
[5] Leachman, M., & Mai, C. (2014). Most States Still Funding Schools Less Than Before the Recession. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, October 16, 2014, http://www. cbpp. org/cms/index. cfm? fa= view&id, 4213.
[6]
Bandeira de Mello, V., Bohrnstedt, G., Blankenship, C., and Sherman, D. (2015). Mapping State Proficiency Standards Onto NAEP Scales: Results From the 2013 NAEP Reading and Mathematics Assessments (NCES 2015-046). U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved [date] from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch.
[7] Hanushek, E.A. (1986) Economics of Schooling: Production and Efficiency in Public Schools. Journal of Economic Literature 24 (3) 1141-1177. A few years later, Hanushek paraphrased this conclusion in another widely cited article as “Variations in school expenditures are not systematically related to variations in student performance”
Hanushek, E.A. (1989) The impact of differential expenditures on school performance. Educational Researcher. 18 (4) 45-62
Hanushek describes the collection of studies relating spending and outcomes as follows:

“The studies are almost evenly divided between studies of individual student performance and aggregate performance in schools or districts. Ninety-six of the 147 studies measure output by score on some standardized test. Approximately 40 percent are based upon variations in performance within single districts while the remainder look across districts. Three-fifths look at secondary performance (grades 7-12) with the rest concentrating on elementary student performance.” (fn #25)

[8] Notably, Hanushek then and now asserts that it’s not that money doesn’t matter at all, but rather that additional money doesn’t matter on top of the already high (apparently indisputably and invariably) levels of spending that currently exist across all U.S. schools.
[9] http://www.edlawcenter.org/assets/files/pdfs/maisto/masito%20trial%20documents/State%27s%20Expert%20Report%20-%20Dr.%20Eric%20Hanushek.pdf
[10] Baker, B. D. (2012). Revisiting the Age-Old Question: Does Money Matter in Education?. Albert Shanker Institute.
[11] Including but not limited to:
Jackson, C. K., Johnson, R., & Persico, C. (2015). The Effects of School Spending on Educational and Economic Outcomes: Evidence from School Finance Reforms (No. w 20847) National Bureau of Economic Research.
Papke, L. (2005). The effects of spending on test pass rates: evidence from Michigan. Journal of Public Economics, 89(5-6). 821-839.
Hyman, J. (2013). Does Money Matter in the Long Run? Effects of School Spending on Educational Attainment. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jmhyman/Hyman_JMP.pdf.
Deke, J. (2003). A study of the impact of public school spending on postsecondary educational attainment using statewide school district refinancing in Kansas, Economics of Education Review, 22(3), 275-284. (p. 275)
Nguyen-Hoang, P., & Yinger, J. (2014). Education Finance Reform, Local Behavior, and Student Performance in Massachusetts. Journal of Education Finance, 39(4), 297-322.
Downes, T. A. (2004). School Finance Reform and School Quality: Lessons from Vermont. In Yinger, J. (Ed.), Helping Children Left Behind: State Aid and the Pursuit of Educational Equity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
[12] Specifically, Hanshek includes the following footnote:

Hanushek (2003). See also Hanushek (1981, (1986, (1989). The statistical analyses focus on the independent impact of resources on performance after allowing for differences among families, peers, and neighborhoods. A variety of sophisticated approaches have been applied to schooling situations across the countries, and the reviews summarize these studies. The aggregate results of the most sophisticated of these studies are shown below.

[13] Jackson, C. K., Johnson, R. C., & Persico, C. (2015). The effects of school spending on educational and economic outcomes: Evidence from school finance reforms (No. w20847). National Bureau of Economic Research.
[14] http://hanushek.stanford.edu/opinions/does-money-matter-after-all
[15] http://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Hanushek%202003%20EJ%20113%28485%29.pdf
[16] http://www.edlawcenter.org/assets/files/pdfs/maisto/masito%20trial%20documents/State%27s%20Expert%20Report%20-%20Dr.%20Eric%20Hanushek.pdf
[17] Specifically, Hanushek proclaims:

It also underscores how calculations of equity gaps in spending, of costs needed to achieve equity, or of costs needed to obtain some level of student performance are vacuous, lacking any scientific basis.” (Maisto, p4)

http://www.edlawcenter.org/assets/files/pdfs/maisto/masito%20trial%20documents/State%27s%20Expert%20Report%20-%20Dr.%20Eric%20Hanushek.pdf
[18] http://educationnext.org/money-matter/
[19] http://www.shawneecourt.org/DocumentCenter/View/457
[20] Baker, B., & Welner, K. (2011). School finance and courts: Does reform matter, and how can we tell. Teachers College Record, 113(11), 2374-2414.
[21] http://www.edlawcenter.org/assets/files/pdfs/maisto/masito%20trial%20documents/State’s%20Expert%20Report%20-%20Dr.%20Eric%20Hanushek.pdf
[22] http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/2011/04/bill-gates-should-hire-a-statistical-advisor.html
[23] See, for example:
http://www.epi.org/publication/fact-challenged_policy/
[24] The authors explain:

To see the problems of Hanushek’s logic, consider the following true statistics: between 1960 and 2000 the rate of cigarette smoking for females decreased by more than 30 percent while the rate of deaths by lung cancer increased by more than 50 percent over the same time period.[1] An analysis of these time trends might lead one to infer that smoking reduces lung cancer. However, most informed readers can point out numerous flaws in looking at this time trend evidence and concluding that “if smoking causes lung cancer, then there should have been a large corresponding reduction in cancer rates so that there can be no link between smoking and lung cancer.” However, this is exactly the facile logic invoked by Hanushek regarding the effect of school spending on student achievement.

http://educationnext.org/money-matter/
[25] Baker, B., & Welner, K. (2011). School finance and courts: Does reform matter, and how can we tell. Teachers College Record, 113(11), 2374-2414.
[26] http://www.robblaw.com/PDFs/1169.pdf
[27] http://www.edlawcenter.org/assets/files/pdfs/maisto/masito%20trial%20documents/State’s%20Expert%20Report%20-%20Dr.%20Eric%20Hanushek.pdf
[28] As explained by the authors:

We also examine changes in student performance in 41 states within the United States between 1992 and 2011, allowing us to compare these states with each other.
Our findings come from assessments of performance in math, science, and reading of representative samples in particular political jurisdictions of students who at the time of testing were in 4th or 8th grade or were roughly ages 9–10 or 14–15.

[29] Hanushek, E. A., Peterson, P. E., & Woessmann, L. (2012). Is the US catching up: international and state trends in student achievement. Education Next, 12(4), 24.
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG12-03_CatchingUp.pdf
[30] http://jaypgreene.com/2015/05/29/does-school-spending-matter-after-all/
[31]Including renowned segregationist David Armor who continues to testify alongside Hanushek, http://www.edlawcenter.org/assets/files/pdfs/maisto/masito%20trial%20documents/State’s%20Expert%20Report%20-%20Dr.%20David%20Armor.pdf

City orders work to stop at site of new Lexington high school, citing building permit issue

This from the Herald-Leader:

The city has ordered construction to stop at the site of a new Lexington high school on Winchester Road.

Derek Paulsen, the city's commissioner of planning, preservation and development, said in a statement issued late Saturday that Fayette County Public Schools "was issued a stop work order for the new high school on Winchester Road due to the fact that they did not have a building permit at the time they started construction."

"We have a meeting set up with FCPS next week to discuss the remaining issues associated with the building permit and are hopeful that the permit will be issued and work will be resumed within the week," he said.

School district spokeswoman Lisa Deffendall said Saturday evening that "building permits are applied for by and issued to the contractor, and we will be working with both the city and the contractor to resolve this issue as quickly as possible."

"It is our understanding that the city traffic engineering department wants to revisit issues that had already been worked through," she said.

D.W. Wilburn has a $62 million construction contract with the district to build the school. The total cost is expected to be more than $81 million.

The school, expected to open in fall 2017, is to be built on 65 acres at 2000 Winchester Road. It would serve about 1,800 students.

Redistricting plans have been developed because of the new high school plus two more elementary schools scheduled to open next year.

ad more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/08/15/3990689/city-orders-work-to-stop-at-site.html#storylink=cpy

Kentucky Board of Education to interview 12 in commissioner search

This from WDRB:

The Kentucky Board of Education will meet Friday and Saturday in Louisville to interview 12 candidates interested in becoming the state's next education commissioner.

The interviews will begin at 7a.m. both days at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, but they will all be done in closed session.

At the conclusion of the interviews Saturday, the state board will discuss the interviews and determinate which candidates will proceed with reference checks.

The board is searching for a replacement for retiring Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday, whose last day is Aug. 31.

Last week, the board decided to appoint associate commissioner Kevin Brown as interim commissioner while they continue their search.

Brown, who oversees the Office of Guiding and Support Services and serves as general counsel of the Kentucky Department of Education, will start his interim role on Sept. 1.

The Public University: Recalling Higher Education’s Democratic Purpose

This by Michael T. Benson and Hal R. Boyd at the NEA:

Michael T. Benson

The modern university has been called, “a series of separate schools and departments held together by a central heating system,” and, in a play on this line, “a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking."¹ Whether parking, heating, or, more probable today, WiFi, these tongue-in-cheek caricatures belie a more serious worry that higher education is rudderless, lacking a unifying raison d’etre. Across the U.S., pockets of politicians view higher education in economic terms, seeking to peg public funding to the size of post-graduation salaries or other criteria ostensibly focused on outcomes more than inputs.² Professors and administrators, at times at odds with this perspective on higher education, see cultivating critical thinking as college’s central purpose.³ Meanwhile, student feedback demonstrates the vital role relationships play in university life.⁴ These and other visions of higher education may initially appear to conflict; yet, we argue that they often operate in concert to serve higher education’s broader public purpose—that of supporting our national democracy.

In Derek Bok’s Higher Education in America, the former president of Harvard ⁵ “Until the Civil War,” he writes, “most colleges in this country [had] only one aim—to educate an elite group of young men for the learned professions and positions of leadership in society.”⁶ Institutions such as Harvard and Yale strove to “discipline the mind and build the character of their students” through “strict disciplinary code[s]” and “compulsory attendance at chapel.”⁷ In the early years of the Republic, however, this monolithic, ecclesiastical form of education began to bifurcate. By the mid-19th century, new ideas about the role of college gained support.

Hal R. Boyd

University divides the historical aims of the American academy into several distinct periods.

As industrialization and agriculture expanded, demand increased for training in the so-called practical sciences. Benjamin Franklin and the leaders of what became the University of Pennsylvania had anticipated this shift by founding an institution to teach “those things that are likely to be most useful,” in addition to the “most ornamental.”⁸

This kind of vocational-minded schooling would later inspire the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862 (discussed below), which subsidized the creation of public agricultural and industrial colleges across the U.S. Within only a few decades, other pragmatic programs launched in “domestic science, engineering, business administration, physical education, teacher training, and sanitation and public health.”⁹

Around the same time, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) proliferated as a result of the Second Morrill Act. The Act required states to either eliminate race as part of admissions criteria or provide a separate state-sponsored institution for African Americans. Finally, in the late 19th century, universities undertook more rigorous scientific research. In 1873, the wealthy bachelor Johns Hopkins bequeathed his fortune to fund a college that made its purpose the discovery of new knowledge.¹⁰ Other schools such as Harvard and the University of Chicago followed by awarding Ph.D. degrees and engaging in extensive scientific inquiry. The American research university was born.

Today, many post-secondary schools trace their origins to one or more of the aforementioned movements. However, in narrating the sweeping genesis of contemporary higher education, scholars tend to overlook the democratic ethos woven into its history. In this article we highlight three figures—George Washington, Justin S. Morrill, and Harry S. Truman—and discuss how they envisioned higher education fostering more fulsome democratic engagement, raising the country’s global reputation, cultivating goodwill between states and nations, and expanding opportunities for more Americans. From the founding years of the early Republic, to the Civil War and World War II, they lived during some of America’s most tumultuous times. Their efforts solidified the long-standing democratic purpose of higher education that still informs its mission today. And yet, as we discuss, when it comes to increasing opportunities for the most economically disadvantaged, higher education desperately needs to regain this democratic vision.

GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Some of America’s greatest proponents of public higher education were themselves not college graduates. Harry S. Truman, for example, was the only U. S. president of the 20th century without a college degree, yet he established the highly influential Commission on Higher Education and helped administer the G.I. Bill. These initiatives marked “a substantial shift in the nation’s expectation about who should attend college.”¹¹ Likewise, U.S. Senator Justin S. Morrill of Vermont was a self-educated merchant and the champion of legislation that helped establish public universities in every state in the union. George Washington’s schooling was similarly limited, but he became the early Republic’s most prominent proponent of a national university and, among the founders, was arguably second only to Thomas Jefferson in promoting civic-minded higher education.¹²

From the beginning of Washington’s presidency to the end of his life, establishing a national university remained a primary focus. Not only did he publicly promote the idea, but he also donated seed money.¹³ Washington’s rhetoric on the subject suggests he hoped a national university would assuage inter-colonial discord and ensure that the nation’s future leaders learned a uniquely American political curriculum. In his mind, teaching republican principles and constitutional governance was as vital to protecting liberty as maintaining a skilled army.

Furthermore, Washington’s own lack of formal education likely influenced his crusade to secure for others (albeit exclusively white males) the opportunities he himself never possessed. As one biographer observed, not attending college was “a deficiency that haunted him throughout his subsequent career.”¹⁴ Whether haunting or not, his academic background differed from those around him. Thomas Jefferson, for example, studied at the College of William and Mary and read law under the famous George Wythe; John Adams attended Harvard and learned law from John Putnam; James Madison went to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) and spent a post-graduate stint studying with the school’s president John Witherspoon. Both Alexander Hamilton and John Jay attended King’s College (now Columbia). Washington undoubtedly observed the role that his colleagues’ educations had on our nation’s founding.

Although the idea of a national university was discussed by Benjamin Rush and later by the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Washington resurrected the proposition throughout his presidency.¹⁵ In his First Annual Message to Congress he observed, “There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of Science and Literature.” The acquisition of knowledge, he continued, was the “surest basis of public happiness” and essential to the “security of a free Constitution.”16 Whether Congress should help support existing schools or fund a new national university he left to their discretion. Yet, four years later, in correspondence with John Adams, he was unequivocal that “a national University in this country is a thing to be desired.”¹⁷
Washington again returned to the idea in his Eighth Annual Address to Congress: “I have heretofore proposed to the consideration of Congress, the expediency of establishing a National University; and also a Military Academy.” As he saw it, the former was important not only for “National prosperity and reputation” but also to prepare the “future guardians of the liberties” in the “science of Government.” Meanwhile, the military academy would secure freedom through creating “an adequate stock of Military knowledge for emergencies.”¹⁸

Washington wished to insert similar ideas in his canonical Farewell Address, but Hamilton—who helped draft it—thought the proposal was best discussed in his annual message to Congress.¹⁹ For his part, Washington continued to promote the plan well into retirement and went so far as to bequeath “fifty shares which I hold in the Potomac Company … towards the endowment of a UNIVERSITY to be established within the limits of the District of Columbia.”²⁰ Congress eventually enacted the proposal for a military academy in 1802, but Washington’s dream for a national university never came to fruition. It remained a matter of congressional debate well into the late-19th century and is still discussed today.²¹ Washington understood how a public university could benefit students, boost prosperity, enhance the nation’s global standing, and help diminish provincial tendencies. Along with Rush, Jefferson, Madison, and others, he crystallized the idea that higher education was a public good that could help shape the nation’s “future guardians of the liberties.”

JUSTIN MORRILL AND UNIVERSITIES FOR STUDENTS OF TOIL

More than half a century after Washington’s death, Congress passed the single most significant legislation for the democratization of higher education. The Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862 apportioned to each state endowments of land to be sold and used for the “support, and maintenance of at least one college” that—without excluding classical studies—would focus mainly on agricultural and mechanical arts, as well as military instruction.²² It is hard to overstate the public and private impact of this new “liberal and practical education” tailored for the “industrial classes.”²³
Today, the original land-grant universities have graduated countless civil servants, business leaders, and luminaries in the arts and sciences. Alumni include more than 500 Rhodes Scholars, 500 federal legislators, 200 governors, and a handful of U.S Supreme Court justices, vice presidents, and foreign heads of state.²⁴ Over the years, hundreds of Pulitzer Prize winners and Nobel laureates have affiliated with these institutions as students, professors, and researchers.²⁵ Currently, the CEOs of Apple, Walmart, Ford, Verizon, BP, Berkshire Hathaway, McKesson, and Koch Industries²⁶—eight of the globe’s largest companies²⁷—are land-grant alumni. The aggregate endowments of the schools total more than $64 billion,28 and by a conservative estimate they annually educate more than 1.5 million students. In short, these institutions significantly impact the nation and the everyday lives and careers of Americans.

In Congress, few probably foresaw the long-term significance of the measure when it passed amidst the turbulence of the Civil War. If anyone sensed its importance, however, it was Justin S. Morrill, the congressman who championed the measure. Born in 1810 in Strafford, Vermont, Morrill came from hardscrabble circumstances with little formal schooling. He received a basic elementary education and then attended local academies (akin to high schools) for two terms.²⁹ On the advice of his lifelong mentor Judge Jedediah H. Harris, Morrill took a job as a local merchant’s clerk. Though his formal schooling ended early, he never lost an innate autodidacticism. He borrowed books from Harris on “the History of England, . . . Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, the Federalist, and various Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper novels.”³⁰ While working in Maine he took a class in bookkeeping and spent his Sundays devoted “to study or general reading.”³¹ He later reflected that it took “a long time and much labor” to gain the education he acquired and that “it was a great disadvantage to me that I could not go to school.”³²

His initial arguments for the “college act” in the U.S. House of Representatives centered on the economic gains that would come by way of better agricultural education. “Other nations lead us … in nearly all the practical sciences which can be brought to aid the management and results of agricultural labor,” he lamented. “We owe it to ourselves not to become a weak competitor in the most important field where we are to meet the world as rivals.”³³ He also made a broader moral appeal for the measure: “We have schools to teach the art of manslaying and make masters of ‘deep-throated engines’ of war, and shall we not have schools to teach men the way to feed, clothe, and enlighten the great brotherhood of man?”³⁴

In the Senate, Morrill found an ally in Iowa Republican James Harlan. As if to complement the economic arguments, Harlan discussed how the measure also expanded educational opportunities. “The passage of this bill will be one step in the right direction,” he said to the Senate. “It will be, in effect, a declaration that Congress will no longer discriminate against the people; that the masses, on whose shoulders have been imposed the burdens, shall participate in the enjoyment of some of the advantages of Government.”³⁵ The measure passed both chambers but President James Buchanan vetoed the bill on constitutional grounds—Congress, he felt, did not possess the power to intervene so directly in the state’s affairs.

Later, as a member of the Senate, Morrill reintroduced a revised version of the bill in 1862. In light of the Civil War, the new bill provided the colleges would also teach military tactics. He once again marshaled arguments about national competitiveness and the need to stave off the deleterious effects of soil depletion. This time he also expressed the bill’s attempt to make education affordable to America’s “sons of toil.” Harlan similarly defended the measure as a way to help “the children of the nation.” The bill passed and was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln just weeks before the battle of Antietam, the deadliest day of the Civil War. As one historian put it, the Land-Grant Act “forced education to fit the changing social and economic patterns of an expanding nation. It helped to create equality of educational opportunity by offering education at public expense to the industrial classes; it gave some measure of dignity to the vocations pursued by such classes.”³⁶

The Act also proved important to the country’s military efforts well beyond the Civil War. Officers from the schools served in the Spanish-American War and World War I. In the early 20th century, the campus programs evolved into the now-familiar Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). With the outbreak of World War II, thousands of ROTC officers helped America’s initial mobilization. More than a decade later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower bore witness of the “efficacy of that training” and the “great services” the land-grant officers “rendered to the United States of America on the field of battle.”³⁷ In addition to military training, Land-Grant scientists engaged in agricultural and engineering research to aid the war effort. Thanks to the G.I. Bill, these schools would greatly expand as they provided an educational landing place for thousands of World War II’s returning G.I.s.

THE TRUMAN COMMISSION AND EXPANDING EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

During 1943, the American Legion promoted legislation that eventually became The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (known today as the G.I. Bill). The primary author of the legislation was American Legion leader Henry Walter Colmery. Pitched as a “square deal” for veterans, the bill included, among other benefits, unprecedented educational subsidies for the nation’s returning veterans. The measure passed unanimously through both chambers, and—one week after D-day—President Franklin Roosevelt signed it into law. “Ultimately,” scholar Suzanne Mettler writes, “more than twice as many veterans used the higher education provisions than the most daring predictions officials had forecast.”38 By the expiration of the first bill in 1956, nearly half of the 16 million World War II veterans received some kind of educational training through the program.39 In 1947 alone, G.I.s accounted for nearly half of all students enrolled in American colleges.40 Given this remarkable growth in the nation’s post-secondary schools, President Harry S. Truman organized the President’s Commission on Higher Education.

Despite having never completed a college degree, Truman, like Washington, led some of the most sagacious and highly educated minds of his age. The cabinet he inherited upon President Roosevelt’s passing included Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins (a student of Mount Holyoke College, Columbia University, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania); Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School); Attorney General Francis Biddle (who graduated from Harvard with both undergraduate and law degrees); and Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes (who did the same at the University of Chicago). While a young captain in World War I, Truman grasped the value of a college degree when—as a self-described “old rube”—he was assigned to lead infantry training for “Harvard and Yale boys.”41 Little did he know then that such experiences might come in handy for his not-so-dissimilar role 27 years later.

Though Truman did not graduate from college, he held strong convictions about expanding the citizenry’s access to post-secondary opportunities. Addressing graduates at Howard University, the historically black university in Washington, D.C., he expressed remorse at the thought that some of the graduates could be denied opportunities to use their new skills due to racial prejudice. “I wasn’t able to go to college at all,” he confessed. “I had to stay at home and work on the family farm.” While some are denied opportunities for “economic reasons,” he explained, still others are denied opportunities “because of racial prejudice and discrimination.” He continued: “I want to see things worked out so that everyone who is capable of it receives a good education. I want to see everyone have a chance to put his education to good use, without unfair discrimination.”⁴¹ These sentiments exemplified the work of the President’s Commission on Higher Education, which became known colloquially as the Truman Commission.

Assembled in 1946 and active until its last report in 1948, the Commission contained “outstanding civic and educational leaders,” and Truman charged the group with examining “the functions of higher education in our democracy” as well as “the means by which [the functions] can best be performed.”⁴³ The result was a widely praised and scrutinized six-volume report titled Higher Education for American Democracy. The work laid out a philosophical vision for American higher education and provided practical recommendations to confront both contemporary challenges as well as those on the nation’s horizon. “Long ago our people recognized that education for all is not only democracy’s obligation but its necessity,” the report stated. “Education is the foundation of democratic liberties. Without an educated citizenry alert to preserve and extend freedom, it would not long endure.”⁴⁴

Around the same time, and only five years before the famous desegregation case Brown v. Board, W. E. B. Du Bois remarked, “Of all the civil rights for which the world has struggled and fought for 5,000 years, the right to learn is undoubtedly the most fundamental.”45 These sentiments echoed those articulated in the U.S. more than a century-and-a-half earlier, and yet sadly for most black Americans the struggle for equal educational opportunities was just beginning. In another particularly prescient passage, the Commission’s report warned what bears repeating today: “If the ladder of educational opportunity rises high at the doors of some youth and scarcely rises at all at the doors of others, while at the same time formal education is made a prerequisite to occupational and social advance, then education may become the means, not of eliminating race and class distinctions, but of deepening and solidifying them.”⁴⁶ Preventing this phenomenon is just as important to strengthening democracy at home in the 21st century as it was in the 20th.⁴⁷

HIGHER EDUCATION’S CONTEMPORARY RESPONSIBILITIES TO DEMOCRACY

For Washington and his contemporaries, the case for higher education was not only about “prosperity,” but also about educating youth for political participation, raising the country’s international standing, and diminishing provincialism. For Morrill and his allies, investment in higher education promised to yield agricultural and economic returns and help the nation remain globally competitive; but it was equally about expanding opportunity for the “sons of toil” and helping “enlighten the great brotherhood of man.” For Truman and his commission, economics and global competiveness played a role, but more important were the ways higher education could help sustain democracy through global understanding and expanded educational access. “Equal opportunity for all persons, to the maximum of their individual abilities and without regard to economic status, race, creed, color, sex, national origin, or ancestry is a major goal of American democracy,” the report stated.⁴⁸

Contemporary universities still aim to boost individual success. Data shows that, even with troubling tuition hikes, the long-term financial returns from a college education far exceed the individual monetary investment for most students.⁴⁹ Campus startup incubators and industrial collaboration initiatives help turn university research and innovation into products, services, and new businesses that help grow local and national economies. Colleges and universities also aim to provide high quality general education and create a campus atmosphere that prepares students for life-long civic engagement and sustained pro-social behavior. Aside from the obvious societal benefits that come with educated surgeons, judges, engineers, and others, studies suggest that those who attend college exhibit increased levels of political participation and are more likely to attend churches and become involved in various social causes.⁵⁰College graduates exhibit better health and contribute to the state through paying their taxes.⁵¹ Meanwhile, study abroad programs and international students help spread goodwill overseas as the nation’s research production continues to bolster its global reputation.⁵²

By these and other metrics, contemporary universities are fulfilling, or actively striving to fulfill, the democratic missions outlined by the likes of Washington, Morrill, and Truman. Fully detailing the promises and perils of contemporary higher education within our democracy deserves more space than we dedicate here.53 Suffice it to say however, that in some areas universities are faltering and need major improvement. A recent report by the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education says that while the rate of affluent students graduating from college has gone from 40 percent in the 1970s to 77 percent today, the rate has only increased from six percent to nine percent for low-income students over the same period.⁵⁴ Other reports have questioned such figures, putting the graduation rate closer to 17 percent for the lowest quintile of students.⁵⁵ Even these and other more conservative estimates are sobering in light of the Truman Commission’s call nearly 70 years ago to expand opportunity “without regard to economic status.” Commenting on the state of inequality in the U. S., the chancellor of the University System of Maryland, William E. Kirwan, recently remarked:
Our public universities—especially our public flagship campuses—have the obligation to help expand access to higher education for more low-income, first-generation, and non-traditional students . . . not just those students fortunate enough to win some sort of “lottery of birth.” Our flagship campuses have the broad statewide reach and historic responsibility embedded in our Land Grant traditions to take on this challenge and help reestablish the American Dream for the millions of people who have seen that dream become a nightmare. There can be no more important responsibility and calling, nor a priority more critical for the long-term success and prosperity of our state and nation.⁵⁶

If our system of higher education is to live up to its legacy of supporting democracy and improving the minds and lives of all able and willing citizens, we must solve this challenge. The university, after all, is more than just a place for scholars to share a heating system or a common grievance over parking. It is a sanctuary of citizenship where young and old come to expand their skills, broaden their horizons, and prepare themselves for the rigors of 21st century citizenship. Washington, Morrill, and Truman never graduated from college, but they understood better than most that the aims of democracy are inextricably connected with the aims of the nation’s universities. The Morrill Land-Grant Act passed amidst the Civil War while the G.I. Bill came during World War II. This history teaches us that our contemporary political and economic challenges do not serve as a ready excuse to jettison our nation’s democratic ideal for higher education; rather, daunting difficulties should remind us just how important it is to recapture the democratic purpose of higher education in America.

Michael T. Benson is president and professor of government at Eastern Kentucky University. Hal R. Boyd is a J.D. candidate at Yale Law School. He and Dr. Benson are currently writing a book on the democratic purpose of higher education. The authors thank Richard Day, Mary Ellen Flannery, Jennifer Muse, Luis Proenza, Gerald Sherratt, and Wayne Watkins for valuable contributions to various iterations of the piece.

Endnotes
1. The former quotation is attributed to Robert Maynard Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago and the latter comes from Clark Kerr, former president of U.C. Berkley. See Kerr, The Uses of the University, p. 15.
2. A majority of states now allocate at least some funding for higher education based on institutional performance matrix. See “Performance-Based Funding For Higher Education.”
3. Stassen et al. “Defining Critical Thinking in Higher Education,” p. 126.
4. See generally Chambliss, How College Works.
5. Bok, Higher Education in America.
6. Ibid, p. 28.
7. Ibid, p. 29.
8. Franklin, “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania.”
9. Bok, op cit.
10. Gilman, “Inaugural Address of Daniel Coit Gilman as first president of The Johns Hopkins University.”
11. Hutcheson, “The Truman Commission’s Vision of the Future,” p. 107.
12. Thomas Jefferson founded one of the first public universities in the U.S., the University of Virginia. He considered the university, including its iconic architectural design, one of his greatest accomplishments in life. It was there he also developed a unique model for higher education, focusing on equipping leaders with tools for political participation and allowing students to elect courses. Jefferson’s passion for a civic-minded education is best captured in his famous “Bill for the more general diffusion of knowledge.” While the Virginia legislative proposal did not pass, it still serves to document Jefferson’s vision for eduation in the Republic. “[I]t is believed,” he said, “that the most effectual means of preventing [Tyranny] would be to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large...it is generally true that people will be happiest whose laws are best, and are best administered, and that laws will be wisely formed, and honestly administered, in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest; whence it becomes expedient for promoting the public happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens...” 18 June 1779, Founders Online. For more on Jefferson’s views on education and the early Republic, see generally Roth’s Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters.
13. See Washington, “George Washington to The Commissioners of The Federal District, January 28, 1795,” p. 36. See also Washington, “George Washington to Thomas Jefferson, March 15, 1795,” p. 51.
14. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington, p. 9.
15. See Thomas, The Founders and the Idea of a National University: Constituting the American Mind; see also Castel, “The Founding Fathers and the Vision of a National University,” pp. 280-302.
16. Washington, “First Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union, January 8, 1790.”
17. Washington, “To John Adams from George Washington, 15 November 1794.”
18. Washington, “Eighth Annual Message, December 7, 1796.”
19. Washington, “To Alexander Hamilton, September 1, 1796,” p. 267 and Hamilton, “From Alexander Hamilton to George Washington, September 4, 1796,” p. 316.
20. “George Washington’s Last Will and Testament, July 9, 1799,” pp. 479-511.
21. Carey, “Fulfill George Washington’s last wish—a national university.”
22. Morrill Act of 1862, Public Law 37-108, U.S. Statutes at Large 12 (1862), p. 503.
23. Ibid.
24. Estimates based on information from “Colleges and Universities with U.S. Rhodes Scholarship Winners”; “Biographical Directory of the United States Congress 1774-Present”; and “Biographical Directory of Federal Judges.”
25. Statistics gathered from “Past winners and finalists by category”; and “All Nobel Peace Prizes.”
26. Information obtained from company biographies and other publicly available sources.
27. In 2014 the annual consolidated revenues for each of these companies exceeded $100 billion.
28. See “U.S. and Canadian Institutions Listed by Fiscal Year 2013 Endowment Market Value and Change in Endowment Market Value from FY 2012 to FY 2013.”
29. Cross II, Justin Smith Morrill: Father of Land-grant Colleges, p. 5.
30. Ibid.
31. Morrill to James Barrett, January 1886, Library of Congress, as cited in Ibid, p. 6.
32. Ibid.
33. Morrill, “Speech of Hon. Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont, on the bill granting lands for agricultural colleges; Delivered in the House of Representatives, April 20, 1858,” p. 7.
34. Ibid, p. 8.
35. Congress, Senate, Senator Harlan of Iowa, 35th Congress, 2nd session, p. 720.
36. Eddy, Colleges for our Land and Time: The Land-Grant Idea in American Education, p. 45, as cited in Cross, p. 88.
37. Eisenhower, “Remarks at Annual Meeting of the Association of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities, November 16, 1954.”
38. Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens: The GI Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation, p. 42.
39. “Born of Controversy: The GI Bill of Rights.”
40. Mettler, op cit.
41. Truman, “From Harry S. Truman to Bess Wallace, June 27, 1918.”
42. Truman, “Commencement Address at Howard University, June 13, 1952.”
43. Truman, “Letter Appointing Members to the National Commission on Higher Education, July 13, 1946.”
44. The President’s Commission on Higher Education, Higher Education for American Democracy: A Report of the President’s Commission on Higher Education, Vol. I. Establishing the Goals, p. 25.
45. Du Bois, “The Freedom to Learn,” pp. 230-31.
46. Education for American Democracy, p. 29.
47. Truman, “Statement by the President Making Public a Report of the Commission on Higher Education, December 15, 1947.”
48. The President’s Commission on Higher Education, Higher Education for American Democracy: A Report of the President’s Commission on Higher Education, Vol. II. Equalizing and Expanding Individual Opportunity, p. 3.
49. Pay Scale, Inc. “College ROI Report: Best Value Colleges.”
50. See Baum, Ma, and Payea, “Education Pays 2013 The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society.”
51. Ibid.
52. The United States research universities account for 11 of the top 20 global institutions ranked for scientific research by the journal Nature. See “Table 2: Top 200 institutions.”
53. We discuss these topics at greater length in a forthcoming book on the subject.
54. Cahalan and Perna, “Indicators of higher education equity in the United States,” p. 30.
55. In scrutinizing the methodology of the Pell Institute’s study, cited above, Matthew Chingos of the Brookings Institute and Susan Dynarski of the University of Michigan estimate that the college graduation rate for the top income quartile is closer to 54 percent while the lowest quintile is closer to 17 percent. See Chingos and Dynarski, “How can we track trends in educational attainment by parental income? Hint: not with the Current Population Survey.” In their 2011 working paper, Bailey and Dynarski demonstrate “that inequality in college persistence explains a substantial share of inequality in college completion. These differences in persistence may be driven by financial, academic, and social factors.” See “Gains and Gaps: Changing Inequality in U.S. College Entry and Completion.”
56. Kirwan, “Keynote Address delivered at University of Kentucky Sesquicentennial, February 23, 2015.”

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