West Virginia Leaders Focusing on the Challenges of Education
Steven Allen Adams Trending
MORGANTOWN -- Education, from kindergarten through graduation, to community colleges and four-year universities, has long been a challenge in West Virginia.
But members of the 2023 class of Leadership West Virginia learned this week how educators and nonprofits are working to overcome those challenges.
"We all have to lean in and support our education system in West Virginia," said Frank Vitale, a 2021 graduate of Leadership West Virginia and the CEO of Forge Business Solutions during Thursday's session opening remarks at the Erickson Alumni Center on the campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown.
It is fitting that WVU played host for LWV's education-focused session. The university is one of two land-grant universities in West Virginia, along with West Virginia State University in Institute, created by the 1862 Morrill Act to help expand educational opportunities in rural areas.
But WVU is dealing with issues affecting higher education across the nation. A combination of decreasing student enrollment, cuts in state funding, increases in spending and tuition and trying to be all things to all students have caught up with the state's flagship university. And West Virginia's elementary, middle and high schools are working to address systemic poor proficiencies in math and reading.
ACADEMIC PROBATION
In June, the WVU Board of Governors approved a $1.256 billion budget for fiscal year 2024. The university has to fill a $45 million hole. Some of that deficit is being made up from salary and wage cuts, with more than 135 positions being eliminated. The university also is cutting 12 graduate and doctorate programs. That hole is estimated to be $75 million next fiscal year.
According to WVU, most of the employee reductions, 78 (58%), are coming from non-classified, salaried positions, including the WVU Research Corp. Faculty will be reduced by 38 (28%), with classified staff reduced by 19 (14%). The reductions amount to 2.4% of WVU's total number of employees.
Just last week, WVU released its preliminary recommendations for academic programs to either shrink or eliminate entirely. Once an appeals process happens next month, the university could see as much as 9% of WVU's majors eliminated along with 7% of faculty across the university.
Some of those programs include master's programs for creative writing, public administration, mathematics, acting and higher education administration. The entire Department of World Language is also up for discontinuance.
"We knew there would be a process we would need to go through and there would be critics, there would be a lot of turmoil, and then it would be hard for a lot of people," said Rob Alsop, vice president for strategic initiatives at WVU, during Friday's session. "But nonetheless, given the changes that are going on in higher education, we believe that it was not only necessary but essential to move forward."
WVU isn't the only university experiencing these issues. According to a review of 50 of the nation's public flagship colleges and universities by the Wall Street Journal, spending at the median flagship university increased by 38% over a 20-year period between 2002 and 2022. But students saw their tuition increase by more than 64% during that same time. While these same schools saw cuts in state funding, the tuition increases more than covered the monetary loss.
"Were there things we probably should have foreseen earlier? Probably so, but this is a cliff that is coming and it's going to come across the country," said James Hoyer, a retired major general and former adjutant general of the West Virginia National Guard who is vice president for economic innovation at WVU.
Hoyer, a member of the 2015 class of Leadership West Virginia, said the recent hardships at WVU are giving rise to a need to rethink the entire model for higher education going forward. Hoyer said WVU needs to think differently about the kinds of programs it offers and how those programs are delivered.
Hoyer used the example of the state's nursing shortage. There are 4,389 vacancies in nursing jobs across the state. Hoyer said higher education needs to look at how nurses are educated and rethink pushing nurses through four-year programs. Cybersecurity is another career where industry-standard certificates can make more sense than degrees.
"We have to change who we educate and how we educate them," Hoyer said. "We have to understand that not everybody is going to go to a college or university and get a four-year degree, a master's degree or a Ph.D."
Hoyer also said colleges and universities need to do a better job of connecting graduates with jobs inside the state. According to Hoyer, 60% of WVU's enrolled students come from out of state, but only 8% stay in the state after graduation while there are more than 31,000 vacant jobs in high-demand fields in the state.
"One of the flaws we found in the system here is the system we use to make jobs available to our graduating students uses an algorithm that is biased toward out-of-state jobs," Hoyer said. "We've got things like that we have to fix."
However, the rumors of WVU's demise have been greatly exaggerated, Alsop said Friday. The university is preparing for a demographic cliff with fewer families having children and creating a smaller pool of potential students to recruit in the years to come.
Alsop said the university estimates it could see 5,000 fewer students over the next decade, losing $73.4 million in revenue.
But WVU saw its graduation rates increase by 23% between 2013 and 2018. That means students are completing college quicker and the university receives less revenue.
"The fact is, given the amount of customers, our students, that are going to be out there, we've got to increase market share to keep our enrollment trends," Alsop said. "And guess what? Every other institution of higher education is thinking about the same thing as they go forward."
Alsop sees WVU's graduation rates as a great recruitment opportunity, promoting that students can receive a four-year degree in less time.
"It's a phenomenal, outstanding story for WVU," he said. "It also means those kids are not staying here for 10 semesters. They're staying here for eight, which means less money for the institution going forward. What we need to do is to tell this story and get more students to come to WVU to increase that market share, because we want this number to continue to improve.
"More kids are taking credit hours in high school for pennies on the dollar of what we charge," Alsop continued. "It means they're going to have less time at WVU. We're not going to be able to change that, and we don't want to draw it out for more student debt. We want to add to that value proposition of how can we get you through quicker. It means our financial model needs to change or we need to be responsive to what those kids want."
Institutional aid for students, including scholarships, the PROMISE Scholarship and other support, increased at WVU from $51 million in 2014 to $134 million this year. And 41% of students at WVU graduate with no debt. Despite tuition increases at WVU, the rates remain comparable to other similar schools in the Big 12.
Even with the proposed program cuts and eliminations, Alsop said WVU still has a robust academic program for undergraduates, master's and doctorate programs. And WVU would still retain its R1 research classification through the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education for colleges and universities that award at least 20 research and scholarship doctoral degrees and spend at least $5 million for research.
WVU generates 104 out of 180 research Ph.D. degrees, while 10 other R1 colleges and universities generate fewer than 100 research doctorates. At WVU, any doctoral program that generated more than $1 million in research dollars was exempt from program review.
"We're going to be a research powerhouse," Alsop said. "There's no better place than WVU. Not only the great faculty and getting the degree, but there are job opportunities anywhere in the state you want to go to serve your state going forward. It is a phenomenal story that we're going to continue to tell going forward."
IT'S ELEMENTARY
West Virginia's students in elementary, middle and high schools are still recovering from COVID-19 learning loss, but the state's mathematics and reading/English proficiency was already poor pre-COVID.
According to 2023 Statewide Summative Assessment results released last week by the Department of Education, 35% of the students tested in grades third through eighth grade and 11th grade were proficient in math, up from 33% in 2022 and 28% in 2021. There was no testing in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but math proficiency was at 39% in 2019 pre-COVID.
English Language Arts (ELA) proficiency last year was at 44%, up from 42% in 2022 and 40% in 2021, but down from 46% in 2019. Science proficiency was 29% in 2023, up from 28% in 2022 and 27% in 2021 but down from 33% pre-COVID.
Since last summer, the Department of Education has worked on several efforts to help address the issues, particularly with reading. Unite for Numeracy (formerly Math 4 Life) focuses on helping students master math basics and learn to enjoy numbers. At the end of 2022, the Department of Education launched Ready, Read, Write West Virginia. The program focuses on the science of reading and phonics education, with resources for families, school administrators and teachers.
"This is our focus on making sure our students receive the skills and the instructions and the support they need to be able to read by the time they leave third grade," said Michele Blatt, state superintendent of schools. "What we've learned over the past decade or more is that phonics went by the wayside across the state due to different philosophies out there. Without that basic construction, so many of our kids were struggling to read."
And the department worked with the West Virginia Legislature earlier this year to pass the Third Grade Success Act that requires the development of screeners and benchmark assessments in ELA and math for students in kindergarten through third grade.
The Third Grade Success Act requires creation of a multi-tiered system of support for students exhibiting substantial reading or math deficiencies to ensure students are proficient before moving past the third grade. The bill allows for teacher aides and interventionists in early elementary classrooms up to third grade to help assist and allow teachers to work with students facing learning difficulties.
"The big win was that funding was put in there to have a classroom aide or early childhood classroom teaching assistant for each first grade classroom, then the following year it will be second and then third," Blatt said. "If we're able to sustain that funding and support this work, we will be the first state in the nation to have classroom assistants in grades K-through-Grade 3."
Schools have until 2026 to implement the Third Grade Success Act before it is required to hold back third grade students who do not meet math and ELA proficiency standards.
The Third Grade Success Act also includes requirements for the department to establish an approved list of dyslexia screeners administered twice per year for students in kindergarten through third grade. The bill requires training and access to materials for teachers to identify the characteristics of dyslexia and dyscalculia which make learning to read or understand math difficult.
Denise Workman, a teacher of gifted students in Kanawha County Schools and a member of the Leadership West Virginia Class of 2016, said the Third Grade Success Act is the first time public schools in West Virginia have been required to screen for dyslexia and dyscalculia.
Workman talked about the many issues affecting students in West Virginia schools. COVID-19 learning loss is not the only issue. Students have to deal with poverty, lack of access to food, homelessness, substance use among parents or family members, physical and mental abuse, among others.
"I'm not apologizing for the deficits in education, but please know there are so many things in front of students before you can get to page seven or page eight and page nine," Workman said. "Kids, they have to protect themselves. They cannot dream about the future if they're trying to get to 'where are we sleeping tonight? What are we eating today,'" Workman said. "That instability in their lives permeates every decision that they make."
But Blatt said the state Communities in Schools program is helping address this social and emotional issues. Communities in Schools, now in 54 out of 55 counties, places a site coordinator in each school and helps students with their social, emotional, behavioral, and academic needs, working with 25% of at-risk students in the schools.
"They make sure that they have clothes, they make sure they have food, they buy beds, they deliver groceries, they help families get to the doctor," Blatt said. "They surround the family with all the support they need for that child to be able to go into the classroom, and that teacher to provide the instruction so that kid can be ready to learn."
Blatt said education officials, administrators, and teachers are going into the new school year in the next few weeks with optimism.
"We really have high hopes for our students and our teachers, because I really feel like the excitement is back this year," Blatt said. "We really have a focus on supporting our schools and supporting our districts."