LOCEA Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

FAFSA Issues, College Going Rate And More Presented To LOCEA

A change to a federal financial aid form for college students is having major ripple effects through West Virginia’s higher education system.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) unlocks both federal and state financial aid for students but a recent attempt to simplify the form has caused delays for college applicants across the country.

“At this point this year, we have six million students who have filled out a FAFSA,” said Sarah Tucker, chancellor of the Higher Education Policy Commission. “At this point last year, we had 17 million, this is across the country. So we have a significant deficit right now that we’re trying to make up and trying to figure out exactly what’s going on and how best to help our students.”

Tucker told an interim meeting of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability Sunday the Student Aid Index (SAI), which determines student need, is now being determined by a new interface between the IRS and the federal Department of Education that is not working correctly. Further delays occur because users of the new system are not notified of errors until after the form has been submitted.

Tucker told the commission the faulty SAI formula is causing delays for the state’s educational programs as well.

“I need to know how much money the federal government is going to be giving to all of our students in order to know what our award is going to be for West Virginia Invests,” she said.
“We’re really sort of stuck in limbo until this functionality gets fixed.”

The Higher Education Grant Program, West Virginia Invests and PROMISE Scholarships are all currently delayed.

Nationally, West Virginia is faring slightly better than average with the new FAFSA. As of last month, more than 6,000 seniors across the state have filled out the form, a number Tucker credits to hundreds of FAFSA workshops the HEPC and other organizations have hosted.

“We’re actually ranking 20th in the number of high school seniors who have completed the FAFSA,” she said. “The West Virginia Department of Education has done a lot of work as have all of our institutions in trying to do FAFSA workshops to make sure that our students know how to fill out those forms.”

Tucker said West Virginia Invest and PROMISE may revert to awarding the same amounts as last year without adjustments to ensure students are not further delayed.

“I think that may be where we end up because I don’t want to keep stringing students along,” she said. “I want to do the best we can to make sure that they know that they can go to college. Our college going rate is finally ticking up. We have this great momentum.”

College Going Rate

The oversight commission also heard a report on the state’s college going rate from Zornitsa Georgieva, director of research and analysis for HEPC. She highlighted a one percent increase in post-secondary enrollment from 2022 to 2023, including enrollment in trade programs or other career and technical pathways.

“For the class of 2023, the college going grade is 47.4 percent,” Georgieva said. “We’ve had more than 7,900 high school graduates continue into some kind of post-secondary education this year. I think that really speaks for the hard work of high school staff, high school counselors, teachers, our staff in our secondary system, as well as post-secondary institutions and staff that works around outreach. And providing information about financial aid.”

In 2021 the national immediate college enrollment rate was 62 percent, which puts West Virginia 15 percent below the national average. “Immediate college enrollment” is the metric used by the National Center for Educational Statistics and looks at students who enrolled in a post-secondary institution the fall after graduation.

Georgieva said when looking at the 12 months after graduation, including spring enrollments, West Virginia’s college going rate jumps to 49 percent. Rates differ from county to county, and 36 of 55 of West Virginia’s counties increased their college going rate year over year.

Benchmarks and Screeners

As part of House Bill 3035 – also known as the Third Grade Success Act – that passed last year, screeners or benchmark assessments must be administered at the beginning of the school year and repeated mid-year and at the end of the school year to determine student progression in reading and mathematics kindergarten through third grade.

Sonya White, state deputy superintendent, presented the results of the mid-year screeners to the commission.

“Overall, we were encouraged by the results, we had a decrease in the number of students… who needed that intensive intervention,” she said.

Even accounting for regular academic gains in the first half of the school year, White said the need for intensive intervention decreased from the start of the year to mid-year. She said the screeners are also identifying new students that need intensive interventions and are getting the help they need.

“On the front side are the literacy results,” White said. “We had an average decrease of 5.4 percent of students that needed intervention in grades K through three, and an average of 6 percent of the students in grades four through eight were scoring in the lowest category.”

White presented even higher decreases in intensive intervention for mathematics, “with an average of 6 percent for K through three and an average of 8.1 percent for four through eight.”

Del. Joe Ellington, R-Mercer, expressed concern at some of the numbers that showed an increase in the need for math intervention between first and second grade.

“Do we have schools looking at why there might be that big change from only 17 percent initially in first grade up to almost 40 percent when they get the second?” he said.

White cautioned that the state is still in its first year of collecting the data but theorized that those numbers could be a result of lowered learning opportunities three years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are being proactive,” she said. “We are also looking at getting more detailed data for each section so we know what pieces of mathematics are struggling with.”

Policy 7212

Earlier in the meeting, legislators heard a brief description of changes to Department of Education Policy 7212. The policy applies to the transfer of students, both inside and out of their county of residence.

Student transfers became a point of contention this past fall after legislation passed during the 2023 regular session changed eligibility rules for student athletes after transfer. Gov. Jim Justice and others urged the legislature to revisit the issue during this year’s legislative session, but no action was taken by the legislature.

The proposed changes to Policy 7212 include significant clarifications of the requirement for county boards of education to implement an open enrollment policy for nonresident students, including a new allowance for boards to revoke applicants for chronic absenteeism or behavioral infractions. There is no mention of athletics in the proposed changes.

The changes to 7212, as well as other policies, are open to public comment until May 13.

Literacy Program Unintentionally Pulling Resources From Special Education

As a side-effect of legislation passed earlier this year, 41 percent of special education aides in the state have moved into first grade literacy aide positions.

State Superintendent Michele Blatt told legislators during Monday’s meeting of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Educational Accountability that the shift is an unintended consequence of House Bill 3035.

The Third Grade Success Act is meant to address literacy and numeracy in early education by bringing more aides and specialists into first, second and third grade classrooms across the state. Implementation has begun this fall in first grade classrooms, with second and third grades to follow in the coming years.

Blatt said the data is based on a survey of 48 counties, and represents some 249 aides that have transferred out of special education.

Sen. Amy Grady, R-Mason, said legislation often creates unforeseen issues, but keeping special education aides needs to be addressed.

“We need to find a way that we can entice them to stay in those harder positions,” Grady said.

Del. Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell, asked how the special education aides were being replaced.

“Many of them have been replaced with people, new positions, people trying to get into the system,” Blatt said. “We can follow up and see how many of those are actually still shortages, but I do know, we still have some shortages and some day to day subs in those classrooms.”

W.Va. K-12 Schools See Rise In Popularity, Access For Computer Science

A report from the West Virginia Department of Education says access to computer science courses has notably increased over the past four years. This comes after a 2019 Senate bill that had the department create a development plan in K-12 schools.

The report was given to the Legislative Oversight Commission on Educational Accountability during Sunday’s legislative interim meetings.

Erika Klose coordinates computer science initiatives for the state’s Department of Education. She says the report indicates 76 percent of West Virginia high schools are now teaching computer science courses as of 2021. That’s 30 percent higher than before the bill was passed. It is expected to increase further this school year.

“Our goal is that every high school in the state will have access to a trained computer science teacher, every middle school will have access to a trained computer science teacher,” Klose said during the meeting. “If there’s one educator in each school at each grade level, they can support those that they teach with in providing that computer science instruction.”

More than 1,100 West Virginia teachers have undergone professional development courses relating to computer science since the initiative began in 2019, including 116 high school, 181 middle school and 819 elementary school teachers.

Digital literacy classes are similarly growing in popularity, with an estimated 242 schools in West Virginia offering courses this school year after a House bill required the state Board of Education to implement the Mountain State Digital Literacy Project in 2019.

College-going Rate For Eligible W.Va. Graduates Dips Below 50 Percent

The college-going rate for eligible 2021 graduates has dropped to just 46 percent.

This dropoff marks the first time the metric has dropped below 50 percent since tracking began in 2001. It includes students who have reported their standardized test scores to four-year public institutions and two-year community and technical colleges.

At an interim meeting of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability (LOCEA), Matt Turner of the Higher Education Policy Commission says this dropoff may be because of pandemic-related factors.

“Just even in the fall of 2021, the college courses were still a hybrid mix, there was a lot of uncertainty, a lot of folks were coming to the class and they’d have to go back home,” Turner said. “We believe that there probably was a bit of a sour taste from Zoom exhaustion, we’ll call it, and some concern from students that, ‘I’m not sure I want to pay for a college experience that is going to be remote.’”

Turner also noted that struggles with both the pandemic and the ongoing opioid crisis could specifically be adding to the academic difficulties of first-generation students from rural areas.

The data comes from the yearly Academic Readiness Report shown to the LOCEA by the Higher Education Policy Commission and Council for Community and Technical College Education. The report measures post-secondary students’ ACT and SAT scores and the enrollment and completion of college-level coursework.

Other trends in the report are more positive. Average ACT scores increased in 25 counties and English and math readiness rates increased in 36 counties over the past year.

W.Va. Higher Ed Chancellor Asks Legislature To Back Millions In Maintenance Needs

West Virginia’s higher education institutions are in need of some major maintenance repairs, according to West Virginia Higher Education Chancellor Sarah Armstrong Tucker. It’s been almost a decade since they received deferred maintenance funding.

Tucker gave a presentation last weekend about deferred maintenance to the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability – known as LOCEA.

“We have significant deferred maintenance on all of our college campuses [and] community colleges. There are a lot of reasons that has happened, but that deferred maintenance has continued and has grown.”

Tucker explained to lawmakers that the state’s colleges and universities have a lack of capital funding to use, and much of the maintenance they do get is paid for through tuition and fees.

“Our institutions have been hesitant to increase tuition and fees,” Tucker said. “Because a lot of them feel like they’ve sort of maxed out where they are, and they don’t want to have this fall on the backs of students. Our facilities personnel have been really creative and have tried really hard to do the best with what they have, and to make the changes that they need to make – but the funds just aren’t always available.”

Every year, state agencies are required to give a budget presentation to the West Virginia Legislature. Within those presentations, state organizations may request more funding to meet specific needs, and sometimes those requests are required by law.

If the state is experiencing any sort of budget shortfall, the legislature may be unable to provide additional funding to state agencies. This year, however, West Virginia is experiencing a surplus.

“How we fund capital projects in higher ed [is through] dedicated legislative appropriations,” she said. “So every year, when I do my budget presentation, I’m required by state code to come to you and ask you to give us money for capital projects for deferred maintenance. The last time that was funded was in 2013.”

Tucker described for lawmakers how several HVAC systems need to be replaced, windows need repairs, and bathrooms and accessibility entrances are out of compliance.

She is asking the legislature for $22.5 million for community colleges and more than $350 million for the state’s baccalaureate institutions in deferred maintenance costs.

Higher education in West Virginia, unlike K-12, does not have a school building authority to help offset these types of costs.