Officials with the U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday revealed a slightly earlier estimate for when colleges may get a glimpse of the Obama administration's controversial college ratings.
The department aims to come out with its first version of college ratings by late spring or early summer, according to Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell, who spoke about the plan at the Association of Community College Trustees' National Legislative Summit.
When the administration published its draft framework for the ratings plan in December, the timetable for release was pegged to the start of the 2015-16 academic year, and Mitchell has reiterated that deadline in other appearances.
The department didn’t offer any details on the summer estimate for release. And it's worth noting that the administration barely met its timeline for publishing the framework, after it twice delayed the date of release.
Also on Tuesday, Mitchell spoke about the limitations of creating a ratings system only with data collected through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), which is run by the National Center for Education Statistics.
Those limitations are especially salient to the crowd of community college representatives Mitchell spoke to Tuesday. The IPEDS data doesn’t capture students who transfer between institutions, meaning it doesn’t properly count many of the students community colleges serve.
Read more Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/11/shortened-timeline-ratings-plan-community-colleges-air-concerns