By Daniel Pryzbyla Columnist EdNews.org

What better setting for a post-Thanksgiving turkey-shoot than have the Federal Student Aid (FSA) conference the following week in Las Vegas? It's also the unofficial beginning of the holiday shopping season. Not surprising, shoppers included "representatives of the lending industry, guaranty agencies…and software developers." They were not here to gamble either.

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings was the featured speaker at the 2006 FSA conference held November 28 in Las Vegas. Sooner or later and better than never, she'd have to address those on the education front-lines having to deal with the chaotic and imbalanced college student finance gambling stakes. According to her department's official press release, the 3,300 attendees included financial aid officers and other officials of more than 2000 colleges and post-secondary institutions. It had been over a year earlier in a speech in September 2005 she had formally announced the creation of the "Secretary of Education Commission on the Future of Higher Education" at the University of North Carolina – Charlotte. At her side was James B. Hunt, Jr., former governor of the state and 1 of the 19 members of the new "commission." How they were selected is anybody's political guess, but about one-quarter are heavy-hitters from the corporate sector – including Autodesk, Inc., IBM, Microsoft Corporation, Kaplan, Inc., and the Boeing company. This gang only gambles on sure bets.

In addition, two months before rolling the dice at the Vegas convention, the commission's report had already appeared in the news media. Spellings ran into some harsh scrutiny when she appeared September 26, 2006 at the National Press Club. "In one of its most highly debated recommendations, the report called on public universities to measure learning with standardized tests, and listed two by name: the Collegiate Learning Assessment and the Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress," wrote Sam Dillon in the September 27, 2006 New York Times. "During the panel's deliberations, many educators opposed the testing proposal, calling it misguided for the federal government to require the nation's more than 3,000 colleges, universities and trade schools to test and compare learning outcomes among such disparate students as physic scholars at Caltech and dance majors at Julliard."

In her speech, said Dillon, "Ms. Spellings moved forward with the testing proposal, but cautiously." Spellings continued. "No current ranking system of colleges and universities directly measures the most critical point, student performance and learning. We absolutely should. And Action 4 under my plan will provide matching funds to colleges and universities and states that collect and publicly report student learning outcomes." Later in a response to a question after her speech, Dillon quoted Spellings, "Nobody envisions a one-size-fits-all test of student ability." Uh, for the sake of state superintendents of public schools shackled with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) high-stakes testing, let's repeat her latent awareness one more time. "Nobody envisions a one-size-fits-all test of student ability." After hearing or reading that response, you could imagine the country's 50 state public school superintendents screaming, "Where's the equal treatment?" Copy and make a banner of it, and hang it in every entrance in every public school.

Although they're separated physically and educationally by a wide margin, college and university representatives have not been wearing blinders or earmuffs during the NCLB testing wars of U.S. Department of Education and K-12 public school educators. Since President Bush's arrival to the White House, most are also aware of the administration's fetish to dismantle anything "public" from its political vocabulary. However, and not uncommon nowadays, they had previously sighed a breath of relief, "At least it's not us."

Richard Vedder, a commission member, was also on the panel at the Press Club meeting. He is a distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University and also "adjunct scholar" at the conservative, pro-privatization American Enterprise Institute. Dillon quoted Vedder, "I'm concerned with a certain vagueness to it all at this point…there's been a lot of platitudes – 'increase affordability, control costs' – but we've not come up with much that's specific about how to do that." He's correct. But politics reflects playing poker. You never show all your cards. Their NCLB poker game was played the same way. Although Democrats had "trumped" vouchers from NCLB, they hadn't seen the Republican trump cards still in the NCLB deck.

Of course, his concerns of "vagueness" and lack of "specifics" were probably echoed by FSA conference attendees listening to Spellings. "Sixty percent of Americans have no post-secondary credentials at all," she said. "Where we once were leaders, now other nations educate more of their young adults to more advanced levels than we do. And to reclaim the top spot, we need to help an additional 9 million Americans earn degrees. That's why I'm proud to help kick off our new, national public service campaign to spread the message that we want to help every qualified student who wants a degree to attain one…regardless of race, background, or income level." She even mourned the litany of problems parents and students must go through to get financial aid – but she was preaching to the choir. Attendees knew all these "non-specifics" before she even took her coat off the first day in her new job. Did her memory lapse, forgetting who they were? No. To the original Michigan and now transferred Texan, Spellings was just showing her "Texas Hold 'em" poker skills. Never show all your cards.

"To meet the challenge I've outlined today, we must work together," she continued. "In March, I'll convene a summit to discuss the full slate of recommendations, our progress, and specific responsibilities going forward, and I want the leaders of the financial aid community to be front and center." Again, similar to the clandestine NCLB adoption, they purposely have the cart before the horse. Their "specific responsibilities" will have already been signed and delivered on the dotted lines. Spellings "front and center" role for the financial aid community really means for them to bring their pom-poms and be cheerleaders. She ends with the obligatory, "I'll be happy to answer your questions." There were probably a few. "Ms. Spellings, do you know where the "Gamblers Anonymous" group meets?"

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) did review the September 2006 "prepublication" release of the commission's report "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education," but also pointed out many of its shortcomings. In its October 13, 2006 press release, their Committee on Accreditation stated "that had the commission included more members of the faculty among its ranks, and in its discussions, a more sophisticated and nuanced evaluation of our higher education system would have resulted."

A list of the committee's concerns and accompanying comments included "standards and quality assurance." It noted, "The report fails to acknowledge those already included in existing accreditation measures, factors such as the quality of the faculty, their professional credentials, and the intensive review process faculty undergo as part of the current accreditation process." In addition, it said, "A significant strength of the system of higher education in the United States is its diversity of institutions and academic missions. Colleges and universities advance their missions through a variety of academic programs requiring different standards. The imposition of a single set of criteria for excellence on all institutions, implicit within the Commission's findings, would be to the detriment of this rich tradition of academic diversity."

The AAUP committee also noted another blunder that established "an irreconcilable conflict between the need for increased graduation rates and increased access to higher education." It didn't take into account "the demographic changes which would result from the additional number of part-time students who would be unable to graduate within a four-year period." The commission's fast-track implementation also raised "red flags," deepening the committee's concerns "that ill-conceived measures may be implemented administratively." It's a legitimate concern, and Spellings & Co. already has a track record of implementing NCLB high-stakes testing and fallout "administratively."

"Congress is even more beholden than academe to its wealthiest contributors, and more willing to compromise the principles – like equal opportunity – that its members claim to cherish," wrote Dorothy Wickenden in her commentary in the October 2, 2006 New Yorker magazine. "The value of Pell grants, which help low-income students pay for college, continues to drop precipitately, as the price of higher education rises." Last year, the largest Pell grants were only $4,050. "The most recent federal budget signed by President Bush slashed tuition assistance by almost $13 billion," she said. It's certainly not the colleges' fault, Wickenden noted, "that the financing of education for the less well-off, like so much else these days, is being increasingly left to the vagaries of the private sector."

The Commission on the Future of Higher Education is a bet it will continue.