Posts published on July 18, 2011

Two Major Problems In Community College Developmental Education

In the first of eleven, Policy Analyis For California Education( PACE) Working Papers, W. Norton Grubb et al, frame the issues surrounding basic skills instruction in California Community Colleges.

While increases in remedial education (or basic skills instruction or developmental education) have taken place at several levels of the education and training system, there are reasons for thinking that the issue is particularly acute in community colleges. This introductory working paper divides the problem into two. The first is the high proportion — perhaps 60 percent for the country, and 80 percent in California — of students entering colleges who assess into developmental courses. This can be explained by the pattern of dynamic inequality in American education, where inequalities among students increase as they move through the system.

The second problem arises from the evidence that students entering a remedial trajectory are unlikely to move into college-level work, so remediation has become a serious barrier to success for many students. Unfortunately, like other second-chance efforts, basic skills instructions often works under difficult conditions, and there are many hypotheses about why success rates in basic skill are not higher — most of which will be examined in this series of papers.

Since developmental education is first and foremost an instructional issue, this series of papers rests on a conceptual foundation focusing on the triangle of instruction, considering the instructor, students, and content within a set of institutional influences. The underlying research for these papers involves classroom observation, and interviews with instructors and administrators, to understand both classroom settings and the institutional setting. This framing paper then introduces the subjects for remaining papers in the series.

The direct link to this working paper is: http://www.stanford.edu/group/pace/cgi-bin/wordpress/2517

Community College Transfer Most Efficient Way to Increase College Efficiency

Experts concerned about impact of community college tuition hikes
According to Patrick Callan, Director of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, “The way we’re going to increase completion of baccalaureate degrees, in the biggest and fastest-growing states, is by improving the number of students who start in community colleges and transfer.” However, this goal will be increasingly hard to attain “if tuition at public two-year institutions continues to rise sharply as it has since 1999, far outpacing the rise in median family income in every state except Maine.”
insidehighered.com

Texas Examines Increasing College Efficiency

Third-parties look to improve efficiency, outcomes at Texas publics
“Conservative” groups, such as the Texas Public Policy Foundation and America’s Next Impact, as well as more “bipartisan” ones, such as the Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education, are becoming increasingly involved in making recommendations to the Texas public univerRsity system regarding its spending and student outcomes. Don Hale, a University of Texas spokesman, responded to these groups, stating that the university is “committed to managing its resources wisely and efficiently.”
nytimes.com