Posts published in October, 2009

Community College Completion Will Pay Off

October 8, 2009 12:54 pm

According to the Department of Labor jobs for community college graduates will grow at double the national average over the next decade. This is faster job growth than for 4 year graduates. Some fields like computer support, nursing, and green jobs are examples of this trend for community colleges. But community college completion rates are low- around 25 to 35% , so it is unclear whether the supply of graduates will materalize. Their are waitng lists for courses in many 2 year colleges ,along with student aid cutbacks. Student services are being slashed, and financial incentives encourage colleges to enroll students but not completion.

How To Improve State Policy For Community College Developmental Education

October 7, 2009 9:53 am

Achieving the Dream, a national initiative to improve student success in community colleges, recently released a policy brief entitled Setting Up Success in Developmental Education: How State Policy Can Help Community Colleges to Improve Student Outcomes. Remediation is well in excess of 60% of students in community colleges, so the need for new state policy is urgent.

In the report, Michael Collins describes how fifteen Achieving the Dream states are focusing on four key policies to improve outcomes for developmental students:

· Prevention Strategies

· Assessment and Placement

· Implementation and Evaluation of Program Innovation, and

· Performance Measurement and Incentives

The full report is available at: http://www.jff.org/publications/education/setting-success-developmental-education-/839

Big Gates Grant To Improve Community College Accountability

October 6, 2009 9:36 am

WASHINGTON, D.C.—While the U.S. Congress is considering an unprecedented $9 billion in new funding to community colleges in exchange for improved graduation rates, colleges and higher education advocates are already working on a new accountability system that will enable colleges to improve their programs and graduate more students on time and at a lower cost. The project is being funded with $1 million in grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Lumina Foundation for Education.

More than 11 million students attend 1,200 community colleges across the country, and enrollment rates have surged in the last year as the recession has forced many Americans to return for additional training and education. Yet many leaders are concerned about the success of those students and how many will actually go on to earn a degree or credential. Without an accepted accountability system that aligns with the multiple missions of community colleges, measuring progress is difficult.

According to federal data sources, college completion rates for two-year degrees (those who enrolled in two-year colleges and completed their degree within three years) are just 28 percent overall, 26 percent for Hispanics and just 23 percent for African-Americans. There is currently no universal system in place to help college leaders and funders understand how to improve the success of community college students.

“Community colleges recognize that it is time we focus on success and not just access for our students,” said George Boggs, president of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC). “Community colleges must do whatever is necessary to help students obtain the degrees, credentials, and training they need to be successful in life and be able to document that success in a meaningful way.”

In addition to the AACC, both the College Board and the Association of Community College Trustees have led efforts to launch the project, which began last year with a planning grant from Lumina Foundation. The three organizations will work collaboratively as the work moves into an implementation phase.

“Our goal is to help more students complete college,” said Hilary Pennington, director of Education, Postsecondary Success, and Special Initiatives for the Gates Foundation. “Colleges need accountability systems that will help students maintain, and even accelerate, their effort toward a degree.”

Ultimately, the accountability system could be adopted by all the nation’s community colleges giving them, for the first time, the common metrics and data points to evaluate their effectiveness, both internally and against one another developed specifically for their sector and mission. Eight initial pilot sites for the new system include Cuyahoga Community College in Ohio, Dallas Community College District in Texas, Greenville Technical College in South Carolina, Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana, Laney College in California, Louisiana Community and Technical College System in Louisiana, Oklahoma City Community College in Oklahoma, and Pima Community College District in Arizona.

This two-year project will result in the creation of a voluntary accountability system to be piloted in up to 20 community colleges by 2011.

“The first step will be to get everyone speaking the same language,” said Lumina CEO Jamie Merisotis, whose foundation will contribute technical expertise as well as share some of the cost of the project. “For example, there is little consistency in how states report retention or graduation rates, so we first must agree on universal measures that are easy to calculate and are meaningful to both college officials and the general public.”

In July, President Obama challenged community colleges to boost their ranks of graduates by 5 million by 2020. The new voluntary accountability system will help community colleges meet that challenge by establishing, for the first time, common performance measurements necessary to evaluate an institution’s effectiveness. It will help provide valuable feedback on programs and services to which officials should direct resources and will allow them to benchmark each individual college’s progress against others. The new measures will also help assure lawmakers and the public that funding through the American Graduation Initiative will be well-spent and provide results.

The grants announced today advance efforts by the Gates Foundation and Lumina Foundation to help increase the number of people in the United States who successfully earn a degree or certificate beyond high school.

Provocative New Book On The Death and Life of School Reforms

October 4, 2009 10:12 am

THE DEATH AND LIFE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM:
How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
By Diane Ravitch
Basic Books
Publication Date: March 2010
Contact: Angela Hayes, 212-446-5104; ahayes@goldbergmcduffie.com

In THE DEATH AND LIFE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM, award-winning author, public intellectual, and former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch critiques a lifetime’s worth of school reforms and reveals the simple—yet difficult—truth about how we can create actual change in public schools. Evaluating broadly popular ideas for restructuring schools, she explains why they have had no positive impact on the quality of American education. Throughout the book, Ravitch reconsiders the evolution of her own views on key issues and reveals her skepticism regarding charter schools, Teach for America, ethnocentric and religious schools, philanthropists who are trying to control school reform, and using business models for school planning. Drawing on over forty years of research and observation on education, Ravitch also offers prescriptions for improving our schools. A passionate plea to promote the survival of public education, The Death and Life of the Great American School System represents a radical change of heart from one of America’s best-known education experts. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of our schools in this country.

Federal Study Of What High Schools Can Do To Help Students Enter College

October 4, 2009 10:03 am

The federal Institute For Educational Sciences has a very useful and careful synthesis of how to help students enter and be successful in college. It is authored by five leading scholars who use explicit criteria for weighing the scientific evidence for various programs and practices. It is the most comprehensive research synthesis I have seen. The results are organized around 5 key themes such as : surround students with adults and peers who build and support college aspirations. Programs like Upward Bound and Talent search are evaluated based on the quality of research for each intervention.

You can down load it at http://ies.ed.gov/ncee