Posts published in August, 2010

Notifying Secondary Schools About Student College Performance Has Not Worked In The Past

  This news clip interested me becasue the new policy in New York did not have any effect in California.

The New York City Department of Education, for the first time, has sent detailed reports to all of its high schools, telling them just how many of their students who arrived at the city’s public colleges needed remedial courses, as well as how many stayed enrolled after their first semester. The reports go beyond the basic measure of a school’s success – the percentage of students who earn a diploma – to let educators know whether they have been preparing those students for college or simply churning them out. See ECS’ summary of state remedial education reports

  The University of California and Cal State system sent these reports for years to high school and hardly anybody paid attention to them, So Ca. colleges stopped doing this. There is no accountability bewteen education levels or any follow up to problems that arise. Perhaps this policy will be more effective in NYC , but I doubt it. Principals at secondary schools do not seem interested in this articulation issue.

College Students Study Time Drops By 10 Hours Per Week

A recent study by 2 University of California Professors  came up with 3 very disturbing conclusions  concerning long run trends in the time students spend studying in college:

-Study time for full-time students at four-year colleges in the United States fell from twenty-four hours per week in 1961 to fourteen hours per week in 2003, and the decline is not explained by changes over time in student work status, parental education, major choice, or the type of institution students attended.

-Evidence that declines in study time result from improvements in education technology is slim.  A more plausible explanation is that achievement standards have fallen. The study decline could not have happened without the cooperation of colleges.

-Longitudinal data indicate that students who study more in college earn more in the long run. The study uses four large data sets.

The article is at http://www.aei.org/outlook/100980

For- Profit Postsecondary Education Is A Complex Issue

  The recent Senate hearings highlights the problems of misleading recruitment by for- profit colleges. Federal investigators visited 15 colleges and found problems in each one! But there are many aspects (many are good) at for- profit colleges as presented in a 2007 book by William Tierney and Guilbert Hentscke called New Players, Different Game published by Johns Hopkins Press.

  This book covers many issues in the for-profit sector: growth, finance, governance, faculty roles, success, students, culture, and a balanced summary. The completion rates of for-profit look higher in several colleges than in community colleges. The book explains why this happens. So, before you make up your mind, do some more reading on this growing sector.

Biggest Mistakes College Students Make Are In This New Book

  Lynn F Jacobs and JeremyS. Hyman have published The Secrets Of College Success to help the 3 million students who will start college in 2010 fall. Their top 5 are :- cutting classes because students believe they can miss 6 to 10 classes

Overloading with coursework  such as more than 16 units full time, and taking too many units if students need to work part time.

Oversurfing by spending too much time on the internet

Procrastinating by pulling all nighters before a test or term paper deadline

Going it alone, and not seeking help from professors and counselors

Here is some added advice from other research;

Enroll in college as soon after high school as possible, do not withdraw from courses, stay continually enrolled,  do not stop out for long, and go to summer school if  you get behind.

How To Save State Universities

Saving State U by Nancy Folbre is a basic book on the problems and prospects of state universities in these difficult economic times. It is a beginning book that is short and easy to read. It covers the basic topics and has good footnotes for follow up. Her thesis is that state universities were on a downward spiral long before the recession, and the impact is particularly harmful to lower and middle income students. She has some vivid examples from her inside view of the University of Massachusetts flagship campus in Amherst. This is a book to start with if you want to an overview of the interconnected problems.

Published in 2010 by The New Press

Useful Summary On High School And College Dual Enrollment

 ECS clips provides this link to a research summary by TC- Columbia and Rutgers of what we know about effective dual enrollment. The data base on pupil outcomes is very spotty , but the concepts for program design make sense given my experience with dual enrollment.

Dual enrollment programs can help high school kids – even those who considered “high risk” – increase their chances of success and improve school retention efforts. That’s the conclusion of a study on the programs, which give high school students the chance to take courses for college credit. While the researchers found examples of programs that appear to increase college attendance and success rates even for non-traditional students, they also found a mixed bag of student support systems to ensure that success

States Search For Ways To Make College More Efficient

 Several states are condisering legislation and regulations to get more college productivity for each dollar spent. One example is Texas. An advisory committee tasked with making Texas higher education more efficient recommended that the state make better use of online courses and “no-frills” education and tie state funds to course completion rather than enrollment. Other suggestions included pushing students to finish college in four years and requiring them to complete 10% of their degrees outside the classroom. Its suggestions are aimed at forcing lawmakers, institutions and students to focus on degree completion, but one major logjam is remedial education. Cursor down page to see the report. (Houston Chronicle, 07/29/10)

Can Career Theme Secondary Schools Enhance College Readiness?

The Irvine foundation has provided money for development of career themes and 4- year college preparation in the same high school. This keeps the college door open, but enables significant focus on a career cluster.

Over the past 10 years, many of California’s high schools have gotten worse, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. In an encouraging trend, however, thousands of high schoolers across California have joined an educational approach called Linked Learning, which changes the way core academics are taught by combining classroom learning with real-world, work-based experience. The idea behind Linked Learning is simple: To make it easier for students to stay engaged, coursework must be relevant to their aspirations. For instance, at Skyline High School in Oakland, Calif., every 10th-grader chooses from seven different career-themed programs where they spend the next three years combining out-of-school internships in their academy field with a rigorous academic core, taught through the lens of their industry theme, which qualifies every student for college. Teachers are trained to incorporate this work-based experience into the classroom, and vice versa. In Skyline’s architecture academy, for example, algebra and physics teachers show their students how the formulas they’re learning are used in real-world projects like building bridges or designing buildings. The Chronicle describes one student, Cynthia Gutierrez, who entered high school “bored” and garnered mostly Cs and Ds her first year. In the 10th grade, she joined the education academy, centered on careers in education. “Before, I couldn’t really connect with my teachers all that well,” Gutierrez says. “But in the academy, it was different.” Gutierrez’s grades improved despite a more demanding course load, and have qualified her for admission to the state university system.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/24/IN1K1EGR92.DTL#ixzz0uz2DMpfp

Source: PEN newsblast

Policies And Practices That Enhance Transfer From 2-Year To 4-Year Colleges

Promising Practices in Statewide Articulation and Transfer Systems, highlights promising statewide articulation and transfer efforts. Specific recommendations to states include regular and systematic evaluation of articulation and transfer policies that respond to changing conditions and consider the perspectives of a broad range of stakeholders, the allocation of funds to aid in the development of policies and practices that support and measure articulation and transfer efforts, and the identification of key metrics related to articulation and transfer systems. The publication further recommends that states foster collaboration and communication through the creation of standing committees focused on multi-institution transfer, the establishment of a state-level office or position that facilitates a statewide approach to articulation and transfer, and the development of clear transfer pathways for community college student .

While, this publication highlights “promising practices,” it is important to understand that there is little evidence of what actually works and that few policies are consistently and regularly measured against performance metrics. Instead, those working in this area have to rely on what they think is effective. For this reason, this publication documents policies and practices that are “promising,” but not necessarily proven strategies for success.

Here is the link:

http://www.wiche.edu/stas

This report is one deliverable from a joint project of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) and Hezel Associates, with funding from Lumina Foundation for Education, that seeks to develop a deeper understanding of how states coordinate articulation and transfer policies and practices. Other deliverables to be published in coming weeks include individual state profiles and a policy brief about state web portals designed to ease transfer processes for students.

For hard copies or if you have any questions, please contact Demarée Michelau, WICHE’s director of policy analysis, at dmichelau@wiche.edu or 303.541.0223.