Improving developmental education—Opportunities for state policy to support innovation and evaluation
Posted by Mary Perry (Deputy Director) and Matthew Rosin (Senior Research Associate), EdSource. Mountain View, California.
This is the last of three posts drawing from EdSource’s recent study of developmental education in the California Community Colleges, available at www.edsource.org. This post focuses on the relation of state policy to ongoing innovations in developmental education and evaluation of these.
Important work is being done in California and nationally to rethink how developmental education is delivered. Everyone from local college faculty to state policymakers has a role to play in the research, innovation, and evaluation now underway. In the current financial climate, more funding to support pilot projects or increase student support services is probably too much to ask of state leaders, but they can still support these efforts.
On the one hand, despite the pressure to increase completion rates, state policymakers should resist the temptation to act hastily and enact new regulations that codify rigid developmental sequences or approaches. The emerging research makes it clear that there is much to learn on this score and that the most effective programs to date are those that respond to local circumstances and faculty capacity.
On the other hand, state policymakers can and should continue to support the work being done by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office and other state leadership to standardize the data used to measure student progress and completion. Institutional researchers at colleges throughout the state can help inform and implement shared metrics. They can also help faculty on their campuses develop the capacity to better use such measures to inquire into local developmental programs, the students they serve, and the areas where innovation is most needed.
For the same reason, the state also needs to continue to pursue its goal of developing a comprehensive data system that can follow students from K–12 education through postsecondary education and into the workforce. It should also encourage—and support with additional resources or policy changes where necessary—the kind of system-level cooperation that led to the development of the CB-21 coding rubrics and clarified the definitions of college-level work across the system.
Ideally, this work of innovation and evaluation will result in a stronger spirit of inquiry among all community college stakeholders regarding how to continuously improve the effectiveness of their developmental programs for students.
