Community College Remediation: A Bermuda Triangle For Students

In the September Washington Monthly www.washingtonmonthly.com/  Camille Esch has a beautifully written overview of the the endemic problems of community college remediation- eg few students are ever heard from again. This quote about Sacramento , Ca. City College is a small sample:

” Only 60 percent of the community college’s 3,000 remedial students pass their classes with a C or higher.  Those who go looking for help at Sacramento City will face a melange of disconnected programs and services.  The college’s academic counseling center is badly understaffed, and most of the tutoring available on campus is provided by other students.”

Community colleges get funding based on the number of students they enroll, not the number of students that finish. Community colleges receive much less per pupil than 4 year colleges. It will be a challenge for Obama’s 12.5 billion proposed program to overcome these obstacles.

Why Do Qualified Secondary Students Not Complete College

A puzzle surrounds the static percentage of college completion despite burgeoning college enrollment in the past 20 years.  In our book, From High School to College, Andrea Venezia and I speculated about how college non-completion was caused by different factors such as preparedness, cost, time management, personal commitment and so on.  We know a lot of non-completion is caused by a lack of preparation, but how much?  No one knows this, but there is an interesting new study on college costs by the Advisory Commission on Student Financial Assistance, a nonpartisan panel that advises Congress.  They concluded that in the 1990s between 800,000 and 1.6 million low and moderate high school students who were both academically qualified for and intent on attending a four year college did not earn a bachelor’s degree.  Note the study tried to include only students who were well prepared.  All of the students in the study completed algebra II or trigonometry.  These mathematics courses are crucial predictors of college completion in studies by Clifford Adelman, formerly with the U.S. Department of Education.  Moreover, all the students in 10^th and 12^th grade planned to get a bachelor’s degree.

.  Even though students fail to move through the higher education  system for many reasons,  this  study includes only students for whom finances were the deciding factor in not getting a  4 year degree. 

I am not sure this study controls for all factors that cause non-completion, but inadequate finance is clearly a major factor. Now we need a study that examines how many students do not get degrees because of inadequate academic preparation. This also will be hard to measure precisely because student commitment to study and persevere is also an important factor in college completion. Subsequent blog entries will discuss even more factors that make up the puzzle of college completion.

New Book On College Completion: Two Issues To Consider

  The new book, Crossing The Finish Line by William Bowen and Michael McPherson will be released today , but some previews raise two issues to for me . The authors have records on 200,000 students at 68 colleges and correctly question whether the entire USA 4 year college system is the best in the world.  Their evidence  on college graduation clearly supports the notion that US leadership is confined to very selective colleges that are known worldwide. They look at a range of 4 year colleges from most to least selective, and focus on “undermatching”. For example students who had a 3.5  Grade point average and could have gone to a selective college, but chose to go to a less selective college with a history of low graduation rates.

  Here are two things to watch for when the book comes out. The control variables in the september 9, 2009 NY Times review are GPA. The authors compare college graduation rates for students with aa 3.5 GPA in selective and less selective colleges. But we know it is much easier to get a 3.5 GPA at some high schools than others. So , the less selective colleges may be enrolling weaker students and this is a significant cause of their higher drop out rates. This would weaken the control variable, and impact the outcome analysis.

 Second, they use 6 year graduation rates, but Cliff Adelman in his book, The Toolbox Revisited found that at the less selective institutions a significant number of students take more than 6 years to finish for a variety of reasons. What would  10 year graduation rates show?

College Remediation Rate Confusion Persists

Last weeks Education Week has a front page story on community college remediation rates that has the US Education Departments Estimate of 40 % remediation on the front page , and Tom Bailey”s estimate of over 60 % on the inside page. Bailey from Colombia Teachers College is right. The US Department uses student responses for the numbers of students who take a remedial course in the past year. Two problems with this are: many more students need remediation according to college placement tests than take a course in a particular year , or the students never take a remedial course. They start in regular credit courses and then drop out.  Moreover, students under state  how many remedial courses they take.

California community colleges report remediation need on their placement tests is closer to 80% than 60%. The US Ed Department 40 % is misleading. All of my numbers in this blog are for students who come from high school to community college, not adults.

National Assessment Will Fund National Study Of Cut Scores For College Remediation

The National Assessment Governing Board  www.nagb.org will fund a national study withe following purpose

The purpose of this statement of work is to define the requirements for conducting a nationally
representative survey of 2-year and 4-year postsecondary education institutions to determine the
tests and cut-scores in reading and mathematics used to place entry-level students into standard,
credit-bearing coursework that fulfills the respective institutions’ general education
requirements, to place students into coursework generally referred to as developmental or
remedial, and to exempt students from placement testing.

This will be the first national scope study ever, and will assist the Board in relating grade 12 NAEP to academic prepardness for college and work force training.-

A New Vision For K-20 Featuring Student Progression And Dual Enrollment

A report released today presents a new model of student progression and plan of action proposed by a unique assembly of high-level stakeholders from K12, community colleges, and four-year institutions working toward increased high school and college graduation rates. The group was convened by the Blackboard Institute, a new research organization within education solutions provider Blackboard Inc., and called for a greater focus on expanding opportunities for dual enrollment in order to accelerate student progression. see www.blackboardinstitute.com.

The gathering, “Pipeline Matters Council: Improving K20 Student Progression,” included 50 education leaders representing a cross-section of leadership in education, government and business including superintendants, college presidents, chief technology administrators, business executives and national policymakers.

“When our traditionally siloed interest groups come together to benefit the student, a constituency often sidelined in the education debate, there is potential for real education change,” said Council participant Bill Flores, president of University of Houston-Downtown. “Together we can help find ways to make the system more responsive to the student, rather than simply asking the student to be more responsive to the system,” added Flores.

The group stressed the importance of educating policymakers on K20 as a complex cycle of lifelong learning with many entry and exit points and multiple paths to student success – not just a linear progression from K12 to higher education. In this dynamic model of learning, dual enrollment, electronic student portfolios and early warning systems will play an important role, according to participants. At the top of the list: dual enrollment as a universal option in every state.

In dual enrollment, higher education institutions partner with K12 school districts – or community colleges partner with four-year institutions – to offer higher-level course work for dual credit, accelerating completion to a degree for motivated students and engaging learners who have lost interest in their current courses. Dual enrollment programs are growing nationally, according to the most recent study done by the U.S. Department of Education. But while more than half of all colleges and universities enrolled a combined five percent of high school students for college credit, dual enrollment offerings are not available consistently nationwide.

Council participants identified a need to examine the existing practice and mine data in order to develop actionable guidance on how to create successful dual enrollment programs – and to make those tools available to the time- and resource-pressed leaders seeking to add dual enrollment offerings to their school or system.

To fill that gap, the Blackboard Institute will publish effective practice studies on dual enrollment by drawing on Blackboard’s proximity to education practice and make them widely available to all educators on the Web. The effective practices will assist on the ground educators, but also inform the larger policy debate by surfacing and sharing real responses to education’s critical challenges.

“Without addressing roadblocks throughout the entire learning process, student success will continue to be compromised,” said Gordon Freedman, Blackboard vice president education strategy and Council organizer.  “We seek to increase accessibility for all students by supporting policies and programs that make the journey through school and into higher education as efficient and productive as possible,” added Freedman.

About the Blackboard Institute
The Blackboard Institute, launched as an independent organization within the education technology company, seeks to help leaders at all levels improve student progression. The Institute will put to work millions of hours spent in partnership with thousands of education institutions tackling tough problems through technology, and offer the education community insight into both the problems and the real practice of addressing them in a multitude of different environments. Additionally, the Blackboard Institute will continue to bring together diverse actors to address progression issues with a combined perspective.

Federal Role May Grow In Regulating College Tuition Increases

Federal postsecondary policy has focused on college student aid, but a new article by Michael Dannenberg in the American Prospect makes a good case for a more active federal role in controlling college tuition growth–see www.prospect.org for the September 2009 issue. Here are some interesting direct quotes form his article.

“Obama has proposed increasing Pell Grants significantly and throwing the banks completely out of the student-loan program.  Loans instead would be made directly by the government…Pell Grants and student loans address only one side of the college-affordability ledger.  The other is tuition, which is increasing at a rate that dramatically outpaces median family income.  Student-loan debt is chasing ever-rising tuition like a dog chasing its tail…That doesn’t mean regulating tuition.  Reform can be as simple as helping students make better decisions in choosing a college, incentivizing states to maintain their fiscal effort for higher education, and making the colleges that the plurality of students attend tuition-free for those willing to work.”

State Common Core Standards Face Old Dilemas

Standards setting has been going on for many decades, and the attempt by the Chief state school officers and the National Governors Association to work with 47 states is confronting many of the problems of the past-see www.ccsso.org. Here are the dilemas from the past;

– there are always complaints that the process does not include all the necessary stakeholders

-if you chose standards with a broad consensus , then” leading edge thinkers” complain you are choosing” what is “”rather than what ought (eg 21st century skills)

-Consensus is hard to reconcile with less is more. Consensus generates too many standards to make everyone happy.

-If you please specialists in a discipline like math, then people will complain you have neglected inter disciplinary content/skills.

-If standards are too general , then there will be complaints that the details will be filled in by the test makers and pedagogues.

-If experts devise the standards, then there will be complaints that elected officials and interest groups were not involved.

-It is difficult to use the same structure for math and English. The common core draft is more detailed for math.

-If you want the standards to be in schools within 4 years, people will say this is too quick (eg need for extensive professional development)

Race To The Top Guidelines Do Not Provide Extra Points For P-20 Plans

 The best summary I have seen of Race to the Top application priorities and criteria is from the New Teacher Project www.tntp.org . Thier brief makes it clear that a states p-20 plan linking succesful transitions from k-12 to postsecondary education is not really a significant factor in determining which states will win the competion.  here is the precise language-” The USDE is interested in recieving applications meeting this priority(eg P-20 plan) but will not award additional points for doing so.”

  Some so called priorities must be met for the state application to be considered and others give the aplication preference or added points, but not P-20. I wonder why not.

Academic Disciplines Summarize What Is Known About College Transition

  Teachers College Record on line has a summary of what many academic disciplines have contributed to research about college transition. Among the disciplines included are : economics, sociology, anthropology etc. There has never been a recent compilation like this. The authors who are well known academics point out needed new directions for college transition research. The compilation is entitled , William Trent ed, Transitions To College: Lessons From Discipline Based Literature Reviews. You can access it at: http://www.tcrecord.org ID Number 12594.