Guest Post: You’ve Got a Friend—Supportive State Policy for Dev Ed Innovation

Today’s post comes from Michael Collins, associate vice president of postsecondary state policy at Jobs for the Future. JFF leads DEI’s state policy initiative by supporting policy teams in CT, FL, NC, OH, TX, and VA, who are implementing the three-pronged Developmental Education Initiative State Policy Framework. In the first of a three-part series about the framework, Michael shows how collecting the right data can inform state policy that can accelerate dev ed innovation across a system—and introduces a new JFF publication that details how states are doing just that.

There is a lot of talk about fixing developmental education these days. In most people’s mind, this looks like a teacher in a classroom who is teaching better—and thus, students are learning better. That’s not a bad thing. Better teaching is an important part of the solution. For all the energy devoted to technological innovation in instructional delivery, the classroom continues to hold its own as the most widely used venue to serve academically underprepared students. Teaching and learning are central to improving outcomes in developmental education.

State policy, on the other hand, does not come to mind when thinking about improving outcomes in developmental education. But policy can make a big difference in identifying and spreading effective teaching practices, which can contribute to deeper and more sustained learning.

Now, teaching and learning is a somewhat private enterprise between a teacher and a student—behind closed classroom doors. Smartly designed state policy can open these doors. For example, states—particularly those with community college systems—can use their data and performance measurement systems to identify institutions that consistently do the best job of accelerating students through developmental education, through math and English gatekeeper courses, and on to programs that are tied to credentials and degrees. The hypothesis is that analyzing student outcomes will lead to conversations with high performing colleges, which will lead to a better understanding about effective practices—including good teaching.

States can go further to document and disseminate effective teaching practices once identified. This might include the development and maintenance of a central repository of teaching resources or an innovators network where faculty are convened on a systematic basis to share proven-practices and serve as resources to each other. Optimally, it might be both.

State policy can go a long way to support better teaching and learning. Currently, there are few examples of states using their data and performance measurement systems in a robust way to identify and spread successful practices. The six states participating in the Developmental Education Initiative (DEI) are changing this. They are implementing a three-part change strategy featuring data-driven improvement, investment in innovation, and policy supports.

Under the first component of the strategy—data-driven improvement—the states are actively fashioning their data and performance measurement systems so that they can identify high performing colleges and begin to pinpoint effective strategies as described above. You can find out more about their progress by checking out Driving Innovation: How Six States Are Organizing to Improve Outcomes in Developmental Education here.

We’ll take up the second strategy, investment in innovation, next time! Until then…

Michael Collins is associate vice president for postsecondary state policy at Jobs for the Future.