We Heart Wonks: A Friday DEI State Policy Review

• Jobs for the Future just released their latest edition of Achieving Success, the state policy newsletter of Achieving the Dream and the Developmental Education Initiative, which highlights and profiles new state-level innovations, policy supports, and data-driven improvements. This issue features Florida’s new student success dashboard, Connecticut’s dev ed redesign task force, and Arkansas’ plans for developmental educator professional development. You can find it on the DEI website’s Resources page under “State Policy.”
• In other news, it was a banner week for developmental education bills in the Texas Legislature. We posted in April about the impact that the DEI state policy team in Texas was having on the content of two House bills. This week, both bills passed the Texas House and Senate. Cynthia Ferrell, director of the Texas Developmental Education Initiative state policy team, tells us, “After learning about the Community College Research Center work on the ineffectiveness of online developmental education offerings, the language in HB 1244 and SB 1564 was changed from mandating online DE to include support for ‘a range of developmental coursework or instructional support that includes the integration of technology to efficiently address the particular developmental needs of the student.’“ The bills also address the need for new research-based and diagnostic assessment, encourage the use of course and non-course based dev ed, establishes alternative dev ed funding structures, and promotes professional development for developmental educators.