What’s Up With DEI

With the close of the fiscal year last month, it’s the season of annual reports and compliance documents. And though deadlines and details are sometimes stressful, the process does provide an opportunity to reflect on accomplishments, to remember what worked really well, and to formalize those “I’ll never do THAT again” mental notes. We’ve recently reviewed the annual reports from DEI state policy teams and colleges; it’s exciting to see the progress, the unexpected successes, and the continued commitment to improving outcomes for students in developmental education.

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing some of the accomplishments at the state and college-level. We’ll make our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. State profiles will be organized according to the DEI State Policy Framework: data-driven improvement; investment in innovation; and policy supports. College recaps will be organized in three categories: scaling; institutional policy change; and academic and supportive service innovations.

We’ll lead off with Connecticut tomorrow, but today, we’ve got a quick snap shot of the accomplishments and challenges that we’re seeing across the initiative.

DEI State Policy Teams

• Data-Driven Improvement. States are implementing new technology to collect state-wide data, conducting evaluations of developmental education policies and practices, and creating dashboards of ATD/DEI intermediate benchmarks. Some of these efforts have sometimes run up against…the intricacies of establishing agreements for data sharing. States also are navigating the recent proliferation of national efforts to develop community college performance metrics.
• Investment in Innovation. States are providing incentive funding for campus-level innovation, as well as acting as conveners for state-wide curriculum redesign and professional development. Sadly, some of these efforts are threatened by continuing state budget crises.
• Policy Supports. Some states are conducting system-wide developmental education policy reviews; others have seen supportive legislation passed in the last year. The teams have participated in semiannual ATD/DEI state policy meetings, further strengthening the policy learning community. States and colleges are still wrestling with constraints caused by federal financial aid regulations that complicate funding for promising non-course-based and non-semester-based instruction.

DEI Colleges

• Scaling. Ten of the fifteen DEI colleges have met or exceeded their expansion targets on at least one of their interventions; some have exceeded these targets in all of the DEI work. All are planning for continued expansion of the most effective practices. Staff turnover, budget constraints, and increasing enrollment are particularly thorny issues at some colleges when it comes to meeting scaling targets.
• Institutional Policy Change. In the last year, three more colleges have taken the eliminate late-registration plunge; others have made orientation, advising, and enrollment in required dev ed courses and student success courses mandatory. Some colleges are still facing institutional research challenges when it comes to collecting necessary data, but many are putting new practices in place to coordinate student success efforts across the college. 
• Academic and Supportive Service Innovations. Colleges are engaging faculty, staff, and their communities to refine and improve DEI interventions. The individual college profiles will highlight exciting work in cooperative learning, supplementation instruction, modularization, and contextualization. For all of the progress, some colleges still face faculty engagement issues as they expand; others are struggling to get all eligible students to participate in practices and programs that have proven effective for their peers.

So, what’s up with DEI? A whole lot. We look forward to sharing more of it over the coming weeks! 

Abby Parcell is a Program Manager at MDC.