Guest Post: Mobilizing Faculty toward Dramatic Curricular Change

Please welcome Katie Hern, Ed.D., an English Instructor at Chabot College, to Accelerating Achievement! Katie leads the California Acceleration Project, an initiative of the California Community Colleges’ Success Network (3CSN), with support from the Walter S. Johnson Foundation, LearningWorks, and the Community College Research Center. Bruce Vandal posted a great summary of the program and its results over at Getting Past Go yesterday; below, you can read what Katie has learned about motivating folks to take on the challenge of accelerated developmental education courses.

The California Acceleration Project has ambitious goals: getting the state’s 112 community colleges to shorten and redesign their developmental sequences in English and math.

The California community college system—if “system” is the right word—is among the most decentralized in the country. For those of us advocating change, this means we have to do more than provide good data to a group of high-level decision-makers. We have to convince individual faculty at all 112 individual colleges to pursue the change themselves.
 
On the face of it, this might seem a job for Sisyphus. And yet, faculty across California have begun doing exactly that.
 
The project is part of the California Community Colleges’ Success Network (3CSN), which provides professional development for the state’s Basic Skills Initiative. To date, more than 80 of California’s community colleges have participated in the project’s acceleration trainings, 19 colleges are working together on accelerated English and pre-statistics courses they will offer in 2011-12, and at least 12 more colleges are actively pursuing pilots for the following year. 

Bringing acceleration to scale requires us to think about what motivates people to change. Inside 3CSN, we talk a lot about a book called Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. Business writers Dan and Chip Heath stress that everyone has two competing drives influencing our decisions: “the rider,” or rational side, and the “elephant,” or emotional side.  Mobilizing change requires engaging the rider holding the reins and the elephant that the rider is trying to steer. “Anytime the six-ton Elephant and the Rider disagree about which direction to go, the Rider is going to lose” (Switch, p. 7). 

In making a case for acceleration, my co-leader Myra Snell and I ground our conversations in quantitative data. No one would listen if we didn’t show that acceleration can significantly increase the number of developmental students going on to pass college-level gatekeeper courses. But data are never enough. We also have to address the elephant. What is spooking faculty about acceleration? Where are the emotional sticking points? And what positive emotions can be harnessed so that faculty charge toward change, instead of sitting stubbornly by while would-be change agents seek “buy in”? 

Sometimes teachers’ elephants don’t move because they literally can’t see the way ahead. In faculty workshops, we show two classroom videos, five minutes from my open-access accelerated English class, where students engage an excerpt from Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and five minutes from Myra Snell’s open-access pre-statistics course where students grapple with a problem from a national statistics exam and prove that the exam’s answer key is incorrect. These videos give faculty a visceral, concrete sense of how developmental education might be different. They see that students who might have placed 2, 3, 4 levels below college in their own sequences have the capacity to do challenging intellectual work. They see that developmental education doesn’t have to be grammar workbooks or skill-and-drill math procedures. They get a vision of the possible, and their elephants respond. They want to be part of it. 

The California Acceleration Project is not arguing for small-scale changes—tutoring, student success courses, mandatory placement testing. We’re arguing that developmental education is broken; that community colleges must shorten and redesign our long remedial sequences; that our placement system is profoundly flawed; and that students are capable of so much more than developmental classes often ask of them. It’s not an easy case to make, and there are many opportunities for our riders and our elephants to derail movement. Yet the good news from California is that, when faculty elephants and riders get going in the same direction, dramatic change becomes possible. 

To see Katie Hern and Myra Snell make a case for acceleration and speak to both rider and elephant, check out their webinar “College Completion: Why Acceleration Developmental English and Math is the Essential First Step.” For more information about the California Acceleration Project, go to http://3csn.org/developmental-sequences.

Snacktime!

Here are a few tasty morsels from the internet’s pantry this week.  Enjoy!

• Complete College America just launched a new blog, which is featuring remediation for its first week! This will be a great source for news and commentary from across the college completion arena. We were happy to see them call attention to Community College of Baltimore’s co-requisite model. Want to know more? CCBC’s Andy Rusnack guest blogged for us yesterday about their innovative approach.
• Earlier this week on Talk of the Nation, host Rebecca Roberts spoke with Diane Ravitch and Angel Harris about closing the gap between white students and students of color in academic achievement. We’ve written about equity on this blog before, because the achievement gap has significant implications for developmental educators. As Roberts says, “Educators hear the statistics all the time, but if you're a parent or even just an observer, the facts are still shocking: Students of color lag well behind their white counterparts, despite education reforms aimed at narrowing the gap. By age 17, the average black student is a full four years behind the average white student. Race and economic background are still overwhelming determinants when it comes to academic success in this country.”
• Last weekend, The New York Times ran an editorial from Sol Garfunkel and David Mumford about quantitative literacy. They write that “different sets of math skills are useful for different careers, and our math education should be changed to reflect this fact.” Hear, hear! Carnegie’s Statway and Quantway programs are trying to do just that.
• Check out Bridgespan Group’s Matthew Forti over on the Stanford Social Innovation Review; he writes about the dangers of letting conventional wisdom shorten our vision of long-term impact. The important drive for more evidence might lead an organization to focus on the program outcomes that are easy to measure, rather than finding ways—inevitably more complicated—to measure whether we’re really changing the trajectory of program participants for the better. This is a critical consideration when it comes to questions of which programs should be scaled up. As Mr. Forti says “instead of fragmenting impact into measurable bites, we need to purpose measurement to create solid pathways to better, ultimate outcomes for those we serve.”

Guest Post: How Do You Think About Developmental Ed?

Today, we welcome Andy Rusnak, assistant professor of English and assistant director of Accelerated Learning Program at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC), to Accelerating Achievement. Andy introduces us to Peter Adams, the founder of CCBC’s ALP program, and invites dev ed skeptics to change the way they think about the whole enterprise—both assumptions about who dev ed students are and assumptions about the best way for those students to make their way to credit-bearing work.

How to think about developmental education? Should it be thought of as a gate, keeping out those not qualified for college work, the gathering convention of many universities? Or, should it be thought of as a pathway to success, the open-door policy of some community colleges that are now implementing more expeditious means to persistence?

One slide in the Community College of Baltimore County’s PowerPoint presentation on the history and success of the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) pictures an austere, locked, wrought-iron gate between two Grecian-style columns. The gate protects everyone’s archetypal image of the ivory tower. One can almost envision a “No Trespassing” sign. The next slide is a pristine path through the woods, very promising, the mythological hero journey with ethereal rays of lambent light pointing the way.

ALP Founder and Director Peter Adams contemplated these two competing concepts before laying the foundation for the ALP program and giving it direction. He chose the path metaphor, one that leads directly to our liberally educated sensibilities, our ideas of fairness, and our desire to offer access and upward mobility to what may be economically disadvantaged students.

Makes perfect sense right? To think of developmental education in this way especially at community college? Political ideologues wielding the budget axe might not think so. “Why should we appropriate tax dollars for college-level developmental education?” they might ask. “If a student passes a state-mandated writing test before he or she graduates high school, why aren’t they ready for college-level work?” Their underlying assumptions would post guards at the gates of higher education after sending out hit squads to patrol the wooded paths. But the biggest assumption, that those who need developmental writing, math, and/or reading just graduated high school, turns out to be false. At many community colleges, the median student age is upper twenties. At CCBC it’s 29. And if you don’t use it, you lose it. The politicos might respond by saying, “Well, ok, but why does it take three-to-four semesters, three-to-four levels of developmental classes before a student is even eligible for credited work? This appears to be a self-serving enterprise, designed to enhance revenue, not a pathway to success.” 

It might be hard to argue this point. Not to mention how daunting it must look to an aspiring and expeditious student who returns to school after a long absence to improve his or her life. Adams took all this into consideration when he conceived ALP at CCBC. And, I might add, did so in a cost-effective manner. ALP takes eight students who test out via the Accuplacer at developmental levels and places them into a credited freshman composition class with 12 students who passed the Accuplacer. After this English 101 class, the eight students then meet with the same instructor to satisfy developmental writing requirements. Both courses are conducted concurrently and the need for a two semester sequence is eliminated.

From the fall of 2007 to the fall of 2008, the Community College Research Center of Columbia University tracked 2,070 of CCBC’s traditional developmental writing students and 104 ALP students. Even though the sample for ALP is much smaller as it was still in a pilot phase, only 40 percent of the traditional, two-semester sequence students went on to pass English 101 the following semester, compared to 75 percent of ALP students who passed English 101 concurrently with their developmental course. CCBC’s own data reflect consistent English 101 pass rates for ALP students, 59 to 66 percent from the 2007 fall semester through spring semester, 2010. In the fall semester of 2006, traditional developmental writers who went on to take and pass English 101 shook out to only 27 percent.

ALP is an intriguing, innovative program. It’s a different animal and requires non-traditional, non-linear logic and approaches. Many community colleges that are now replicating versions of ALP must seek even greater imaginative and critical resources as entrenched cultures and bureaucratic challenges change from state-to-state and even campus-to-campus. Change is hard, but not impossible. At CCBC, administrators and professors involved in ALP oftentimes cite business models that replicate technologies within months to jump start discussions on what factors in community college culture inhibit similar expediency. There is a danger, of course, of institutions of higher learning assuming a strictly business model, but being able to respond quickly to change, to “self-evaluate” and to augment, streamline, or, if necessary, tear down and start over is the sign of a healthy, progressive institution, especially in today’s fast-paced, demanding, mutable climate. It pays to cultivate a proactive ethos, to challenge methods, processes, and systems, to welcome and support idea-generation. There is no “eureka” in sluggish, reactionary organizations.

Adams paints a nervous, good-natured figure. He rolls up his sleeves, projects the value of hard work. He is driven. His eyes dart from side-to-side to meet a world that is obviously a huge question mark. Beneath it all is a strong drive to champion the educational needs of those who may not have enjoyed the economic advantages of those in the upper middle class, but who can make important (maybe the most important) contributions to society. These are the students who fight our wars, fix our brakes, take our X-rays, make our music, and build our aircraft. And through CCBC’s ALP steering committee and inquiry network (ALPIN) the pedagogy most professors embrace is sympathetic to the ever-demanding lifestyles of today’s community college student—work, children, transportation, bills, studying. Sympathetic, but demanding. Principled and ideological, but ideology is not a bad word when it comes to making a better student, and it’s certainly not delusional when one looks at the very pragmatic success Adams has built via ALP. Ideology underlies many of our pedagogical pursuits. We’re fortunate that way. In higher education, more so than in other environments, there are more successful outcomes, more direct and positive results, that come from hard work—a cause and effect formula that adds value and is worth pursuing. For professors and students.  Perhaps this is how we all should think about developmental education. 

Andy Rusnak is an assistant professor of English and assistant director of the Accelerated Learning Program at the Community College of Baltimore County

Guest Post: Choice Scholars Summer Institute

Today, two faculty members from the Harper College Department of Academic Success dish the details of a successful bridge program for developmental ed students. Thanks for the heads up, Shante Bishop and Stephanie Whalen!

The Choice Scholars Summer Institute at William Rainey Harper College, an Achieving the Dream institution in Palatine, Illinois, is a four-week summer experience that develops basic skills (reading, writing, mathematics) through contextualized frameworks to help incoming freshmen prepare for college. The program engages students in problem-based learning, connects them to valuable campus resources, and cultivates relationships between and among Harper faculty and students. The contextualized approach allows students to apply these skills in a practical way. Choice has partnered with both STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) fields and career fields (business, nursing, early childhood education) to provide college-level, industry-grade learning experiences for incoming freshmen.

Program Goals

• Choice placement scores are just below the cusp of college readiness. At the end of the program, students re-test on the placement exam with the hope of placing into college-level courses and bypassing remediation.
• Choice also challenges the prevailing narrative that developmental students are incapable of successful engagement in college-level coursework. In its three years, Choice has demonstrated that a cut-score on a standardized placement exam is not a strong enough indicator of college readiness. Students in the program are engaged and expected to perform at the college level. Students demonstrate their knowledge and skill through improved scores, higher retention, and a capstone project presented annually through a program- sponsored research symposium.   
• Choice also attempts to demystify college expectations, forge relationships among faculty and students, acclimate students to the campus, and help them transition seamlessly from high school to college during the critical first semester. Students are introduced to career fields and learning opportunities that lay the foundation in developing a professional identity, better preparing them for the workforce. This year, we welcomed Motorola Solutions as a partner, as part of the Skills for America’s Future initiative commissioned by the Obama Administration. Motorola facilitated a series of lunch-and-learn opportunities called, “Motorola Moments”; Motorola professionals provided Choice students with etiquette and industry knowledge on topics such as critical thinking, innovation, marketing, communication, interviewing, and job safety.

Program Activities

• Professional Seminar Series: Industry experts are invited to a weekly lecture series where students are able to learn about specific opportunities and qualifications in a career field.
• Problem-Based Learning: Students explore and discover answers to real-world challenges, deepening critical thinking and moving from procedural to more dynamic learning. 
• Research Symposium: At the conclusion of the four- week program, students present the results of an inquiry-based learning to a panel of faculty experts and invited guests from the college community.
• Diagnostic Development: Students work with faculty who specialize in developmental education, building necessary postsecondary study competencies. Students are given an individualized study plan, customized for their specific developmental needs.
• Peer Mentoring: Each year students who were previously successful in the Choice Scholars Summer Institute are invited to serve as tutors, advisers, and guides for the incoming group.
• Information Literacy & Technical Proficiency: The institute supplements students’ learning with regular meetings with faculty from our college library and Computer Information Systems (CIS) departments. Students develop presentations, compose essays, and manage data using the most current Windows and Mac operating systems.

Program Results

• Improved placement on the COMPASS Exam: Choice participants average between 76 percent improved placement on the reading/writing exam, and 80 – 85 percent improvement on math placements. Students typically move up one level or test out of developmental studies altogether.
• Fall Semester GPA: The average GPA for Harper students is approximately 2.59. Choice Scholars’ average GPA is 2.88.
• Semester Retention: In Spring 2011, 95 percent of Choice Scholars were retained (did not withdraw from courses or the institution).
• Persistence: In Spring 2011, 91 percent of Choice Scholars persisted from fall-to-fall (registered for subsequent semesters).

The Choice Scholars Institute has been embraced by high schools in the surrounding area. The districts have marketed the Choice Scholars program in their schools and high school counselors routinely refer students to the program. Additionally, high schools have been receptive to site visits from former students who were successful in the Choice program as well as Choice faculty and staff. You can read more about the Choice program in the Daily Herald, Chicago Tribune, and the Barrington Courier.

Shante Bishop is an assistant professor in the Department of Academic Success at Harper College; Stephanie Whalen is an instructor in the Department of Academic Success at Harper.

What’s Up with DEI: Patrick Henry Community College

For the past month and a half, we’ve been sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. We’ve made our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. Yesterday, we introduced Virginia’s state policy work; now it’s time to learn a bit more about Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville, Virginia.

Patrick Henry Community College (PHCC) serves almost 3,000 students in the city of Martinsville and in Patrick, Henry, and Franklin Counties. We’ve selected some highlights from their last year of DEI work in three main categories: scaling, institutional policy change, and academic and supportive service innovations.

Scaling

• The college has exceeded the projected goal for increased use of cooperative learning in the classroom; cooperative learning is becoming a standard teaching methodology for PHCC, with nearly 2000 students enrolled in courses that used this methodology in 2010-11. In order to better measure the effectiveness of cooperative learning, faculty trainers and institutional research staff have developed comprehensive survey instruments for faculty and student participants. The surveys have undergone one round of validation to date. The final validated survey will be administered in fall 2011.
• PHCC also exceeded its targets for enrollments in fast-track math and accelerated learning program courses. Pass rates in accelerated and traditional math courses were 59 percent and 54 percent. Pass rates in accelerated and traditional English courses were 73 percent and 54 percent. The college anticipates enrollment in ALP courses to increase tremendously, due in part to the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) Developmental Education Redesign Initiative.
• Patrick Henry has established the Southern Center for Active Learning Excellence (SCALE) to provide training to other educators on campus and across the country. The college is developing a business plan to establish SCALE as a self-sustaining unit through the PHCC Foundation.

Institutional Policy

• The college is adopting a PHCC-designed student success prediction model as part of its dual enrollment program to advise entering high school students.
• Policy changes that the college has implemented to support the success of underprepared students include: increased funds available for tutoring purposes; incorporating COMPASS Test Preparation Workshops into the responsibilities of the Integrated Advising, Testing and Career Center; providing emergency funding from the PHCC Foundation for students, targeting low-income and first generation students; and paying adjunct faculty who complete cooperative learning professional development training a higher per credit hourly rate.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• Professional development is imperative and has contributed to the success of PHCC’s DEI work, including training for full-time and adjunct faculty and staff in cooperative learning and accelerated learning methods, use of the new advising model, use of technology (MyMath Lab, MyWritingLab, and iPads), and an annual data summit attended by faculty, staff, and administrators.

What’s Up with DEI: Danville Community College

For the past month and a half, we’ve been sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. We’ve made our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. Yesterday, we introduced Virginia’s state policy work; now it’s time to learn a bit more about Danville Community College in Danville, Virginia.

Danville Community College (DCC) serves more than 4,000 students in the city of Danville and Pittsylvania and Halifax Counties. We’ve selected some highlights from their last year of DEI work in three main categories: scaling, institutional policy change, and academic and supportive service innovations.

Scaling

• All DCC developmental courses now include a technology component, and faculty members incorporate online homework assignments, require students to supplement classroom instruction with instructional videos, and encourage students to take advantage of online practice tests and tutoring. 
• At the beginning of their DEI work, the college served approximately 30 students in modular instruction. Now, approximately 200 students complete developmental math in four-week modules rather than the traditional 15-week program. With the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) math redesign that will be implemented in spring 2012, all developmental math students will be enrolled in math modules.

Institutional Policy

• Because of the major revisions to developmental math content in the VCCS, faculty teaching college-level courses are reviewing the content of the new nine math modules and determining which of the modules students need to be prepared for their first college-level math course and program of study. A course-by-course review will also be required no later than fall 2011 for new students enrolling in spring 2012. Descriptions of the new math modules have been shared with high schools in the service area.
• In 2010-2011, developmental education faculty conducted the first formal program review of developmental math and English, documenting assessment of specific learning outcomes, setting benchmarks, examining data, and using the data to make changes designed to improve student success.
• DCC has created a Developmental Education Advisory Committee with representatives from the local business community, public schools, and other educational institutions. At two meetings over the course of the year, participants discussed the challenges and opportunities facing potential partnerships between DCC and other educational institutions, business, and industry.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• The college has worked with Rose Asera, a DEI technical assistance provider, to design a Faculty Inquiry Group. Originally, faculty met to align curriculum between developmental and college-level courses and develop a writing rubric. The rubric has been shared with area high schools and adult basic education providers and used at DCC by developmental writing faculty and college-level faculty.

What’s Up with DEI: Virginia

For the past month and a half, we’ve been sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. We’ve made our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. This week, we’re finishing the series with Virginia, the Old Dominion State.

The Virginia Community College System (VCCS) serves as the state team lead for Virginia’s ATD/DEI state policy work. Two of the state’s 23 community colleges participate in DEI, Danville and Patrick Henry. Three others were Round 1 ATD colleges (Mountain Empire, Paul D. Camp, and Tidewater) and Northern Virginia became an ATD institution in 2007. In the last year, Virginia has moved forward on all three DEI State Policy Framework levers:

Data-Driven Improvement

• In August 2010, the VCCS college presidents accepted the report and the recommendations from the developmental math redesign team, The Critical Point. VCCS also published its first annual Developmental Education Annual Report in February 2011.

Investment in Innovation

• VCCS has established a campus implementation team comprised of faculty from all 23 VCCS campuses, to work on the implementation of the new developmental math modules. This group will meet regularly in the coming year to address issues related to learning resources, scheduling, teaching load, delivery, and other topics that arise in the process of implementation.
• VCCS has designed two developmental education professional development opportunities:
• Developmental Education Symposium: An annual event held as a pre-conference to the system-wide professional development conference. This year, 175 developmental education faculty came together for a day-long working meeting.
• Developmental Education Institute: This event was held in June in partnership with the National Center for Developmental Education. The one-week summer institute for developmental education faculty is modeled after the nationally recognized Kellogg Institute.

Policy Supports

• In September 2010, the chancellor convened the Developmental English Redesign Team to examine the existing structure of developmental reading and writing in the VCCS and to make recommendations on how the model can be changed to increase student success. This is the same process that was undertaken for the developmental math redesign. The charge of the redesign team was to review policies and practices and make recommendations on what steps the system should take to redesign developmental reading and writing to improve student success and implement more streamlined and efficient ways of delivery. The report and recommendations were unanimously accepted by the college presidents at their April 2011 meeting and were endorsed by the State Board at their May meeting. The report was published in June 2011.

What’s Up with DEI: South Texas College

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. We’re making our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. Earlier this week, we introduced Texas’s state policy work; now it’s time to learn a bit more about South Texas College in McAllen, Texas.

South Texas College (STC) serves nearly 30,000 students in Hidalgo and Starr Counties. We’ve selected some highlights from their last year of DEI work in three main categories: scaling, institutional policy change, and academic and supportive service innovations.

Scaling

• South Texas has now integrated 40 percent of the developmental English and reading curriculum. They are focusing their work on increasing the depth of this initiative by creating additional developmental English essay prompts, to maintain faculty interest and enthusiasm about the approach. In general, this effort has resulted in more collaboration among the sociology, history, developmental English, developmental reading, and developmental math departments.
• During the first year of the grant activity, all fall 2009 full-time FTIC developmental English and reading students participated in the case management initiative, an expansion of an effort begun as part of STC’s Achieving the Dream work. This expansion resulted in case loads for the two DEI Student Success Specialists (SSS) at the South Texas College Pecan Campus that were too large (over 600 students for each SSS). The college has revised eligibility criteria to ensure that those that participate can benefit from the program. The new criteria resulted in case loads below 180 students. Under this approach, the pass rate for fall 2010 developmental reading students who received face to face contact was 74 percent, compared to 66 percent pass rate for the fall 2009 developmental reading students who received face-to-face contact—an increase of 8 percent. Similarly, the pass rate for fall 2010 developmental English students who received face-to-face contact was 80 percent, as compared to 68 percent pass rate for the fall 2009 developmental English students who received face-to-face contact—an increase of 12 percent.

Institutional Policy

• The integrated contextualized curriculum initiative supports one of STC’s Strategic Directions: “South Texas College proudly provides opportunities to all students with high expectations for their success.” Developmental studies students regularly enroll in non-developmental courses while they are completing their developmental coursework. Many instructors for these academic courses require students to write research papers. The additional emphasis on academic writing for developmental writing students through the implementation of the STC DEI Integrative Contextualized Curriculum  is an example of the instructors’ efforts to prepare students  for academic writing demands in non-developmental studies courses, even before these students have had the opportunity to take a college-level composition course.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• Modifications to the case management case loads were made, partially in response to feedback from a case management survey of the fall 2009 DEI cohort. After reducing case loads, survey responses for the fall 2010 showed greater awareness of the program.

What’s Up with DEI: Houston Community College

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. We’re making our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. Earlier this week, we introduced Texas’s state policy work; now it’s time to learn a bit more about Houston Community College in Houston, Texas.

Houston Community College (HCC) serves more than 70,000 students in the Houston area. We’ve selected some highlights from their last year of DEI work in three main categories: scaling, institutional policy change, and academic and supportive service innovations.

Scaling

• Given positive results from an MDRC study of HCC learning community offerings and the college’s own analysis, HCC has increased learning community offerings from 10 percent of developmental math offerings in 2009-10 to 20 percent in 2010-2011, with plans for additional increases in the future. Successful course completion rates in learning community and non-learning community courses are 68 percent and 59 percent. The college also has plans for accelerated learning communities that will link the exit-level developmental math course with college algebra. HCC is promoting learning communities on their website right now; check out the tag line on their homepage.
• HCC has gradually increased student participation in a four-week math bridge courses from less than 50 students a semester to currently more than 200 per semester. The results continue to be very positive, with bridge course students having lower rates of attrition and higher rates of achievement and persistence. In spring 2011, students passed the bridge courses at a rate of 79 percent; the pass rate in traditional developmental math courses was 68 percent.

Institutional Policy

• To improve alignment of HCC course and program advising the college has implemented a web-based software called CurricUNET that facilitates the posting, development, revision, and archiving of all HCC curriculum.
• The college has developed an interactive web-based dashboard for 2010-2011 that allows users to check HCC progress in nine categories: access, completions, faculty ratios, financial aid, persistence/retention, placement, satisfaction, student engagement, and transfer. 
• HCC has made significant progress in aligning institutional policies and procedures to ensure better coordination of developmental education, including: automatic blocks on students’ registration for courses for which they have not satisfied pre-requisites, automatic drops of pre-registrants who have been placed on academic probation or suspension with mandatory academic advising and limitations on subsequent course-taking; creation of a new grade (FX) to identify students who fail a course because of lack of attendance; and development of a faculty advising handbook.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• The HCC Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence has developed numerous courses and workshops designed to assist faculty in implementation of DEI interventions:  Freshman Success: First Year Experience; Learning Communities in Community Colleges; Classroom Strategies for Developmental English; and Battle of the Book: Combating the Textbook Reading Resistance
• In Texas, there is currently no floor below which students are allowed to score on the COMPASS exam prior to admission into developmental reading classes. Consequently, the lowest level reading course has a very low success rate. The college is exploring re-testing of students in the tenth week of the semester to see if any progress has been achieved and if not, referring students to other more appropriate programs, Adult Education, ESL, VAST (a program at HCC for those with learning disabilities), or a CE program that incorporates literacy or ESL instruction.

What’s Up with DEI: El Paso Community College

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. We’re making our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. Yesterday, we introduced Texas’s state policy work; now it’s time to learn a bit more about El Paso Community College in El Paso, Texas.

El Paso Community College (EPCC) serves nearly 30,000 students in El Paso County, Texas. We’ve selected some highlights from their last year of DEI work in three main categories: scaling, institutional policy change, and academic and supportive service innovations.

Scaling

• Math emporiums have been implemented on all five campuses and each one has been, or is in the process of being, scaled up. The college is on pace to reach their target of having 30 percent of developmental math students enrolled in math emporiums by spring 2012 and will likely exceed that target by summer 2012. Students enrolled in math emporium sections from spring 2009 through fall 2010 successfully completed the course at the same rate as students enrolled in traditional developmental math sections, 67 percent. However, during that same period the withdrawal rate for students enrolled in math emporium sections was four percent less than that of students enrolled in traditional sections.
• EPCC is now serving more than 3000 students in PREP (Pre-testing Retesting Educational Preparation) program, and is on track to continue adding 500 or more students each semester. The PREP Program has become the backbone of the college’s case management system, providing the tracking needed to guide developmental education students through the attainment of their first 30 college credits. From fall 2009 to summer 2010 the percentage of students participating in the PREP Program who advanced at least one level in developmental education coursework is as follows: 65 percent math, 65 percent reading, and 47 percent writing.
• The case management system piloted at two campuses during the fall 2010 semester has now been implemented on all five campuses. The target population is students who test into all three developmental areas (math, reading and writing); there are now more than 2000 students in the system. Part of this approach involves encouraging students to participate in the EPCC mentoring program. The college currently has 250 mentors (faculty, staff, and students) working with 1,600 students and expects to decrease the mentor-to-student ratio as recruitment efforts are expanded.

Institutional Policy

• EPCC has committed to requiring all developmental education students to enroll in their developmental coursework and a student success course during the first year of their college experience. Procedures to implement this commitment will be in place by the fall 2011 semester.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• The college conducted centralized informational and training workshops for mentors at the beginning of the spring semester and will repeat those at the beginning of the fall 2011 semester.  During the semester, EPCC offered similar sessions on each campus, including a meet-and-greet to bring mentors and mentees together to exchange ideas and discuss concerns.

What’s Up with DEI: Coastal Bend Community College

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. We’re making our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. Yesterday, we introduced Texas’s state policy work; now it’s time to learn a bit more about Coastal Bend Community College in Beeville, TX.

Coastal Bend Community College (CBC) serves more than 3,000 students in nine rural counties in South Texas. We’ve selected some highlights from their last year of DEI work in three main categories: scaling, institutional policy change, and academic and supportive service innovations.

Scaling

• Coastal Bend redefined case manager duties and hired a full-time case manager for both the Alice and Kingsville campuses. This allowed case managers to increase the number of students served, the number of contacts made, and the number of interventions offered to students.
• Sections of CBC’s Fast Track English and reading courses are now offered on three campuses, in back-to-back eight week sessions. The courses had a 96 percent course completion rate and an 88 percent course success rate (students who receive an A, B, or C grade). Almost all students testing into two levels of remediation completed both levels during the course. Additional course offerings have been added.
• The Accelerated English Learning Community has also been expanded to all four campuses.

Institutional Policy

• The Student Success Task Force was reinvigorated as the Student Success Team, solidifying this committee’s ongoing responsibility for the vision, oversight, and coordination of all student success work at CBC’s four campuses. A small workgroup, with representatives from all sectors of CBC personnel, meets routinely to address DEI-specific issues, review data, share success stories, and expand promising practices.
• The college has instituted a number of supportive policies, including: the elimination of late registration; all students are required to take an Accuplacer Review course before testing; and students who have remediation needs may not register for courses online, but must meet with an advisor for registration. The college instituted this policy for developmental math students as part of their Achieving the Dream work; the policy now extends to students testing into any developmental education subject area.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• CBC invested in training for three new math instructors with limited experience working with developmental students, including monthly departmental meetings, professional development, software training, and an opportunity to make site visits to view successful models on other campuses or attend the National Association for Developmental Education (NADE) conference.

What’s Up with DEI: Texas

During July and August, we’re sharing some of the accomplishments of the last year by our DEI state policy teams and colleges. We’re making our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. This week, we’re focusing on Texas, the Lone Star State. Here’s the policy update; look for reports about our colleges over the next few days.

The Texas Association of Community Colleges (TACC) serves as the state team lead for Texas’s ATD/DEI state policy work. Four of the state’s 50 community colleges participate in DEI: Coastal Bend, El Paso, Houston, and South Texas. Thirty-three others are ATD colleges. In the last year, Texas has moved forward on all three DEI State Policy Framework levers:

Data-Driven Improvement

• A revised set of developmental education accountability measures, now based on ATD intermediate and final benchmarks, are publicly posted. TACC presented institutional developmental education success data, based on these same measures, at the Presidents' Summer Conference in July 2011. 

Investment in Innovation

• TACC hosted a meeting of nearly 150 developmental math chairs from across the state, featuring Dr. Uri Treisman, director of the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin and developmental education revolutionary. See his call to action in this video. They began initial recruitment for a developmental math leadership team of college leaders to head up efforts for more comprehensive developmental math innovation and possible redesign.

Policy Supports

• Four bills regarding developmental education instruction at community colleges passed the Texas House and Senate. Deliberations included testimony from Cynthia Ferrell, DEI State Policy Team lead regarding Community College Research Center work on the ineffectiveness of online developmental education offerings. Subsequently, the language in HB 1244 and SB 1564 was changed from mandating online dev ed 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 developmental education, establishes alternative developmental education funding structures, and promotes professional development for developmental educators.

For more details on DEI state policy accomplishments, check out Jobs For the Future’s latest DEI publication Driving Innovation: How Six States Are Organizing to Improve Outcomes in Developmental Education Outcomes.

What’s Up With DEI: Zane State College

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. We’re making our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. Earlier this week, we introduced Ohio’s state policy work; now it’s time to learn a bit more about Zane State College in Zanesville, Ohio.

Zane State College serves 2,700 credit students in Southeastern Ohio. We’ve selected some highlights from their last year of DEI work in three main categories: scaling, institutional policy change, and academic and supportive service innovations.

Scaling

• Zane State’s intensive advising program, begun as an ATD pilot, is at full scale, serving all students who test into at least one developmental education course. Advisors monitor unmet prerequisite reports for all three developmental subject areas and re-enroll students who are inappropriately registered. The partnership of quality classroom instruction and intensive advising has enabled the developmental education program to maintain high course retention rates and successful completion rates despite the recent 9 percent growth in new students placing into developmental courses. Course retention rates range from 88-96 percent, with successful completion rates ranging from 72-82 percent.
• The college has implemented seven Project ADVANCE courses, accelerating students’ progress through developmental education by pairing two developmental courses in one semester or paring a developmental and a college-level course. Nearly two-thirds of the students eligible for these courses participated in the 2010-2011 academic year. Project ADVANCE students have higher course retention rates, successful course completion rates, and winter-to-winter retention rates than the traditional developmental students. ADVANCE students are also accumulating more college-level credits in their first year. A new eligibility determination process will enable the college to reach even more of the students that could benefit from this intervention.

Institutional Policy

• In the first year of the DEI grant, Academic Services at Zane State was restructured. The Developmental Education Department became an academic department within the Arts and Science Division with full-time faculty supervised by an associate dean. This integration of the developmental education department into Academic Services and the acknowledgement of the academic contributions the developmental education program makes to students’ progress to degree or certificate completion has resulted in unprecedented support from the college community.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• In January, 92 faculty (both full-time and adjunct) participated in a two-day cooperative learning workshop presented by faculty from Patrick Henry Community College. A subset of faculty have pursued more training, attending the two-day institute on active learning on Patrick Henry’s campus in May.

What’s Up With DEI: Sinclair Community College

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. We’re making our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. Earlier this week, we introduced Ohio’s state policy work; now it’s time to learn a bit more about Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.

Sinclair Community College serves more than 26,000 students in Ohio’s Miami Valley. We’ve selected some highlights from their last year of DEI work in three main categories: scaling, institutional policy change, and academic and supportive service innovations.

Scaling

• Sinclair has set a goal to increase the number of students served in self-paced modular math courses. There are now 10 math module classes offered on the main campus and 12 – 15 classes will be offered during fall 2011. The successful completion rate for modular courses was 56 percent compared to 50 percent success rate in the counterpart conventional sections developmental math. Almost 60 percent of these successful completers went on to take the next course in their sequence. (Some students needed only the developmental courses as a pre-requisite for a technical program.) Sixty-eight percent of those continuing were successful in the next course in the sequence. Of the students who persist and take the final exam, approximately 96 percent pass with a 75 percent or better.
• The college is expanding the number of students served in basic skills boot camps, a one-week intensive developmental education review intended to accelerate students’ progression through the developmental sequence. First offered in math, the college added English and reading boot camps last year. They will expand beyond the main campus to satellite and learning center sites in fall 2011. Summer and fall success rates were 84 percent and 75 percent, compared to traditional developmental course success rates during those quarters, ranging from 51 percent to 63 percent.

Institutional Policy

• Sinclair’s DEI work is closely aligned the college’s AQIP Action Item project, “Improving the First Year Experience.” Additionally, DEI efforts support three of the college’s eight strategic priorities, which have been identified by the Board of Trustees: success for a wide range and variety of students; expand P-20 school linkages; and develop partnerships for efficiency and effectiveness.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• Eight faculty, staff, and administrators were able to take advantage of invaluable best practices campus visits, observing and assessing the developmental education practices at institutions recognized for having excellent programs. Site visits were to Jackson Community College in Tennessee, Eastern Gateway Community College in Ohio, and Virginia Tech.

What’s Up With DEI: North Central State College

In July and August, we’re sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. We’re making our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. Yesterday, we introduced Ohio’s state policy work; now it’s time to learn a bit more about North Central State College in Mansfield, Ohio.

North Central State College (NC State) serves more than 3,500 students in north central Ohio. We’ve selected some highlights from their last year of DEI work in three main categories: scaling, institutional policy change, and academic and supportive service innovations.

Scaling

• NC State’s adult transition program, Solutions, has already exceeded targets set for number of students served. Relocating the Solutions program next to the tutoring center to share tutoring services has increased the program’s service capacity. The college compared the performance of Solutions students enrolling at NC State with the ATD fall 2009 cohort on developmental course/sequence completion, English gateway completion, and persistence. The performance of the Solutions students far exceeded cohort averages. The college calculated almost $20,000 in savings to students from acceleration through at least one level of developmental course work.
• The student success workshop, part of the Solutions program, is now offered on a quarterly basis year-round, and the college has received a grant through the Ohio Learning Network to expand this program to other locations.
• NC State has also set a target to increase the number of developmental students served in the tutoring center. In 2007-2008, the baseline year, 6 percent of developmental students participated. In 2010-2011, the center served 18 percent of the student group. (Both figures represent duplicated headcount.)

Institutional Policy

• NC State is considering a mandatory referral to Solutions for students under a certain COMPASS math threshold; a similar policy is already in place for low reading scores. The college has also recently eliminated late registration and plans to add a computer literacy assessment for entering students.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• NC State’s Assessment/Placement and Case Management Advising work groups are engaged in work that has the potential to affect every developmental student on the campus. The college’s pre-registration process now more effectively prepares potential students for success by breaking out advising sessions rather than conducting placement testing, results debrief, advising, and registration in one visit. While all developmental students had long been required to meet quarterly with an advisor, the switch to a case management process allows for more effective service.

What’s Up With DEI: Eastern Gateway Community College

In July and August, we’re sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. We’re making our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. Yesterday, we introduced Ohio’s state policy work; now it’s time to learn a bit more about Eastern Gateway Community College in Steubenville, Ohio.

Eastern Gateway Community College (EGCC) serves students in Columbiana, Jefferson, Mahoning, and Trumbull Counties in Ohio. We’ve selected some highlights from their last year of DEI work in three main categories: scaling, institutional policy change, and academic and supportive service innovations.

Scaling

• EGCC has implemented their redesigned developmental math curriculum in all sections at the college’s main campus. After the first semester of implementation (fall 2010), students in the lowest level of developmental math had higher completion rates, pass rates, and grades.
• The redesigned developmental language courses will be implemented in all course sections on the main campus in fall 2011.
• EGCC’s service area is expanding from one to four counties. The college intends to implement the redesigned courses at satellite campuses.

Institutional Policy

• With the expansion of EGCC’s service area, a new board of trustees was appointed. The board has elevated student success as a strategic focus, due in part to the Ohio Board of Regents’ Success Points, outlined in the University System of Ohio community college system strategic plan. DEI interventions at EGCC directly support the plan.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• Under the guidance of Rose Asera, DEI technical assistance provider, EGCC has launched a faculty inquiry group (FIG). Faculty are investigating interventions that could improve student attendance. The FIG conducted student and faculty interviews and data analysis regarding attendance in the redesigned developmental education math courses. In the fall, the FIG group will reconvene to build an action plan based on the analysis.

What’s Up With DEI: Cuyahoga Community College

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. We’re making our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. Earlier today, we introduced Ohio’s state policy work; now it’s time to learn a bit more about Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, OH.

Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) serves more than 55,000 students in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. We’ve selected some highlights from their last year of DEI work in three main categories: scaling, institutional policy change, and academic and supportive service innovations.

Scaling

• Tri-C has exceeded its goal for increasing the number of students in a course pairing a developmental math course (Algebra I) with a math success course. Of the students who participated from fall 2006 through fall 2010, 63 percent successfully completed their Algebra I course in the semester in which they took the paired course, compared to a 60 percent success rate for students in matched comparison groups. The college will continue to gradually increase the number of sections offered; they are conducting analyses to determine which students benefit most from this approach.
• Tri-C has exceeded its goal for increasing the number of students enrolled in supplemental instruction (SI) sections; the college increased the number of SI sections from 10 in the first year to 35 in the second year. The college has created a very strong faculty and student development program for SI and they are implementing scheduling and marketing changes in response to student feedback.

Institutional Policy

• The college made a critical policy decision to eliminate late registration, effective fall 2011. The new registration policy will facilitate Tri-C’s ability to enforce the orientation attendance policy. College-wide data show that students who entered in fall 2010 and participated in an on-campus orientation were retained in spring 2011 at a rate of 15 percentage points higher than those who did not participate. 

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• Faculty and staff involved with the SI program created a course for SI student leaders, designed to provide ongoing support and training for the leaders. The new leader course was taught for the first time on all three campuses in spring 2011.
• After two years of emphasis on cooperative learning training for faculty, a team of 11 Tri-C faculty will be certified as “in-house” trainers. The team of certified faculty trainers will design a cooperative learning training for the third year of the grant.  In addition, faculty who have already been trained are pairing up to observe each other’s classes and provide feedback. The faculty members will receive a small stipend to participate.

What’s Up with DEI: Ohio

During July and August, we’re sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. We’re making our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. This week, we’re focusing on Ohio, the Buckeye State!

The Ohio Board of Regents serves as the state team lead for Ohio’s ATD/DEI state policy work. Five of the state’s 23 community colleges participate in DEI: Cuyahoga, Eastern Gateway, North Central State, Sinclair, and Zane State. In the last year, Ohio has moved forward on all three DEI State Policy Framework levers:

Data-Driven Improvement

• One Board of Regents effort will identify levels of developmental education classes offered at all 23 community colleges; this information will be added to the Higher Education Information system to determine outcomes for students who enter developmental education at various levels. Such analysis will enable them to identify what type of innovations work with particular subsets of students.
• The Board of Regents has produced college-level reports of outcome data and convened meetings with Institutional Research and other college staff to explain the reports. These meetings predated a series of regional data workshops in which the five DEI colleges facilitated meetings with community colleges in their region. 
• The Board of Regents will also fund a second study aimed at compiling results of research on effective developmental interventions that have been implemented by Ohio’s DEI colleges and other Ohio community colleges and disseminating that information throughout the state.

Investment in Innovation

• Twenty-two of Ohio’s 23 community colleges and their local ABLE program partners are participating in a pilot program to identify the practices and procedures most likely to lead to stable college-ABLE agreements. This alignment project is ultimately aimed at increasing student postsecondary success and to inform the Board of Regents as it develops recommendations for determining when a student is not yet ready to be enrolled in any college course, including developmental education. This pilot also will provide data to satisfy a commitment made to the Ohio legislature to better align the state’s ABE, adult workforce, and community college systems.

Policy Supports

• The Board of Regents has completed the first phase of a survey of Ohio community college assessment and placement practices. The second phase will dig deeper into some of the trends reported by colleges related to when placement tests are administered, how much information is provided to students about the test, and what type of test preparation is offered or suggested.  Results of this study will inform recommendations for appropriate testing and placement procedures.
• The state of Ohio has implemented a performance funding system based on these Success Points. Under this system, the community college funding formula will distribute 95 percent based on traditional enrollment calculations, and 5 percent based on success points. The percentage based on success points will increase, with 7.5 percent for next fiscal year and 10 percent the following.

For more details on DEI state policy accomplishments, check out Jobs For the Future’s latest DEI publication Driving Innovation: How Six States Are Organizing to Improve Outcomes in Developmental Education Outcomes.