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.