Guest Post: We're Getting the Band Back Together!

The Developmental Education Initiative is all about sharing good ideas and successful practices so that more states, colleges, and students can take advantage of what’s working. There are many ways to do this across a campus, a system, or the entire community college sector. One example comes from Houston Community College (HCC). Last month, HCC held a conference that brought together developmental educators and national experts to focus on accelerating progress across the state. Below, Maria Strauss, director of instructional initiatives at HCC, recaps the conference.

Houston Community College hosted our third statewide developmental education conference, “Texas takes Developmental Education by the Horns” on November 18, with almost 200 participants from 18 Texas community colleges. The focus and theme of the conference was “Accelerating Achievement” [Great name! --Eds.]. Participants were organized according to their teaching fields and areas of specialization as we listened to speakers and enjoyed guided “table talk” during a working lunch.
 
Our first speaker, Joe Cuseo addressed academic advising and first-time-in college students’ need for college knowledge. Cuseo compared colleges with hospitals to illustrate the necessity of continued commitment to developmental education: if hospitals only admitted healthy patients their success rates would be great, and if colleges only admitted college-ready students the need for developmental education would be extinct; but with over 60 percent of community college students in need of some form of remediation, we must find ways to remediate them and make them college ready.

Hunter Boylan was our second speaker; Boylan reviewed the research on the best and promising practices for developmental programs. He was a strong advocate for improving students’ knowledge of assessment tests and their consequences on placement. He recommended making refresher courses available before giving students placement tests. He also argued for the new model of reducing the number of developmental courses and combining developmental English with reading courses. He suggested that colleges develop more 5-to-8 week refresher courses, provide intensive short-term open-entry/open-exit courses, and pair college-level courses with study strategies courses focusing on content.

We also heard from Karen Graham and Linda Thompson who are the current review coordinators for the National Association for Developmental Education (NADE). They discussed the accreditation principles of NADE certification and encouraged all participating colleges at the conference to consider going through the process.

We concluded the conference with Cynthia Ferrell, the director of the Texas Developmental Education Initiative state policy team. Ferrell brought information from Austin about what is ahead for our state. For example, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is considering adopting one assessment test for the entire state to determine college placement. She also announced several leadership groups across the state that will be looking at developmental education redesign and making recommendations for state-wide strategies.

Everyone had the opportunity to interact with likeminded colleagues and share promising practices. After every presentation we had a question and answer session so participants could pose questions to the presenters. We all learned and reflected on our work with developmental students. We are already planning our fourth statewide conference for the spring of 2012!