A new report released this week by Complete College America (CCA) drawing on recent Community College Research Center studies and data from CCA states, is recommending major changes to developmental education programs at two- and four-year colleges to secure better outcomes—in both cost and credentials—for students. From administering assessments in high school, to using multiple diagnostics for placement, to instituting co-requisite models that place students in college-level courses with built-in support, the report highlights promising practices from across the country. The title, REMEDIATION: Higher Education’s Bridge to Nowhere, is provocative, to be sure, and the recommendations are bold—and boldness is certainly required when so few students who begin their postsecondary journey in developmental education actually complete it. However, that “bridge to nowhere” language undervalues the successes of reformers cheered in the report who are making the system work for their students—and doesn’t fully appreciate the hard work of students who are doing the best they can with the options they’ve got. We know sometimes the truth hurts, that sometimes someone has to schedule An Intervention, and sometimes feelings are going to be hurt before you can see the hard work that really has to be done. But if we’re going to burn this “bridge to nowhere,” we’re going to need some help rebuilding it. This new report has solid recommendations for the pieces of the structure, but this isn’t a “no assembly required” kind of project. Colleges and universities will need equally solid support for the execution of these new approaches.
Maybe what we’ve got is not so much a bridge to nowhere as a rickety one-lane bridge that needs to be an eight-lane superhighway (or maybe a track for a bullet train, or an easily accessible and frequently used bike path if we want to be carbon neutral). Whatever the path, it needs to lead to credentials that set students up for family-sustaining employment and career advancement, a point noted in the report, particular regarding getting students into career-tracked programs of study as soon as possible. While CCA encourages the critical commitment of state-level government in “Governors Who Get It,” and of state legislators, reform can’t be driven only from that arena. And it can’t be driven without any gas in the tank—the resources (financial and human) to implement them. We tend to agree with Nancy Zimpher, chancellor of SUNY, in Insider Higher Ed last week. Responding to legislation in Connecticut to end most remedial education in public higher education, Zimpher said, “I applaud Connecticut’s intent to abolish remediation, but this is not a legislative issue. It’s a community issue….” Mandates like the one proposed in Connecticut (which would eliminate traditional dev ed and replace it with embedded support in credit-bearing course and require college readiness bridge programs), while drawing on practices that are showing positive preliminary results, also must consider the complexity of this kind of change in a higher ed institution—especially given increasing resource constraints. Knowing what to do doesn’t mean you know how to do it, or that your current funding allocations can support it. Such reform must take into consideration the extensive professional development that will be required to ensure that new programs are delivered effectively, as well of the cost of that training. Also essential to successful implementation will be federal, state, and institutional policy changes that align funding with new models of instruction, among other structural changes. Finally, bringing faculty along in the process (or leaving them out) can have significant impact on the success of new initiatives and the students who participate. (Katie Hern of the California Acceleration Project, one of the reformers lifted up in the CCA report—and deservedly so!—wrote about the necessity of faculty engagement in reform efforts here.) Changing the delivery mechanism probably won’t be much more effective if those doing the delivery feel like they haven’t been part of the decision-making process and feel that they don’t have the support they need to be successful.
DEI colleges and states have been hard at work on many of the CCA-recommended practices over the course of the initiative, and they’ve seen good results for their students. They’ve also experienced the sometimes labored process of building relationships across previously siloed departments, of responding at the system and institutional level to state-wide changes, and of fine-tuning messaging—repeatedly—for students, faculty, and staff so everyone really understands what is at stake and how they can benefit from doing things in a new way. We commend Complete College America for making the case for a new approach and declaring their vision for the best way forward; we hope that policy makers responding to these recommendations will carefully consider an approach to implementing these bold changes that draws on experience throughout a college, and that they’ll provide the resources—human, financial, and capital—to build a bridge to college completion that is long-lasting and gets individuals, institutions and our nation where we need to go.
Maybe what we’ve got is not so much a bridge to nowhere as a rickety one-lane bridge that needs to be an eight-lane superhighway (or maybe a track for a bullet train, or an easily accessible and frequently used bike path if we want to be carbon neutral). Whatever the path, it needs to lead to credentials that set students up for family-sustaining employment and career advancement, a point noted in the report, particular regarding getting students into career-tracked programs of study as soon as possible. While CCA encourages the critical commitment of state-level government in “Governors Who Get It,” and of state legislators, reform can’t be driven only from that arena. And it can’t be driven without any gas in the tank—the resources (financial and human) to implement them. We tend to agree with Nancy Zimpher, chancellor of SUNY, in Insider Higher Ed last week. Responding to legislation in Connecticut to end most remedial education in public higher education, Zimpher said, “I applaud Connecticut’s intent to abolish remediation, but this is not a legislative issue. It’s a community issue….” Mandates like the one proposed in Connecticut (which would eliminate traditional dev ed and replace it with embedded support in credit-bearing course and require college readiness bridge programs), while drawing on practices that are showing positive preliminary results, also must consider the complexity of this kind of change in a higher ed institution—especially given increasing resource constraints. Knowing what to do doesn’t mean you know how to do it, or that your current funding allocations can support it. Such reform must take into consideration the extensive professional development that will be required to ensure that new programs are delivered effectively, as well of the cost of that training. Also essential to successful implementation will be federal, state, and institutional policy changes that align funding with new models of instruction, among other structural changes. Finally, bringing faculty along in the process (or leaving them out) can have significant impact on the success of new initiatives and the students who participate. (Katie Hern of the California Acceleration Project, one of the reformers lifted up in the CCA report—and deservedly so!—wrote about the necessity of faculty engagement in reform efforts here.) Changing the delivery mechanism probably won’t be much more effective if those doing the delivery feel like they haven’t been part of the decision-making process and feel that they don’t have the support they need to be successful.
DEI colleges and states have been hard at work on many of the CCA-recommended practices over the course of the initiative, and they’ve seen good results for their students. They’ve also experienced the sometimes labored process of building relationships across previously siloed departments, of responding at the system and institutional level to state-wide changes, and of fine-tuning messaging—repeatedly—for students, faculty, and staff so everyone really understands what is at stake and how they can benefit from doing things in a new way. We commend Complete College America for making the case for a new approach and declaring their vision for the best way forward; we hope that policy makers responding to these recommendations will carefully consider an approach to implementing these bold changes that draws on experience throughout a college, and that they’ll provide the resources—human, financial, and capital—to build a bridge to college completion that is long-lasting and gets individuals, institutions and our nation where we need to go.
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