State Policy Update

Our colleagues at Jobs for the Future have been compiling newsletters, writing reports, and posting blogs, all about developmental education, state policy, and every good thing. We wanted to be sure that you had the latest links to all this great material:

• The March 2012 edition of Achieving Success is available here. Achieving Success is the state policy newsletter of Achieving the Dream and the Developmental Education Initiative, with features on all three elements of the DEI state policy framework. In data driven improvement, you'll find a synopsis of a recent convening on faculty engagement; in investment in innovation, there's a conversation with Shanna Smith Jaggers from CCRC discussing state policy implications of her recent work on the opposing forces that shape developmental education (she blogged about it here); and finally, in policy supports, you'll find viewpoints about placement polices from both SMARTER Balanced and PARCC common core assessment consortia.

•  JFF has also has released a new set of tools to help states design performance-based funding systems. You can download Tying Funding to Community College Outcomes: Models, Tools, and Recommendations for States here.

• Rachel Pleasants just completed a three-part series on the JFF blog about scaling up. The three posts, planning for scale, managing change, and ensuring that good programs make a strong impact, draw from a session at the recent ATD/DEI State Policy Meeting.

Guest Post: Coordinating State Policy for Completion

Today’s post comes from Michael Collins, associate vice president of postsecondary state policy at Jobs for the Future. JFF leads DEI’s state policy initiative by supporting policy teams in CT, FL, NC, OH, TX, and VA, who are implementing the three-pronged Developmental Education Initiative State Policy strategy. The first of Michael’s three-part series showed how collecting the right data can inform state policy to accelerate dev ed innovation across a system. Part two detailed how states are investing resources in that innovation. The final installment, below, makes the case for a continuous improvement cycle focused on strengthening policy supports.

Only twenty-five out of one hundred students who take developmental education ever earn an associate’s or bachelor’s degree, a fact that is unlikely to change without more strategic use of state policy. Many community colleges are working to improve completion rates, but successful innovation typically happens in isolation. The lack of coordinated effort reflects that local, state, and national infrastructure for systemic improvement is not up to the challenge of graduating academically underprepared students. This is why the third component of the Developmental Education Initiative State Policy Strategy is policy supports.

Policy supports, admittedly, is a “catch all” term. In the Developmental Education Initiative, we broadly define this area of work as state-level policies that establish the necessary conditions for community colleges to redesign their approach to serving academically underprepared students. Focusing on policy supports can do three specific things to dramatically increase completion rates for developmental education students:

• Facilitate the identification and removal of barriers to innovation
• Secure new policies that make it easier to implement new models
• Establish incentives to serve students that are academically underprepared

Remove policy barriers
Community college completion rates can be improved by a coordinated effort to identify policy barriers to developmental education innovation. The North Carolina Community College System, for example, implemented a listening tour of the system’s 58 colleges to identify policy barriers to innovation. Interestingly, it turns out that state policies did not constrain innovation as much as the colleges thought. Often, policy barriers that colleges thought were state-level were actually college-level policies or rules. Being clear on perceived and real barriers to innovation is critical to improving completion.

Secure new policies
Sometimes new policies can clear the path to innovation. In Texas, for instance, until recently, community colleges were required to provide developmental education through semester-length courses. This requirement presented a barrier to colleges that wanted to implement interventions that were not course-based, such as open-entry/open-exit models, advising, or tutoring. New legislation changes that. A bill was passed that allows community colleges to submit non-course-based developmental education interventions for funding, allowing the colleges to design more nimble and targeted interventions.

Establish Incentives
Incentives can keep community colleges focused on serving students who are academically underprepared. Momentum points-type models, such as the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges’ Student Achievement Initiative, provide financial rewards to colleges that successfully move students to and through key milestones, including basic skills and developmental education. These performance-incentive models are worth watching. Preliminary results suggest that the process and consensus on desired outcomes is as important—maybe even more important—than the money.

Continuous Improvement
Ultimately, policy supports are about continuous improvement. Policy supports, properly leveraged, can assist colleges’ efforts to design newer, faster, and better ways to ensure that developmental education students get the support they need to earn credentials and degrees that provide family-supporting wages, and not only survive in today’s economy, but thrive.
 

Michael Collins is associate vice president of postsecondary state policy at Jobs for the Future.

Guest Post: Ohio’s Developmental Education Policy Review

This Statewise post comes from Ronald Abrams, president of the Ohio Association of Community Colleges. In this guest post, Ron describes how a task force conducted a comprehensive developmental education policy review at Ohio’s 23 community colleges and how their recommendations will help the colleges respond to a new performance-based funding system.

Per the request of Ohio’s 23 community college presidents, the Ohio Association of Community Colleges (OACC) organized a task force to review institutional policies related to developmental education. The presidents’ request was necessitated by Ohio’s Success Points performance funding model, implemented in fiscal year 2010.

The main focus of the Success Points model is student progression and success (i.e., completion of coursework and moving through appropriate pathways). Community colleges often work with populations that are unprepared or underprepared for college work, which has lead to increased enrollment in developmental education coursework. The Success Points mirror this increase by assigning a higher point value to developmental education completion and transition to college-level coursework.

The OACC Developmental Education Policy Review Task Force, composed of community college administrators, faculty, and staff began working on recommendations about institutional developmental education policies in January 2011 and completed their work in June 2011. Their recommendations were submitted to the Ohio community college presidents for initial review and comment. The final document, Developmental Education Policy Recommendations, focuses on institutional policies that may increase success for students progressing through developmental education coursework and also offers recommendations for state-level consideration (i.e., developing state-wide assessment standards, cut scores, etc.). 

The Developmental Education Policy Recommendations addresses the following institutional policies:

• Introductory information for placement testing/assessment
• Mandatory entry assessment
• Mandatory Orientation
• Mandatory developmental education course placement & continuous enrollment
• Require that developmental education coursework take place first
• No late registration for developmental education (also provide “flexible start” developmental education)—this policy may vary from campus to campus, but it ensures students are present for the first class meeting
• Required math & English sequences
• Implement interventions for repeated failure

The Developmental Education Policy Recommendations also addresses the following state-level policies:

• Ohio should become an ACT state
• The Ohio Board of Regents (OBR) should regularly review cut scores for college-level placement (“College-level” includes: transfer, certificates, and degrees)
• Define ABLE (Adult Basic and Literacy Education) referral & cut scores and determine connection to the college
• Define minimum standard of developmental education competency
• Allow for alternative math curriculum & instruction

You can download the complete Developmental Education Policy Recommendations document from the OACC website here.