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!

Equity and Excellence in Indy

This week is the 2011 Achieving the Dream Strategy Institute in Indianapolis. This year's conference theme is equity and excellence; both facets of that theme will be discussed at today's convening of the DEI colleges. With plenaries and discussion groups on institutionalizing innovation, designing professional development, and integrating college and state policy efforts. State policy teams will be learning together on Tuesday and Wednesday, too, on topics ranging from state data systems to ABE/dev ed integration to other national initiatives committed to the college completion agenda. We’ll be live tweeting from Indy, and we’ll post a full recap of the DEI college convening tomorrow morning. If you aren’t at the Strategy Institute, or if you can’t make it to every session on dev ed, then be sure to check the blog all week to hear what ideas and learnings ATD colleges are sharing.


Richard Hart is MDC's Communications Director.

2 X 2

According to Jeff Bradach, 2 x 2 actually equals 100. A recent article from Bradach in the Stanford Social Innovation Review investigates strategies that expand the impact of organizations well beyond what you’d expect from their size. Rather than just duplicating a program’s structure, high-impact organizations use approaches that allow them to realize their objectives in less conventional ways. Bradach identifies eight concepts that organizations can employ to increase impact without greatly increasing organization size. Here are a few examples of Bradach’s suggested approaches as they play out in DEI colleges:

• Build Networks. Valencia Community College is engaging students and faculty in new ways through learning communities and supplemental instruction. And DEI’s learning network of 15 colleges creates opportunities for idea and resource sharing, which can enhance our effectiveness.
• Develop talent. Patrick Henry Community College is providing faculty professional development focused on cooperative learning. With 95 percent of developmental faculty, both full-time and adjunct, receiving this professional development, PHCC is pollinating the college with active learning strategies. They’ve also opened the Southern Center for Active Learning Excellence to offer similar training to faculty from other institutions.
• Change the Perception of What is Possible. That’s what DEI is all about. We are proving that investing in students that need dev ed is important, and that students can successfully move on to college-level work and a degree. As more decision makers, community leaders, citizens, and potential students see the progress that DEI institutions are making, we’re hopeful that more resources and support will flow to colleges and communities, generating developmental education innovations at non-DEI schools.
• Strengthen the Sector. Remember, the 15 DEI institutions also are part of Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count. For the last five years and more, these colleges have been working at the institutional and state level to eliminate policy barriers, improve institutional research capacity, and engage leaders at every level of the college and community. Achieving the Dream’s model of continuous institutional improvement creates an environment that encourages the scaling of evidence-based strategies focused on student success.

One aim of the Developmental Education Initiative is to bring more effective programs to more students that need a jumpstart or a refresh as they tackle college. But like Bradach’s new math, we’re also interested in multiplying student success across the campus and community. The focus of scaling at the community college is to have a sustainable impact on students, faculty, and systems. We’ll be using this blog to share our continued thinking with you on what scaling means and what resources you can use to realize it.


Abby Parcell is MDC's Program Manager for the Developmental Education Initiative.

Guest Post: Levers for Change

Institutional change can be even more transformative (and sustainable) when it’s backed by supportive state policy. That’s why the Developmental Education Initiative—with leadership from Jobs for the Future (JFF)--also includes six state policy teams.They’re tackling questions like: In which policy areas should states concentrate their efforts to improve outcomes for students who test into developmental education? And how do those areas interact to accelerate change? They’re already well on their way to answering them, using the Developmental Education Initiative State Policy Framework and Strategy. 

The Developmental Education Initiative (DEI) builds on the foundation of Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count. After collaborating with DEI state leads, consulting the research literature, and receiving advice from national experts, JFF identified six priority state policy levers:

• Aligned expectations (P-16)
• Assessment and placement
• Data performance and measurement
• Developmental education innovation and redesign
• Integration of academic and student services,
• Finance

But developing consensus on policy levers is not sufficient to improve student success.  Thus, we developed the DEI State Policy Strategy, a state-level developmental education improvement strategy that incorporates the above levers into three innovation-focused action priorities:

• A Data-Driven Improvement Process that ensures the right conditions for innovation. This includes data and performance measurement activities, specifically identifying the right success measures (including intermediate measures that indicate if a student is on track for success) and protocols for systematic sharing of results as a part of state-level processes for continuous improvement.
• A State-Level Innovation Investment Strategy that helps states align and coordinate support from multiple sources to provide incentives for the development, testing, and scaling up of effective models for helping underprepared students succeed.
• Policy Supports that provide a foundation for improved outcomes for underprepared students, facilitate the implementation of effective and promising models, and encourage the spread of successful practices.

Here’s an example of how one state policy team is employing these strategy: The Connecticut Community College System (CCCS) has two DEI colleges, but has leveraged its support for improved outcomes across the other 10 community colleges in the system. CCCS secured resources to provide $50,000 seed money for innovation initiatives in all 12 of the System’s colleges. This investment in innovation, in combination with additional funding for performance, is designed to accelerate institutional innovation across the state.

When the elements of this framework are combined with support for a state-level network of institutional innovators, assisted by strong state-level technical assistance services, we believe states will accelerate the creation of solutions and pathways that improve outcomes for students who test into developmental education.

Michael Collins is a Program Director at Jobs for the Future

For more information see the DEI State Policy Framework and Strategy, available on the Resources page under "State Policy."

What's in a Name?

Ever wish you had a ready-made elevator speech for talking about developmental education? Something simple, straightforward, and conversational that anyone would understand? Talking about developmental ed can be challenging. So to help, we’ve assembled some general advice and messaging for discussing developmental education with any audience. It’s our goal to provide you with the basics for getting the word out whether you’re at a board meeting with trustees or in line at the grocery store.  (Because we really want to spread the good word everywhere, people.)

While these documents were developed with DEI colleges in mind as the users, we think they will be useful to a broader audience. The messages draw on research from our funders, Public Agenda, and some trusty communications consultants. Here’s a brief rundown of the four pieces we’ve prepared to help you meet the challenge. Future blog posts will delve into the content and utility of each:  

1. Talking Points –special messages for key audiences and four main themes: 
• The problem: Half the new jobs created in the next 10 years will require some college education. Yet right now, students who need a developmental course are much less likely to finish college than those who don’t need one. 
• The conventional one-size-fits-all approach to developmental education doesn’t work for many students. 
• Developmental education can work for students who need it. 
• It’s just a matter of offering motivated Americans at all stages of life and from every background a fair chance at a good-paying career and a better future. 
2. Dev Ed is Good for Business & the Economy—an economic appeal for propelling under-prepared students toward rewarding careers. 
3. Promising Examples from DEI Colleges—a quick look at the types of innovation that are changing students’ lives. 
4. Institutional Innovation & State Policy Change—how coordination of these two important efforts is essential to sustainable success.

You can find all of these in the Resources section of our website under “Communications.” In the coming weeks, we’ll be blogging about specific messaging problems that all of us encounter, including students’ negative perceptions of developmental education and the search for a name and definition for these courses that is both representative and accessible. This blog can be a forum to test and share new ways of talking about developmental education. Let’s get started: click on the “comments” link below and give us your most successful dev ed elevator speech.

Richard Hart is MDC's Communications Director.