You Can't Handle the Links

• College strategic plans for increasing student success are by nature long-term efforts, so concrete measures of progress often take years to appear. What do you do when your work to “move the needle” is slow going, or when initiative fatigue sets in at your institution? According to Inside Higher Ed, Monroe Community College has “started a series of modest but tangible 100-day projects to improve the college.” These projects are intended as small steps toward larger goals, but they also foster broad engagement and keep motivation high. Their first project is to “streamline the application and enrollment process so that prospective students have to create one password instead of three.” As blogger Dean Dad points out, this idea requires widespread institutional buy-in. If people don’t take it seriously, it won’t work. Wondering how to get that buy-in? Nick Bekas of Valencia Colleges offers his advice on building alliances in an Accelerating Achievement post earlier this year. 
• A substantial portion of our nation’s workforce is unemployed or underemployed, but many companies can’t find the workers they need to fill high-skill jobs. Why are we struggling to train workers for existing positions when so many are in need of work? Maureen Conway of the Aspen Institute says that workforce training and education programs don’t do enough to address the real-world challenges adult students face. She sees a need for increased funding and budgetary flexibility for integrated student support services. Check out Colin Austin’s guest post on an approach that weaves together education and training, income supports, and financial services. Another reason that we can’t fill those open positions? It isn’t readily apparent to students or colleges what employers are looking for. Jobs for the Future’s Credentials that Work initiative uses real-time labor market information to help students choose credentials that will get them jobs, and to help institutions craft programs with local labor market value.  
• Last week in The Chronicle of Higher Ed, developmental English professor Brian Hall of Cuyahoga Community College (a DEI Institution) shared some insight into “What Really Matters to Working Students.” Frustrated by students’ seemingly constant absence and inattention, Hall asked one of his developmental English classes to explain why so few students are successful. The biggest reason his students gave: the difficulty of balancing academics with life. Between work schedules and family responsibilities, many students feel that their motivation to do well in class is eclipsed by unforeseen hurdles. While developmental educators can’t eliminate these hurdles (see the previous bullet for what colleges can do), Hall and his students recommend ways professors can keep students on track, and caution against behavior that could knock them off course permanently. They propose that professors should make expectations and rules apparent from the start, treat students with the respect they require in return, make class work relevant and engaging, and show students that it is ok to make mistakes if you learn from them. 
• The College Board has released a new “web based tool that provides quick and easy access to national, state and initiative-level data that describe the progress and success of community college students.” The Completion Arch establishes indicators for five areas: enrollment, developmental education placement, progress, transfer and completion, and workforce preparation and employment outcomes. You can filter the indicators by data source, state, and student characteristics. The site is easy to navigate, so check it out for yourself! 
• The Hartford Courant ran an op-ed from the Community College Research Center at Columbia University last week on Connecticut’s recent developmental education legislation. Tom Bailey, Katherine Hughes, and Shana Smith Jaggers expressed their concerns over the potential negative impact that the legislation could have on students in need of significant skill development before they are ready for college-level coursework. They also noted their concerns about buy-in from college faculty and staff: “A policy that gives community college practitioners flexibility and support to try out new models — and that includes accountability measures to accelerate real change — would make them far more likely to embrace reforms on an institutional and state level.”

This Week in Links: Equity, Policy, Analytics, and Peeps!

• Sara Goldrick-Rab posted this week about the assault on community colleges (and, by extension, on equity): “That's right—students are showing up at ‘open door’ colleges and being effectively turned away.  Welcome to the ‘new normal.’”
• Getting Past Go posted a video on Tuesday of Katie Hern’s presentation to the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO). Katie, previously featured on Accelerating Achievement and director of the California Acceleration Project, gives a five-point policy agenda:

1. Set a statewide policy directive that limits the amount of time students spend in remediation
2. Incentivize colleges to develop accelerated pathways in reading/writing, ESL, and math
3. Fund professional development to train faculty to develop and teach in new accelerated models
4. Maintain a commitment to access while increasing completion – we need to cut the lower levels from our remedial sequences, not the students unlucky enough to be placed there
5.  Reject solutions focusing on the need for more and better placement testing, including “diagnostic testing.”

• The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning is “designing a system that will incorporate institutional records going back to 2008 on the longitudinal performance of cohorts of students designated for developmental mathematics at each of the 30 colleges participating in [their] community college mathematics pathways initiative. These data constitute a baseline for understanding institutional performance over time, for establishing college-by-college improvement targets, and for exploring the antecedents and conditions of performance going forward.” They are also “prototyping continuous data feed reports to faculty on their classroom context and individual student progress.” Pretty cool stuff.
• Remember last year, when we were inspired by the Washington Post’s Peeps Diorama Contest to use peeps to demonstrate key developmental education reforms, like contextualization and a strong peer support network? Sadly, we don’t have any new dev ed peep-oramas this year. But be sure to check out the winners of this year’s Washington Post Peeps Diorama contest.

SuccessNC

Last week, the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) was featured in the Atlantic Cities series “The Next Metro Economy.” Bruce Katz of Brookings Institution and Judith Rodin, of the Rockefeller Foundation, lifted up ten innovative efforts to shape the post(?)-recession economy, among them was the NCCCS initiative SuccessNC.

SuccessNC “is working with all 58 community colleges in the state to strengthen the college and career pathways available to North Carolina students, with the ultimate goal of doubling the number of students completing career credentials by 2020.” Katz and Rodin applaud NCCCS efforts to increase collaboration across the system, pointing to the system-wide listening tour conducted from February to October of 2010. (You can read a bit about how the tour fit into a broader state policy strategy in this Accelerating Achievement post.)

Leaders of the tour collected best practices from colleges as they went; those best practices are now housed in a searchable, online innovations database. You can search by college, by category (access, quality, success) or issue (from accreditation to developmental education to human resources and professional development.) NCCCS will continue to update the database with new promising practices from across the system.

We add our applause for NCCCS! It’s great to see DEI states receiving well-deserved national recognition for their efforts to increase student completion. What’s happening in your state that is worthy of celebration? We’d love to hear about it!

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: The Michigan Center for Student Success--Accelerating Innovation

Today, it’s all about state policy connections. Chris Baldwin, executive director of the Michigan Center for Student Success, describes how statewide approaches can work—even in decentralized systems.

Mounting evidence leaves little doubt that a postsecondary credential will be a prerequisite for a majority of jobs in the future. Policymakers, experts, and foundations across the country are responding with calls to dramatically increase educational attainment. Michigan is not immune from these pressures and community colleges across the state have responded by intensifying efforts to improve student outcomes through initiatives like Achieving the Dream. The challenge, given the decentralized nature of higher education in Michigan, has been that college innovations often occur in isolation leaving each college to re-invent the wheel with limited or no support.

To address this disconnect and provide greater opportunities for colleges to collaborate, the Michigan Community College Association established the Center for Student Success  through a generous grant from the Kresge Foundation. This Center provides state-level support to Michigan’s 28 community colleges by serving as a hub connecting leaders, administrators, faculty, and staff in their emerging and ongoing efforts to improve student outcomes. By deliberately linking practice, research, and policy the Center will help to shorten the time it takes colleges to implement practices that work. Center activities are guided by four overarching goals:

1. To enhance existing and establish new student success communities of practice through the regular exchange of information at convenings and professional development opportunities
2. To promote innovation and continuous improvement through the appropriate collection and use of data and performance metrics
3. To develop a sustained student-success research agenda based on the needs of Michigan community colleges and key issues correlated with improved student outcomes
4. To identify areas where collective, state-level policy action is warranted to enhance collaborative college efforts to innovate toward improved student outcomes

The Michigan Center for Student Success is an emerging model for other states to consider. By connecting college practitioners around effective practices, supporting colleges’ efforts to share data with key faculty and staff, establishing a robust statewide student success research agenda, and identifying crucial issues to advance as a student success policy agenda, this new Center provides critical state-level capacity to support colleges efforts to move the needle on student outcomes.

Chris Baldwin is executive director of the Michigan Center for Student Success (cbaldwin@mcca.org)

New JFF publication on Virginia Dev Ed Redesign

Want to see a DEI state policy team in action? Yesterday, Jobs for the Future released a new publication detailing the Virginia Community College System’s developmental education redesign. From the JFF release:

Innovation at Scale—written by Rose Asera for Jobs for the Future—describes Virginia’s process of redesigning developmental education to increase college readiness and student success across the state’s 23 community colleges and 40 campuses. Innovation at Scale was released today to the Chancellor of the Virginia Community College System's Advisory Council of Presidents.

You can download the report here.

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.

Guest Post: There's No "I" in Team

We’ve featured the nuts and bolts of the DEI state policy work on Accelerating Achievement before. In the six DEI states, these nuts and bolts are assembled by state policy teams, with expert support from Jobs for the Future. Today’s post from Susan Wood, vice chancellor, academic services and research in the Virginia Community College System, describes how Virginia has leveraged the state policy team structure to advance their DEI work. You can read more about Virginia’s DEI efforts in this post.

Hello from Virginia’s DEI State Policy Team! Virginia’s team includes core members who have participated since the beginning of DEI and other members who have moved on and off of the team to support grant efforts. In light of Virginia’s centralized governance structure for their 23 community colleges, all but one of the initial core team members were from the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) office. The non-VCCS member is the statewide K-12 instructional leader for the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE). Core members are Susan Wood, Donna Jovanovich, Jennifer Allman, Dan Lewis, Linda Wallinger (VDOE), and Gretchen Schmidt (formerly with VCCS, now with JFF). Core membership reflects expertise in the areas of policy, academics, student services, data/research, assessment, and connections with K-12.

Semiannual state policy meetings convened by JFF provide a strategic opportunity to add critical partners to the team. These partners, selected to align with the current focus of Virginia’s work, have included the executive vice president at our largest college (chair of the Developmental Education Task Force) and two faculty members (chairs of the faculty Curriculum Teams developing student learning outcomes for new courses). Bringing critical partners continues a practice begun in our Achieving the Dream efforts where Virginia’s secretary of education and the vice-chair of the State Board for Community Colleges (member of the VCCS Strategic Planning Task Force) participated in state policy meetings.

The team meets regularly to coordinate the launch of a system-wide developmental education redesign. This includes staffing the Developmental Education Task Force (whose recommendations determined the direction for overall redesign) and the Developmental Mathematics and English Redesign Teams. Recommendations are found in The Turning Point, The Critical Point, and The Focal Point (forthcoming). The VDOE representative’s role was critical as VDOE, collaborating with VCCS and Virginia’s State Council for Higher Education, led the College and Career Readiness Initiative supported by the Southern Regional Education Board through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. VDOE mathematics and English coordinators participated fully on redesign teams as a result of VDOE’s core team participation.

The state policy team structure solidifies and reaffirms Virginia’s developmental education redesign direction and purpose. State policy meetings provide a venue where objective analysis and essential team self-reflection occur, where the work of other state teams infuses our thinking, and where needed mid-course corrections can surface. Bringing the temporary members “into the fold” serves well to broaden the conversation about our DEI progress by adding a direct link to our colleges. In Virginia, the state policy team is an essential and effective component of work that has facilitated our progress thus far. Questions?  Contact Susan Wood, vice chancellor, academic services and research, at swood@vccs.edu.

What’s Up with DEI: Virginia

For the past month and a half, we’ve been sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. We’ve made our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. This week, we’re finishing the series with Virginia, the Old Dominion State.

The Virginia Community College System (VCCS) serves as the state team lead for Virginia’s ATD/DEI state policy work. Two of the state’s 23 community colleges participate in DEI, Danville and Patrick Henry. Three others were Round 1 ATD colleges (Mountain Empire, Paul D. Camp, and Tidewater) and Northern Virginia became an ATD institution in 2007. In the last year, Virginia has moved forward on all three DEI State Policy Framework levers:

Data-Driven Improvement

• In August 2010, the VCCS college presidents accepted the report and the recommendations from the developmental math redesign team, The Critical Point. VCCS also published its first annual Developmental Education Annual Report in February 2011.

Investment in Innovation

• VCCS has established a campus implementation team comprised of faculty from all 23 VCCS campuses, to work on the implementation of the new developmental math modules. This group will meet regularly in the coming year to address issues related to learning resources, scheduling, teaching load, delivery, and other topics that arise in the process of implementation.
• VCCS has designed two developmental education professional development opportunities:
• Developmental Education Symposium: An annual event held as a pre-conference to the system-wide professional development conference. This year, 175 developmental education faculty came together for a day-long working meeting.
• Developmental Education Institute: This event was held in June in partnership with the National Center for Developmental Education. The one-week summer institute for developmental education faculty is modeled after the nationally recognized Kellogg Institute.

Policy Supports

• In September 2010, the chancellor convened the Developmental English Redesign Team to examine the existing structure of developmental reading and writing in the VCCS and to make recommendations on how the model can be changed to increase student success. This is the same process that was undertaken for the developmental math redesign. The charge of the redesign team was to review policies and practices and make recommendations on what steps the system should take to redesign developmental reading and writing to improve student success and implement more streamlined and efficient ways of delivery. The report and recommendations were unanimously accepted by the college presidents at their April 2011 meeting and were endorsed by the State Board at their May meeting. The report was published in June 2011.

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.

What’s Up with DEI: Ohio

During July and August, we’re sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. 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 Ohio, the Buckeye State!

The Ohio Board of Regents serves as the state team lead for Ohio’s ATD/DEI state policy work. Five of the state’s 23 community colleges participate in DEI: Cuyahoga, Eastern Gateway, North Central State, Sinclair, and Zane State. In the last year, Ohio has moved forward on all three DEI State Policy Framework levers:

Data-Driven Improvement

• One Board of Regents effort will identify levels of developmental education classes offered at all 23 community colleges; this information will be added to the Higher Education Information system to determine outcomes for students who enter developmental education at various levels. Such analysis will enable them to identify what type of innovations work with particular subsets of students.
• The Board of Regents has produced college-level reports of outcome data and convened meetings with Institutional Research and other college staff to explain the reports. These meetings predated a series of regional data workshops in which the five DEI colleges facilitated meetings with community colleges in their region. 
• The Board of Regents will also fund a second study aimed at compiling results of research on effective developmental interventions that have been implemented by Ohio’s DEI colleges and other Ohio community colleges and disseminating that information throughout the state.

Investment in Innovation

• Twenty-two of Ohio’s 23 community colleges and their local ABLE program partners are participating in a pilot program to identify the practices and procedures most likely to lead to stable college-ABLE agreements. This alignment project is ultimately aimed at increasing student postsecondary success and to inform the Board of Regents as it develops recommendations for determining when a student is not yet ready to be enrolled in any college course, including developmental education. This pilot also will provide data to satisfy a commitment made to the Ohio legislature to better align the state’s ABE, adult workforce, and community college systems.

Policy Supports

• The Board of Regents has completed the first phase of a survey of Ohio community college assessment and placement practices. The second phase will dig deeper into some of the trends reported by colleges related to when placement tests are administered, how much information is provided to students about the test, and what type of test preparation is offered or suggested.  Results of this study will inform recommendations for appropriate testing and placement procedures.
• The state of Ohio has implemented a performance funding system based on these Success Points. Under this system, the community college funding formula will distribute 95 percent based on traditional enrollment calculations, and 5 percent based on success points. The percentage based on success points will increase, with 7.5 percent for next fiscal year and 10 percent the following.

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.

Only in Miami

It may be hot hot hot here (and everywhere else), but cooler heads are certainly prevailing at the 2011 ATD-DEI Summer State Policy meeting. Led by Jobs for the Future, representatives from ATD & DEI states have gathered for a day and half of learning, a little commiseration (it IS a lousy economy), and a lot of thoughtful planning for the year to come. The discussions are organized according to the DEI State Policy Framework, so we're diving into data-driven improvement, investment in innovation, and policy supports.

Yesterday began with state-to-state sharing; teams covered current budget situations (context is important), and then reported on recent legislative action, the most important progress on developmental education and college completion policy; the groups also discussed where they were headed and what they hoped to achieve in 2012. While there were many familiar frustrations regarding budget constraints, states reported movement on policy priorities and picked up some good ideas from their colleagues about other ways to approach the work.

The remainder of the day was chock full of working sessions on performance funding, ABE and dev ed alignment (see Bruce Vandal's take on the session here), and closer looks at how some states are identifying and responding to policy barriers and state mandates. Sara Goldrick-Rab presented some thought-provoking research on cost-effectiveness studies and Shanna Smith Jaggers assessed the evidence of recent dev ed research. We also got updates on the developmental ed redesigns in Virginia and North Carolina, learned more about new centers for student success in Michigan and Arkansas  and delved a little deeper into MDRC's recent dev ed research literature review. Scott Jaschik from Inside Higher Ed was also here, with some frank advice on how to tell the community college story.

Today is all about connecting the ATD-DEI work with other national completion initiatives, like Complete to Compete, Accelerating Opportunity, Getting Past Go, and Complete College America. We'll be digging into data, too, considering how to organize and present information to make clear, compelling arguments for all sorts of constituents. And that's all before lunch!

Check back in the next week or two for additional recap. Jobs for the Future packs a meeting with too much good info for one blog post!


Abby Parcell is a Program Manager at MDC.

What’s Up with DEI: North Carolina

During July and August, we’re sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. 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 North Carolina, the Tar Heel State.

The North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) serves as the state team lead for North Carolina’s ATD/DEI state policy work. One of the state’s 58 community colleges participates in DEI, Guilford Technical Community College. Five others are ATD colleges (Asheville-Buncombe Tech, Central Piedmont, Davidson County, Durham Tech, and Martin). In the last year, North Carolina has moved forward on all three DEI State Policy Framework levers:

Data-Driven Improvement

• NCCCS has created a Performance Measures Committee comprised of leaders from across the system. This committee will develop recommendations for new student success measures. They began by investigating national accountability frameworks from the National Governors Association, Complete College America, and the American Association of Community Colleges.
• NCCCS completed a statewide listening tour of each of the 58 North Carolina community colleges. Colleges identified gaps in developmental education offerings and barriers.

Investment in Innovation

• NCCCS is developing a statewide redesign of developmental math curricula and delivery. In October 2010, it approved design principles to steer developmental math redesign, as well as a process to identify 18 developmental and curriculum math faculty from across the state to carry out curriculum redesign. It has now formed a DEI Math Task Force comprised of faculty and administrators from across the state. The new math modules will be implemented in 2012; the courses will be paired with a custom diagnostic test (also in development) and revised placement policies. The eight modules are designed so they can be taken in a year, in contrast to the current three-semester sequence.

Policy Supports

• To support the developmental math redesign, a group of administrators is designing processes to address necessary changes in administration, including registration, tuition, data management systems, and financial aid disbursement practices.
• NCCCS has begun a validation study of Accuplacer and COMPASS, two placement exams used within the system. They are conducting a study of other possible placement measures.

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.

Guest Post: Florida Remakes Placement Test

Today’s guest post comes from John Hughes, associate vice chancellor for evaluation at the Division of Florida Colleges. John is here to tell us about Florida’s new placement mechanism, the Postsecondary Education Readiness Test.

The Florida College System (FCS) is comprised of 28 colleges with 887,000 students enrolled in 2009-10. More than half of the colleges offer baccalaureate programs, though upper division enrollments represent only about 1 percent of the total. This reflects the system’s historic and continuing mission to serve lower division or two-year students. As part of that mission, Florida has long had well-established readiness testing and placement policies. All students are required to take a common placement test for reading, writing, and math, and are required to enroll in developmental education if they do not meet the minimum cut scores. For years Florida used the Accuplacer as the primary placement tool.

In 2008, working with the assistance of Achieve’s American Diploma Project, Florida began working toward a common definition of college readiness that would include specific expectations of what students need to know and be able to do in order to succeed in their first college-level English and math classes. During the same time period, the state’s contract for the Accuplacer expired and had to be re-bid. The Division of Florida Colleges recognized the opportunity and released an invitation to negotiate (ITN) for a test that would reflect the definition of college readiness already under development.

The requirements and expectations for the new test were established by English and math faculty. Statute and rule require a test that covers three subjects – reading, writing, and math. Faculty determined the content by identifying the competencies necessary to succeed in college credit courses and also developing example questions. The competencies were then used to create a test blueprint that identifies how many questions each student will be asked for each competency. Faculty approved the blueprint as well as the alignment of each item to the competencies and the content of every test item. Thus, Florida college faculty guided and shaped the entire test development process.

In October 2010, the Florida Department of Education’s Division of Florida Colleges (division) and McCann Associates rolled out the Florida Postsecondary Education Readiness Test (PERT). The test went live with interim cut-scores designed to replicate the placement rates observed with the Accuplacer. Once students have been placed using the PERT and the state has received their course outcomes, the division and McCann will conduct a detailed analysis to determine if the cut-scores are appropriate or need to be revised.

With a new placement test now in use, Florida is moving ahead with the development of diagnostic tests. Once again faculty members were asked to identify the competencies for the tests. In this case the competencies focused on the skills necessary to move into college credit courses. The diagnostic exams will be given to students who place into either the upper or lower level developmental courses. Data from the exams can be used to guide instruction or even to direct students into a modularized curriculum that focuses on just those areas in which a student is deficient. The lower level diagnostic tests are schedule to go live in August, 2011.

In addition to its use for entering college students, in 2011-12 the PERT will be used to assess the readiness of all 11th grade students whose high school assessments indicate they are at risk of not being college ready. Those who do not meet the cut-scores will be given remediation in 12th grade. As many as 150,000 Florida 11th graders may be eligible for readiness testing.


John Hughes is associate vice chancellor for evaluation at the Division of Florida Colleges.

What’s Up with DEI: Florida

During July and August, we’re sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. 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 Florida, the Sunshine State!

The Division of Florida Colleges serves as the state team lead for Florida’s ATD/DEI state policy work. One of the state’s 28 community colleges participates in DEI (Valencia); three others are ATD colleges (Broward, Hillsborough, and Tallahassee). The division has made great efforts to leverage ATD/DEI data collection, learning, and progress across all of the colleges, including six additional colleges that received grants from the division to pursue developmental education redesign (Florida State College at Jacksonville, Miami Dade College, North Florida Community College, Santa Fe College, St. Johns River State College, and St. Petersburg College). In the last year, Florida has moved forward on all three DEI State Policy Framework levers:

Data-Driven Improvement

• The Division of Florida Colleges is developing a student success dashboard, with initial rollout planned for this summer. The goal of the dashboard is to make accountability and outcome data more visible and accessible to state and local decision makers. The dashboard will provide access to a series of dynamic reports on student performance and outcomes; each entering cohort of students (FTIC and Transfer) will be tracked for six years using the ATD intermediate benchmarks and final outcomes. 

Investment in Innovation

• The division identified six non-DEI colleges to redesign and implement pilot models for developmental education course delivery using a modularized format and awarded $10,000 grants. The college redesign teams revised and finalized their implementation plans with consultation and technical assistance from the division throughout the 2010 summer and fall terms. All six colleges began implementation of their modularized courses in January 2011.

Policy Supports

• The Florida Postsecondary Education Readiness Test (P.E.R.T.) was released in October 2010.   Twenty-six of Florida’s 28 colleges have implemented the P.E.R.T.  There also will be two diagnostic assessments for each discipline, one for each upper-level and one for each lower-level developmental education course, with the first diagnostic test available in August. The division held a developmental education faculty workshop in October 2010 to identify developmental education competencies that will inform the development of these diagnostics. Colleges will begin offering the new courses with the corresponding competencies and implementing the diagnostic assessments in fall 2011 or spring 2012 terms.
• The Florida Legislature amended the 2008 legislation to establish an early assessment and remediation program for high school students. This amendment requires school districts to test all 11th grade students within a specified score range on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test for college readiness. An estimated 150,000 students will be eligible for testing this coming year. Previously, this program was voluntary.

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.

What’s Up with DEI: Connecticut

Connecticut State Policy Blog Post
Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing some of DEI’s state policy and college accomplishments. We’re making our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. We’re leading off with Connecticut, the Constitution State!

The Connecticut Community College (CCC) system Chancellor’s Office serves as the state team lead for Connecticut’s ATD/DEI state policy work. Two of the state’s 12 community colleges participate in DEI (Housatonic and Norwalk), but the system has made great efforts to leverage ATD/DEI data collection, learning, and progress across all twelve institutions. In the last year, Connecticut has moved forward on all three DEI State Policy Framework levers:

Data-Driven Improvement

• A business intelligence tool is in beta testing for state-wide implementation; training is underway for a launch at all 12 Connecticut Community College system institutions.
• The system contributed data collection and analysis in a Connecticut Association for Human Services report: Developmental Education at Connecticut Community Colleges: The Key to Economic Recovery in February 2011.

Investment in Innovation

• A CCC’s Chancellor incentive funding program announced in 2010-2011 included:
• $50,000 per college devoted to developmental education initiatives
• $1.24M in incentive funding for improvements in intermediate benchmarks and developmental education outcomes
• $5,000 per college to support faculty involvement and professional development in curriculum redesign efforts.
• A professional development fund to support faculty participation at developmental education conferences to encourage utilization and dissemination of best practices throughout the system.

All 12 colleges will be invited to submit proposals for participation in the fund. 

Policy Supports

• Further support for longitudinal tracking system has been secured with an agreement between the State Department of Education and higher education units, and new legislation requiring unique identifiers on high school transcripts to facilitate data analysis on student success in college and the state’s workforce.
• The System also led a series of developmental education convenings in the last year:
• A Developmental Education Forum including the chancellor, presidents, academic deans, and deans of students.
• A Developmental Education Task Force; the task force submitted policy recommendations to the Council of Presidents in June 2011.

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.

Abby Parcell is a Program Manager at MDC.

Guest Post: You’ve Got a Friend—Supportive State Policy for Dev Ed Innovation

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 Framework. In the first of a three-part series about the framework, Michael shows how collecting the right data can inform state policy that can accelerate dev ed innovation across a system—and introduces a new JFF publication that details how states are doing just that.

There is a lot of talk about fixing developmental education these days. In most people’s mind, this looks like a teacher in a classroom who is teaching better—and thus, students are learning better. That’s not a bad thing. Better teaching is an important part of the solution. For all the energy devoted to technological innovation in instructional delivery, the classroom continues to hold its own as the most widely used venue to serve academically underprepared students. Teaching and learning are central to improving outcomes in developmental education.

State policy, on the other hand, does not come to mind when thinking about improving outcomes in developmental education. But policy can make a big difference in identifying and spreading effective teaching practices, which can contribute to deeper and more sustained learning.

Now, teaching and learning is a somewhat private enterprise between a teacher and a student—behind closed classroom doors. Smartly designed state policy can open these doors. For example, states—particularly those with community college systems—can use their data and performance measurement systems to identify institutions that consistently do the best job of accelerating students through developmental education, through math and English gatekeeper courses, and on to programs that are tied to credentials and degrees. The hypothesis is that analyzing student outcomes will lead to conversations with high performing colleges, which will lead to a better understanding about effective practices—including good teaching.

States can go further to document and disseminate effective teaching practices once identified. This might include the development and maintenance of a central repository of teaching resources or an innovators network where faculty are convened on a systematic basis to share proven-practices and serve as resources to each other. Optimally, it might be both.

State policy can go a long way to support better teaching and learning. Currently, there are few examples of states using their data and performance measurement systems in a robust way to identify and spread successful practices. The six states participating in the Developmental Education Initiative (DEI) are changing this. They are implementing a three-part change strategy featuring data-driven improvement, investment in innovation, and policy supports.

Under the first component of the strategy—data-driven improvement—the states are actively fashioning their data and performance measurement systems so that they can identify high performing colleges and begin to pinpoint effective strategies as described above. You can find out more about their progress by checking out Driving Innovation: How Six States Are Organizing to Improve Outcomes in Developmental Education here.

We’ll take up the second strategy, investment in innovation, next time! Until then…

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

We Heart Wonks: A Friday DEI State Policy Review

• Jobs for the Future just released their latest edition of Achieving Success, the state policy newsletter of Achieving the Dream and the Developmental Education Initiative, which highlights and profiles new state-level innovations, policy supports, and data-driven improvements. This issue features Florida’s new student success dashboard, Connecticut’s dev ed redesign task force, and Arkansas’ plans for developmental educator professional development. You can find it on the DEI website’s Resources page under “State Policy.”
• In other news, it was a banner week for developmental education bills in the Texas Legislature. We posted in April about the impact that the DEI state policy team in Texas was having on the content of two House bills. This week, both bills passed the Texas House and Senate. Cynthia Ferrell, director of the Texas Developmental Education Initiative state policy team, tells us, “After learning about the Community College Research Center work on the ineffectiveness of online developmental education offerings, the language in HB 1244 and SB 1564 was changed from mandating online DE 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 dev ed, establishes alternative dev ed funding structures, and promotes professional development for developmental educators.

Guest Post: Texas is Taking Developmental Education by the Horns

The theory of change for both Achieving the Dream and the Developmental Education Initiative rely on the integration of institutional change and policy change. Today’s post comes from Cynthia Ferrell, director of the Texas Developmental Education Initiative state policy team. Cynthia introduces the Texas approach to this college/state integration.  For more on Texas developmental education policy and to see some legislative action, check out Bruce Vandal’s post over at Getting Past Go. Now, let’s get ready to rodeo!

We Texans pride ourselves on doing things big. And like our famed and fearless rodeo bull riders, we have strapped ourselves, with full intentions of victory, to the back of the massive and stubborn challenge of improving developmental student success. Four brave Texas DEI colleges—Coastal Bend College, El Paso Community College, Houston Community College and South Texas College—have sparred with the beast and have found innovations that are making a dramatic impact.

These institutions, and other Texas ATD colleges like them, collaborated with the DEI state policy team to co-construct a strategic state policy plan founded on what the institutions had learned about improving developmental student success and the state policy supports needed for further improvements and scaling. The new Texas Developmental Education Initiative State Policy Strategy placed their promising innovations at the center of a statewide cycle of continuous improvement and policy planning aimed at closing student success gaps. The following graphic illustrates the four core priorities of the plan.

1. Cultivating Broad Engagement: The colleges found that getting everyone involved was an important key to developmental student success. So, this state policy priority is about getting lots of Texans involved in scaling up effective practices. Much of this work is being done through collaborations between the policy team, lead institutions, and established state associations. One exciting new development is a grass-roots initiative of enthusiastic ATD faculty who want to build a statewide network for all Texas community college developmental education faculty. These faculty leaders, with DEI state policy team support and coordination, are building face-to-face and web-based opportunities to encourage statewide scaling of developmental innovations that work.
2. Building a Statewide Culture of Evidence: Colleges are building institutional cultures of evidence and we want to do the same for the state. Texas has great statewide data on community college developmental education outcomes. This priority is dedicated to raising awareness of the state of developmental education, increasing commitments to improving developmental student outcomes, and informing policy and decision-making by sharing state data in more meaningful ways. We (the DEI team and the DEI colleges) are in the midst of planning the Texas Community College Developmental Education Data Summit for core teams from each community college.  
3. Scaling Successes: While the 26 ATD college districts and DEI colleges are busy piloting and scaling successes funded by state and national foundations, Teaxs legislators committed state funding to finding sustainable solutions to the developmental dilemma. In addition to the state formula funding of developmental courses in the last biennial budget, the state appropriated $15 million for developmental and adult basic education innovations, pilots and demonstration projects.
4. Providing Policy Supports: All of the colleges revised their institutional developmental policies to support student success. Likewise, this priority was designed to inform state-level policy and advocate for innovation funding to support colleges’ efforts. Although it is too early in the legislative session to predict the outcome, several developmental education bills and riders have been filed and are currently being debated, including legislation regarding statewide college readiness assessment and placement, statewide planning that would require offerings of technology-based developmental coursework and faculty development, success-based outcomes funding (momentum points), and non-semester length developmental education funding.

Together, the Lone Star State’s ATD and DEI colleges, and the DEI state policy team, are truly taking developmental education by the horns.

Guest Post: ATD/DEI State Policy Meeting Recap

Greetings from the Jobs for the Future ATD/DEI team! On February 8-9, 2011, we convened our state policy leaders and advocates in Indianapolis for our semi-annual ATD/DEI State Policy Meeting. During our two days together – and with an eye on student success – we applauded our recent achievements, revisited our initiative goals, and discussed how best to make progress given the current state policy environment.

As conversations with our states unfolded, we took care to recognize that the ongoing fiscal crisis and limited evidence on effective interventions pose serious challenges. We created a space in which our state policy leads could learn and share – and we worked with them to be well positioned to make smart choices over the next year and a half of work.

Highlights included:

• Engaging and spirited dialogue during our plenary sessions on data-driven improvement, investments in innovation, and policy supports – followed by concurrent breakout sessions led by guest presenters, state policy team leaders, and JFF staff.
• Presentations from higher education experts such as Kevin Dougherty and Shanna Smith Jaggars of the Community College Research Center, providing us with insight on the latest research evidence and its implications for policy.
• A rousing lunchtime keynote from Uri Treisman of The University of Texas at Austin in which he targeted faculty development, well-executed modularization, and student surveys as proactive methods for improving student completion. 
• Participation in a hands-on data exercise hosted by JFF’s Keith Brown, and Florida Department of Education’s John Hughes, spurring such questions as: How and why are some institutions more successful than others? How can we train staff and faculty to better understand and analyze data? And finally, how do we create a common language around data?
• The emergence of topics that warrant increased attention at the state and institutional levels – including new approaches to performance funding, methods of better engaging faculty, and taking the data-use conversation to the next level.

Over the next 18 months, the DEI states are poised and ready to continue making great strides. We look forward to continuing these discussions at our summer convening in Miami from July 26-27, 2011. See you there!

Katrina Reichert is a project manager at Jobs for the Future.