Something's Got to Give - California can't improve college completions without rethinking developmental education at its community colleges

President Barack Obama has set a national goal that by 2020, “America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” On Oct. 5, 2010, the president and the U.S. Department of Education underscored the central role community colleges play in this effort by hosting a White House Summit on Community College.

California’s community colleges are the single largest postsecondary system in the country, serving nearly a quarter of all community college students. It is clear that this new national challenge cannot be met unless California’s community colleges ramp up their student completion rates.

In order for more students to reach that finish line of college completion, California has to get more of them to the starting gate, ready and able to do college-level work. As open-access institutions, California’s community colleges play a crucial role in that effort. They are the main source of postsecondary education for the state’s high school graduates, but particularly for first generation college goers, many of whom are low-income and students of color. California’s community colleges hold out hope for a better future for the more than 2 million individuals they enroll each year.

Because of their commitment to open access, the community colleges serve huge numbers of students who are unprepared for college-level academic studies. Local campuses have responded to this by creating a variety of developmental education programs to help students learn the basic skills they need for college success. Over time, California’s longstanding tradition of local autonomy has resulted in a myriad of approaches to this righteous but often daunting challenge, some of which are more successful than others.

Students get mixed signals about what they need to do to prepare for community college and – after they enroll – are too often left to their own devices to figure out how to get the skills they need for college success.

State and national leaders say that increasing the number of students who graduate from high school ready for college and career is essential. But to meet the goal of more college completions, California’s community colleges must also strengthen developmental education.

That is particularly true if the state remains committed to maintaining the open-access mission it has assigned to the community colleges. But colleges are expected to improve their effectiveness at educating these unprepared students at a time when budget and enrollment pressures are constraining their capacity to respond.

Continuing to tackle the problems of readiness and remediation with the same strategies will simply not work. Something’s got to give.

This report draws from a recent EdSource Study that was commissioned by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO) to provide a deeper understanding of the system’s challenges and opportunities related to developmental education. It provides some insights into how well the community colleges are currently positioned to respond to these pressures. It also details how students have moved through remedial course sequences in writing and mathematics, which students take these courses, and the extent to which their starting levels and course-taking behaviors appear to relate to their achievement of longterm academic goals.

Click Here for Complete Report and/or Free Download

– From October 2010 EdSource Reports – Researched and written by:
Mary Perry, Deputy Director of EdSource and Study Project Director,
Matthew Resin, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate, EdSource, with
research support from: Kathryn Morgan Woodward, Research
Associate, EdSource, and Quantitative analysis by: Peter Bahr, Ph.D.,
Assistant Professor, School of Education, University of Michigan.

My Students Won’t Read! Part Two: The Three Levels of Reading Comprehension

Before I was able to create any shift in my students’ attitude toward reading, I had to understand what they experienced when confronted with unfamiliar texts. It dawned on me that I had once been in a similar predicament.
After completing my undergraduate coursework in mathematics, I thought it would be cool to return to school and study “something fun” such as literature. I naively entered a graduate program in English and signed up for a couple of graduate seminars. The reading was heavy, but I enjoyed it. I’ll never forget coming to class all prepared (so I thought) to “talk about” Wieland, the first novel of the semester. I had rehearsed its complicated story line, itemized its characters, and carefully determined the book’s theme. However, the ensuing discussion left me in the dust. Only much later did I realize what had happened. My classmates were discussing the book from all three levels of comprehension whereas I was stuck at Level One.
The Three Levels
1. Literal comprehension: what does it say?
This is the skeletal starting point, consisting of a text’s main idea (or thesis or theme) and major supporting details. It answers the overt WHO, WHAT, WHERE, and WHEN questions. Yet even literal comprehension is challenging if the text contains difficult vocabulary or if the reader is unfamiliar with the subject matter. Most of our students are at (or still struggling with) this level of reading comprehension.
2. Interpretive comprehension: what does it mean?
Here we ask HOW and WHY the text is organized the way it is. We must consider the author’s tone, bias, inferences, audience, and purpose. Since these are usually implicit rather than explicit, they require a more sophisticated understanding.
3. Critical analysis: what is our evaluation?
Only after moving through the first two levels can we decide what the text means to us individually and as a community of readers. Do we agree with the author? Do we approve of the manner of presentation? Will it move us to action of any kind?
Decision Time for the Professor
Given these three levels of reading comprehension—and the fact that moving up the scale is no simple matter—instructors must make choices. First, what level of comprehension is necessary? Will literal comprehension be sufficient? This will vary from discipline to discipline. In a basic anatomy class, it is probably sufficient for students to learn the various body parts and their functions. Nurses don’t need to ponder very deeply whether or not the organs of the human body might be arranged in a more optimal manner. (Surgeons and bio-engineers, however, will certainly do so.) Wherever bias is possible, as in the social sciences, level one comprehension will not be sufficient.
Instructors must also have a clear understanding of the purpose of their reading assignments. It is not enough to ask students to read the textbook simply because this is customary. Here then are some questions for reflection: Will the textbook provide information that students will not receive in lecture? Is it intended to reinforce what students hear in lecture? Or is it intended to introduce lecture material? The answers to these questions will determine whether a textbook is really needed and, if so, how it ought to be used. If the textbook is one that students will want to keep as a lifelong reference book, there is very good reason for wanting them to develop extreme familiarity with it. How to do so will be the topic of Part Three, our final installment.

For the full Article, Click HERE

Source--Patrick Wall, English/Reading Instructor, San Joaquin Delta Community College

9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning

1. The assessment of student learning begins with educational values. Assessment is not an end in itself but a vehicle for educational improvement. Its effective practice, then, begins with and enacts a vision of the kinds of learning we most value for students and strive to help them achieve. Educational values should drive not only what we choose to assess but also how we do so. Where questions about educational mission and values are skipped over, assessment threatens to be an exercise in measuring what's easy, rather than a process of improving what we really care about.
2. Assessment is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in performance over time. Learning is a complex process. It entails not only what students know but what they can do with what they know; it involves not only knowledge and abilities but values, attitudes, and habits of mind that affect both academic success and performance beyond the classroom. Assessment should reflect these understandings by employing a diverse array of methods, including those that call for actual performance, using them over time so as to reveal change, growth, and increasing degrees of integration. Such an approach aims for a more complete and accurate picture of learning, and therefore firmer bases for improving our students' educational experience.
3. Assessment works best when the programs it seeks to improve have clear, explicitly stated purposes. Assessment is a goal-oriented process. It entails comparing educational performance with educational purposes and expectations – those derived from the institution's mission, from faculty
intentions in program and course design, and from knowledge of students' own goals. Where program purposes lack specificity or agreement, assessment as a process pushes a campus toward clarity about where to aim and what standards to apply; assessment also prompts attention to where and how program goals will be taught and learned. Clear, shared, implementable goals are the cornerstone for assessment that is focused and useful.
4. Assessment requires attention to outcomes but also and equally to the experiences that lead to those outcomes. Information about outcomes is of high importance; where students "end up" matters greatly. But to improve outcomes, we need to know about student experience along the way -- about the curricula, teaching, and kind of student effort that lead to particular outcomes. Assessment can help us understand which students learn best under what conditions; with such knowledge comes the capacity to improve the whole of their learning.
5. Assessment works best when it is ongoing not episodic. Assessment is a process whose power is cumulative. Though isolated, "one-shot" assessment can be better than none, improvement is best fostered when assessment entails a linked series of activities undertaken over time.

Authors: Alexander W. Astin; Trudy W. Banta; K. Patricia Cross; Elaine El-Khawas; Peter T. Ewell; Pat Hutchings; Theodore J. Marchese; Kay M. McClenney; Marcia Mentkowski; Margaret A. Miller; E. Thomas Moran; Barbara D. Wright.

This document was developed under the auspices of the AAHE Assessment Forum (Barbara Cambridge is Director) with support from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education with additional support for publication and dissemination from the Exxon Education Foundation. Copies may be made without restriction. AAHE site maintained by: Mary C. Schwarz mjoyce@aahe.org

Click HERE to read the entire