Strategies for Accelerating Student Success :

1. Strategies for Accelerating Student Success: Findings & Recommendations from the Assessment of the Evidence Series Thomas Bailey Community College Research Center Teachers College/Columbia University RP Group Conference April 14, 2011

2. Assessment of Evidence Series • Focused on: • Developmental education (assessment & placement, acceleration programs, contextualization of basic skills instruction, innovative math pedagogy) • Non-academic supports • Program & institutional structures • Online learning • Organizational improvement • Impacts: Best-quality quantitative research • Implications: Qualitative research, theoretical literature, practitioner input

3. Findings & Implications

4. An overarching theme • Organizational improvement was a stand-alone topic. • Over time, realized it was integral to all the topics • To substantially improve: • developmental education • online & face-to-face pedagogy • support provision • . . . the whole institution needs to be engaged and focused on improving student outcomes.

5. Four Broad Findings & Recommendations • #1: Complexity & Structure • #2: Faculty Engagement • #3: Academic Alignment & Assessment • #4: Continuous Improvement

6. Complexity & Structure • All humans make bad choices in unduly complex environments. • College can seem complex and confusing to students, due to: • A bewildering array of options • Lack of information integration • Unnecessary bureaucracy • Tools convenient / inexpensive to the college

7. Not enroll, skip C GK Enroll, then skip GK Complete, then skip No E3, skip to GK E2, no C2, skip to GK C3, C2, C1 E GK, exit E1, no C1, skip to GK C3, C2, C1, exit 1 E2, no C2, skip to 1 No E3, skip to 1 C3, C2, E1, no C1, exit C3, C2, exit C2, skip to GK 2 E3, no C3, E2 No E3, skip to 2 C3, E2, no C2, exit C3, skip to GK C3, exit C3, skip to 1 E3, no C3, E1 3 E3, no C3, exit E3, no C3, E GK Exit without ever enrolling R=3

8. Timing of Entry into a Program of Study

9. Complexity & Structure • Recommendation: Simplify the structures and bureaucracies that students must navigate.

10. Complexity & Structure • Recommendation: Simplify the structures and bureaucracies that students must navigate. • Does not require restricting choice

11. Complexity & Structure • Recommendation: Simplify the structures and bureaucracies that students must navigate. • Does not require restricting choice • Re-examine policies, practices, programs, services: • Why are they in place? • Are they serving their intended function? • Are they aligned with the goal of student success?

12. Complexity & Structure • Re-examine policies, practices, services... • Form cross-functional teams of faculty, student services, staff administrators • Map out student’s experience from first contact; where & why are students encountering frustration and confusion? • Develop protocols of recommended practice to support student success at each stage of their experience in college

13. Faculty Engagement • Substantial organizational improvement requires strong employee involvement. • In CCs, student success goals can be hampered by: • lack of faculty/staff engagement • large part-time workforce • organizational silos

14. Faculty Engagement • Organizations with strong employee involvement in reform: • Ensure employees have deep understanding of goals and methods of reform • Empower employees as part of reform • Encourage staff to work in cross-functional teams • Create challenging yet meaningful goals • Present evidence of successes

15. Faculty Engagement • Student supports: • Resources are limited • Yet students underutilize • Potential solution: integration of supports • Would require deep and broad faculty & staff support

16. Faculty Engagement • Previous attempts to broadly engage faculty have not always been successful • Perhaps because reforms: • Often focus on student retention / completion (institutional effectiveness) • Not on student learning (instructional effectiveness)

17. Faculty Engagement • Recommendation: Empower faculty to set challenging and meaningful student learning goals • Include not just content knowledge/skills • Create recommended protocols for challenging areas

18. Academic Alignment & Assessment • In K-12, schools effective with disadvantaged students have “instructional program coherence:” • Well-coordinated, “rationalized” curriculum • Common instructional framework • Clearly defined learning outcomes • Integrated assessments & academic supports • Colleges do not put strong emphasis on these.

19. Academic Alignment & Assessment • Recommendation: Faculty work together to craft learning outcomes. Process would: • Help faculty from different disciplines communicate and align expectations for reading, writing, & math • Help part-time instructors understand course goals • Help students understand program goals & requirements • Help high schools understand expectations

20. Continuous Improvement • Practices of high-performance organizations: • Strong leadership • Customer focus • Functional alignment • Process improvement • Use of measurement for improvement • Employee involvement • Training and professional development • External linkages

21. Continuous Improvement Set learning outcomes/completion goals Measure student learning/progression Identify learning/achievement gaps Align practices/policies to improve outcomes Evaluate and improve alignment efforts Process Measurement, Alignment, Improvement External Linkages Employers Universities K-12 Schools Adult Basic Skills Non-credit Workforce Programs Community Groups Leadership Focused on Outcomes Set learning outcomes/completion goals Faculty/Staff Involvement Targeted Faculty/ Staff Training, Prof Development IMPROVED STUDENT LEARNING/COMPLETION

22. Steps to Redesigning CCs for Completion Engage faculty and staff to examine practices at key stages of students’ experience with the college Redesign and align practices at scale, applying principles of effective practice, to increase rates at which students enter and then complete programs Evaluate changes by comparing college’s past rates of program entry and, by program, rates of completion among concentrators Repeat these steps, rethinking professional development practices, committee structure budgeting and incentives to institutionalize the process

23. Empower Faculty and Staff to Design/Implement Innovations at Scale

24. Reports in the Series • Edgecombe, N., Accelerating the academic achievement of students referred to developmental education: A review of the evidence. • Hodara, M., Reforming mathematics classroom pedagogy: Evidence-based findings and recommendations for the developmental math classroom. • Hughes, K. & Scott-Clayton, J., Assessing developmental assessment in community colleges. • Jaggars, S. S., Online learning: Does it help low-income and underprepared students? • Jenkins, D., Redesigning community colleges for completion: Lessons from research on high-performance organizations. • Karp, M. M., Toward a new understanding of non-academic student support: Four mechanisms encouraging positive student outcomes in the community college. • Perin, D., Facilitating student achievement through contextualization. • Scott-Clayton, J., The shapeless river: Does a lack of structure inhibit students’ progress at community colleges? • Jenkins, D., Get with the program: Accelerating community college students' entry into and completion of programs of study.

25. For more information: Please visit us on the web at http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu, where you can download presentations, reports, CCRC Briefs, and sign-up for news announcements. Community College Research Center Institute on Education and the Economy, Teachers College, Columbia University 525 West 120th Street, Box 174, New York, NY 10027 E-mail: ccrc@columbia.edu Telephone: 212.678.3091 CCRC is funded in part by: Alfred P. Sloan foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Lumina Foundation for Education, The Ford Foundation, National Science Foundation (NSF), Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education