Some students have the potential to succeed in four-year colleges, but do not apply as they are concerned that they are not academically prepared. Many more students lack college readiness because their high school courses and exams are different from the academic expectations at college.

The alignment of curriculum standards, assessments, and teacher practice from K-12 through the first year of college can enhance academic preparation and college completion. In addition, K-16 assessment alignment (including placement exams) is desirable.

Three state policy possibilities have emerged:

(1) K-12 educators negotiate with colleges concerning a statewide aligned assessment both will use. No statewide higher education system has done this.

(2) Higher education negotiates with K-12 to modify an existing K-12 statewide exam to make it congruent with college/university expectations. California State University has done that through its Early Assessment Program.

K-12 officials agree to use an existing college assessment for their secondary grades. Six states use ACT and Maine utilizes the SAT I.

The ACT option is particularly interesting because ACT has 8th, 10th, and 11th grade assessments that could send signals to students about college readiness and areas of academic strength and weakness.

Unfortunately, the big problem with ACT is that it was never designed for secondary school teachers to use for their classroom instruction. Secondary school teachers complain that ACT is not specific or appropriate for them to plan their content or pedagogy.

It would be difficult to retrofit ACT so that it has the properties that current state and local K-12 standards contain. ACT is too generic and abstract for secondary school teachers, and is useful as a summative indicator, but not as a guide for weekly or monthly instruction.

Colorado merely put ACT at grade 11 on top of a state testing system that is unaligned with ACT at prior grades. Illinois uses ACT for its 11th grade exam and found thousands of students with ACT scores high enough to succeed in college, but no plans to go to college.

Kentucky will use all three ACT exams (grades 8, 10, 11), so we will know more about ACT’s potential to enhance college readiness.

Labels: College Success

Washington-based Achieve Inc. operates the America Diploma Project Network (ADP) primarily using Gates Foundation funding. ADP is a coalition of twenty-six states dedicated to aligning K–12 curriculum, standards, assessments and accountability policies with the demands of college and work.

Achieve’s primary goal is to align state high school graduation requirements with college and workplace expectations. Over the past decade, states have led the national movement to raise standards, improve teaching and learning, and hold schools more accountable for student success.

Standards are in place in every state. But, as the demands of the economy continue to increase, standards must keep pace. Achieve recognizes that too many young people leave school without the skills they need college success or to compete in the workplace. Achieve’s goal is to help every state close the expectations gap so that all students graduate ready for success.

Achieve also wants states to use high school assessments for college admission/placement. And, Achieve hopes to develop a K-16 longitudinal data system. These strategies are part of the solution to overcoming student risk factors that inhibit college persistence, college completion and college success.

Achieve monitors progress toward these goals in all fifty states. The organization reports slow, but steady progress. Achieve’s 2006 report says eight states (Arkansas, Texas, Indiana, Kentucky, New York, Michigan, Oklahoma, and South Dakota) have enacted college- and work-ready high school graduation requirements. Apparently, more states will reach this goal of graduation requirements in 2007 as twelve more states plan to align K-14 tests.

Nevertheless, few states have high school tests in place that are sufficiently rigorous to signal whether students are college-ready. Colleges are aware of this deficiency and, as a consequence, ignore the results of most high school tests.

Six states {California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, and Texas) report that statewide high school assessments are used for college admissions and/or placement decisions. Eight more states are working toward this goal.

It is difficult to get K-12 and postsecondary education to work together on curriculum/assessment alignment.. Thus, the progress in meeting Achieve’s goals is not that impressive.

State-elected officials probably will increase their intervention in these policy areas in the near future. Achieve has a new report coming out in February 2007 that may show more progress.

Labels: College Success

Several states are using existing data to improve our understanding of college readiness, college persistence, and college completion. One of the best is the high school teacher quality on college readiness, high school reform, and geographic/racial college attainment.

For example, IERC found that attending college full-time trumps college readiness as a predictor of persistence in college. This reinforces the findings of Clifford Adelman in my last blog.

IERC emphasizes that initial student choice of college matters. Students who start at two year institutions need more institutional support to complete college than students who start at four year institutions. IERC demonstrates that among students who are equally prepared for college, two year entrants have less persistence than four year entrants.

In Illinois, nearly three quarters of the high school class of 2002 had some college. Illinois students who stopped out were unlikely to return to postsecondary education.

IERC demonstrates that examining persistence from data of single institutions in Illinois is misleading because so many students attend multiple institutions. State centers like IERC track Illinois students through the whole national higher education system to obtain more accurate conclusions. Everything I have seen in the Illinois data confirms the studies by Clifford Adelman in my two prior blogs.

Labels: College Success Studies

In the last blog, I featured the study by Clifford Adelman called, The Toolbox Revisited, published in 2006 by the U.S. Department of Education.
www.ed.gov/pubs/edpubs.html.

His longitudinal use of student postsecondary transcript data (NEL 1988/2000) demonstrates that students can increase their probability of four year college completion by taking some specific steps. These steps apply whether a student starts at a four or two year institution.

1) Sooner is better than later. Start college right after high school graduation.
2) Take as many classes per semester as you can handle given other time demands (full-time is best)
3) Part-time attendance (less than 12 credits per semester) at any point proved to be detrimental to the ability of students to complete degrees. But continuous part-time enrollment is less damaging than excessive stop-out periods.
4) Earn at least four credits in the summer
5) Do not withdraw from or repeat courses unless it is absolutely necessary. No-penalty withdrawals hinder degree completion and may be the principal cause of increased time-to-degree.
6) If you have academic trouble in the first academic year, the second year is crucial because many students recapture their momentum in the second year and complete gateway courses in basic subjects.

Students are not passively passing through an academic pipeline to college completion. They can be active in creating their own path to college success.

Labels: College Completion

I believe Clifford Adelman completed one of the most important studies concerning staying in college . The study is found in The Tool Box Revisited: Plans to Degree Completion from High School to College (Washington, D.C: U.S. Department of Education, 2006).

Adelman found a 66% college completion rate. This is a higher college persistence rate than most prior studies. (One prominent prior study is by Susan Choy, entitled Access and Persistence.) In fact, it easily trumps the common idea that college completion rates are, at best, 50%.

He investigates a number of student risk factors for non-completion. Adelman examined elements of college support, student time management, and predictors of success. He found that academic preparation in mathematics beyond Algebra II is a very strong predictor of success.

I found the most novel part of the study by Adelman was what students can do after they are in college to enhance college success. More on this in the next blog.

While his conclusions regarding predictors of success are noteworthy, his methodology is more critical, in my view. The study by Adelman did not rely on institutional data. In other words, it did not rely on the graduation data provided by the school as school-level data has always failed to properly measure students who transfer, only to successfully graduate elsewhere.

Adelman did it the only way that it can be done properly. He collected performance data at the individual data, by reviewing the college transcripts of individuals through the National Education Longitudinal Study 88/2000 database. His study sampled all college students, EXCEPT for those who attended community college (graduating or not), and NEVER entered a 4-year college. Adelman followed students for eight and one-half years after high school.

Adelman emphasized that much data and reporting on college success mixes up nineteen-year-olds with much older college students (his focus is on the former). He found that 60% of students go to more than one postsecondary institution, and many swirl between several colleges. In sum, many statistics on college dropout rates overstate non-completion because they rely on return rates at a single postsecondary institution.

Labels: College Completion

I was quoted in the Sunday, January 7, 2007 New York Times about the vast differences in college preparation between the most and the least selective colleges. As I told the Times, I have been a critic of the low end of college preparation. But at the high end, it just gets better every decade.

The Times article, The Incredibles (p. 19 of the Education Life Section), features stellar students who are taking more AP, IB, and other college level courses in high school. These students experience the high school-to-college transition as more of a lateral step and are sometimes frustrated that their college courses are too basic.

Increased competition for slots at prestigious selective colleges motivates some students to take very hard high school classes that include critical thinking, complex analysis, and sophisticated writing. At Stanford, these students are ready as freshmen to complete substantial original research. Some observers label these students as zoomers who are similar to outstanding athletes who specialize in academics at a very early age.

But my concerns are not about which selective college these students will attend. Only 5% of students are incredibles or zoomers. About 50% of students are not prepared for college. They are not ready for college and have many student risk factors that reduce college persistence. But the incredibles get much more national media attention. Community colleges, where academic or college readiness is the weakest, get the least media attention. Nevertheless, the Times article is an in-depth analysis of how our best colleges are adapting to extremely high levels of college preparation.

Labels: College Success

The Quality Counts report from Education Week appears to get bigger and bigger every year. This year, the report includes sections on efforts to integrate preK16, early childhood education, and more.

I served as a technical adviser to the 2007 report from EdWeek. It discusses a complete conceptual overhaul and not an incremental extension of the versions used in the last ten years.

It moves away from just tracking and analysis of the K12 state standards movement. All states have K12 standards and related policies , so there was very little variation for EdWeek to work with by 2007.

So EdWeek decided to move to a cradle to career focus that features key transition points such as preschool to K5. The most interesting thing for this blog is that the transition from K12 to postsecondary education is a prominent part of the redesign, and will continue as such for many years.

This is a major change in EdWeek editorial polices, and will be a major force to reframe the education policy debate around an all one interconnected system perspective.

At the middle of the special issue is a section entitled Moving Beyond Grade 12. It includes educational attainment up to age thirty-five and the gap between college expectations and college completion.

College preparation is explored in depth by David Spence , the president of the Southern regional Education Board. He recommends that all of public postsecondary education in a state reach a consensus on a single set of academic readiness standards.

All states are ranked on fourteen indicators that include college costs, placement, time to degree, persistence, and college completion. This new focus by EdWeek will be a challenge to the Chronicle of Higher education which does not have as much of a education policy orientation.

Labels: College Completion

Low community college completion rates are a major reason that six nations passed the U.S. in higher education degrees for ages 25-34 in the last decade. In Texas, for example, educational strengths are more concentrated in the older population, because the proportion of younger adults (ages 25-34) with a two year or four year degree has fallen behind that of older adults (ages 35-64).

In a recent blog , I reviewed a significant new study by Thomas Bailey , Defending the Community College Agenda, Johns Hopkins Press, 2006. His book raises major questions about the effectiveness of community colleges in terms of adequate college preparation and college success, as well as support for college after students enroll. Below is a summary of my own views on these topics from a variety of sources including the Bailey book.

First, some quick facts:

Community colleges in the U.S. enroll 45% of first-time students in all types of postsecondary education and include 50% of total enrollment in public postsecondary education.

Low income and minority students are heavily concentrated in community colleges.

A large majority of community college students want a four year degree, but only 39% transfer to a four year institution and an abysmally low rate of 23% ultimately obtain a four year degree.

Why do students with high education aspirations fail to realize their goals of college success and college completion in community colleges? There are several reasons, but inadequate academic preparation and lack of money are crucial. Both of these causes have deep historical roots.

Community colleges were created at the turn of the 20th century as junior colleges, closely linked to high schools. As late as the 1930s, 85% of two-year colleges were physically located in high schools. Consequently, secondary schools and their students knew more about what was needed to succeed academically in the 13th and 14th grade, and then to transfer to a four-year college.

But over the next thirty years, the close association was shattered as public community colleges accumulated three functions in addition to college transfer
(1) vocational, (2) general education, and (3) community adult education.

Adults can take courses in aerobic dance or photography. Community colleges became an all-purpose institution that lost their focus on college preparation, and moved their campuses away from high schools. Isolation from high schools spawned a lack of clear signals to secondary students about the necessary academic preparation to succeed. Community colleges emphasized that anybody over eighteen years of age could attend, and featured the goal of a second chance for low performing students.

But a nationwide study by Stanford University revealed that secondary students received signals that (1) there were very low academic standards at community colleges, and (2) their minimum high school graduation requirements were enough to succeed.

Very few secondary students knew about college placement exams given to first time students when they initially enroll. I estimate that 60% of entering community college students fail a placement test and end up in remedial noncredit courses that extend their time for a degree, and consequently increase total college costs.

Financial aid remains a mystery for too many first-time students in community colleges. State and federal financial aid for low income students was not designed for community college students who are often part time and first generation. These students do not know that they must apply for federal Pell grants before they enroll at community colleges. The federal forms are extremely complex and make the long form income tax look easy by comparison. Financial aid is more difficult to obtain for part time students who must work to pay for college, or help their families.

What to do about this? Community colleges and high schools cannot solve these problems working separately.

Most high school seniors imagine community college to be a souped up high school, so they take only a few college prep courses in their senior year. Community colleges should create tighter linkages to high schools and send clear and strong signals to students about challenging academic standards. Community colleges should recommend that high school students take college placement exams in their junior year. If they score low, then the senior year needs to become an intensive college prep experience.

Financial aid forms need to be simplified and students notified of their aid eligibility before spring of their senior year in high school.

Student aid based on financial need should be increased.

States should provide financial rewards to community colleges that increase completion rates.

On September 26, 2006 Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling endorsed most of these recommendations, but much of the changes must be initiated and implemented by state and local educators.

Finally, community college students can enhance their college completion chances by staying enrolled continuously and not taking long breaks from college. Each enrollment gap makes it less likely that they will graduate.

Labels: College Preparation

Like Dr. Kirst, I (Peter Burns) am quite concerned that students are ill-prepared for college. One part of the preparation problem stems from their lack of understanding about how to approach academic life at the university-level. During my time in higher education as a student, teaching assistant, and professor, I realized that many keys to college success are not a mystery, but few students fully understand them.

I offered strategies, lessons, and advice to many students, most of whom employed these tips to earn higher grades and to increase the amount they learned. Based on the importance of the information I collected over the years, I decided to write Success in College: From Cs in High School to As in College, which provides advice that students need, but rarely get, in order to earn excellent grades and success in college.

I use my experience as a successful undergraduate student and an award-winning professor to convey important lessons about collegiate success. I encourage people to read this book and to use this book to help students learn more and achieve higher grades.

To view the first chapter of this book, click the following link to the web site:

http://www.rowmaneducation.com/ISBN/1578864585

Here are what I regard as some of the essential points in the book:

Success in College offers critical advice about the attitude students need in order to succeed in college.

It provides insight into the kinds of expectations students should have about the college experience.

The book shows students how to plan for the semester.

It offers critical tips about study habits, advice on exams, paper writing, note taking, and in-class behavior.

Success in College presents the view of an insider regarding how students should approach professors.

It describes and compares the behavior of good students and not-so-good students.

This book also offers advice to parents about what their children need from them during the academic year.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: The Purpose of this Book (You Can Make College a Learning Experience)

Chapter One: What Is the Goal of your Collegiate Experience? (The Goal is To Learn)

Chapter Two: Expectations (This Isn't High School Toto)

Chapter Three: Preparing for the Semester (How to Outrun the Avalanche)

Chapter Four: Stages of the Semester (Will You Work Hard During the Dog Days?)

Chapter Five: Study Habits (Make Studying a Habit)

Chapter Six: Advice on Exams (Prepare, Don't Cram)

Chapter Seven: Paper Writing (Build a Tasty and Well-Presented Cake)

Chapter Eight: Notes (Write, Read, Write, Read, Read)

Chapter Nine: Your Professors (Is the Professor Dr. Jekyll or Mr./Ms. Hyde?)

Chapter Ten: Scheduling of Classes (Make a Well-Balanced Schedule)

Chapter Eleven: In-Class Etiquette (Oh Behave)

Chapter Twelve: Evaluate Your Performance (Figure Out What You Did Wrong, and Try to Fix It)

Chapter Thirteen: Good Student vs. Not-So-Good Student (Which One Are You? Which One Will You Be?)

Chapter Fourteen: How Parents Can Help Their Children Succeed (Parents Just Don't Understand)

Chapter Fifteen: The Most Important Points (If You Work Hard, the Grades Will Come)

Labels: College Success