Blackboard Inc., a provider of education and software services will launch " a strategic initiative" to help connection and collaboration between k-12 and postsecondary institutions.
The Company appears to have a good grasp of the problems including disconnected systems and the resulting poor preparation for college as well as low postsecondary completion overall.

Blackboard's assumptions are that a k-20 community can be built by leveraging technology and spending "over a million dollars". Both of these assumptions are problematic, but Blackboard's specific objectives are sensible. Technology could be an impetus for connecting two systems that rarely talk to each other about crucial issues. Blackboard hopes to build a k-20 online community of educators, promote state and local models of successful collaboration, publish case studies of success, and utilize Blackboard solutions and technology to enhance coordination.

Unfortunately, Blackboard's examples in its press release feature universities, rather than community colleges where the bulk of the problems (like remediation) exist. Something new is needed because k-20 connections are not growing fast enough. Focusing on so many age groups at once has bogged down states and regions as the Education Commission of the States found out in trying to organize around such a huge target. Perhaps Blackboard should focus on grades 8 to 14 as a first step , and not try to integrate kindergarten with college seniors in the same initiative.

I am intrigued by what technology might do, because there are few natural meeting places where k-12 and postsecondary come together face to face to confront their mutual problems and discuss potential solutions. Sectors of education have different governing boards and funding systems. The teacher unions are not well integrated either. Perhaps technology can bridge some of these divides without expensive and time consuming travel to meetings.

Don't forget to visit our sister site http://www.mycollegepuzzle.com/ for one tool that we believe could help students BEFORE they get to college.

Labels: academic preparation, College Completion, College Preparation, College Success

Professor John Braxton at Vanderbilt has reframed the discussion about college success. He examined thousands of references to the words college success and found no consistent defintion. So he has provided eight dimensions of college success that expand the defintion well beyond college completion. These dimensions are: academic attainment, aquisition of general education, development of academic competence, development of intellectual dispositions, employment after graduation, preparation for adulthood and citizenship, extracurricular accomplishments, and personal development. he defines each of these at nces.ed.gov/npec/symposium.asp
College success like college readiness are important concepts that are undergoing much deeper thought than in the past. Right now these are vague slogans that mean very different things to different people. While I think Braxton's defintions are too expansive, he has made a major contribution in the discussion.

Labels: College Readiness, College Success

Texas will implement end of course exams in subjects like Biology and World History. But the lone star state is going way beyond facts and skills to include in these new tests college readiness attributes like probing why historians have competing views, and how to write research papers. The end of course tests are much more complex than the multiple choice tests they will replace. Texas is rare in that the tests were devised by both the k-12 state board and the coordinating board for higher education in a collborative manner. Texas is concerned about its high remediation rates and determined to use a k-20 approach to do something about it. They brought in college readiness guru David T. Conley to help them. The Southern Regional Education Board in Atlanta is a proponent of end of course tests, and spreading the concept throughout the Southeast.

Labels: College Readiness

Many researchers have suspected that dual enrollment programs where high school students take college courses will enhance college readiness and completion. Now we have a Columbia University longitudinal study in Florida and New York that shows positve effects from dual enrollment that helps students complete high school, enroll full time in postsecondary education, and improved probabilities of college completion. Former dual enrollment students have higher grade point averages in college than similar students without dual enrollment experience.
I have written about CUNY's dual enrollment programs and the study found more positve outcomes if students took more than one dual enrollment course. In Florida , dual enrollment had a much greater positve effect on college success for low income students with poor grades.
You can find the study at http://crc.tc.columbia.edu/

The College Board just reported that the average price for a college education once again rose faster than the inflation rate this year, particularly at public four-year institutions.

According to the College Board's annual tuition survey, the increase in tuition and fees this year at the nation's public four-year institutions sustained the trend that has persisted for three decades. The College Board's tuition survey, "Trends in College Pricing," and the survey on financial aid, "Trends in Student Aid," are both available on its website.

Importantly, no one who is considering attending college should do so without a clear understanding of the financial implications. Too many students – prospective or existing—suffer not only sticker shock AFTER they’ve committed, but angst with the whole process of securing aid and making timely payments.

A student cannot be college-ready, if they are not ready financially. We offer prospective students very basic, yet helpful tools at our partner website -- MyCollegePuzzle.

Labels: College Readiness, College Success, support for college

One of the reasons for poor college preparation and completion is the misalignment between mathematics content in high school with mathematics content in postsecondary education. Students complete Algebra 1 and 2 , but still end up in college remediation. College math placement tests are not aligned with state high school assessments. High school course content is all over the map, so aligning with college math is difficult.
Achieve has created the largest group of states ever to develop a common assessment for algebra 2 based on common curriculum standards-www.achieve.org. Nine states are in the consortium for a common end of course assessment. Field testing is October 2007and the test will be operational in 2008. Achieve will work with these nine states to align the common high school course content with college first year math courses and placement exams.

Labels: College Completion, curriculum alignment

The City University of New York will spend 20 million to impement a number of interlocking and simultaneous interventions to increase graduation rates at 6 communtity colleges. The interventions include: a summer orientation program, creation of leraning communities where students take classes together , homework sessions on campus, tutors, faculty advisers, and part time employment in jobs related to their studies. CUNY is on the right track, because it takes more than one thing to help students succeed in college and overcome remediation. The planned interventions are based on research, and the combined effect should be greater than just one or two interventions.
But scaling this up will cost lots of money that most community colleges do not have. California community colleges spend less than high schools per FTE. We need to get serious about what it will cost to increase community college completion rates which are only 24% after 6 years in California for any type of program including vocational certificates.

WICHE is the accreditation agency for postsecondary education in the Western USA. It is led by David Longanecker who was Assistant Secretary of Education for the Clinton Administration. WICHE does a lot more than accredit colleges, and has significant policy analytical capability in the k-16 area
Their new report is particularly useful for thinking about systemic policy to improve college completion and readiness. It is called Thinking Outside the Box: Policy Strategies for Readiness, Access, and Success. These policy goals are examined in light of four policy tools: finance,regulation, accountability , and governance. Go to www.wiche.edu/Policy Changing for this useful report

There are many complex dimensions for assessing college readiness of secondary school students. This is a follow up to my last blog concerning David T Conley's paper for Gates Foundation. Many students consider their personal beliefs sufficient justification for their opinions, and view any challenge as a personal attack. Unprepared students resist solving problems with ambiguous or multiple solutions. They look for the right answer among two conflicting conculsions , rather than analyzing the clues in the text about the authors motivations or historical context. In short, their high school work displays no deep understanding of complex technical reading.
States have been trying to ameliorate these problems by merely requiring more years of English and social studies. But this will not solve the proble. Research has shown that what is in the courses matters more than the label. Recent studies of huge samples of high school seniors by ACT confirms this view.

Labels: College Readiness

How do we know whether high school students are ready for college? This is a complex subject with many dimensions. For example, according to a paper by Davit T. Conley for the Gates Foundation, college instructors expect students to draw inferences, interpret results, analyze conflicting source documents, support arguements with evidence, solve complex problems that have no obvious answer, and conduct research. This is a lot more than just memorizing facts and being able to answer multiple choice questions. Many secondary school students have no idea that colleges expect these types of skills. Colleges expect students to be independent , self reliant learners that can write multiple 3-5 page papers that are well reasoned and documented with credible sources.
Conley"s full paper is at epiconline.org

Labels: College Readiness

Often remedial programs in college are not evaluated, and the few evaluations that exist have poor designs. So we do not know if they work or help students to progress into regular credit courses and complete college. Henry Levin and Juan Calcgno have a paper that provides a framework for evaluating remediation that is based on the best concepts we know, and includes several alternative reserach designs
See it at http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/- Now all we need is for more money and time to implement their good ideas.

Policymakers, politicians, and parents lament the rift between K-12 schools and college – High schools teach one thing and colleges demand another.

These misaligned expectations results from poor communication between K-12 and our college system – miscommunication that leaves us with far too many students who lack proper academic preparation for college success. And, by the way, these misinformed high school students become struggling college students for whom college completion becomes more dream than reality.

There is a similar, dangerous rift that exists between colleges and companies. Colleges, in general, are not graduating students who can contribute to the American enterprise. Thus, corporations are compelled to invest in, at a minimum, training newly hired workers or, at worst, remediating them with basic skills courses.

Howard Block, who commented for this Blog's previous entry, is frustrated by experts’ frequent lamentations that our economy will fail without more college graduates. Humbug, he says -- it’s not about graduates! It’s about skills. We need more educated, skilled and informed labor, IRRESPECTIVE of graduating from college. The graduation ceremony and diploma should be the byproducts, the accoutrements of the skills and knowledge acquired.

Therein lays the opportunity.

The rift, the miscommunication between traditional colleges and American enterprise is presents a huge opportunity, more significant, in Block's view, as that which faced John Sperling—the founder of Apollo Group--more than thirty years ago when traditional colleges did not address the needs of the consumer. Driven by the failures of traditional colleges, John Sperling built the largest university in this country on the back of a powerful B2C (business to consumer) model.

Now, traditional colleges are not addressing the needs of business. Therefore, winning colleges or companies will build a B2B (business to business) model.

But, in order to do that, postsecondary education companies will need to deploy sophisticated sales professionals who are accustomed to calling on sophisticated businesses. The winning colleges or companies will need a coat-and-tie crew that can dazzle ‘em in the board room.
Colleges will need to approach employers, ask them what they need in terms of skills or competencies. (Most large employers already catalogue the competencies they need to prosper. ) Then, the colleges will contract with employers to provide students with those competencies. This will compel colleges to build curricula that map to the competencies.

This increasing communication between colleges and business would further elevate the ownership taken by employers in student development. This should also compel employers to offer greater levels of tuition subsidy thereby addressing the burgeoning problem of rising tuition.

Labels: academic preparation, College Completion, College Preparation, College Success

Howard Block is a former student of mine. He recently concluded a 10-yr career as an equity analyst, on the “sell”-side of Wall Street. By sell side, he would conduct research on companies and then make BUY or SELL recommendations on the stocks of those companies to professional money managers on the “buy” side.

Howard was distinguished on Wall Street as its only analyst with a doctorate in educational policy analysis – earned at Stanford University. Howard established a reputation as an original, independent, critical and creative thinker, often shedding light on issues that were not well understood by his audience – money managers, advisors, business managers and the broader public. His perspective on postsecondary education can be gleaned in a review of his testimony before Secretary Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education

While Howard’s research primarily focused on commercial enterprises like DeVry and the University of Phoenix, his conclusions were relevant for a far broader universe of institutions. For example, Howard always argued that an investment in the stocks of any education company is ultimately an investment in the academic outcomes of its students.
As intuitive as that may sound and as logical as it is, Howard felt that few managers abided by it and few investors appreciated it.

Too many managers of the commercial enterprise turn their heads (perhaps in shame) away from academic outcomes. Those managers are not yet held accountable for their failings as their business are able to grow, in spite of little or no value proposition for their students.

The growth of the companies has been driven more by marketing services than by academic services.Yet, as more and more students graduate (or not) with little hope of finding rewarding jobs – let alone jobs that can help them service tens of thousands of debt – Howard (and I) still believe that schools will come under increasing scrutiny to provide exceptional learning outcomes

Graduates of colleges, particular the commercial ones noted above, must be able to parlay favorable academic outcomes into a favorable career outcome – be it a new job, promotion, pay raise or other. For without a favorable career outcome, the broader market of Main St., not only Wall Street, would soon realize that the academic outcome may not be worth anything more than the paper on which the attendant diploma was written, which could be particularly troublesome considering the significant debt that may be assumed while pursuing the paper.

I am hopeful that Howard will share more of his insight in future postings.

Labels: College Completion, College Success