Recommendations May Not Go Far Enough

Carnegie Senior Managing Partner Bernadine Chuck Fong served as a member of the American Association of Community Colleges 21st-Century Commission that released a report last week urging community colleges to change their practices in order to meet the needs of the future. “The report pushes community colleges in the right direction if they are bold enough to truly re-imagine how to implement their mission, but I think colleges can aspire to even higher aims,” Fong said. For example, the report recommends having a goal to increase completion rates by 50 percent by 2020. “I think we can do better than a 50 percent completion rate and accomplish it before 2020,” Fong said.

Carnegie is working to increase the success rate of students in development math, which is one of the greatest gatekeepers to college completion. Statway™, one of Carnegie’s new math pathways, aims to get students to and through a transferable college-level math course in one year. Across the Carnegie network of 19 community colleges, almost 1200 students enrolled in Statway™ last fall, and 68 percent of them passed the first term with a C or better; 75 percent passed with a D or better. “Getting students to success takes attention, but we have already demonstrated that we can do it,” Fong said.

As outlined in a nice article in Inside Higher Ed, the commission’s seven final recommendations fall under three categories:

Redesign students’ educational experiences:
Increase completion rates to 50 percent by 2020 while preserving access.
Dramatically improve college readiness.
Close the skills gap by focusing career and technical education on job preparation.

Reinvent institutional roles:
Refocus the community college mission to meet 21st-century education and employment needs.
Invest in collaboration between community colleges and with partners among philanthropic organizations, government and the private sector.

Reset the system:
Target public and private investments strategically to create new incentives for colleges and students.
Encourage rigor, transparency, and accountability.

Also on the Commission with Carnegie ties were Carnegie Board members Kati Haycock, president of The Education Trust, and Austin Community College District President Richard Rhodes.

Early Results

Those of you in the Carnegie Network already have this news from Statway™ Director Karon Klipple, but it deserves to be shared further because it reinforces that we are indeed on the right track. She reported that 88% of students who passed the first term of Statway™ with a C or better have enrolled in the second term and will earn college credit with its successful completion. This is considerably more than the 25% of students (with C or better) who enrolled in a second term of math studies for college credit in our NIC colleges prior to Statway’s™ launch. If our pass rate remains the same for the second term, and 68% of those students pass the second term, then we will have achieved a success rate of 42%. Currently, among the 19 Statway™ colleges, only 12% of students who are placed into developmental mathematics complete a college-level math course in two years. Stay tuned for final results on the first year when they are available this summer.

Lesson Study the Carnegie Way: Sharing Ideas for Continuous Improvement

Carnegie’s Lesson Study provides a framework for faculty members who are part of a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) to be involved in continuously improving the Foundation’s two mathematics pathways—Quantway™ and Statway™ — from curriculum development to implementation in the classroom.

The specific goal of a Lesson Study cycle may be any of the following:

• To test a lesson as written, identifying problems that are either specific to that lesson or that may cut across lessons, and hypothesizing improvements in the materials and/or their implementation that might enhance learning opportunities for students;
• To design and test a change, in either the materials or the implementation; and
• To work on a general problem that cuts across specific lessons and that the community sees as a high priority.

Michelle Brock, one of Carnegie’s Lesson Study Handbook authors and Statway™ faculty member from American River College in Sacramento, said Lesson Study is a way to get a lot done with one tool. “The instructors concentrate both on what the students are able to do and on what our role is in making that happen,” she explains. “It forces you to narrow your focus into seeing that one thing that is either supporting or denying the students’ understanding.”

The Carnegie Lesson Study protocol that Brock and others created has been piloted with faculty teams in the NICs and will go into a wider trial later this year. By participating in Lesson Study, the team members will work together to plan instruction, observe each other teaching, and identify the most difficult and high-priority obstacles that stand in the way of success of the pathways.

As Julie Phelps of Valencia Community College noted, “Teaching is a lonely job, and it is really great to have others watch and experience what is going on in my classroom to help inform us all on how to improve our methods to have better student engagement.”

The general goals are to:

• Improve the Statway™ or Quantway™  instructional program (both the materials and the implementation);
• Improve instructors’ own knowledge and skills for implementing the program; and
• Develop a professional community focused on improvement.

Lesson study is fundamentally a research and development process. A core focus of the work is to analyze the program in cause-effect terms, generating and testing hypotheses about how the instructional activities are processed and interpreted by students; how students develop content knowledge based on their instructional experiences; and how changes might be expected to improve students’ learning. In other words, Carnegie is involving its NIC faculty members to improve the materials and the pedagogy.

Brock said that being involved in Lesson Study improved her preparation for class. “I thought I was pretty good before, but being involved forced me to ask the harder questions about how what I did in class impacted student learning.”

She added that Lesson Study is not just one more activity piled onto a faculty member’s already heavy workload. “I appreciate that it does take more time, but the payoff is worth it. We get another perspective and get to see what others are doing.”

Brock said that participating in Lesson Study was part of her commitment to being in collaboration with other faculty members in the co-development of Statway™. “I believe in Carnegie’s vision that Statway™ has the possibility of netting amazing results for student success in developmental mathematics and those of us involved in this initiative from the beginning were committed to going beyond the ‘what’s in it for me’ thinking.”

Carnegie Lesson Study groups are most commonly site-based (at the college); they include from two to six members; and are facilitated by one of its members. The group organizes its work around Lesson Study cycles, usually a minimum of two cycles per year. Each Lesson Study cycle takes from five to eight hours of faculty time, plus an extra two to three hours of the facilitator’s time. It is expected that time spent on Lesson Study will reduce, at least partly, the time faculty would need to spend preparing to teach the program.

A Lesson Study cycle often focuses on a single lesson, and sometimes even a specific part of a lesson.

The findings of site-based Lesson Study groups are shared with other Lesson Study groups working on similar lessons, changes, or problems. Carnegie also anticipates cross-site groups working virtually on common problems.

It is this sharing component that Janet Zupkus of Naugatuck Valley Community College in Connecticut and another contributor to the Handbook, finds most helpful. “Our faculty group is very good at collaborating and sharing results, informally.  We meet weekly for an hour and discuss what went well and what didn’t and share all supplementary materials. Through conversations at the Carnegie Winter Institute, we found that other colleges are not meeting regularly, so the Lesson Study process will hopefully initiate that process and allow them to see the value in meeting regularly, especially with the new curriculum. The other benefit for the formal process is now we will get feedback from all the other participants, not just our own college members.”

No matter what the goal, an important element of Lesson Study is to produce a report in which the group’s inquiry and findings are shared with the Networked Improvement Community. With groups working on improving a common instructional program within a common improvement framework and on common problems encountered when implementing the program, it’s expected that these reports can provide a foundation for continuous improvement of the NIC.

Carnegie at Achieving the Dream

Carnegie Fellow David Yeager presented on Productive Persistence during the Achieving the Dream D.R.E.A.M. conference in Dallas this week. As you can see from the turn out, this is a subject that those working to improve student success in community college want to hear more about. You can watch a video of David presenting to Carnegie’s Winter Institute here … .

Webinar: Updates on Carnegie’s work in developmental math

Join us for a webinar, “It’s Not Just the Curriculum: Developing Pathways for Student Success in Community Colleges,” on Tuesday, January 24 at 11 a.m. Pacific, 2 p.m. Eastern time. Bernadine Chuck Fong, the senior managing partner for Carnegie’s Community College Program; Karon Klipple, who directs the Statway Networked Improvement Community (NIC); and Jane Muhich, who directs the Quantway NIC and our work in productive persistence, along with faculty members from participating institutions, are on the program. They will provide an update on what students and faculty members are experiencing with these new pathways and tell you how new institutions might get involved in the future.

Space is limited, so REGISTER NOW!

Pathways Update: Good News from the Campuses

Good News from the Campuses
We now have 30 colleges participating in our two networked improvement communities—22 in Statway™ and eight in Quantway™. There are 1200 students enrolled in 60 sections of Statway™, and Quantway goes live in classroom beginning in January. Over 80 faculty members are now network members, all of whom have participated in some fashion in co-developing the materials with us and are beginning to engage in improvement projects seeking quality at scale.

The news coming from the Statway™ campuses is heartening, as is the reception from other sectors. From focus groups of the students on the campuses we’ve gotten comments that indicate that our work in productive persistence is having the effects we had hoped. As David Yeager posted here recently: “We recognize that in addition to pedagogical improvements, student motivation, engagement and skills must also be attended to. Keeping these factors in mind, Carnegie’s new math pathways include specific activities, support systems, and pedagogical approaches designed to encourage and build these skills and mindsets in order to increase a student’s self-efficacy, motivation, persistence, and ability to navigate college.”

Statway™ students are telling us that math and statistics are more interesting than the math they had before. They are less anxious and more likely now to believe that with hard work, they too can learn math. For example, we’re hearing things like, “It’s real world math. It’s realistic.”

Another student told us: “I just never really went past the basic math in high school. Then I went to college and just bombed it, never understood it. And it’s just very refreshing to be—not only grasping it—to actually be interested in math.” And another student said, “… We actually read an article about how we can learn math, in the statistics class—like how to grow your brain and stuff like that.  … It kind of gave me hope. It was something that we did at the beginning of this quarter. … I was like, ‘Okay, I can grow my brain.’”

Faculty members too are saying that the content is resonating with their goals for the class. Some who were doubtful when we first met a year a half ago, have showed up as faculty leaders within these communities. As one faculty member put it: “All of my comfort zones are deeply threatened, but it is like the comfort zones were exactly what has been wrong. The whole system is set up to protect us from being challenged to improve. …”

Statway™ In the News
“Statway, created by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of teaching is a promising approach to remedial mathematics education. Built on the premise that statistics, data analysis and quantitative reasoning are essential for a growing number of occupations and professions.”

—The Hidden Costs of Community Colleges, American Institutes for Research, October 2011

A recently released report from the American Institutes for Research (AIR) found that nearly $4 billion was spent by federal, state, and local governments over five years on full-time community college students who dropped out after their first year without completing their certificate or degree programs. About a fifth of full-time students who enroll at a community college do not return for a second year. According to the report, for the 2008/2009 academic year, the most recent year for which data are available, nearly $1 billion of taxpayer money was spent on first-year, full-time students who dropped out, about 35 percent more than five years earlier. Mentioned in the report were initiatives that were attempting to address the completion rate of students in community colleges and Statway™ received a nod as a promising approach.

Fong, Treisman are part of new commission

New National Commission To Help Reshape the Future of Community Colleges

Association Leader Says Effort Will Address Hard Choices, Embrace Innovation

WASHINGTON, D.C. – For only the third time in their 110-year history, community colleges are preparing to take a holistic look at their broad and continuously evolving mission with the naming this week of the landmark 21st-Century Commission on the Future of Community Colleges.

The commission was appointed by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) and comprises 36 individuals who represent a broad array of constituencies and expertise from education, business, policy and communications. The group will work to examine the challenges and opportunities confronting the nation’s largest and fastest growing higher education sector.

“We have very intentionally selected commissioners who bring diverse viewpoints and backgrounds,” said AACC President Walter G. Bumphus. “That includes a few friendly critics who have consistently challenged community colleges to increase accountability and improve student outcomes.”

Over the next 10 months, the 21st-Century Commission will meet in person and virtually to examine the community college mission in light of current economic realities. President Obama has challenged community colleges to educate an additional 5 million students with degrees, certificates or other credentials by 2020, at a time when beleaguered state budgets have resulted in drastic cuts in state funding to the colleges. The first commission meeting will be held Aug. 12 in Washington, DC.

“We do not intend to be timid or superficial in confronting the hard choices and need for innovative thinking our leaders face in the coming decades,” Bumphus said.   “We will focus the collective intellect of the commission on such issues as use of disruptive technologies to speed learning and the redesign of structures, calendars and processes to better match the needs of our increasingly diverse student population. We will also not shy from criticism, such as our perceived need to be all things to all people.”

Guiding the commission’s work will be three nationally-known experts on community colleges who will serve as co-chairs: San Diego Community College District Chancellor Emeritus Augustine Gallego, Cuyahoga Community College President Jerry Sue Thornton, and Dr. Kay McClenney, director of the Center for Community College Student Engagement and former chief operating officer for the Education Commission of the States.

Community colleges currently enroll close to half of all U.S. undergraduates.  Enrollments have surged
by double digits over the last 2-3 years, reflecting a deep and lingering U.S. recession and persistently high unemployment rate that has caused families to seek lower cost college alternatives and workers to throng to the classroom for new skills or careers.

The new commission marks the third such effort to realign the community college mission to reflect national needs and changing times. The Truman Commission (1947) challenged higher education to provide universal access based on its belief that then-junior colleges could broaden and further democratize their mission by
becoming community colleges. Four decades later, the AACC Futures Commission (1988) set forward a reform agenda designed to strengthen the comprehensive mission the Truman Commission originally proposed.

In addition to the co-chairs named above, members of the 21st-Century Commission include:

• Mr. J. Noah Brown, President & CEO, Association of Community College Trustees (Washington, D.C.)
• Dr. Walter G. Bumphus, President & CEO, American Association of Community Colleges (Washington, D.C.)
• Mr. Kenneth P. Burke, Trustee, St. Petersburg College (Fla.)
• Dr. Gerardo E. de los Santos, President & CEO, League for Innovation in the Community College (Phoenix, Ariz.)
• Dr. Myrtle E. B. Dorsey, Chancellor, St. Louis Community College District (Mo.)
• Dr. Peter T. Ewell, Vice President, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (Boulder, Colo.)
• Dr. Bernadine Chuck Fong, Senior Managing Partner, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Stanford, Calif.)
• Dr. Marie Foster Gnage, President, West Virginia University, Parkersburg
• Dr. Allen Goben, President, Heartland Community College (Normal, Ill.)
• Ms. Kati Haycock, Director, Education Trust (Washington, D.C.)
• Dr. Alex Johnson, President, Community College of Allegheny County (Pittsburgh, Pa.)
• Dr. Christine Johnson, Chancellor, Community Colleges of Spokane (Wash.)
• Mr. Dwight D. Jones, Superintendent, Clark County School District (Nev.)
• Dr. Jane A. Karas, President, Flathead Valley Community College (Mont.)
• Dr. William “Brit” Kirwan, Chancellor, University System of Maryland
• Ms. Jennifer Lara, Professor, Anne Arundel Community College (Md.)
• Dr. Paul E. Lingenfelter, President, State Higher Education Executive Officers (Boulder, Colo.)
• Dr. Michael B. McCall, President, Kentucky Community & Technical College System (Versailles, Ky.)
• Dr. Mark David Milliron, Deputy Director, Postsecondary Improvement U.S. Program, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Seattle, Wash.)
• Mr. Eloy Oakley, Superintendent-President, Long Beach City College (Calif.)
• Dr. Diana G. Oblinger, President and CEO, EDUCAUSE (Boulder, Colo.)
• Dr. Daniel J. Phelan, President, Jackson Community College (Mich.)
• Dr. DeRionne P. Pollard, President, Montgomery College (Md.)
• Dr. Richard M. Rhodes, President, Austin Community College (Texas) as of Sept. 1, 2011
• Dr. Rod A. Risley, Executive Director, Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society (Jackson, Miss.)
• Dr. John E. Roueche, Professor and Director, Community College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin
• Mr. James T. Ryan, Chairman, President and CEO, W.W. Grainger, Inc. (Lake Forest, Ill.)
• Dr. Randy Smith, President, Rural Community College Alliance (Olustee, Okla.)
• Dr. Mary F. T. Spilde, President, Lane Community College (Ore.)
• Dr. John “Ski” Sygielski, President, Harrisburg Area Community College (Pa.)
• Dr. Vincent Tinto, Distinguished University Professor, School of Education, Syracuse University (N.Y.)
• Dr. Philip Uri Treisman, Professor of Mathematics and Public Affairs; Director, Charles A. Dana Center, The University of Texas at Austin
• Dr. Nancy L. Zimpher, Chancellor, The State University of New York (Albany)

Summer Institutes scheduled for July

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s Quantway and Statway Summer Institute is scheduled for mid-July. Teams from 30 colleges in eight states will gather in Palo Alto, California, to further develop these two newly designed mathematics pathways. Carnegie’s aim in this project is to significantly increase the proportion of students, who, within one year of continuous community college enrollment, are mathematically prepared to succeed in further academic study. While there are other objectives, the primary Institute goal is for faculty to feel comfortable delivering lessons to developmental math students this fall for Statway, and for Quantway in spring 2012.