Unfunded Mandates Accomplish Little and Frustrate Many

Inside Higher Education (May 17, 2010) published Community Colleges' Unfunded Mandate. It stated “President Obama, foundation leaders and the heads of advocacy groups all agree that community colleges need to focus on more than access and drastically improve their generally low completion rates. By and large, these leaders believe that these institutions know, whether by research or common sense, just what to do - such as providing better academic advising, outreach to struggling students, financial aid to encourage full-time enrollment, smaller class sizes and so forth. So what's the holdup? Community college presidents across the country argue there is a great disparity between what is being asked of their institutions as far as the "completion agenda" and their ability to actually accomplish its goals - mostly because of dwindling state and local resources….” http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/05/17/completion

Another reason for the problem not mentioned by the article is the shift of developmental-level courses to the community colleges by an increasing number of four-year institutions that no longer offer them due to their own budget issues and desire to upscale their images. Rather than acting as partners in the access priority for a growing diversity of students, four-year institutions tell students that need some courses at the developmental-level to go elsewhere. Community college enrollments are already swelling due to the national unemployment increase, funneling more students for these needed courses increases the burden on the community college when their funding is either stagnant or declining. According to some community college leaders, the surge of enrollments in this area diverts resources from offering high-demand (and often expensive) certificate and associate degree programs needed by students and local employers. A few leaders now advocate that the time of open admissions for these institutions is over and some students should go elsewhere, wherever that is.

 Big problems demand widespread partnerships (2yr, 4yr, proprietary) with the resources needed to accomplish them. Unfunded mandates are cruel to those charged with implementing them since they are the ones harshly criticized for not accomplishing the goals created by those far above them. And students do not benefit any better.

Developing smartness: The lost mission of higher education

Headlines within the postsecondary press report morre frequently the "alarm" of students arriving at college that lack sufficient academic preparation and their subsequent need for enrollment in developmental-level courses. These are  not new concerns. Higher education officials have been voicing them since the first college oppened in America four hundred years ago. Why are we surprised? Students go to college to learn what they don't already know and to do things that are yet to have the skills for.

The change in the dialogue is now that more policy makers want to stratify access and opportunity in higher education. Admit only those students who are already smart and skilled and send the rest to the community college. Even community colleges are increasingly voicing frustration over the burden and some call for entry level standards and elimination of open door admissions. Before proceeding with that conversation, they should review Dr. Astin's article on this subject.

Astin, A. W. (1998). Remedial education and civic responsibility. National Crosstalk, 6(2), 12-13. Retrieved July 4, 2004, from: http://www.highereducation.org/crosstalk/pdf/ ctsummer98.pdf The author, director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, argues that remedial education is the most important problem in education today and providing instruction in this area would do more to alleviate more social and economic problems than any other activity. Astin discusses the history and stigma of remedial education and how higher education has become focused on "identifying smart students" rather than "developing smartness" in all its students. Astin argues that it is for the benefit of society that remedial education, affirmative action, and other programs be highly supported and valued.

It is easy for a college to take highly gifted students and help their reach even higher. It takes much more skill, commitment, and dedication to take students who have high desire, but have yet obtained a wide set of skills, experiences, and knowledge. But isn't that what the general public wants us to do? Identifying smart students and admitting them is easy. "Developing smartness" is much harder. And more satisfying.

The Community College and Remedial/Developmental Education

Recently the Gates Foundation announced a gift of over $100 million to support community colleges in identifying best practices to improve remedial and developmental-level courses and other services to support higher student achievement and graduation rates. The following interview forecast many of these recommendations by Robert McCabe a decade ago. Revisiting McCabe and reading his book provides best practices and case studies of success with increasing student success.

Callan, P. M. (2000, Fall). An interview: Robert McCabe. National Crosstalk, Retrieved July 4, 2004, from: http://www.highereducation.org/crosstalk/ct1000/interview1000.shtml

Robert McCabe, senior fellow with the League for Innovation in the Community College and former president of Miami-Dade Community College is the focus of this interview. Much of the interview revolves around McCabe's newest book, No One to Waste, a national study of community college remedial programs. McCabe employs a variety of arguments for the support and expansion of remedial education.

ERIC Database, ED448813, Title: No One To Waste: A Report to Public Decision-Makers and Community College Leaders. Authors: McCabe, Robert H. Abstract: Twenty-five community colleges participated in a study that tracked 71 percent of 592 students who successfully enrolled in a remedial program in 1990. Follow-up interviews of program completers gathered information about further education, employment, family, and facts about post-remedial life. A criminal justice search was also conducted on the entire study cohort. These data were the basis for this first comprehensive national study on community college remedial education students. The study found that most successfully remediated students perform well in standard college work, gravitate to occupational programs or direct employment, and become productively employed. While a majority of the remedial students were white non-Hispanic, ethnic minorities were overrepresented in the cohort and even more so in a seriously deficient student sub-cohort, confirming that remedial education is a significant issue for ethnic minorities. While community college remedial programs are cost effective, most colleges fail to use the substantial research concerning successful remedial education, and do not fund programs at a level necessary for successful results. Recommendations include: (1) giving remedial education higher priority and greater institutional and legislative support; (2) requiring assessment and placement of all entering students; and (3) developing a national guide to assist colleges in developing effective remedial education programs. (Contains 15 figures and tables, 45 references and 63 pages.)/p>

Gates Foundations Commits $110M to Reform Traditional Remedial and Developmental Education

(Gates Foundation Press Release) To aid community colleges in developmental education reform, the foundation announced a commitment of up to $110 million to help research and scale innovative programs. These strategies will help under-prepared students spend less time and money catching up, and will lead to improved retention and completion. About half of the foundation’s commitment has already been given to colleges and programs. The remaining $57 million will be given as grants over the next two years and will be guided by lessons learned through the earlier investments, which are showing that good remedial education contains several key elements:

• It starts early with effective collaboration between middle schools, high schools and colleges that can prevent the need for remediation in the first place. For example, El Paso Community College partners with local school districts and the University of Texas at El Paso, which has dramatically improved graduation rates in just a few short years.
• It is tightly structured blending credit-bearing classes with enhanced academic supports. For example, Washington state’s I-BEST program blends basic academics and career training into a seamless accelerated program.
• It’s flexible and personalized to address specific skill gaps to ensure that students learn what they need. This can be accomplished through technology and other means to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of remedial education. Monterey Institute for Technology and Education, for example, will fund the development of remedial math courses that will be made available for free to colleges. The project aims to reduce the time and cost of remediation through interactive and adaptive multimedia and games.

Reoccurring Themes for Historically-Underrepresented Students

A review of the history of academic access and learning assistance in American higher education validates the following reoccurring themes. Understanding these can help predict future trends and proactive actions to take.

1. Institutions often admit students from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds but do not effectively deal with that reality.  Most institutions do not report their academic success with the media.
2. Many do not place sufficient resources in place to effectively deal with the oppressive and academically-deprived backgrounds of the students.  Many institutions target academic resources for upper division students who have survived.
3. College admission standards favor the dominant power culture.  Standardized admission tests are culturally biased in a variety of ways to favor of the dominant culture.  This has erected severe barriers for access of students to many institutions of choice.
4. No significant attention is placed on widespread reporting of college outcomes.  The dropout rate from college has remained at 50 percent for the past 100 years.  There is no significant tie between institutional funding by the state and its rate of academic success.
5. Educational leaders and faculty members have always complained about the academic preparation level of prospective students.  Academic expectancy always rises mores quickly than the academic preparation level of students.  The creation of admission standards guarantees that some students will be excluded and some will be admitted provisionally and need developmental education.  The quickly growing database of knowledge in the academic disciplines doubles every five to fifteen years, yet the number of lecture periods to deliver the information has remained fixed for hundreds of years.  Since employers expect more of college graduates, increased pressure is placed on college faculty to prepare students at higher levels of knowledge and skill mastery.
6. While learning assistance activities and approaches permeate the history of higher education in the U.S., it is nearly universally ignored by education historians.  There is little mention of learning assistance, students in general, or faculty members in histories.
7. While the name for learning assistance may change over time, the need persists.  Some institutions deal with the need by renaming courses.  Harvard University renamed it “Remedial Reading” course to “The Reading Course.”  Later they renamed “Basic Writing” to “Introduction to Expository Writing.”  Enrollment soared.   Other institutions simply renumber their courses to a higher level to make them more politically acceptable to campus or state officials.
8. Students with learning assistance needs are recruited for economic gain by institutions during times of low student enrollment.
9. Rising high school exit standards do not eliminate the need for learning assistance.  The College Board was created in 1890 for such a purpose.  The 1970's were dominated by A Nation At Risk Report. Two reasons explain why this has occurred.  The first is that expectation levels by the college faculty have risen more quickly.  The second is the number of students who enter or reenter college after a decade and have forgotten some of what they learned in high school.  The third is that more students enter college from high school (nearly two-thirds) than those who enrolled in college preparation course in high school (approximately half).  And of those students who enrolled in college prep courses, what proportion earned high marks?
10. Academic enrichment activities, based upon best practices of learning assistance, have been offered at privilideged schools for hundreds of years.  These institutions have used other language to describe their activities and have a campus value system and culture than support and nurture this orientation. 

Past Efforts to Validate Best Practices by USDOE

A precedent for national validation of best education proactices for postsecondary education existed for several decades in the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) now succeeded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Within OERI was the Program Effectiveness Panel (PEP). PEP reviewed educational practices submitted by educators. An example of one of these applications is provided through the following: https://www.casas.org/home/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.downloadFile&mapID=1362

Through a rigorous evaluation process some practices were "validated." These validated practices were disseminated to the education community. OERI's National Diffusion Network (NDN) provided grants to a selected number of PEP certified programs for national dissemination. Due to budget cuts, both PEP and NDN were eliminated in the 1990s.

$100 Billion Invested and Only One USDOE Validated Practice

I was curious how much money had been invested in TRIO programs by the federal government since the 1960s. I found a table on the Internet, http://tinyurl.com/TRIOfundinghistoryThe total is about $16 billion through FY10 and they still don't have any validated best practices by external evaluation agencies. Add to this all the money that has been spent on GEAR UP, Adult Education, Title III, Title IV, etc. Since some of those programs were created by the original Higher Education Act, the total by all of them together probably exceeds $100 billion. Maybe a lot more. And only one validated postsecondary practice by USDOE (Supplemental Instruction).

Millions of students are served every year by these federal programs. Many students benefit from the services. However, the USDOE does not have a mechanism to identify why they work. Or what particular policies, specific activities, and the like make the differernce for higher outcomes. TRIO, Title III, GEAR UP, and other federal programs are not themselves best practices. An individual college makes a selection from a wide variety of policies and activities to craft their own approach to better serving students. Those individual choices and the way that they are implemented could be "best practices." But currently there is no where to find such best practices that have been validated by USDOE.

USDOE used to have the Program Effectiveness Panel (PEP) that evaluated education practices at the secondary and postsecondary level. Only one program at the postsecondary level was validated regarding improved student achievement and graduation rates. PEP was eliminagted in the mid 1990s due to budget cuts imposed by the administration of President Clinton.

Every year the U.S. Department of Education awards close to $2 billion for grants to colleges to support high student achievement and graduation rates. But there is currently no system for identifying, validating, and disseminating best practices for postsecondary education. Every year colleges are forced to reinvent the wheel regarding education practices to serve those students. This is an enormous waste of the taxpayer's dollars and lower outcomes for students. We need a onestop shop for college administrators to locate validated best practices that they know will work rather than experimenting on their own students to see if something works. If it does not, the students suffer. if it does work, no one else knows about it. This has to stop. If we ever hope to raise the achievement of U.S. college students to be the best in the world, we will have to make ourselves accountable for those federal funds and effectively share best practices with one another.