Half of High School Sophomores Graduates from College

A federal study tracking a cohort of high school sophomores over 10 years shows that about half had a postsecondary credential, that those who went straight to college after high school were far likelier to earn a degree, and that the bachelor's degree holders among them were less likely to be unemployed or to have lost a job since 2006.  The report, published by the National Center for Education Statistics and drawn from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, examines a range of employment and other outcomes a decade later for students who were high school sophomores that year. Among the findings: A third (33 percent) of the 2002 high school sophomores had earned a bachelor's degree or higher, another 9 percent had associate degrees, 10 percent had undergraduate-level certificates, and 32 percent had attended college but lacked a credential. Forty-two percent of fhose who went to college within three months of completing high school had earned a bachelor's degree, and 11 percent had earned a master's.  Of those who went to college, 40 percent had no student loan debt, 36 percent had borrowed less than $25,000, and 11 percent had more than $50,000 in student loans.  Those with some kind of postsecondary credential were less likely to be unemployed (11.8 percent, vs. 25.9 percent of those who did not complete high school and 15 percent who had only a high school diploma), and to have received public assistance (26.2 percent, vs. 47.2 and 32.4 percent, respectively).

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/01/10/2002s-high-school-sophomores-10-years-later#ixzz2q3CeTNq8   Inside Higher Ed 

Study finds key criteria that determine college success for low-income youth

<Click on this link to download this report.>

A five-year study by UC researchers that included a survey of California youth and interviews with more than 300 young adults about their interactions with educational institutions has identified the five key issues that matter most for understanding and improving college success for low-income students.  The $7.5 million study, “Pathways to Postsecondary Success: Maximizing Opportunities for Youth in Poverty,” spotlights the importance of student voices, an understanding of student diversity, asset-based approaches to education, strong connections between K–12 and higher education, and institutional support for students.  The study was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and was issued by the University of California’s All Campus Consortium on Research For Diversity (UC/ACCORD) at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (GSE&IS).

“Our study began in 2008, at the onset of a critical economic downturn—the Great Recession—which impacted education and the labor market in considerably complex ways,” said UC/ACCORD director Daniel Solórzano, co-principal investigator on the study and a professor of social sciences and comparative education at GSE&IS. “It was clear the recession had an effect on both colleges and students. Budget cuts slashed enrollments at campuses and decreased the resources for those already enrolled. Many low-income students faced even greater financial instability from the scarcity of work or sudden unemployment of family members.  Therefore, at a time when students’ required additional support to stay on the path through college, the supports and conditions that are vital to their success were disappearing or overburdened on campuses.”

While “Pathways” reports on national data, the study focused on California, which has the largest number of community colleges (112). The vast majority of low-income students in California who pursue post-secondary education begin at community colleges.

Principal findings from the study include:

• Student voices matter: Education is a powerful force in the lives of low-income youth, and hearing what students say about their experiences is essential to understanding their educational pathways and outcomes. Financial difficulties, lack of available classes, transportation problems and a lack of availability of child care are obstacles to many low-income students’ success. Yet students reported that when they experienced caring educators and high-quality instruction in high school or college, this made a difference in their engagement and success in college.
• Diversity matters: Low-income youth are a diverse group, and understanding the similarities and differences in this student population enables administrators to better plan college success initiatives. In California, students of color make up the majority of community college enrollment, and many are the first in their family to attend college. Almost half (46 percent) of community college students are older, 54 percent work full-time and 16 percent are parents. “Common understandings of traditional college students may be less relevant as we plan for the growing number of community college students who are working full-time, raising families and have many responsibilities outside of school,” said Amanda L. Datnow, co-principal investigator on the study and a professor of education at UC San Diego. “These students are quickly becoming the majority, and we need to orient around their needs.”
• Assets matter: Report findings indicate that an asset-based approach helps education administrators tap into and foster students’ strengths in order to support college success. Low-income students enroll and often persist in college, although not always in traditionally defined ways. They arrive with high aspirations to do well and either finish their certificate program or transfer to a four-year college. Successful programs at the colleges affirm and tap into these assets.
• Connections between K–12 and higher education matter: High-quality K–12 schooling, combined with college preparatory resources, helps ensure college-going success for students. Nationally, 78 percent of low-income youth do not complete a college-preparatory curriculum in high school. In California, 85 percent of community college students require remediation in math and English to complete coursework they should have been taught in high school. Therefore, to ensure college readiness, better articulation between high schools and colleges needs to occur, and students need accurate information about enrollment practices and assessment procedures.
• Institutional supports and conditions matter: While funding cuts have resulted in reductions in mentoring programs and supports for students, financial difficulties, transportation problems and a lack of child care also frustrate many low-income students’ attempts to fulfill their goals. Low-income students are particularly dependent on financial aid to attend college, and information about resources—including academic and other services—must be integrated and streamlined to make the existing process less complicated and easier to access.

The multi-method study included the development of a monitoring tool to track educational opportunities for low-income youth. It also identified a set of indicators at the organizational level of community college campuses that support student success.

New WWC Quick Review on Daily Online Testing in Large Classes: Boosting College Performance While Reducing Achievement Gaps

This study investigated the effect of daily quizzes on the performance of college students. Students in an introductory psychology course used their own wireless-enabled devices to take short, Internet-based quizzes at the beginning of every class. The quiz items were drawn approximately equally from material covered in the readings and the lectures. The study authors examined impacts of the daily quizzes on student performance in the psychology course, in addition to other classes taken during the same semester and during the semester following the introductory psychology class.

The intervention took place during the fall 2011 semester, and the performance of intervention students was compared to students from the fall 2008 semester. About 50% of the students in the sample were racial/ethnic minorities, and about 60% were female. About 20% of students were first generation college students, and most students were in their first or second year of college.  The study authors reported that there was a nearly statistically significant effect (p = 0.06) of the daily quizzes on student performance in introductory psychology. Specifically, the daily quizzes incorporated 17 items that were also used on tests given during the comparison semester. Students in the daily quiz condition scored higher on these 17 items (77%) than the comparison students (71%). In addition, students in the intervention condition earned higher grades in their other courses during both the fall (3.07 vs. 2.96) and the subsequent spring (3.10 vs. 2.98) semesters. However, it is unknown whether these differences are statistically significant. Finally, the authors reported a statistically significant interaction suggesting that these effects were strongest among lower-middle SES students.  This study is a cohort-based quasi-experiment, and as such could meet WWC evidence standards with reservations. However, more information is needed from the study authors regarding the comparability of the intervention and comparison students at baseline before a rating can be given. A more thorough review (forthcoming) will determine the final study rating and report more fully on the study’s results.

Citation: Pennebaker, J., Gosling, S. D., & Ferrell, J. D. (2013). Daily online testing in large classes: Boosting college performance while reducing achievement gaps. PLoS One 8(11): e79774

Higher education officials tout the need for developmental education

LJWorld.com,  November 28, 2013  Sometimes state leaders complain about providing remedial education to college students, but a recent report says that basic instruction is crucial to the progress of thousands of Kansans and the state in general.  For many, remedial or developmental education provides a path to higher education and out of poverty, said Brian Inbody, president of Neosho County Community College.  "It is at the heart of the community college mission," Inbody recently told the Kansas Board of Regents.  "If you are ready to make a change in your life, we are going to meet where you are in your life. And if you can prove yourself, you can move on," he said.

Developmental education refers to coursework offered at a post-secondary institution that usually involves intermediate algebra, fundamentals of English or reading. Students usually enroll in the classes to prepare for more rigorous college-level courses.  In academic year 2010-2011, the most recent for which statistics are available, 38 percent of first-time, degree-seeking students attending Kansas community colleges enrolled in developmental courses during their first year at college. Seventeen percent of university students enrolled in developmental courses during their first year. The most common remedial course taken is math.

Developmental education is crucial for student success, Inbody said.  A typical community college class may include a mixture of recent high school graduates, older adults who haven't been in a classroom in more than 15 years, and students who scored low on the ACT.  Inbody said many students in community colleges are struggling to overcome poverty and haven't had the family supports that other college students have had.  "The idea of setting a goal of five years down the road to get into college is a foreign concept to a lot of families," he said.

Regents agreed with the need of developmental education to help increase the number of Kansans who have a post-secondary credential or degree.  "Too many people think developmental education is a dirty word. It's not," said Regents Chairman Fred Logan  Community college officials are planning a more in-depth study of developmental education needs to be completed by June.  "If there are policy issues that need to be changed, please bring them forward," Regent Kenny Wilk told Inbody.  Regents President and Chief Executive Officer Andy Tompkins said developmental education is key to helping people succeed. It would be easy to write off some of these students, but he said that wouldn't be right.  "We have set this system up where we do have a place where you can get into post-secondary education," he said.

Originally published at: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2013/nov/28/higher-education-officials-tout-need-developmental/

Opportunity Makers: Influencing Opportunity for Low-Income Students

OPPORTUNITY MAKERS:  Caroline M. Hoxby & Sarah E. Turner.  Two of the people identified by the Chronicle of Higher Education as making a difference during 2013.

Caroline M. Hoxby and Sarah E. Turner have devised an inexpensive way to get high-achieving, low-income students to consider selective colleges, an idea that has received widespread attention this year.  They're opening doors for low-income students

In a phenomenon called "undermatching," such students usually end up at places with fewer resources, less-prepared classmates, and lower graduation rates.  Ms. Hoxby, a professor of economics at Stanford University, and Ms. Turner, a professor of economics at the University of Virginia, devised an experiment in which they mailed college information to high-school students whose family incomes were in the bottom 25 percent and whose test scores were in the top 10 percent.

In the randomized trial, the professors sent one group of students general college-search information, another group information on college costs after financial aid, a third group application-fee waivers, and a fourth group all of those. A control group got nothing. The mailings cost only $6 per student.

And they worked. Students who received the combined information—and remembered getting it—submitted 48 percent more applications than did those in the control group. They applied to colleges that had a 17-percent higher graduation rate and an 86-point higher median SAT score. And the students enrolled in colleges that were 46 percent more likely to be places where their classmates were equally prepared.  Getting students to go to certain colleges wasn't really the goal, Ms. Hoxby told The Chronicle this past spring. It was to help them choose. "To not make decisions well simply because you don't know what's out there," she said, "that's sad."

Now she and Ms. Turner, both 47, are collaborating with the College Board to expand their work. Already packets based on the economists' experiment have been sent to 28,000 high-school seniors, and the College Board plans to email them, too. It also expects to expand the outreach to younger students. About 35,000 high-achieving, low-income students graduate from high school each year, and very few apply to any of the country's 230 or so most selective colleges, according to a previous study by Ms. Hoxby and another researcher.

At least one state, Delaware, is also joining the effort, announcing this fall that it would collaborate with the College Board and send information to an additional 2,000 students.  While the researchers have found that families are wary of information from colleges themselves, Harvard University has said it will conduct similar outreach, encouraging students to consider it and other selective institutions.  It's been a big year for the idea of undermatching: White House officials met with college presidents to discuss it, and it underpins Michelle Obama's recent focus on expanding college access.

Still, not everyone is sold on the solution. Catharine Bond Hill, president of Vassar College and an economist, argued in a letter to The New York Times that as long as many selective colleges "reject talented low-income applicants because of students' financial need," then without extra aid, "getting more low-income students to apply to top colleges will just result in more rejections. Of course, students could be rejected from selective colleges for any number of reasons. But nobody goes to one without applying first.

Transforming Remediation: Understanding the Research, Policy, and Practice (Webinar)

Transforming Remediation:  Understanding the Research, Policy, and Practice was a webinar conducted October 4, 2013  highlights research into the problems of remediation, along with promising practices from community colleges across the country. Speakers include Complete College America’s Bruce Vandal, the California Acceleration Project’s Katie Hern, North Carolina’s Cynthia Lyston, and researcher Michelle Hodara. The webinar was co-sponsored by the American Youth Policy Forum and the American Institutes for Research. Through the California Acceleration Project, the state is seeking alternatives to traditinoal approaches of developmental-level courses for meeting the needs of the students and the state.

MOOCs Don't Work for Academically Underprepared Students by Udacity Founder

Much has been written about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) as an important advance for making college accessible and inexpensive for students worldwide. Frankly, I have never seen an instructional technology drawn such high visibility from popular and professional media, embraced so quickly, and universal claims made about its efficacy, with little to no evidence. As a technology geek, I would be happy to read of MOOC success with students. But the walls are being to crack in this success story. The following report published in the Chronicle of Higher Education (based on interview through another publication), reveals that even one of the founders of the MOOC movement admitting that MOOCs may not work for academically underprepared students. MOOCs may favor the better prepared and also the more affluent. Does this mean that MOOCs would not be effective with TRiO students? No, there are many TRiO students that may be low-income or first-generation for college that might benefit from MOOCs. But for those that are academically underprepared, caustion is warranted. Watch for more reports on the efficacy of MOOCs. carefully read the reports to see for whom the MOOCs are effective. Time will tell.

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Sebastian Thrun, the Udacity founder calls his company’s massive open online courses a “lousy product” to use for educating underprepared college students. Mr. Thrun reflected on the discouraging results of an experiment at San Jose State University in which instructors used Udacity’s online platform to teach mathematics. Some of the students were enrolled at the university, and some at a local high school. “We were on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, and at the same time, I was realizing, we don’t educate people as others wished, or as I wished. We have a lousy product,” Mr. Thrun told the reporter, Max Chafkin. “It was a painful moment.”

But academics who have studied online education for longer than a few years were not surprised by the Udacity founder’s humbling. “Well, there it is folks,” wrote George Siemens, a researcher and strategist at Athabasca University’s Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute, on his blog. “After two years of hype, breathless proclamations about how Udacity will transform higher education, Silicon Valley blindness to existing learning research, and numerous articles/interviews featuring Sebastian Thrun, Udacity has failed.” “Thrun seems to have ‘discovered’ that open-access, distance-education students struggle to complete,” wrote Martin Weller, a professor of educational technology at the Open University, in Britain. “I don’t want to sound churlish here, but hey, the OU has known this for 40 years.”

Beyond schadenfreude, Mr. Thrun’s humbling has left some academics wondering who MOOCs are good for, if not underprivileged students in California. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania recently noted that the students taking MOOCs from Penn on Coursera, another major MOOC platform, tend to be well educated already. “The individuals the MOOC revolution is supposed to help the most—those without access to higher education in developing countries—are underrepresented among the early adopters,” wrote the researchers.

In a blog post this week, Mr. Thrun responded to the fallout from the Fast Company profile by citing data from Udacity’s summer pilot with San Jose State, whose pass rates compared more favorably to the traditional versions offered on the campus. But he neglected to mention that Udacity had, by then, stopped focusing on underprivileged students. More than half of the students in the summer trial already had a college degree. “Thrun’s cavalier disregard for the SJSU students reveals his true vision of the target audience for MOOCs: students from the posh suburbs, with 10 tablets apiece and no challenges whatsoever—that is, the exact people who already have access to expensive higher education,” wrote Rebecca Schuman, a Slate columnist and adjunct professor at the University of Missouri at St. Louis.