Developmental Education Initiative
Nearly 60 percent of students enrolling in community college must take remedial classes to be eligible for credit-bearing courses. For low-income students and students of color, the figure tops 90 percent at some colleges. MDC’s Developmental Education Initiative was a three-year effort (2009-2012) to learn more about what policies, practices, and resources are needed to scale up community college programs that help underprepared students get on the credit-earning and completion track. Fifteen colleges and six states that were early participants in Achieving the Dream modified financial aid policies, assessment preparation, and curriculum. They adopted new professional development strategies and conducted evaluations and held student focus groups to learn what was working and how to expand the reach of those practices to more students.
Some policy levers and state actions included:
- Identifying obstacles to completion, factors that correlate with student success, and high and low performing institutions to inform statewide goals for community colleges.
- Phasing in common statewide placement standards and aligning remedial work with credit-bearing courses to accelerate progress toward degree completion.
- Collaborating with K-12 systems to reduce the need for remedial education.
- Using state-level data systems to track student outcomes in remedial courses.
- Developing performance-based funding systems that would reward community colleges for helping students progress through remedial education and subsequent college-level courses.
- Instituting performance incentives to reward colleges for helping more students advance through remedial education courses.
DEI states and colleges completed their grant program in December 2012.
Who's Involved
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States
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Colleges
- Coastal Bend College
- Cuyahoga Community College
- Danville Community College
- El Paso Community College
- Guilford Technical Community College
- Housatonic Community College
- Houston Community College
- North Central State College
- Norwalk Community College
- Patrick Henry Community College
- Sinclair Community College
- South Texas College
- Valencia College
- Zane State College
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Partners
Resources
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Adopting and Adapting Course Compression Strategies
This brief summarizes efforts to reform developmental education at Zane State College and the Community College of Baltimore County. Focused on accelerating student success and progress, the two schools pursued distinctive approaches to reform that aligned with their institutional missions and student populations. Recognizing that the majority of its students will not succeed with only “skill and drill” work on academics, Zane State pursued a holistic, student-centered approach to help students build academic, social, and cultural skills; that work is detailed here. Supplementary information is provided about the work at the Community College of Baltimore County, focused on its landmark Accelerated Learning Program. The two reforms can be both categorized as compression strategies. At Zane, compression means shortening the overall duration of a course but maintaining the same number of instructional hours; at CCBC, the compression strategy pairs two courses with complementary content, which students take simultaneously.
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Attachment Size RFTS_Compression.pdf
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Advising, Data-Informed Decision-making, Developmental Education, Faculty & Staff Engagement, Institutional Research & Information Technology, Professional Development, Retention & Support, Student EngagementCollege Readiness, Culture of Evidence & Inquiry, Institutional Change, Faculty & Staff Engagement, Scaling Change, Student-Centered SupportsSeries
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February 25, 2014 -
Adopting and Adapting Contextualization Strategies
As described in this brief, Tacoma Community College and South Texas College each focused on contextualization as a cornerstone of developmental education reform, albeit with different approaches. With a comprehensive look at the experience at Tacoma Community College and a supplementary example from South Texas College, we begin to understand how colleges can enact effective reforms in developmental education that are uniquely appropriate to their institutions.
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Attachment Size RFTS_Contextualization.pdf
407.29 KB Type of Resource
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Advising, Data-Informed Decision-making, Developmental Education, Faculty & Staff Engagement, Institutional Research & Information Technology, Professional Development, Retention & Support, Student EngagementCollege Readiness, Culture of Evidence & Inquiry, Equity, Institutional Change, Faculty & Staff Engagement, Scaling Change, Student-Centered Supports, Technology in EducationSeries
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February 25, 2014 -
Adopting and Adapting Computer-Assisted Learning Strategies
Three community colleges—El Paso Community College, Bunker Hill Community College, and Patrick Henry Community College—incorporated technology into the curriculum to support student progress in mathematics through developmental education. Each college took its own path: El Paso developed a self-accelerated emporium-style computer lab, Patrick Henry incorporated fully modularized math curricula, and Bunker Hill’s contextualized redesign integrated tutoring and skill building. With a comprehensive look at the experience at El Paso Community College and supplementary examples from Bunker Hill Community College and Patrick Henry Community College, we begin to understand how colleges can enact effective reforms in developmental education that are uniquely appropriate to their institutions.
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Attachment Size RFTS_Tech.pdf
458.54 KB Type of Resource
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Advising, Data-Informed Decision-making, Developmental Education, Faculty & Staff Engagement, Institutional Research & Information Technology, Professional Development, Retention & Support, Student EngagementCollege Readiness, Culture of Evidence & Inquiry, Institutional Change, Faculty & Staff Engagement, Scaling Change, Student-Centered Supports, Technology in EducationSeries
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February 25, 2014 -
This overview introduces Right from the Start: An Institutional Perspective on Developmental Education Reform, a series of three practitioner briefs on developmental education. Created by Achieving the Dream and MDC, the briefs spotlight successful reform efforts in developmental education at seven Achieving the Dream colleges.
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Attachment Size RFTS_intro.pdf
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Advising, Data-Informed Decision-making, Developmental Education, Faculty & Staff Engagement, First Year Experience, Institutional Research & Information Technology, Professional Development, Retention & Support, Student EngagementCollege Readiness, Culture of Evidence & Inquiry, Equity, Institutional Change, Faculty & Staff Engagement, Scaling Change, Student-Centered Supports, Technology in EducationSeries
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February 25, 2014 -
In February 2012, MDC convened DEI college teams composed of faculty, administrators, and presidents. We mixed them up—different colleges, different states, different roles—and asked them to create the ideal path for underprepared students to get from college entry to credential completion. Drawing on their collective knowledge, particularly what they’d learned during DEI, the teams considered four points of interaction with students or potential students: early intervention and access, advising and support services, developmental education instruction, and alignment with credential and degree programs. Six teams and six hours later, we had six designs that displayed a remarkable amount of consensus about the programs, policies, and institutional supports needed to help any student be successful on the path from college enrollment to credential completion. This piecesynthesizes our DEI college teams’ recommended best program bets and related critical institutional policies for helping all students succeed at what they set out to accomplish in community college.
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March 20, 2013 -
The Developmental Education Initiative asked 15 college leaders to take what they’d learned in early Achieving the Dream efforts and apply that to the challenge of scaling up: what resources, policies, and practices are essential to scaling up effective developmental education efforts? Finding ways to move more students through developmental education more quickly—or bypass it altogether—while maintaining successful student outcomes required leadership and commitment from every level of the organization. In this essay collection, the presidents of the 15 DEI colleges reflect on what they learned about building, embedding, and maintaining systemic change in their institutions—particularly in the difficult field of developmental education—through work with their trustees, students, faculty, staff, and community. They discuss how they and their colleges took on identifying successful innovations and scaling them up in the midst of leadership transitions, serious reductions in financial resources, and major changes in organizational structure.
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March 20, 2013 -
Less than 25 percent of college students who take any developmental education courses earn a credential within eight years. Over the past three years, the six states in the Developmental Education Initiative have developed and enacted unprecedented changes in policy and practice in an effort to improve outcomes in developmental classes. The reforms by Connecticut, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia are designed to help more students who are placed in to developmental education accelerate into credit-bearing college courses and continue their momentum through to credentials with value. The network of states in DEI undertook bold reforms such as redesigning the delivery of remediation, improving the collection and use of student data to guide priorities and investment, and enacting outcomes-based funding to provide incentives for colleges to encourage innovative solutions to long-standing performance challenges.
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December 9, 2012 -
Driven by economic and educational imperatives, public policymakers, higher education leaders, and philanthropic and advocacy groups are mobilizing aggressive national and state campaigns to bolster college completion. Campaigns to improve student success are particularly concerned about the performance of our nation’s community colleges, where graduation rates have remained stubbornly low. In response to this challenge, state governments are testing the power of several policy levers to change individual and institutional behaviors in ways that increase and accelerate college completion. One of these is the formula used to allocate public funding to institutions.
Recently, several states have experimented with new performance-based funding models that allocate some percentage of state support on the basis of institutional progress in improving student retention, progression, or completion of credentials, not just on enrollment levels.
This brief presents a set of JFF-produced tools that can help states design performance-based funding systems that can influence student and institutional behavior, avoid unintended consequences, and withstand shifts in political and economic climates. These “Performance Funding 2.0” tools are based primarily on the experience of states participating in Achieving the Dream and the Developmental Education Initiative that have moved toward a new performance funding model in recent years.
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Attachment Size 2012TyingFundingToCommunityCollegeOutcomes.pdf
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April 1, 2012 -
Community colleges play a vital role in advancing educational and economic opportunity for many Americans, especially low-income students and students of color. Without these institutions, our higher education system would be inaccessible to a large portion of our citizenry. Today, America is counting on community colleges to help students, regardless of background and level of preparation, obtain a credential or degree and put them on the path to economic security; community colleges are spending more time in the spotlight — and facing increased scrutiny — given the current status of the economy, of national college completion rates, and an increasing mismatch between available jobs and the skills of those available to work. Colleges across the country are responding in innovative ways, but sustaining the services, instruction, and training to meet these challenges will require colleges to move beyond small programs, no matter how successful. We’re not just asking community colleges to soothe some of our toughest educational and economic woes, we’re asking them to do it “at scale.”
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Attachment Size More to Most: Scaling Up Effective Community College Practices
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March 22, 2012 -
An $18 million effort led by MDC and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Lumina Foundation, the Developmental Education Initiative (DEI) is scaling up innovations piloted in Achieving the Dream Colleges and States. Fifteen DEI colleges and six DEI states are scaling up policies and practices that can generate improvements for more developmental education students. Lessons learned from DEI are already making their way through the ATD Network and beyond. The workshop will provide an introduction to DEI and More to Most, a new guidebook for scaling up effective practices at community colleges that features the SCALERS model, seven organizational capacities that institutions can deploy to successfully expand programs. Participants will learn how Guilford Technical Community College has applied these principles to DEI work on its campus, as well as how Jackson Community College has implemented the More to Most process to design a scaling plan for ATD interventions.
Moderator: Holly Zanville, Program Director, Lumina Foundation, IN
Panelists:
- Abby Parcell, DEI Program Manager, MDC, NC
- Ginger Miller, DEI Grant Coordinator, Guilford Technical Community College, NC
- Charlotte Finnegan, Dean, Foundation Studies and Student Support, Jackson Community College, MI
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Attachment Size MDC_2012_DREAM_Bringing_Innovation_to_Scale.pdf
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When research suggested the length of time spent in developmental education courses can impede college persistence, Zane State College, with the support of a Developmental Education Initiative grant, designed two types of courses to accelerate developmental students’ progress to college-level: compressed math courses and developmental courses linked to college-level general education courses. Despite very successful student outcomes, the college faced challenges attracting student enrollment and scaling up the initiative to serve a larger target population. The presenters will share strategies and data obtained at two strategic decision points. Panelists will then ask small groups to devise alternative strategies for scaling up enrollment and increasing student engagement, and then share Zane State’s actual changes in advising, marketing, and classroom practices. The workshop will be a collaborative exercise in data-informed decisionmaking. Participants will obtain valuable insight into how to adjust to student needs and overcome barriers in developmental education course redesign.
- Becky Ament, Associate Dean for Developmental Education, Zane State College, OH
- Beth Fischer, Director of Institutional Research and Planning, Zane State College, OH
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Attachment Size Advising_and_ADVANCE_Original.PDF
7.64 MB Thinking_Beyond_your_Placement_Test_Score_to_choose_the_best.PDF
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In this issue: Tying Funding to Community College Outcomes: Models, Tools, and Recommendations for States; Achieving the Dream and Developmental Education Initiative Policy Network States Meet to Discuss Nurturing Faculty Leadership to Accelerate the Diffusion of Innovation; Interview with Community College Research Center’s Shanna Smith Jaggars on Identifying Trade-offs that Block Developmental Education Improvement; Discussion with Jaci King of SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium and Allison Jones of Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) Exploring How the Common Core State Standards Will Impact Placement Policies.
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Attachment Size ATDDEI-Newsletter-Mar2012-FINAL.pdf
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March 8, 2012 -
In this issue: New Jersey’s Big Ideas Project Integrates Many Achieving the Dream Strategies; Achieving the Dream and Developmental Education Initiative States Receive Federal Funds to Support Workforce Development; Adult Basic Education Alignment in Indiana.
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Attachment Size AchievingSuccessNov2011.pdf
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November 7, 2011 -
Substantive and innovative policy changes designed to help students succeed in developmental education are underway in the six states involved with the Developmental Education Initiative (DEI), even in the face of challenging economic times.
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Attachment Size ATD_ScalingSustaining_100311.pdf
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October 3, 2011 -
As a leader in the Developmental Education Initiative, you possess the unique authority to spread the word about our groundbreaking work to help every American complete the college credential needed for a living-wage job and a middle-class life. Because you’re a busy executive, we’ve assembled this toolkit to make this responsibility easier. Please use these ideas and materials as you speak with colleagues, policymakers, contacts in your community, and other external audiences.
This guide explains the four important themes we’re all working to communicate. We offer them with some suggested language that we can all use in our conversations with various constituencies so that we all reinforce one another’s efforts.
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Attachment Size DEI Talking Points- Complete.pdf
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October 1, 2011 -
Winning Formula: Institutional innovations + State policy strides = Students succeeding in college
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Attachment Size DEI Talking Points- #4 Winning Formula.pdf
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October 1, 2011 -
This handout offers examples of promising practices for you to use when talking about developmental education or DEI.
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Attachment Size DEI Talking Points- #3 Promising Examples.pdf
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October 1, 2011 -
Helping community colleges get more workers ready – faster – for the skilled jobs of the economic recovery.
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Attachment Size DEI Talking Points- #2 Dev Ed is Good for Business.pdf
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October 1, 2011 -
This handout offers advice on how to talk about developmental education and DEI to anyone interested in learning more.
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Attachment Size DEI Talking Points- #1 Talking About Dev Ed.pdf
1.13 MB Type of Resource
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October 1, 2011 -
In this issue: Developing Continuous Improvement Networks: A Strategy to Accelerate Innovations for Student Completion; Hawai’i’s Performance-based Funding System; Massachusetts’ Vision Project and the Working Group on Graduation and Student Success Rates; Texas: The Developmental Education Initiative’s Impact on Recent Legislation.
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Attachment Size AchievingSuccessSept2011.pdf
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September 18, 2011 -
Across the nation, state governments and private foundations are pursuing the long-elusive goal of improving college completion rates. Driving these efforts is a growing awareness of the large proportion of students who come to college—especially community college—unprepared for college-level coursework. This challenge is one that the states and colleges involved in Achieving the Dream and its Developmental Education Initiative have been addressing for several years.
Now states are turning to a familiar tool in education reform—assessment—as a valuable lever to improve college readiness. Testing Ground describes how Florida’s Division of Colleges worked with K-12 partners to design, plan, and launch an ambitious college-readiness agenda with a new college placement test as its centerpiece. By using data to create a sense of urgency, making faculty central players, and ensuring that prominent champions keep the efforts alive, Florida’s education system is well on its way to implementing major college-readiness reforms.
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Attachment Size ATD_AE_TestingGround_100311.pdf
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September 1, 2011 -
Cuyahoga Community College believes that a good cooperative experience is one which motivates students and makes them feel a strong connection to both their work and their classmates. More importantly, it move learning from a teacher-led, top down experience to a responsible student-centered experience. Finally, the cooperative learning experience contributes to another equally important goal: socialization.
These guides discuss the basics of cooperative learning and the benefits the method has to offer students testing below college-ready in English and reading. They also offer a rich selection of exercises on team building, study skills, reading, writing, getting and giving feedback for revisions, strategy cards for supplemental instruction, and suggestions for evaluating cooperative activities. Most of the exercises provided are designed to foster the three ends of cooperative learning: student engagement, language development, and socialization.
English 0980 is Cuyahoga's Language Fundamentals I course while English 0990 is Language Fundamentals II.
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Attachment Size Cuyahoga- Coop Learning Manual Engl 0980.pdf
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August 5, 2011 -
This guide, produced by Cuyahoga Community College, offers vital tips and strategies for being an effective Supplemental Instruction leader.
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Attachment Size Cuyahoga- Supplemental Instruction Manual.pdf
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August 1, 2011 -
In this issue: New Publications from Jobs for the Future; Florida’s Student Success Dashboard: A Tool for Facilitating Institutional Data Use; Connecticut Kicks Off Data-Driven Developmental Education Redesign; Building Capacity in Arkansas Community Colleges Through Statewide Professional Development.
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Attachment Size AchievingSuccessMay2011.pdf
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May 21, 2011 -
A significant redesign of remedial education—how it is organized, delivered, and taught—is required if the nation’s community colleges are to achieve more than incremental progress in increasing student success. The vast majority of our nation’s community colleges need substantial ongoing supports to do so.
The most logical and efficient locus of such support is on the state level, through policies and capacity-building efforts that identify promising practices, test program outcomes, and disseminate proven models quickly and effectively. Six states—Connecticut, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia—are putting the state policy strategy into action through the Developmental Education Initiative, launched in 2009 by MDC and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Lumina Foundation.
Driving Innovation describes what the DEI states have set out to do and why, the momentum they have developed, and next steps in their efforts to overcome obstacles to better results.
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Attachment Size DrivingInnovation.pdf
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April 12, 2011 -
More Than Reshuffling is a companion piece to the previously released report, More Than Rules. The goal of More Than Rules was to describe the challenges facing GED graduates at The City University of New York (CUNY) and the work of the CUNY College Transition Program (CTP) to prepare students for those challenges. Early sections of that paper examined the misalignment between the GED math subject test and college math placement exams, the prevalence of math remediation for GED graduates, and the generally poor educational outcomes for these students at CUNY. The heart of the paper described non-traditional approaches to math teaching and learning in CTP, including content, pedagogy, curriculum, and instructor development. Student outcomes for the fall 2008 and spring 2009 cohorts demonstrated some promising early results.
Just as More Than Rules was released, CTP was restructured and became known as the CUNY College Transition Initiative (CTI). The new program moved “across the college wall” and is now offered as an option to freshmen who have taken and failed multiple placement exams. The most important new feature of the CTI math course was the significant increase in the quantity of instruction. That change has made it possible to examine whether an increase in instruction, while maintaining the pedagogical approaches and other features of the CTP course, could help many more students eliminate their need for one or both levels of remedial math while also making progress on a more extensive set of math learning goals.
This paper will review the first year of CTI math. This is a “companion” paper to More Than Rules because the CTP approaches to math content, curriculum, instructor development, and pedagogy that were described in that paper also provided the underlying foundation for CTI math. If possible, More Than Rules should be read before this paper.
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Attachment Size Hinds- More than Reshuffling.pdf
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March 25, 2011 -
This booklet provides advice on how to reach out to reporters, how to identify newsworthy stories, and what to do if you're approached by a reporter.
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Attachment Size ATD Press Pointers 2011.pdf
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March 24, 2011 -
In this issue: Michigan Community College Association’s Center for Student Success: Using Data to Facilitate Continuous Institutional Improvement; Developing and Implementing a Statewide Redesign of Developmental Math in North Carolina; The Potential of Partnerships Between Community Colleges and ABLE Programs in Ohio.
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Attachment Size ATDDEI_Newsletter_March2011.pdf
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March 23, 2011 -
The Developmental Education Initiative is a groundbreaking effort led by MDC and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Lumina Foundation for Education to scale-up developmental education innovations within the Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count initiative. Helping students progress through developmental education more quickly—or bypass it altogether—reduces students’ financial burden and increases the likelihood they’ll stay in school and receive a postsecondary credential.
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Attachment Size DEI Printable Brochure.pdf
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January 1, 2011 -
In this issue: The Promise of Intermediate Measures for Meeting Postsecondary Completion Goals; State-Level Investment Strategy: How Six States Are Working to Change the Developmental Education Policy Landscape by 2012; Rose Asera, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; News from Achieving the Dream and Developmental Education Initiative States.
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Attachment Size Fall2010StatePolicyNewsletter.pdf
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November 25, 2010 -
Building a Higher Skilled Workforce: Results and Implications from the BridgeConnect National Survey
Bridge programs are a 21st-century idea for helping prepare low-skilled individuals for jobs that require more education. Known by many names—integrated education and training, contextualized learning, embedded skills—bridge programs assist students in obtaining academic, employability, and technical skills they need to enter and succeed in postsecondary education and training and the labor market.
BridgeConnect is a national survey designed to help determine the depth and breadth of bridge programs throughout the country. Quantifying the number and types of programs in operation can help policymakers and funders improve both policy and practice related to adult education. A critical mass of bridge programs may suggest the approach is ready for rigorous evaluation; that an effort to formally identify standard of excellence is warranted; or that it is time to identify strategies for scaling up the most effective programs.
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Attachment Size WSC- Bridge Connect.pdf
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November 25, 2010 -
Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (I-BEST) is an innovative program and strategy developed by the Washington (WA) State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) in conjunction with the state’s 29 community colleges and five technical colleges. Its goal is to increase the rate at which adult basic education and English-as-a-second-language students advance to college-level occupational programs and complete postsecondary credentials in fields offering good wages and career advancement.
The promising results from preliminary analyses of I-BEST have generated interest in replication of the I-BEST model. Nationally, over 2.5 million students take adult basic skills courses at community colleges, high schools, and community organizations; only a fraction of these go on to pursue and earn college credentials. Despite the growing interest in I-BEST, not much is known outside Washington State about how the program works. This study, conducted by the Community College Research Center (CCRC), examines how I-BEST operates in Washington’s community and technical colleges. Researchers conducted telephone interviews with I-BEST faculty, staff, and administrators at all 34 colleges, and also observed I-BEST classes and interviewed faculty in-depth at four colleges.
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Attachment Size CCRC- I-BEST.pdf
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September 25, 2010 -
Developmental education is designed to provide students with weak academic skills the opportunity to strengthen those skills enough to prepare them for college-level coursework. Experts do not agree on the meaning of being “college ready,” and policies governing assessment, placement, pedagogy, staffing, completion, and eligibility for enrollment in college-level, credit-bearing courses vary from state to state, college to college, and program to program. The developmental education process is confusing enough simply to describe, yet from the point of view of the student, especially one with very weak academic skills and little previous success in school, it may appear as a bewildering set of unanticipated obstacles involving several assessments, classes in more than one subject area, and sequences of courses requiring three or more semesters of study before the student (often a high school graduate) is judged prepared for college-level work.
The policy deliberation and especially the research about developmental education give scant attention to this confusion and complexity. Discussion typically assumes that the state of being “college ready” is well-defined, and it often elides the distinction between students who need remediation and those who actually enroll in developmental courses. What is more, developmental education is often discussed without acknowledgement of the extensive diversity of services that bear that label. Any comprehensive understanding of developmental education and any successful strategy to improve its effectiveness cannot be built on such a simplistic view.
In this Brief, which summarizes a study by the Community College Research Center on patterns of student progression through developmental education, we broaden the discussion by moving beyond consideration of the developmental course and focus attention instead on the developmental sequence.
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Attachment Size CCRC- Sequences 2010.pdf
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September 24, 2010 -
This paper presents the findings from a quantitative analysis of the Community College of Baltimore County’s Accelerated Learning Program (ALP). Under ALP, students placed into upper-level developmental writing are “mainstreamed” into English 101 classes and simultaneously enrolled in a companion ALP course (taught by the same instructor) that meets in the class period immediately following the English 101 class. The aim of the ALP course, which has only eight students, is to help students maximize the likelihood of their success in English 101. Our results suggest that among students who place into the highest level developmental writing course, participating in ALP is associated with substantially better outcomes in terms of English 101 completion and English 102 completion, the two primary outcomes ALP was designed to improve. However, we found no evidence that ALP students’ greater likelihood of completing English 101 and 102 correlates with increased rates of college persistence or passing other college-level courses. Looking at the costs of ALP in relation to our findings on its effects, we found that ALP is a more cost-effective pathway through the required college level English courses than the traditional developmental English sequence as measured by cost per successful student ($2,680 versus $3,122). A rough cost-benefit analysis finds that the benefits of ALP are more than double the costs.
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Attachment Size CCRC- ALP Working Paper.pdf
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September 24, 2010 -
In recent years, discussion has arisen among educational researchers and practitioners on how best to teach academically underprepared community college students the basic skills they need to be able to learn from a college curriculum. Research conducted by the Community College Research Center (Perin & Charron, 2006) has found that many creative approaches are used in developmental education, but there exists little quantitative evidence on their effectiveness. The study summarized here begins to fill this research gap. With funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, an intervention called the Content Comprehension Strategy Intervention (CCSI) was developed and tested at three community colleges. CCRC researchers drafted and pilot-tested the intervention in collaboration with science and developmental education faculty and senior administrators at Bronx Community College. The intervention was further tested and revised at Los Angeles Pierce College and Norwalk Community College. In this Brief, we describe the intervention and present data suggesting that it is a promising strategy for community college students who need to improve their reading and writing skills.
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Attachment Size CCRC- Contextualized Dev Ed.pdf
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June 28, 2010 -
In this issue: JFF Reports on States’ Progress in Achieving the Dream; Stan Jones, President and Founder, Complete College America; Developmental Education Initiative Section Focused on Data-Driven Improvement: How Six States Will Change the Developmental Education Policy Landscape by 2012.
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May 1, 2010 -
Developmental Education Initiative’s State Policy Framework & Strategy specifies the levers that state policymakers have at their disposal to support more effective ways of changing the organization and delivery of developmental education—and public expectations of individual and institutional success. Plus, it provides states with a clear, efficient guide for organizing and prioritizing their efforts toward this goal.
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Attachment Size DEI_State_Policy_Framework.pdf
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April 1, 2010 -
In this issue: Assessing the Impact of Achieving the Dream; Levers for Change: The Developmental Education Initiative State Policy Framework; Featured Resource: National Conference Of State Legislatures.
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Attachment Size ATD_newsletter_winter_2010.pdf
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January 3, 2010 -
The Virginia Community College System (VCCS) is engaged in a strategic planning process to improve performance beyond the goals in Dateline 2009, the system’s current vision and plan. A key objective is to encourage colleges to improve retention and academic success for students, particularly the substantial numbers who arrive unprepared for college-level work. Specifically, the VCCS seeks to improve the rates at which underprepared students complete developmental coursework and advance to take and pass college courses, particularly the initial college-level, or “gatekeeper,” math and English offerings.
The VCCS asked the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, to conduct analyses to inform its efforts to improve student outcomes. In response, CCRC designed a study to address the following question: What student characteristics, course-taking patterns, and other factors are associated with higher probabilities that students who require remediation will take and pass college-level math and English?
This report presents the main findings from CCRC’s study and outlines suggestions for steps that the VCCS and its member colleges might take to improve completion of gatekeeper courses by the many students who enter the state’s community colleges poorly prepared to succeed in college-level work.
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Attachment Size CCRC- Gatekeeper Success for Remedial Students.pdf
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November 27, 2009 -
In this issue: What the Experts Have to Say about the Federal Community College Initiative; Six States Selected for Developmental Education Initiative; Indiana, 20 New Colleges Join Achieving the Dream; Updates from Achieving the Dream States; Resources on Community College Student Success.
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Attachment Size AchievingSuccessFall2009.pdf
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October 9, 2009 -
California’s 110 community colleges are an essential part of the state’s higher education and workforce development structure, serving over 2.6 million students annually. But a growing number of students face major obstacles to success, including inadequate preparation for college-level courses, and many end up dropping out. New scholarship suggests that student support services, such as academic and personal advising, counseling, tutoring, and financial aid, are critically important for promoting better academic outcomes for students. The challenge is to integrate these support services with academic instruction. Unfortunately, the very way most community colleges are organized — with student services housed in one division and academic functions in another, each functioning in parallel but with little coordination — creates obstacles to successful integration. These obstacles are often exacerbated by competition between the divisions for limited budget resources.
To help overcome this divide, the Student Support Partnership Integrating Resources and Education (SSPIRE) initiative was funded by the James Irvine Foundation and coordinated by MDRC. SSPIRE aimed to increase the success of young, low-income, and academically underprepared California community college students by helping community colleges strengthen their support services and better integrate these services with academic instruction. Nine California community colleges were selected to participate in SSPIRE, and each received as much as $250,000 in total from 2006 through early 2009.
This report describes how the SSPIRE colleges implemented four basic approaches to integrating student services with instruction: learning communities, a “drop-in” study center, a summer math program, and case management programs.The report also presents some of the colleges’ own data, which suggest that SSPIRE services may have led to modest improvements in students’ course pass rates and persistence in college. Finally, this report offers cross-cutting lessons drawn from MDRC’s research on the initiative. These lessons present practitioners and policymakers across the state and nation with examples from well-implemented programs that integrated student services with academic instruction.
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Attachment Size MDRC- SSPIRE Evaluation.pdf
868.63 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
August 24, 2009 -
Over the past four decades, community colleges have played an increasingly important role in higher education. Today, community colleges — which are accessible and affordable, relative to four-year institutions — enroll more than one in every three postsecondary education students. Unfortunately, among students who enroll in community colleges with the intent to earn a credential or transfer to a four-year institution, only 51 percent achieve their goal within six years. These students may face fewer difficulties and make better academic progress if they had better access to, or more adequate, student services, but, as it stands, student-tocounselor ratios at community colleges are often more than 1,000 to 1, limiting the assistance that students receive.
This report presents the finding of MDRC research into the effects of enhanced student services on student success outcomes.
Resource Files
Attachment Size MDRC- Guiding Dev Math Students to Services 2010.pdf
1.19 MB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
August 24, 2009 -
Much has been written about the high percentage of high school and GED graduates who enter community colleges needing remedial coursework and the low rates of retention and graduation for these students. Reports on how to improve outcomes for underprepared students often focus on the merits of adopting specific program components such as learning communities, computer-assisted instruction, accelerated learning, supplemental instruction, career-based curricula, intensive advisement, or faculty inquiry groups. Certainly, many of these can be useful features of a high-quality transition or remedial program. Unfortunately, though, too little attention is given to exactly how instructors teach students in these classrooms. There is an urgent need to re-examine the
ways we teach underprepared students entering college. Re-focusing attention on pedagogy must also cause us to re-think how we approach content, assessment, curricula, staff development, student placement, and research.This paper describes how the College Transition Program (CTP) has attempted to strengthen GED graduates’ transition into The City University of New York (CUNY) through a semester of reading, writing, mathematics, and academic advisement. More precisely, this paper focuses on math teaching and learning in CTP.
CTP has worked almost exclusively with GED graduates, but we believe the early results will be interesting to a variety of programs working with students who enter college underprepared in math including GED programs more widely, college remedial math departments, and high schools. This paper is for instructors and administrators who work in these settings as well as for researchers, policy makers, and funders. At times, some technical math teaching language may be used but the bulk of these instances are limited to the footnotes and appendices. Much of this paper should be readable by a wide audience.
Resource Files
Attachment Size Hinds- More than Rules.pdf
551.74 KB Type of Resource
Posted On:
June 5, 2009 -
This guide offers advice on how to write an op-ed along with an example of an op-ed.
Resource Files
Attachment Size How to Write an Op-Ed.pdf
105.43 KB Sample Op-Ed.docx
21.43 KB Type of Resource
Authoring Organization
Posted On:
June 1, 2009 -
In this issue: Lessons from Achieving the Dream for Federal Efforts to Improve College Completion Rates; Robert Shireman, Deputy Undersecretary for External Affairs and Outreach, U.S. Department of Education; Developmental Education in Focus; Updates from Achieving the Dream States.
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Attachment Size StatePolicyNewsletterSpring2009.pdf
496.24 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
May 1, 2009 -
It is estimated that that nearly 60 percent of students enrolling in community college must take remedial classes to build their basic academic skills. For low-income students and students of color, the figure topped 90 percent at some colleges. Though remedial classes cost taxpayers more than $2 billion a year, many of these students do not complete remedial classes or continue on to graduate.
The Developmental Education Initiative consists of 15 Achieving the Dream community colleges that are building on demonstrated results in developmental education innovations at their institutions. Six states are committed to further advancement of their Achieving the Dream state policy work in the developmental education realm. With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Lumina Foundation for Education, the initiative aims to expand groundbreaking remedial education programs that experts say are key to dramatically boosting the college completion rates of low-income students and students of color.The innovations developed by the colleges and states participating in the Developmental Education Initiative will help community colleges understand what programs are effective in helping students needing developmental education succeed and how to deliver these results to even more students.
This report provides a framework for the Developmental Education Initiative.
Resource Files
Attachment Size DEI Framing Paper.pdf
53.47 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
March 1, 2009 -
Many experts in the world of mathematics and beyond contend that we cannot meet our developmental math student success goals without incorporating technology. The implementation of innovative technology in program design and practice, as reviewed in this report, provides us with an initial look at how technology can be used to expand, strengthen, and create efficiencies in the delivery of developmental math practice. Despite an expanding knowledge base in developmental1 math practice and the rapid expansion of technology in education, critical challenges remain in maximizing the promise inherent in these innovations. These include blending best practices in developmental math with leading technological innovation, developing a more robust and convincing evidence base, expanding development efforts for promising learning technologies, and overcoming the resistance to change that characterizes the organizational culture of many community colleges.
This report looks at the challenges of remediating math skills in community colleges and the potential of technology to address these challenges. It begins with a short review of current instructional strategies in community college developmental math, including the central pedagogical approaches. The paper continues by identifying several categories of emerging curricular innovations and presenting examples of how selected strategies are being implemented in community colleges. The main body of the report focuses on technology and its role in supporting and strengthening the teaching of developmental math, including the current use of technology as well as promising directions for future use. It concludes with a discussion of adoption challenges in moving forward, from both a curricular and institutional perspective. The report is intended as a broad overview of current practices rather than an in-depth study or recommendation of particular instructional methods.
Resource Files
Attachment Size Epper & Baker- Dev Ed Math.pdf
615.87 KB Type of Resource
Posted On:
January 25, 2009 -
In this issue: Dr. Donald Berwick, President and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement; Recent State Developments.
Resource Files
Attachment Size PolicyNewsletterWinter2009.pdf
1.13 MB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
January 6, 2009 -
In this issue: Transfer and Articulation Policies in Achieving the Dream States; Francesca Purcell and Gretchen Schmidt on Sustainable Transfer Policy Reform; Summary of Achieving the Dream 2008–09 State Work Plans.
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Attachment Size ATDStatePolicyNewsletter October 2008.pdf
195.44 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
October 10, 2008 -
In this issue: Preview: Test Drive Policy Brief; Kevin Carey of Education Sector on Student Success; Performance Measures that Promote Student Success: Comparative Analysis of State Policies; Policy Updates from Achieving the Dream States.
Resource Files
Attachment Size ATD_newsletter_July 2008.pdf
732.94 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
July 8, 2008 -
In this issue: Winter 2008 State Policy Meeting Take-Aways and Next Steps; Bob Gabriner and Barbara Illowsky on the California Basic Skills Initiative; New Issue Brief on Placement Test Policies.
Resource Files
Attachment Size Achieving Success April 2008.pdf
1.39 MB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
April 21, 2008 -
An interview with Byron McClenney published in 2008 in the Journal of Developmental Education, a quarterly publication by the National Association of Developmental Education.
Resource Files
Attachment Size NADE- Relentless Leaders.pdf
2.87 MB Type of Resource
Posted On:
March 25, 2008 -
In this issue: State Action Plans for 2007-08; Connecticut Community College Chancellor Reflects on Achieving the Dream Impact; You Never Know What Might Happen: Reports from North Carolina and Texas.
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Attachment Size Achieving Success January 2008.pdf
298.13 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
January 8, 2008 -
In this issue: New State Policy Framework; Performance and Data Systems that Promote Success; Washington State’s Student Achievement Initiative; Developmental Education Innovation, State Policy, and Institutional Practice; State Policy Developments.
Resource Files
Attachment Size Achieving Success October 2007.pdf
367.57 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
October 9, 2007 -
In this issue: Six States Join; Developmental Education Data from Achieving the Dream Colleges; Accelerating Remedial Math Education Policy Challenges and Strategies; State Policy Developments: What’s New in Achieving the Dream States.
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Attachment Size Achieving Success July 2007.pdf
199.79 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
July 9, 2007 -
In this issue: Challenging California Policymakers to Focus on Student Success; States Tackle Policy on Tuition for Undocumented Students; What’s New in Achieving the Dream States.
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Attachment Size Achieving Success April 2007.pdf
354.89 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
April 17, 2007 -
This brief guide offers 25 essential tips for developing an effective developmental education program.
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Attachment Size CCLP- 25 Steps to Effective Dev Ed.pdf
87.08 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
April 1, 2007 -
In this issue: Achieving the Dream States Progress Reports, 2005–2006; State Policy Developments: What’s New in Achieving the Dream States; Aligning Virginia’s Efforts to Promote Community College Student Success; Next Steps for Achieving the Dream; Resources from Achieving the Dream Partners; Additional Resources.
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Attachment Size Achieving Success January 2007.pdf
128.28 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
January 19, 2007 -
The newsletter highlights progress of the Achieving the Dream State Policy Teams in identifying and promoting policies that support colleges’ efforts to improve student outcomes. Featured in this issue: Regional Accreditation and Student Success in Community Colleges.
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Attachment Size Achieving Success October 2006.pdf
100.3 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
October 21, 2006 -
An electronic policy newsletter is published quarterly by Jobs for the Future. The newsletter highlights progress of the Achieving the Dream State Policy Teams in identifying and promoting policies that support colleges’ efforts to improve student outcomes. Featured in this issue: A Short Guide to Achieving the Dream’s Approach to State Policy.
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Attachment Size Achieving Success June 2006.pdf
107.33 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
June 12, 2006 -
An electronic policy newsletter is published quarterly by Jobs for the Future. The newsletter highlights progress of the Achieving the Dream State Policy Teams in identifying and promoting policies that support colleges’ efforts to improve student outcomes. Featured in this issue: Efforts to Improve State Data Systems Get a Boost.
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Attachment Size Achieving Success March 2006.pdf
102.95 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
March 26, 2006 -
An electronic policy newsletter is published quarterly by Jobs for the Future. The newsletter highlights progress of the Achieving the Dream State Policy Teams in identifying and promoting policies that support colleges’ efforts to improve student outcomes. Featured in this issue: Connecticut Hosts Listening Tour.
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Attachment Size Achieving Success December 2005.pdf
85.68 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
December 4, 2005 -
An electronic policy newsletter is published quarterly by Jobs for the Future. The newsletter highlights progress of the Achieving the Dream State Policy Teams in identifying and promoting policies that support colleges’ efforts to improve student outcomes. Featured in this issue: Framework For Identifying And Setting State Policy Priorities.
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Attachment Size Achieving Success August 2005.pdf
246.31 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
August 25, 2005 -
An electronic policy newsletter is published quarterly by Jobs for the Future. The newsletter highlights progress of the Achieving the Dream State Policy Teams in identifying and promoting policies that support colleges’ efforts to improve student outcomes.
Resource Files
Attachment Size Achieving Success May 2005.pdf
237.24 KB Type of Resource
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Posted On:
May 23, 2005 -
Since April 1999, the Center for Academic Transformation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has conducted a Program in Course Redesign with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The purpose of this institutional grant program is to encourage colleges and universities to redesign their instructional approaches using technology to achieve quality enhancements as well as cost savings. Redesign projects focus on large-enrollment, introductory courses, which have the potential of impacting significant student numbers and generating substantial cost savings.
This report provides an analysis of the results of the third round projects, with a focus on the most important quality improvement and cost reduction techniques used in the redesigns, the implementation issues they encountered, and the projected sustainability of the course redesigns.
Resource Files
Attachment Size NCAT Round III Lessons.pdf
183.95 KB Type of Resource
Posted On:
August 25, 2004 -
Since April 1999, the Center for Academic Transformation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has conducted a Program in Course Redesign with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The purpose of this institutional grant program is to encourage colleges and universities to redesign their instructional approaches using technology to achieve quality enhancements as well as cost savings. Redesign projects focus on large-enrollment, introductory courses, which have the potential of impacting significant student numbers and generating substantial cost savings.
This report synthesizes the lessons learned from the second round of projects, with a focus on the most important quality improvement and cost reduction techniques used in the redesigns, the implementation issues they encountered, and the projected sustainability of the course redesigns.
Resource Files
Attachment Size NCAT Round II Lessons.pdf
177.49 KB Type of Resource
Posted On:
August 25, 2004 -
This report by The Center for Academic Transformation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute summarizes the lessons learned from the first round of course redesign grants awarded to 10 institutions. The purpose of the grant program is to encourage colleges and universities to redesign their instructional approaches using technology to achieve cost savings as well as quality enhancements. Redesign projects focus on large-enrollment, introductory courses, which have the potential of impacting significant student numbers and generating substantial cost savings.
Resource Files
Attachment Size NCAT Round I Lessons.pdf
435.53 KB Type of Resource
Posted On:
September 25, 2003
Updates
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