Policy makers, politicians, and education leaders from 34 states gathered in a hotel ballroom here on Monday to listen to a nonprofit group read from its playbook of “game changing” strategies for doubling or even tripling college-completion rates.
They heard from lawmakers in states that have carried out sweeping changes in remedial education and tied state appropriations to student performance. They listened to students expound on the merits of block scheduling and carefully structured academic pathways.
Then, at the end of Day 1 of Complete College America’s annual “convening” of member states, they dispersed to tables to plot how they would take such strategies and bring them to scale, system by system and state by state.
The meeting, which ends on Tuesday, offers a glimpse at how Complete College America is influencing higher-education policies in dozens of states. About 60 percent of the group’s support comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses much of its philanthropy on college-completion efforts.
Complete College America’s agenda is spelled out in colorful, easy-to-read brochures full of eye-catching graphics. It is as carefully scripted as the course sequences it recommends for students who it says are flailing from too many choices.
To join its Alliance of States, which 34 states thus far have done, a state’s governor, along with its colleges, must pledge to make college completion a priority and promise to take three actions: set state and campuswide completion goals through 2020, collect and report measures of progress using metrics developed by Complete College America and the National Governors Association, and develop and carry out aggressive state and campus-level action plans for meeting the state’s college-completion goals.
Critics argue that some states have gone too far, passing laws like one in Florida that makes remediation optional for students.
They worry that the push to tie state support for higher education to student performance could jeopardize access by prompting colleges to turn away the least-prepared students.
But there were few skeptics in the 200 or so attendees gathered here.
Too Much Remediation
Much of Monday’s discussion centered on what Complete College America calls the “game changers”—strategies that it says can double the number of remedial students passing college-level courses, triple the graduation rates for students transferring with associate degrees to four-year colleges, and quadruple completion of career certificate programs.
Those include tying state appropriations to student performance; making introductory college-level courses, rather than remedial courses, the default placement for almost all students; and offering co-requisite remediation, which is offered alongside college-level courses, to those who need it.
Speakers also argued that too many students are placed directly in remedial courses on the basis of a single placement test, dooming many to a semester or more of courses they pay for but don’t get credit for.
Mathematics educators described accelerated math pathways, like Statway and Quantway, that they say are more relevant to most students than the traditional sequences that trip up many learners.
The approach, which was developed with the University of Texas at Austin’s Charles A. Dana Center, is being used this fall across all of Texas’ 50 community-college districts.
The group also heard from students. Kierra Brocks said that when she enrolled at Ivy Tech Community College, in Indiana, she missed the cutoff in math by two points and ended up in a remedial class that didn’t challenge her. “It wasn’t only money wasted but time wasted,” she said. “It doesn’t give you motivation to continue.”
The ‘Grit’ Factor
Instead of relying on a single test, speakers said, colleges should consider additional factors including high-school grades and even evidence of what a University of Pennsylvania researcher describes as “grit,” or the ability to stick with a challenge.
Angela Duckworth, an associate professor of psychology at Penn who addressed the group via Skype, described grit as “passion and perseverance for long-term goals.” That might show up in activities or interests students continued over several years, she said.
The group also called on colleges to create incentives for more students to take at least 15 credit hours per semester, to provide structured schedules that add predictability to students’ hectic lives, and to steer them into highly structured degree plans rather than individual courses.
“The common belief is that more choice equals more freedom, but in fact too many choices creates anxiety,” Alison Kadlec, a senior vice president at the nonprofit Public Agenda, told the group. Community-college advisers who are responsible for about 400 students, on average, can’t help students navigate all of those choices, she added.
