GettingPastGo

Budget cuts to community colleges highlights the fact that as a society we were never fully committed to remedial students in the first place. Young people and adults who have been criminalized and imprisoned are ineligible for loans, and cannot afford college to turn their life around. These cuts target the working poor, undereducated, and disadvantaged and are a threat to our democracy.

Examines developmental education best practices and policies within Massachusetts' 15 community colleges. It presents findings, recommendations and resources to assist the community colleges in improving the success of academically vulnerable students within and beyond developmental education. (Massachusetts Community Colleges Executive Office, June 2009)

Report on the cost of remedial education at New Jersey Community Colleges.

Under the LA Grad Act, four-year institutions agree to achieve certain standards in exchange for authority to increase tuition. The performance objectives are aimed at improving college completion and meeting the state's workforce and economic development needs. One performance objective - efficiency and accountability - requires four-year institutions that enter into agreements to eliminate remedial education course offerings and developmental study programs unless such courses or programs cannot be offered at a community college in the same geographic area.

This annual report summarizes and disaggregates data on New Mexico high school graduates who require college remedial courses. The percentage decreased by 3.1% from 2008 to 2009. NM has implemented several initiatives to better prepare students for college.

Interview with Commissioner of Higher Education Ray Paredes. Ray is a member of the Getting Past Go advisory team

Report from the Mitchell Institute in Maine on how to improve transitions from high school to college for Maine students. Covers college preparation, awareness, career counseling, financial aid.

The report is referenced in a report on remedial education developed by the University of Maine system in 2007.

The GED testing service has just published Crossing the Bridge: GED credentials and Post Secondary Educational Outcomes. This is a baseline report that follows GED graduates from 2003 (first cohort of the new test) and their enrollment, persistence, and graduation from post secondary institutions. It compares this group with the high school diploma and general population for the school's attended. This is the first year report of a 3 year project to provide a cohort of students with targeted instruction, GED passage, career exploration, and college readiness. The GED administered will be a prototype using the national State College Readiness standards.

Report from Education Sector on high school accountability systems

Interview with Sinclair Community College president on their participation in Achieving the Dream and the efforts in developmental education.

Press release announcing Zane State's grant award as part of the Developmental Education Initiative

Framework for remedial education that includes references to funding, use of data, assessment and delivery.

Article in Houston Chronicle, funded through Hechinger Institute, on the challenge of remedial education in Texas. Emphasizes need for reform in delivery of remedial Education.

Action Analytics, which they define as "a multi-dimensional effort aimed squarely at fundamental and strategic education reform in the context of massive economic, social, and technological change... [A]ction analytics strategically uses data, statistics, predictive modeling and visualization to promote student success, achieve institutional efficiency, and demonstrate transparency."

This guidebook is a result of partnerships between numerous companies, literacy agencies, and trade associations involved with manufacturing and exports in Canada. The guidebook is divided into two sections. Literacy & Essential Skills in Business provides information and facts about Canada's efforts to improve literacy and essential skills in the workplace. The second section is a workbook providing tools for workplace assessments, checklists and usable templates to initiate a workplace literacy program. There is also a very useful appendix with additional resources.

In this edition, we feature the Workforce Competitiveness Collection, which covers Workforce Education, English Language Acquisition, and Technology. Each month, Collections News features one of the three LINCS Resource Collections - Basic Skills, Program Management, and Workforce Competitiveness - and introduces research-based resources that you can use in your adult basic education and family literacy programs and classrooms.

In this editorial, Kevin Carey, policy director of think tank Education Sector, argues that colleges are not fulfilling their mission to students: costs are rising and students are not learning (or even graduating). He argues for transparency and studies of the effectiveness of teaching and learning, and warns of the education-related lobbies that keep the rest of us in the dark about higher education. (Kevin Carey in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Issue #15, Winter 2010).

These videos feature four community colleges that are participating in the Tennessee Developmental Studies Program Redesign. College representatives describe their redesign programs and results to date. (Tennessee Board of Regents, 2010)

The Pathway to the Baccalaureate program at Northern Virginia Community College gives students a structured system of support from high school to community college to a four-year university. Pathway is designed to meet a range of student needs -- academic, financial or personal -- through one coherent program. Specially designed "fast-track remediation" classes in math and English attempt to steer some students clear of traditional remedial classes, where they can get bogged down unnecessarily. The program also uses learning communities.