Group items tagged

Comic piece on YouTube; no date for Father Sarducci's original presentation. In 5 minutes, he can teach you what the average college graduate remembers 5 years after having graduated from college.

By Alan Greenblatt on NPR, March 29 2010. Greenblatt reports that there was initially great promise for community colleges in the health care reconciliation bill that was passed at the end of March. However, "Congress ultimately took a pass on restructuring the mission of the nation's community colleges." The $12 billion American Graduation Initiative recognized the important role that community colleges could play in producing more college graduates, but the initiative was not included in the final law.

See last paragraph for quote from Gail Mellow.

By Kevin Carey in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Issue #15, Winter 2010. In this editorial, 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.

By Tracy Jan, Boston Globe/boston.com, March 23 2011. University of Massachusetts Amherst is announcing a "new effort to recruit community college graduates to the state university's flagship campus." According to the article, there is already a state policy in place guaranteeing admission to most community college graduates who earn a 2.5 GPA and waiving tuition to those with a 3.0. This new effort will also offer priority registration and housing, as well as scholarships and special advising.

By Belinda Allen and Kathryn Coleman (both of University of New South Wales), proceedings of ascilite 2011 conference, Australia, December 2011. ascilite is the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education. "The paper explores creativity as a graduate capability, the creative potential of digital media, and how changing directions in assessment practice could support the assessment of creativity, with a focus on using eportfolios in assessment." Full text, as PDF, available on this page.

A report from the Brookings Institute that the 14 billion dollar American Graduation Initiative targeting community colleges was dropped from the president's education proposal when it was folded into the health reform initiative last week. Too bad.

Created by the Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges, 2008. According to the History page, "The Transition Mathematics Project (TMP) is designed to reverse this trend by helping students successfully progress from high school math to college-level math. With the participation of high school and college math educators, TMP has identified the math skills and knowledge high school graduates need to complete college-level work...."

By Jennifer Gonzalez, Students section, The Chronicle of Higher Education, February2 2012. The new project is being led by the Center for Community College Student Engagement and will analyze data from four different surveys: Community College Survey of Student Engagement, the Survey of Entering Student Engagement, the Community College Faculty Survey of Student Engagement, and the newly created Community College Institutional Survey. Reports will be produced annually for the next three years. See CCCSE tag for first year's report.

By Jennifer Gonzalez, the Chronicle of Higher Education, August 9 2010. Before an audience at the University of Texas at Austin, Obama called for "the United States to produce and additional eight million college graduates by 2020."

Part of the NPR series, Speaking of Faith, hosted by Krista Tippett and first broadcast on January 7 2010. In this presentation, Tippett speaks with Mike Rose of UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies on the idea of what kind of education befits a democracy.

By David Glenn in the Teaching section, Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb 7, 2010. This is an article about new research from the CUNY Graduate Center that looks at "self-regulated learning." With this method, math students work with their instructors to analyze their errors, reworking problems to be sure that they understand how to solve them next time. The article is available by subscription. For the full text, check with your local library.

KS posted a PDF of the article (see her 2/12/10 Coffee Klatch posting for the link).

On PBS NewsHour, April 20, 2010. Jeffrey Brown interview with Mary Spilde and Hilary Pennington about the increased focus on boosting graduation rates in community colleges. Remedial education, innovative technology models and standards for accountabililty are topics covered.

By Catherine Gewertz, Education Week, February 2 2011. A new report, Pathways to Prosperity, published by Harvard's Graduate School of Education, argues that the "college for all" goal might fail students best suited for emerging "middle skills" jobs (e.g. construction manager or dental hygienist). The researchers feel that many who are not suited for college fall out of the educational system completely rather than pursuing other post-secondary options.

A press release published by Creative Commons, January 20 2011. As part of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant Program (TAACCCT), over $2 billion will be invested over the next four years, part of the program to support President Obama's goal of increasing college graduates by 2020. This program is of interest to Creative Commons because all such projects must be released using a Creative Commons attribution (CC BY) license.

By Kara Spak, Chicago Sun-Times, May 31, 2011. This article cites a recent report released by the Alliance for Excellent Education, which finds that "as many as one-third of students entering higher education need to take some sort of remedial or developmental course...." Putting a human face on these statistics is the profile of one student who graduated from high school with a 3.0 GPA and a B in "College Algebra" but still needed to take a non-credit developmental math course when she got to community college.

By Kristen Amundson, Op/Ed, The Washington Post, May 27 2011. Amundson argues that the state of Virginia is doing itself a disservice by allowing high school students to graduate with a "standard diploma." The diploma requires only three years of math, leaving many students unprepared for college math and thus required to enroll in developmental math.

This center, based at the University of Texas at Austin, is looking at the relative success of various intervention/engagement/support methods at community colleges. Follow CCCSE tag for more about this project.

Published by the Center for Community College Student Engagement (CCCSE), 2012. This is the first of three annual reports to look at "strategies that appear to be associated with a variety of indicators of student progress and success." For more on this project, follow the tag CCCSE.

Developmental Ed statistics in texas. Case for reform - highlights ATD and Gates money to colleges

By Stephanie Banchero, The Wall Street Journal, April, 21, 2010. At the annual meeting of the American Association of Community Colleges, officials pledge to boost student completion rates 50% over the next decade.