Tuesday, April 26, 2011

The Completion Agenda

as discovered in New Orleans by
Shirlee Geiger

Last year at the American Association of Community Colleges annual convention, held in Seattle, I felt right at home. For one thing, coffee stations were everywhere, and the caffeine buzz could be heard several blocks away. This year, in New Orleans, it was very hard to find good coffee. Even the famous stuff with the chicory (served with a side of powdered-sugar-sprinkled donuts) was a long walk away, and the place didn't even open until 9. I was astounded by the cultural differences between hot, muggy, and slow Southern life there on the banks of the Mississippi and hyper-tensive hurry and-get-it-done-yesterday Pacific Northwest life we live here on the Willamette...

I was also astounded by the difference in the visibility of Assessment. Last year, in Seattle, there were more sessions on assessment than I could attend. Sylvia and I had to split up to get to them all... This year, there wasn't a single session with "Assessment" in the title. I was feeling a bit forlorn (as well as sleepy, without my daily dose of caffeine), but eventually realized that assessment had not left the scene. It had just receded to the background as an assumption so widespread it didn't need to be mentioned.

Of course, we assess, doesn't everybody?

So what was front and center at the AACC this year? The Completion Agenda. It was everywhere, as in ubiquitous. All over the darn place. There was no way to get away from it.

If you want a cool and clever interactive widget sort of introduction to the problem that the Completion Agenda is supposed to address, please go here:
http://completionagenda.collegeboard.org/

Don't keep reading until you take the test for Oregon.
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Did you take it? (Really, I think you should.... It won't take long.) (That's the kind of assurance needed for hyper-tensive caffeine-fueled Pacific NWers like me.)
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OK, now that you have played with the widget, let's think about what this means for us.

The Obama Administration's Education Department wants a higher rate of our U.S. population to not only attend college, but to finish college -- having earned meaningful degrees.

This means that more of our children need to make it through High School.


But graduating High School and being ready for college are not (as we all know) the same thing. Does the push for HS completion mean more remediation needed at community colleges?

Well, if it does, that is a problem.... There is a move to fund colleges -- not on the traditional measure of how many students are served, described as fte -- but on the basis of degrees awarded. This is a global trend. Here is a place to take a quick tour: completionbasedfunding.pdf. Since remedial classes take up limited financial aid without generating credits toward graduation, there is the risk that as less college-ready HS students are funneled into college, the college completion rate will plummet. If funding is tied to completion, then our funding will plummet....

But there is another problem, as well. One speaker mentioned a study (and I don't have the reference, sorry... not enough coffee) of people who had completed the credits for an associates degree, but never applied to have the degree awarded. In follow up interviews, the people said that an AA or AAS would not do anything to increase their desirability in the workplace... why bother picking up a degree if it doesn't help? So are we being pushed to award ever more degrees, at the same time that our degrees have less and less purpose and use in the workplace?

In our new world of Higher Education, on display at the AACC in New Orleans, it is clear that assessment of learning outcomes is the norm, and the tie between degrees awarded and outcomes assessed is ever tighter. Now comes the sound of the funding shoe dropping... assessments tied, via completion rates, to budgets.

It is the kind of thing to keep a person up at night.... even if you are not wired from drinking too much coffee...


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