We know that many students benefitting from CCC ICT education do not have transfer or academic degree or certificate completion as a goal or intention. They take ICT related courses to acquire knowledge and skill sets that lead to employment or employment growth, and they are succeeding in that regard. CCCs do not yet track that employment outcome data, however, or industry certification awards, so we cannot yet measure those successes and risk being penalized because of it.
As many as half of enrollments in some CCC ICT related courses are by students who already have a bachelor degree or higher, an articulation pathway not yet recognized by most. They are part of the one in two bachelor degree holders living at home with educational debt, unable to find a job. They figure out that ICT has many good jobs, and they go to a community college for knowledge and skills that lead to those jobs. Logically, many have no interest in transfer to a 4-year school, an associate degree or even academic certificates. But, after training, they get jobs. They are delighted, and so are their employers.
CCC ICT academic transfer and "completion" rates are relatively low, in part for those reasons, and we risk having negative impacts to quality ICT programs that are generating successful employment outcomes for students, genuinely "Doing What Matters for Jobs and Economy" in the 21st century, as a result of decision-making based on a definition of student success largely restricted to transfer or academic credential award.
MPICT will continue to advocate on behalf of CCC ICT education on this issue.
April 9, 2013
This morning, the Chancellor's Office launched the new Student Success Scorecard (scorecard.cccco.edu), and
Chancellor Brice Harris, Vice Chancellor Patrick Perry and the entire Chancellor's Office team are to be commended for the release of an outstanding tool.
Chancellor Harris posted this video describing the scorecard, and is holding community forums at Diablo Valley and Pierce Colleges today and tomorrow.
For the first time, trustees, faculty, staff, students and the public can get disaggregated date about student achivement by race, age, and gender. The tool does not provide a "ranking" of our colleges, but rather a longitudinal look at how students are progressing past momentum points on their way to transfer, a degree or a certificate.
I applaud former Chancellor Jack Scott, who was a strong advocate for disaggregated and transparent data as part of the Student Success Task Force. It is also fitting that Chancellor Harris gets to unveil the product, as he was a forceful advocate on the League's Commission on the Future, which had this recommendation in A 2020 Vision for Student Success:
The system should regularly gather, report, and use disaggregated student access and achievement data to monitor student progress across achievement milestones to evaluate institutional and program effectiveness.
Today's release is a major step forward for our system. While data alone do not improve student outcomes, it can enlighten us about which successful strategies our faculty and staff are using around the state so that we can replicate them as best practices in all of our colleges. We must also acknowledge the immense demographic and economic diversity around our state and use that to better understand what will work for each cohort.
I look forward to discussions ahead about what the data mean, and how you are using the data to guide your college's decision-making.
Sincerely,
Scott Lay
President and Chief Executive Officer
Orange Coast College '94
Community College League of California
2017 O Street, Sacramento, California 95811
916.444.8641 . www.ccleague.org
0 comments:
Post a Comment