Massachusetts College and Career Readiness Summit

1
Massachusetts College and Career Readiness Summit

• Tools for Meeting The Challenges
• Aundrea Kelley, Associate Vice Chancellor for
  Academic Policy
• Massachusetts Board of Higher Education

2
Challenges to Achieving College Readiness and
Success Goals

• We need to understand what readiness means
• Students, their families and advisors need to be
  aware of the pathways to success
• Leaders need accessible data to sharpen
  strategies and focus

3
What is college readiness?

• The level of preparation a student needs in
  order to enroll and succeedwithout
  remediationin a credit-bearing general education
  course at a post-secondary institution (Conley,
  D. (2007) Toward A More Comprehensive Conception
  of College Readiness, Education Policy
  Improvement Center, epicoline.org)

4
Remedial Coursework Does Not Lead to Degree
Many college students who need remediation,
especially in reading and math, do not earn an
associates or a bachelors degree.
Percentage of U.S. college students not earning
degree by type of remedial coursework
Source National Center for Education Statistics,
The Condition of Education, 2004.
5
Remedial Coursework

• Designed to prepare students for college-level
  work
• Enrollment based upon performance on placement
  exams
• Does not count towards degree attainment
• Associated with increased costs, time to
  graduation and decreased college graduation rates

6
How do we get more students onto pathways to
college readiness and success?How do we reduce
the need for remediation?

• Provide rigorous, relevant courses and increase
  the proportion of students taking them.
• Percentage of students from the Massachusetts
  public high school Class of 2006 who completed
  the list of MassCore courses 79.6 - suburban
  vs. 46.3 - urban
• Increase awareness among parents, advisors and
  students - at an early age, no later than middle
  school - of the courses that students need
• Facilitate early assessment as a diagnostic tool,
  jumpstart on college placement, alignment
  catalyst

7
Early Assessment

• School College Partnerships
• Accuplacer Reading, Mathematics, Sentence Skills
• Computer Adaptive
• Can be administered at high school
• Immediate feedback with customizable information
• Early warning student can address weaknesses
• Early encouragement contact with college
• Dual enrollment as follow up
• Results helpful to alignment

8
How do we access the data we need to better focus
policies and programs?

• School to College Database and Report
• Data management system - tracks performance of
  public school students who enroll in
  Massachusetts public higher ed institutions
• Overall state level, as well as individual
  reports for each high school about their
  graduates performance in public postsecondary
  institutions includes data on
• Enrollment
• Remedial course taking
• First to second year persistence
• Many data will be broken down by race/ethnicity,
  gender, subgroups (LEP, SPED, Low Income) and
  grade 10 MCAS performance

9
Release of Reports

• Winter of 2008 -BHE/DOE team will generate the
  state report and the individualized reports for
  public high schools.
• Based on the data and on school interest, the
  BHE/DOE team will work with the selected high
  schools to use the data as a basis for developing
  work plans to enhance readiness, particularly on
  a regional basis.

10
School to College Database future enhancements

• Expand the tracking system to include student
  data prior to high school enrollment
• Prepare information on student majors, college
  graduation rates, MassCore completion rates and
  trends over time.
• Work with the Department of Revenue to explore
  integrating employment data with the hopes of
  creating a school-to-college-to-career tracking
  system.