Community colleges to offer web data on their performances
excerpt:
California community colleges on Tuesday will launch a new tool that provides a snapshot of performance at all 112 campuses, designed to help students pick the right school and push the institutions to improve.
The Student Success Scorecard is being touted as one of the most ambitious attempts by any college system to make such key measures as completion rates, retention of students and job-training success accessible to the public and policymakers in an easy-to-use format.
Information for each college as well as statewide averages is available via a portal on the community college chancellor's website, and individual campuses will have their own score card and a link to other colleges on their websites.
And here it is! Click below and see it for yourselves.
Irvine Valley College
Saddleback College
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14 comments:
I would like this to be accompanied by an administration success scorecard. For example, the state should track how well administrators support faculty to help ensure student success through allocation of resources and leadership decisions that truly support that success instead of payback and special favors.
It's interesting to contrast and compare the two colleges...
IVC lags behind Saddleback in "persistence" and "30 units" but jumps ahead in "completion" - any insight as to why?
I like checking to see that stats of the percentage of full-time faculty at the other colleges - SOCCCD ranks among the lowest. We are the lowest in the O.C. IVC and Saddleback - 51%! We're even lower than the statewide average of 56.9%
Here are the other nearby colleges' percentages of full-time faculty:
Golden West - 59%
OCC - 59%
Santa Ana:65%
Santiago Canyon:65%
Cypress: 68%
Cerritos: 72%
And why did Glen quash our efforts to hire this year? At least Saddleback is moving forward.
Come to IVC where chances of being taught by an excellent but overworked, underpaid and over-extended faculty member are high, very high.
Among the few colleges below our full-time faculty percentage: Barstow, Butte, College of the Desert and victor Valley.
The majority are, of course, much higher.
How can a higher percentage of full-time faculty benefit students and the college? Simple. More hands on deck to do all the work that need to be done - aside from teaching. Instead of the way it is done now at IVC - too much work and too few people. Imagine having 20 more hires to help out with not only teaching but dept. and committee work - all those "volunteer" opportunities we keep being offered...
I hope the board is paying attention to this factor - it's an important one.
I like the idea of an administration success card. For example,I wonder how many administrators would work in the summer if they were not paid to do so - yet they expect us to do just that (dept, chair responsibilities). Yes, more full-time faculty would help handle the workload in and out of the classroom, especially in key areas (math, English, etc.). Again, I hope the board is paying attention to this discussion today.
It seems that IVC does pretty good with students who are underprepared for college - but those who are prepared do less well (see "persistence"). Perhaps more support is needed? I think those "prepared" students are often (I find) less likely to work hard in class. They may have got through high school all too easily and think this is the same.
IVC's remedial math scores are way low too. What's up with that?
The F/T faculty percentages are pretty embarrassing (And it explains the malaise and overwork by F/T and P/t alike.) Isn't there some kind of state law that mandates a higher percentage? What can we do to address this?
Some departments fight against hiring more fulltimers so they can teach overload and rake in the big bucks. Just sayin'. I'd like the see the percentages for certain departments (math and English). Does the Office of Instruction have these figures? Does the Office sanction these large lecture classes that have such poor retention and completion rates?
Beware of drawing too many conclusions too quickly from this. There are many problems with a "scorecard" approach to college education. Consider the inherent presumption that everyone who enrolls can - or should - succeed - whatever that means. (completion? persistence?) Not every student is capable. Not every student is willing. (But yes - hire more full time faculty please.)
Why hasn't the district (or the college) shared this information yet? it's interesting - but, of course, not everything.
This scorecard may be yet another example of a well-intentioned idea that could turn into a very confusing tool. Most people, or at least most students and parents who read these numbers, may have difficulty interpreting them, and some of the results could be used to justify any number of things, both good and bad.
Take ESL at IVC as an example, in the "Remedial" tab. It shows that only 14% of credit students who started below transfer level(in ESL, one must assume) completed a transfer-level course in the same discipline (ESL, in this case)within a 6 year period through 2011-2012. At some colleges there are quite a few levels below the transfer-level in ESL. Shouldn't that be a factor? Wouldn't it be better to set a specific level below the transfer level and begin there? Just asking.
First of all, what is a "credit student?" Is it a student who is taking only credit courses and does not include students who take some non-credit courses? It would be useful to know what is meant by that label. Some community colleges have large noncredit ESL programs. Others, like IVC, have very small non-credit ESL offerings.
Second, the insinuation here is that not completing a college-level course in the same discipline may be undesirable. Fair enough. But in the case of ESL, there are students who have no intention of completing a transfer-level ESL course, for a wide variety of reasons: they just want to improve their English skills; they have a degree from a foreign university and want to brush up on specific skills, e.g., vocabulary, reading, conversation, idioms; they are returning moms or retired professionals who have no intention of seeking a degree but want to enhance their knowledge of English. Then there are ESL students who stop short of completing a transfer-level ESL course (there is only one)because they take the regular English placement test and place into the native-speaker English sequence. The picture becomes much more complex as we dig a bit deeper into these details.
The big question, therefore, is knowing what do these numbers really mean and how they can be used by faculty and administrators to help students succeed at our institution and reach their educational goals, whatever they may be. I am not sure that the data presented here gets us closer to the answer, at least not its present form.
Yes, the numbers are problematic - though I think the one about our low percentage of full- time faculty members is one whose implications are clear.
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