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The 2 nd Year. Really????. Myths, propaganda, realities, and guidelines Clifford Adelman, Institute for Higher Education Policy. Rules of Engagement. This is a big crowd, but you can interrupt at any time with burning questions---as long as somebody smells the smoke!
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The 2nd Year. Really???? Myths, propaganda, realities, and guidelines Clifford Adelman, Institute for Higher Education Policy
Rules of Engagement • This is a big crowd, but you can interrupt at any time with burning questions---as long as somebody smells the smoke! • Otherwise, please save the speeches for later. • We may move through some slides quickly, but the whole presentation will be on-line at FYE Central. • In the front, there are some copies of the publications where you can get more detail after the session is over. If you don’t get them, order online (they are free) at www.ed.gov/pubs/edpubs.html
My FYE credentials and comments on your program. . . . . .nothing written on slides here. . .
Put on your hiking boots, and bring plenty of water We’re headed into data-land
Data source: virtues • The most recently completed of 4 grade cohort longitudinal studies by the U.S. Department of Education (1 started in 2002 and is still in progress) • Scheduled high school graduating class of 1992, followed through December 2000 • Full high school and college transcripts---which don’t lie, exaggerate, or forget---along with surveys, test scores, interviews with parents, etc.
Data Source: Limitations • Students are of traditional age (started in 8th grade and followed to age 26/27), so doesn’t address the history of beginning independent students • Sample (initially, 25,000) is not large enough to produce state-level analyses. The closest we can get is with the 9 Census Divisions, e.g. Mid-Atlantic or South West Central
The stories that emerge are student centered not institution centered Though each institution attended by the student is responsible for creating the conditions under which students are actively and positively involved in learning
Student-centered is a product of mobility dynamics: time and place • 20 percent don’t start in the fall term, but the institution reports only those who do start in the fall term. • 64 percent attended more than 1 school; 25 percent attended more than 2---and 25 percent of these people crossed state lines in the process. • 13 percent of those based in 4-year colleges attended community college in summer terms;another14 percent moved back and forth between CCs and 4-year. • 62 percent earned summer term credits.
And if that doesn’t make you dizzy. . . • 20% of students who start in a 4-year college and earn a bachelor’s earn it from a different school; 10 percent in a different state • 25% of traditional-age community college transfers cross state lines to the 4-year • For 41% of students who got to Year 2, the last undergraduate school attended was different from the first (whether a degree was awarded or not) !
Why do we pour extraordinary effort into the 1st year? • We want our students to move to the 2nd year, and preferably at our school, of course. We see the 1st year as the drop-out risk year. • We want our students to accumulate sufficient academic momentum to lead them to completion of credentials, preferably at our school, of course • We want our students’ academic histories to be filled with concurrent---if not leading---knowledge, skills, and dispositions to contribute to our economic and society
Ultimately, this story is not about growing up . . . although that happens along the way.
Basic persistence: academic calendar year 1 to academic calendar year 2 • If the student enrolls in any term in year 1 (July 1 through June 30), and turns up in any term and at any school in year 2 (July 1 through June 30), that student has persisted. • With this student-centered definition, 90 percent of the cohort “persists,” as follows:
Persistence to the 2nd year and its discontents: by first institution
Of the 90 percent persisters, 1/3rd . . . come into the second year with two or more of the following: less than 20 credits, 3 or more remedial courses, and a GPA in the lowest quintile
So what have we seen so far? • High persistence to 2nd year with weak underpinnings, hence threats to further persistence • Most of the weakness/threats occur among those who started in community colleges • The principal weakness lies in 12th grade reading skills • Delayed entry is a killer; so is becoming a parent by age 20 • Continuous enrollment is more important than full-time status • By the end of the 2nd year, there is a 25 credit gap between those who finish degrees and those who don’t
Gateway course completion rates by the end of year 2 (non-math)
A little light through the clouds • When students who never earned a degree took these and other gateway courses, they earned credits at the same rate as those who did earn the degree, suggesting that • Close tracking of student progress, with electronic transcript bells and whistles, can put a zoom lens and macro on your students who can be talked through key gates in Year 2 • The world has gone quantitative, and the momentum of math does not stop in either the matriculation line or at the end of Year 1
End of the 1st Year versus the end of the 2nd Year: degree completion probability change
Let’s translate this • The variables you see are the only ones that are statistically significant • Credit lag is the most serious of the problems, but is obviously affected when the “part-time” variable is entered • High school academic resources remains almost as a constant.
The paradox of rising expectations---I need your help explaining this: • In grade 10 and grade 12, we asked students a series of questions from which a measure of education expectations was constructed • Two years after high school, when 90 percent of those who entered higher ed were in school, we asked them again, and compared their answers to the grade 12 construction • The worse their performance through Year 2 the more likely they were to raise their expectations
Your vision, as custodians of the 1st year • Has to look both forward and back • We looked forward to the 2nd year to demonstrate that the risks are still there and that the primary issue is credit momentum • Now we turn back to the high school, in order to determine how to bring students across the 20 additive credit-line coming into the 2nd year
Goals for coming out of high school, and benchmarks of transition, I • Real Algebra 2---which means one math step beyond Algebra 2 • Reading at a minimum of simple inference, which means you have got to reach out and sponsor creative reading boot camps, e.g. with TV and movie scripts • Ideally, 6 credits of dual-enrollment in real stuff (including 1 gateway course), not fluff • Direct entry in the summer term
Goals for coming out of high school, and benchmarks of transition, II • Entering the first fall term, the student should thus have between 6-9 additive credits, or 3-6 additive credits plus satisfactory completion of 1-2 remedial courses, thus placing into the credit bearing world • To cross the 20 credit yard-line by the end of the 1st calendar year takes a maximum of 18 credits over two semesters, and that is not a daunting load • The point is that part-time students can get there, particularly if you keep them continuously enrolled
A few novel responsibilities for FYE folks Work with feeder high schools so that the first assignments/tests/papers in your applicable “gateway” college courses are the last assignments/tests/papers in their matching high school courses, e.g. in English lit survey, English Comp, and College algebra in particular
Your Web sites are playing the role of high school guidance counselor, so. . . Clean them up so that high school students know how to get there from here! That means a “Future Students” link on your Portal Add an FYE “radio button” to your Portal Put samples of 1st additive-credit level course test questions, writing assignments, and labs under that FYE button
Examples of what can go under that radio button can be found in: • The American Diploma Project, Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma That Counts(2004) • Conley, College Knowledge: What It Really Takes for Students to Succeed . . . (2005)
This, I think, you all know: • Students are not coming to you just to walk around, or just to get to the 2nd year • They are not coming to you learn money management or to develop better social relations • The primary reason institutions of higher ed exist in any country, society, economy is the distribution of knowledge and skills to the next generation of citizens, and the certification, by the award of degrees, that the distribution has taken place • Your students know that, and expect it to happen.
