2013 Report: Pathways to Postsecondary Success Maximizing Opportunities for Youth in Poverty

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By Daniel Solórzano, Amanda Datnow, Vicki Park, and Tara Watford with Lluliana Alonso, Virginia Bartz, Christine Cerven, Nichole Garcia, Karen Jarsky, Nickie Johnson-Ahorlu, Makeba Jones, Maria Malagon, Jennifer Nations, Kelly Nielsen, Mike Rose, Yen Ling Shek, and Susan Yonezawa.

Within the context of the country’s economic downturn and its need for greater postsecondary participation, Pathways to Postsecondary Success: Maximizing Opportunities for Youth in Poverty was designed to provide scholarship and policy recommendations to help improve educational outcomes for youth in low-income communities. This final report of the five-year Pathways project provides findings from a mixed-methods set of studies that included national and state analyses of opportunities and obstacles in postsecondary education (PSE) for low-income youth, detailed case studies of approximately 300 low-income young adults preparing for or pursuing PSE in three California counties, and the development of a set of indicators to monitor the conditions in community colleges. This project was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Key Findings: What Matters Most?
Our study revealed five key things that matter most for understanding and improving low-income students’ success in postsecondary education.

1. Student Voices Matter.  Having numbers that show how many students enroll and persist in postsecondary education is important, but unless we understand from students why these outcomes occur, we run the risk of misunderstanding patterns and implementing ineffective interventions. Hearing student voices is essential to understanding their pathways to and through postsecondary education.

2. Diversity Matters.   Low-income youth are a diverse group with a wide range of experiences. Paying
attention to the similarities and differences in this population of students can help us better plan college success initiatives.

3. Assets Matter.  Deficit approaches blame low-income students for their lack of success, or they blame educational institutions for failing students, often without recognizing the challenging fiscal, policy, and practical constraints they operate within. In work designed to improve student success, it is essential to focus on both student and institutional assets. Our research uncovers the remarkable strengths students bring and the many positive programs that exist in educational institutions. This asset-based approach helps us understand how to design programs that better tap into and foster students’ strengths in order to support college success.

4. Connections Between K–12 and Higher Educat ion Matter.  Postsecondary success is not a story that begins once a student sets foot on a college campus. High quality K–12 schooling and a host of college preparatory resources and activities must be provided in order to ensure college-going success for all students.

5. Institutional Supports and Conditions Matter.  To ensure that low-income students’ college aspirations are affirmed and their academic needs are met, institutional supports are essential. As students persist to and through college, they face critical transitions along the way, and certain conditions function as a “guard rail” for keeping them on the path towards college completion.

In sum, low-income students are a diverse group who bring many assets to the educational enterprise. Their talents need to be fostered in order for them to realize the gains that education can bring to them, to their families, and to society as a whole. Supporting low-income students in postsecondary education requires an institutional commitment to their success, high quality curricula and instruction, ongoing advising and mentoring, integration of support services and resources, and streamlined pathways to completion (West, Shulock, & Moore, 2012). To support student success, four provisions—maps, compass, fuel, and tools—are necessary to help students understand their pathways and stay on track as they navigate their college experience. We observed many positive examples of these elements in our research. The challenge is to make these conditions a reality for more students.

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‘I Need More Information’ How College Advising is Still Absent from College Preparation in High Schools

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By Makeba Jones.  In the wake of the Great Recession, unemployment and poverty rates among young adults have dramatically increased, especially for those who have not earned bachelor’s degrees (Aud, KewalRamani, & Frohlich, 2011). College attendance and completion are critical for individuals seeking stable employment and economic mobility out of poverty. We know that the institutions at the end of the pipeline—colleges and universities—need to improve graduation rates for students who have grown up in poverty (Johnson & Rochkind, 2010a). As important, students who are earlier in the pipeline—i.e., in high school—need to be prepared for college-level work and expectations (Lee & Smith, 2001). For low-income youth, the transition from high school to college is a pivotal juncture; clearing the college-going hurdle immediately, without delay, increases the likelihood that they will earn four-year degrees (Ashtiani & Feliciano, 2012; Bozick & DeLuca, 2005). One of the most important components of preparation for a smooth transition is college advising. High school counselors are arguably as important as teachers in preparing low-income high school students for college. Nationwide, high school counseling is fragmented. Absurdly high student to counselor ratios, counselor knowledge gaps about college requirements, and increasing pulls on counselor time that have nothing to do with advising students have cracked counseling systems in many public schools (Adams, 2010; McDonough, 2005). And, in recent years, slashed education budgets have pushed already fragmented counseling systems to the breaking point. Our nation’s students are painfully aware of how their school counseling programs are failing them. In 2010, Public Agenda publicized troubling survey results from over 600 individuals between the ages of 22 and 30 about their high school guidance systems (Johnson & Rochkind, 2010b). Results showed an overwhelming failing grade; even young adults who had earned four-year degrees rated their school counseling as poor. The fact that the report presented a national portrait of dismal counseling for students from all socioeconomic backgrounds does not diminish the urgency to improve counseling for low-income students in particular.

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What Matters for Community College Success? Assumptions and Realities Concerning Student Supports for Low-Income Women

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By Vicki Park, Christine Cerven, Jennifer Nations, Kelly Nielsen.  As open-access schools, community colleges are vital institutions that provide learning opportunities and experiences for students of wide-ranging interests and backgrounds. Compared to four-year institutions, they serve greater numbers of low-income people and students of color (Provasnik & Planty, 2008). California, which has the largest community college system in the United States, enrolls nearly one-fourth of the nation’s community college students (Provasnik & Planty, 2008). The state has developed an expansive, low-cost system of community colleges to serve its especially large and diverse population (Sengupta & Jepson, 2006).  In line with national efforts, California has undertaken a series of reform initiatives to improve student success in the state’s community colleges, especially with respect to completion rates, which have not been up to par (California Community Colleges Student Success Task Force, 2012). For example, only 31% of the 2003–2004 cohort of California community college students seeking a degree either obtained a certificate or degree or transferred to a university within six years of enrolling (Moore & Shulock, 2010). In response to these types of statistics, and in order to improve retention and completion rates, Governor Brown recently signed into law the California Student Success Act of 2012. This legislation is designed to improve completion rates by requiring community colleges to develop student success and support programs with, among other things, expanded orientation, assessment, and educational planning services for students. These types of broad efforts have placed a spotlight on how support services can facilitate student success, and what institutional conditions must exist in order for them to do so. To better understand the barriers to and supports for student success, this report focuses on the experiences of one large segment of community college students—low-income women. In general, women have made significant gains in college enrollment and completion, often outpacing men in both categories (Horn & Nevill, 2006; Wang & Parker, 2011).

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Postsecondary Educational Pathways of Low-Income Youth: An Analysis of Add Health Data

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By Cynthia Feliciano and Mariam Ashtiani.  This study used data from a recent longitudinal survey conducted over a 14-year period to compare the educational pathways of young adults from low-income backgrounds to their middle/high-income counterparts. Specifically, the study examined whether the effect of low-income status in adolescence on postsecondary pathways is better explained by early academic indicators and educational ambitions or higher education enrollment patterns and out-of school responsibilities. The analysis showed that low-income youth are disadvantaged in terms of entry into higher education as well as degree attainment. Roughly half of young adults from low-income families do not complete any postsecondary schooling, and those who do enroll are less likely to earn bachelor’s degrees, partly due to lower educational ambitions and lower academic achievement in adolescence. Post-high school experiences are most decisive, however: Nontraditional patterns of enrollment in two-year colleges, shaped by out-of-school responsibilities such as full-time labor force participation and family obligations, are a key mechanism through which lowincome status in adolescence leads to lower likelihood of degree completion in young adulthood.

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High School Coursework and Postsecondary Education Trajectories: Disparities between Youth Who Grow Up In and Out of Poverty

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By Leticia Oseguera.  One of the most direct ways schools can positively affect students’ college going trajectories is to ensure access to a rigorous college preparatory curriculum (Adelman, 2006). Students who complete gateway mathematics courses like algebra and pre-calculus, for example, are more likely to succeed in four-year postsecondary institutions (Swail, Cabrera, Lee, & Williams, 2005). Similarly, some researchers have found that enrollment in advanced placement (AP) courses can increase students’ likelihood of eventually completing college (McCauley, 2007). Although students who satisfy a college preparatory curriculum while in high school do have a greater array of college choices available to them, access to this type of coursework is often stratified by socioeconomic status and race (McDonough, 1997; Walpole, 2007). It is essential that we develop a greater understanding of the effects of the high school curriculum on postsecondary outcomes for students from varied socioeconomic backgrounds so  at these differences can be addressed. This brief draws on a study of a national cohort of students to explore how socioeconomic status (SES) and high school coursework intersect to influence
educational pathways. A deeper understanding of how academic course-taking in high school affects post-secondary education outcomes can help guide policy aimed at identifying and closing gaps in the college access pipeline. In particular, a more nuanced portrait of how these factors come into play for students in poverty and for their more affluent counterparts will allow for informed policy and research recommendations that can improve educational outcomes for all students. A National Study of Students’ Educational Pathways The data presented in this brief were drawn from the 2002–2006 panel of the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS), conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). NCES surveyed 15,441 tenth graders at the end of the 2001–2002 academic year, and again in spring 2004 (when the students were asked to report their intended high school graduation status), and in spring 2006 (two years post-high school, assuming a traditional high school path).2 Data collection at these key points in time allowed us not only to compare students’ high school experiences, but also to better understand how those experiences relate to their options and choices after
high school.

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Push to Reform Remedial Education Raises Difficult Questions for Colleges

By Katherine Mangan  As the pressure on community colleges to accelerate or even eliminate remedial-education requirements intensifies, vexing questions are being asked about the impact such a shift could have on low-income and minority students.  Those who are the least prepared for college stand the most to lose from policies that push students quickly into college-level classes, according to some of the educators gathered here for the annual meeting of the American Association of Community Colleges. And those students tend, disproportionately, to be minority and poor.

But others argue that struggling students are ill served when they have to pass through a lengthy series of remedial courses before they can start earning college credit. Too often, they get discouraged and drop out before earning a single credit.  “For many of these students, a remedial course is their first college experience, as well as their last,” Stan Jones, president of the nonprofit advocacy group Complete College America, said on Monday during a session that delved into the politics behind developmental-education reform.  Community colleges have done a great job of diversifying their first-year classes, he said. “But if you fast-forward to graduation day and look at who’s on the stage, they’ve lost a lot of that representation.”

Mr. Jones, whose group is working with 32 states and the District of Columbia to advance its college-completion goals, added that there are “no good answers” to what happens to the least-prepared students “when they insist on wanting an academic program.” Many could benefit, he said, by enrolling in a short-term certificate program that offers job training, with remediation built in.  That sounds like tracking to some educators who remember the days when minority students were routinely routed to vocational courses. But with so many employers lining up to hire students with technical skills in fields like manufacturing and welding, “voc-ed” doesn’t carry the stigma it once did.

The session served as a sparring match of sorts between Mr. Jones and one of his most persistent critics, who says Complete College America exaggerates the shortcomings of remedial education and pushes simplistic solutions for complex problems.  The tone on Monday, however, was polite as the two, meeting for the first time, agreed on one key point: that most stand-alone remedial courses, by themselves, aren’t serving students well.  Hunter R. Boylan, director of the National Center for Developmental Education and a professor of higher education at Appalachian State University, said that if state legislators enacted one-size-fits-all models for streamlining remedial education, “there could be a lot of collateral damage” to minority and low-income students.  “If you don’t pilot innovations before mandating them statewide, the unintended consequences will come up and bite you,” he said. “If you pilot an innovation, you can work the bugs out before everybody has to live with it.”

‘Legislators Are Getting Anxious’
So why all the focus now on fixing remedial education? Several factors have created a “sense of urgency,” according to Matt Gianneschi, vice president for policy and programs at the Education Commission of the States, a national nonprofit group that tracks state policy trends.  The Common Core State Standards, a set of benchmarks that have been adopted by 45 states, will create a “common exit point and common entry point that has never existed before,” he said. The benchmarks will sharply delineate who is and isn’t ready for college, he said, and are likely to show that even fewer students are prepared.  That’s the last thing that two-year colleges want to hear at a time when President Obama and major foundations are calling for double-digit increases in their completion rates.  “It’s creating real urgency, and legislators are getting anxious,” said Mr. Gianneschi. As a result, many are no longer content to defer to faculty members on academic matters. “Many legislatures are now looking at ways they can force their priorities on the academy to get them to move in new directions.”

In Florida, they’re making remediation optional for most high-school graduates. In Connecticut, they’re limiting it to one semester, unless it’s embedded in a college-credit course. And in statehouses across the country, groups like Complete College America are urging lawmakers to replace stand-alone remedial courses with models that are offered either alongside or as part of college-credit classes.  In Texas, lawmakers seeking to cut remediation costs and put more students directly into college classes passed legislation, taking effect next year, that will bump many of the least-prepared students from remedial education to adult basic education.  Karen Laljiani, associate vice president of Cedar Valley College, said her college would be able to offer only two levels of remedial mathematics instead of four. Those at the upper end of the cutoff will be accelerated into credit courses, which has some faculty members worried about an influx of unprepared students.

Helping the Least-Prepared
The big question, though, is what will happen to students who used to place into the lowest levels of remedial math, some of whom might test at third-grade levels. Some might qualify for short-term, noncredit certificate programs that provide training for blue-collar jobs. And in some cases, remediation could be built right into the course.  The college may have to refer others to community groups that handle literacy and job training—a prospect that many community-college educators see as abandoning their open-door mission. Colleges that are already struggling with reduced enrollment also worry about the additional tuition revenue they’ll lose when students are moved into adult basic education, for which they typically don’t receive any state funds.

Among the questions that the changes are raising: What responsibility do community colleges have to educate students who are so far behind that they would struggle even in remedial classes? How do they structure those courses at a time when the emphasis is on accelerating students into college-level classes?  The head of the National Association for Developmental Education said her group was worried that colleges would start turning those least-prepared students away as pressure to push students through to completion intensified.  “If open-access institutions are forced to shut that door, it would be a dark day," said Patti Levine-Brown, a professor of communications at Florida State College at Jacksonville and former president of the National Association for Developmental Education. "It would go against everything we were created to do.”

Some Colleges Try to Catch Students Up Before They’re Behind

By Sara Lipka.  Community colleges contend with a difficult reality: Many students show up unready for college-level work, and few of them catch up and graduate. To shift that status quo, as campuses around the country introduce new models of remedial, or developmental, education, some are trying to reduce the need for it.

The American Association of Community Colleges set a bold goal at its annual meeting here this week: to decrease by half the number of students who come to college unprepared. In presentations on Sunday and Monday, administrators and faculty members shared ideas for how to do that, describing new partnerships with local school districts to offer the colleges’ remedial courses to high-school students. Catch them up, the thinking goes, before they’re behind.

William Penn Senior High School needs that kind of intervention, presenters from Harrisburg Area Community College said here. The college’s York campus, in south central Pennsylvania, sees more students from nearby William Penn than almost anywhere else. Ninety-two percent place into remedial reading, and 100 percent into remedial mathematics.  “These kids are scoring in the lowest developmental levels that we have,” Marjorie A. Mattis, the campus dean, told an audience of educators from Kansas, Montana, Oregon, and Texas. “How long can we sit back and see these types of results and not do anything about it?”  Conversations with the superintendent produced a plan. Last year on a pilot basis and this year for all seniors at William Penn, English and math follow the college’s developmental curriculum.

Students take placement tests at the end of their junior year, and in the fall they report to a “HACC hallway,” painted in the college’s colors, with classroom tables instead of desks. Teachers must meet the criteria for instructors at the college, which at least one already is. Summer sessions familiarize them with the college’s textbooks, syllabi, and method of assignment review, and during the year the teachers work with college-faculty liaisons.  At the end of the pilot year, tests—offered on the York campus, so students might take them more seriously—showed significant improvement. In English 37 percent of students placed one level higher than they had initially, and in math 39 percent did.  “We’re not going to say that we have every student college-ready, but we’re going to have them more ready than when we started,” said Ms. Mattis. If fewer students place into the lowest levels of developmental education, she said, that’s progress. In general, said William Penn’s principal, the program has more students thinking about college.

Plans to Scale Up
Anne Arundel Community College, in eastern Maryland, is pursuing a similar strategy in math. With a grant from the League for Innovation in the Community College, Anne Arundel and its county’s public-school system compared their curricula and opted to offer a pair of the college’s developmental-math courses in two high schools.  Starting last academic year, seniors shifted to a model called Math Firs3t, an abbreviation for “focused individualized resources to support student success with technology.” The computer-based approach involves mastery testing, in which students retake tests until they score at least 70, said Alycia Marshall, a professor and interim chair of mathematics at Anne Arundel, describing the program during a session here.  Of 134 seniors last spring, 107 passed both of the developmental courses, she said. And of those students, 34 enrolled at Anne Arundel and registered for a credit-level math course, which is often a stumbling block for students coming out of remediation. But 30 of them passed.  College and school officials may soon bring the model to other high schools, said Ms. Marshall. “We’re excited about scaling this up,” she said, “because of the success rates.”  This year New Jersey’s 19 community colleges are studying numerous interventions to prepare local high-school students for college-level work. Burlington County College plans to help adapt high-school courses, while other institutions are experimenting with software and summer boot camps.

Such approaches require close, continuous collaboration between colleges and school districts: “the end of the finger pointing,” Patricia C. Donohue, president of Mercer County Community College, said after a presentation. “By partnering with schools,” she said, “we’re trying to be part of the solution.”