40 iPad Apps for Younger Children

In the past I have shared a directory of my favorite (300) iPad apps I find useful personally and as a college educator. <Click to download the free directory.> Recently I received a message from someone that has focused on younger children. I found it quite good and recommend you check it out. <Click to open the document web site.>

From the author's web site: Jill Rooney, Ph.D. is an Education Writer for OnlineColleges.net. After earning an undergraduate degree in Secondary Education and a Ph.D. in History, Dr. Rooney taught History, Political Science, and General Education college courses at state universities, small private colleges, community colleges, and for-profit colleges. An experienced educator with expertise in American politics, Dr. Rooney has also published articles in publications by the Smithsonian Institution, Oxford University Press, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Her teaching experience has taught her that all students really just want one thing: To learn. And that isn't always easy, so she's here to help! We're also on Facebook: join us for more conversation on college life, study tips, career advice, and more!

Call by Dept. of Education for Promising and Practical Strategies

A perfect opportunity has been created for educators to share promising and practical strategies to increase postsecondary success, transfer, and college graduation through the U.S. Department of Education. Please read further how you can share what works with your students and programs with your colleagues nationally. While it is the middle of the academic term and you no doubt have more than a full work load, do not miss the chance to influence other educators and policymakers with what you know for making a difference and demonstrate how your profession has the expertise to increase college success rates. The priority review deadline for submission is April 30th.

The U.S. Department of Education announced at its College Completion Symposium and posted to the Federal Register on January 30, 2012 a Request for Information (RFI) for any person or organization to share with them strategies for increasing college completion that may then be made available through a special web site created by the Department. Submissions received by April 30, 2012 receive priority consideration for dissemination. Click on the following web link for the complete announcement published in the Federal Register, https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/01/30/2012-1963/promising-and-practical-strategies-to-increase-postsecondary-success#p-3

It is important in your proposal to stress the unique features of your activity or program. For example, while many schools have a tutoring or mentoring program, what is novel about yours? How are your credit-hour courses different than others? These are some of the questions the RFI asks for the submissions to address.

The Jandris Center for Innovative Higher Education (http://cehd.umn.edu/jandris/) based at the University of Minnesota has volunteered to provide several free hour-long webinars in the near future to share suggestions for completing a submission with examples from others that have already have or in process of completing their document. Announcements about these webinars will be posted to this blog page soon. Based on the regulations from the published announcement in the Federal Register, click on the following web link for suggestions by a Jandris Center staff member for the submission: http://www.besteducationpractices.org/storage/pdf-documents/Summarized%20RFI%20Announcement.pdf

For more official information and technical assistance with the submission, contact Dr. David Soo at the Department of Education, (202) 502-7742, david.soo@ed.gov Information about the Jandris Center is available at http://cehd.umn.edu/jandris/

Department of Education Collecting Strategies to Increase College Completion

The U.S. Department of Education has asked colleges and universities to report on their successful strategies toward achieving President Obama’s goal of the United States having the highest percentage of postsecondary-degree holders in the world by 2020. In a notice scheduled to appear in Monday’s (January 30) Federal Register, the department is reaching out to institutions of higher education, as well as states and nonprofit organizations, for strategies that have worked. The reported best practices, the notice says, will be posted online in due course.

The U.S. Department of Education is convening a one-day symposium on college completion on Monday, Jan. 30, for 50 of the nation’s leading researchers, policy experts, and practitioners from 30 postsecondary institutions to identify evidence-based best practices that work to increase college completion. At 2:30 p.m., Education Secretary Arne Duncan will address the symposium, challenging participants to think creatively about ways to substantially boost college completion.Sessions will highlight ways to support students’ achievement through accelerated programs, learning communities and bridge programs; as well as through advising, coaching and mentoring. The symposium will also focus on affordable and innovative ways to promote completion in an effort to meet President Obama's goal that the United States once again have the highest college attainment rate in the world by 2020.

Illinois Releases New Report on Practices to Increase College Completion Rates

Illinois Lt. governor Sheila Simon this month released a report called "Illinois Community Colleges: Focus on the Finish." <Click on this link to download the complete report> It is practical examples how the collegtes are implementing practices to improve college completion rates for their students. Some of these could be appropriately modified and integrated into TRIO and other opportunity programs.

Following is the Executive Summary of the report: Community colleges are the future of the Illinois economy. Nearly 1 million students pass through their doors each year in search of accessible, affordable education and career training. Unfortunately, too many students leave campus without the certificate or degree necessary for a good-paying job. Slightly fewer than one in five Illinois students who began their studies as first-time, full-time students at Illinois community colleges in the fall of 2007 graduated by the summer of 2010. In order for our state to attract and retain businesses – and do right by our students – we need to dramatically increase this success rate.

As the Governor’s point person on education reform, I completed a statewide fact-finding tour of all 48 Illinois community colleges in 2011. I wanted to hear firsthand how schools were working to improve completion rates, and to gather input on how the state could facilitate their success. Given that community colleges reach more students – but graduate fewer – than other higher education institutions, their performance is critical to creating a globally competitive workforce.

Today, the Illinois workforce is slightly ahead of most states, with 41 percent of our nearly 7 million working-age adults (25-64 years old) holding at least a two-year degree. But if we do not increase the proportion of certificate and degree holders over time, Illinois will not only fall behind our neighbors, but also lose out on international job investment. As Chair of the P-20 Council’s Joint Educational Leadership Committee and a member of Illinois’ Complete College America team, I am working to increase the proportion of Illinoisans with meaningful college and career credentials to 60 percent by 2025.

During the tour, I found that colleges are actively pursuing the state’s “60 by 2025” completion goal. I witnessed several small scale, but promising, reforms to prepare incoming students and reduce the time it takes for them to earn credentials and enter the regional and national workforce. These emerging on-the-ground practices, coupled with overviews of national research and completion strategies, provide the foundation for this report.

Institutional Mission Differentiation, Academic Stratification, and Reduced Access for Historically Underrepresented Students

Bastedo, M. N., & Gumport, P. J. (2003). Access to what? Mission differentiation and academic stratification in U.S. public higher education. Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning, 46(3), 341-359. This article analyzes developmental education policy in Massachusetts and New York to examine recent policy decisions regarding the termination of academic programs, elimination of remedial education, promotion of honors colleges within each state system. A result of these policy decisions has been to increase stratification of programs and students within a public state higher education system as well as with individual institutions within the state system. The authors argue that more intense analysis needs to be conducted before systematic changes are made within education systems to avoid or at least forecast major changes in the stratification of student opportunity to attend postsecondary education.

Contextualizing the historic role of learning assistance, those who work in learning assistance programs neither determine admission criteria nor set aca­demic standards (Boylan, 1995a). Admissions officers, administrators, fac­ulty committees, and state higher education executive offices are responsible for those decisions. Once standards are set, however, it is the job of learning assistance faculty and staff to ensure students meet or exceed them. The need for learning assistance was created as soon as the first college opened its doors to those prepared to pass the admissions examination and those who were not. These criteria de facto divided students into two groups: those admitted normally and those admitted provisionally. Provisional students need addi­tional academic assistance and enrichment. As the upcoming history chap­ter documents, many students attending U.S. colleges in the 1700s and 1800s participated in learning assistance activities before admission as well as throughout their academic career (Boylan and White, 1987; Brier, 1984).

Nearly all institutions historically offered developmental courses. During the past twenty years, eight states have or are in process of eliminating devel­opmental courses at public four-year colleges. At the same time, thirty states rejected similar legislation (Abraham and Creech, 2000). These mixed results indicate that some states are mandating the shift of the courses from public four-year institutions to community colleges (Hankin, 1996). Shifting the developmental courses often occurs at the level of the campus or state system. For example, in Missouri no state legislation required shifting these courses. Three decades ago, the University of Missouri system eliminated the courses. State four-year and two-year institutions informally assumed them.

During the past quarter century, community colleges assumed primary responsibility for vocational programs, workplace literacy, displaced worker retraining, certificate programs, and others. Their primary role of preparing students for transfer to senior institutions expanded. Traditional boundaries between commu­nity and technical colleges blurred as costly technical programs were offered at community colleges. These expanded curricular responsibilities required community colleges to invest in more buildings, equipment, and faculty mem­bers for expensive high-demand certificate and associate degree programs in response to local needs of citizens and employers. Increased prestige of com­munity colleges and heightened stigma concerning developmental courses led a growing number of community college leaders to reject increased responsi­bility for them (McGrath and Spear, 1994; Oudenhoven, 2002). Community colleges are placed in a double bind to maintain their traditional open admis­sion access and increase academic standards necessary for the new curricular offerings. Some leaders question how both can be maintained while dealing with a large influx of students needing developmental courses formerly offered at four-year colleges (Perin, 2006).

Some policymakers direct students with academic preparation requiring developmental courses to begin their college career at junior and community colleges. These students might be accepted for transfer to the senior institu­tion if their junior college academic profile warrants. The transfer process from community colleges to senior institutions has numerous challenges. As a result, the students are placed at higher risk for academic failure than those who begin their careers in four-year schools (Pascarella and Terenzini, 1991).

Considerable effort has been made with articulation agreements among two-year and four-year institutions. The transfer process is not transparent, however, and the rate of completing an undergraduate degree is lower for stu­dents who begin at a two-year institution than for those beginning at a four-year institution, even when controlling for other variables (Pascarella and Terenzini, 1991). Barriers to success for transfer students include not accepting or requir­ing them to repeat courses previously completed and the turbulence experi­enced by students as they move from one academic environment to another. It is common for students to experience academic difficulty and earn lower grade averages as a result at the senior institution (Eggleston and Laanan, 2001).

With institutional resources, including learning assistance, students from a wide range of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds can be accepted and supported for academic success. Learning assistance, especially developmen­tal courses, have been significant resources for students of color (Boylan, Bonham, and Bliss, 1994). These services along with other institutional sup­ports increase the likelihood of higher student achievement and persistence toward graduation.

• Abraham, A. A., and Creech, J. D. (2000). Reducing remedial education: What progress are states making? Educational Benchmark 2000 Series. Atlanta: Southern Regional Educa­tion Board. Retrieved August 19, 2004, from http://www.sreb.org.
• Boylan, H. R. (1995a). Making the case for developmental education. Research in Develop­mental Education, 12(2), 1–4.
• Boylan, H. R., and White, W. G., Jr. (1987). Educating all the nation’s people: The historical roots of developmental education. Part I. Review of Research in Developmental Education, 4(4), 1–4.
• Brier, E. (1984). Bridging the academic preparation gap: An historical view. Journal of Devel­opmental Education, 8(1), 2–5.
• Eggleston, L. E., and Laanan, F. S. (2001). Making the transition to the senior institution. In F. S. Laanan (Ed.), Transfer students: Trends and issues. New Directions for Community Colleges, no. 114, pp. 87–97. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• McGrath, D., and Spear, M. B. (1994). The remediation of the community college. In J. L. Ratcliff, S. Schwarz, and L. H. Ebbers (Eds.). Community colleges (pp. 217–228). Need-ham Heights, MA: Simon & Schuster.
• Oudenhoven, B. (2002). Remediation at the community college: Pressing issues, uncertain solutions. In T. H. Bers and H. D. Calhoun (Eds.), New steps for the community college. New Directions for Community Colleges, no. 117. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Pascarella, E. T., and Terenzini, P. T. (1991). How college affects students. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Perin, D. (2006). Can community colleges protect both access and standards? The problem of remediation. Teachers College Record, 108(3), 339–373.

Are even community colleges to join many four-year institutions as gated communities as well?

Barton, P. E. (2002). The closing of the education frontier? Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service. Retrieved from: http://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/ PICFRONTIER.pdf

The author makes an implicit analogy with a theory that early America was defined by the opportunity presented by Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis of the 'opening of the American west'. The Turner thesis was, "Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development". Accordingly, America changed when the West was closed and opportunity ended in 1893. Using this concept as a counterpoint, Barton questions whether the frontier of educational opportunity has already closed, and thereby changing American culture. He argues that there is empirical evidence that postsecondary educational opportunity has closed, and therefore changing the nature of American society. Barton's data challenges the conventional wisdom that educational attainment has continued to increase during the last quarter century. He paints a picture of an educational system that is not producing more high school graduates, that continues to display great social inequality, and that is not able to support greater proportions of students through to degree in four-year college programs.

I was visiting with a colleague yesterday in a larger community college in the Twin-Cities area. She remakred how high-level college administrators were voicing the desire to apply admissions criteria to "weed out" students deemed unlikely to be successful at college. These officials often relish the limelight brought when media report on their technical and health-science programs, but are frustrated with devoting larger amounts of funds to support growning numbers of students who need developmental-level courses, especially in mathematics.

It is easy to say that students with severe preparation issues attend community Adult Basic Education or General Education Degree programs. However, the barriers are enormous. How is the issue of stigma going to be overcome by telling students who aspire to college to attend programs designed for apiring high school graduates? How do these community-based programs absorb the enormous numbers of new students when their funding is inadequate for their current clients?

A solution could be to place these ABE and GED programs within local college learning centers with a significant increase in funding. That would help some with the stigma issue, but much more needs to be done with providing seamless academic enrichment and support for students. While the national debate decries the lack of adequately-trained college graduates, we seem to erect new barriers for their success each day.

Stigma for Enrolling in Developmental-Level Courses

I have commented recently about how the state of Ohio is the latest to ban the offering of developmental-level courses at the four-year college level, instead reserving those offerings for the community-college system. While it initially appears to be a good policy decision to differentiate offerings among different types of public institutiohns, the discussions nearly always fail to take into account the psychological consequences of such decisions.

Scholars at several institutions conducted research studies concerning students’ perceptions of learning assistance programs, especially developmental credit courses. Research indicated negative stigma was attached, regardless of volun­tary or mandated enrollment (Higbee, Lundell, and Arendale, 2005; Pedelty, 2001; Valeri-Gold and others, 1997). Perceptions of stigma have plagued learning assistance throughout history. Some believe stigma increases restric­tions and curtails programs, especially at public four-year institutions (Barefoot, 2003; Jehangir, 2002; Martinez, Snider, and Day, 2003).

Various factors contribute to stigma: (1) mandatory enrollment in devel­opmental courses; (2) new students placed in cohorts identified for academic risk; (3) use of terms such as “at-risk students,” “high-risk students,” “devel­opmental students,” and “academically disadvantaged students,” all of which represent a negative condition characterizing students’ academic abilities and potential; (4) public policy fights over admission of students perceived to be academically underprepared; and (5) memories of emotional hazing in previ­ous schools.

Students often experience two concurrent emotions regarding learning assistance. They appreciate the help of learning assistance personnel to strengthen their academic skills, are grateful the institution admits them, and appreciate varied learning assistance activities. On the other hand, contact with these activities inadvertently leads to self-stigmatization because they recog­nize that not all students use the same learning assistance activities, especially developmental courses. Students enrolled in developmental courses recognize their academic profile is lower than that of other students at the institution. Diminished self-esteem and believing they do not belong often emerge. Some­times anger is directed at others and themselves, leading to self-sabotaging aca­demic behavior. This chain of events results in premature academic failure and departure from the institution (Higbee, Lundell, and Arendale, 2005).

When stigma attaches itself to language describing learning assistance and the students served by it, institutional leaders can lose interest and curtail these programs, especially at four-year institutions (Jehangir, 2002). Insufficient ser­vices diminish students’ academic success. A future blog entry will explore the question whether students’ rights are abridged by institutions’ failing to provide them the same services provided to students in previous generations?

References:

• Barefoot, B. O. (2003). Findings from the second national survey of first-year academic practices. Brevard, NC: Policy Center for the First Year of College. Retrieved July 4, 2004, from http://www.brevard.edu/fyc/survey2002/findings.htm.
• Higbee, J. L., Lundell, D. B., and Arendale, D. R. (Eds.). (2005). The General College vision: Integrating intellectual growth, multicultural perspectives, and student development. Min­neapolis: Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy, General College, University of Minnesota.
• Jehangir, R. R. (2002). Higher education for whom? The battle to include developmental education at the four-year university. In J. L. Higbee, D. B. Lundell, and I. M. Duranczyk (Eds.), Developmental education: Policy and practice (pp. 17–34). Auburn, GA: National Association for Developmental Education.
• Martinez, S., Snider, L. A., and Day, E. (2003). Remediation in higher education: A review of the literature. Topeka: Kansas State Board of Education. Retrieved July 1, 2004, from http://www.ksde.org/pre/postsecondary_remediation.doc.
• Pedelty, M. H. (2001). Stigma. In J. L. Higbee, D. B. Lundell, and I. M. Duranczyk (Eds.), 2001: A developmental odyssey. Warrensburg, MO: National Association for Developmen­tal Education.
• Valeri-Gold, and others. (1997). Reflection: Experience commentaries by urban developmen­tal studies students. In J. L. Higbee, and P. L. Dwinell (Eds.), Developmental education: Enhancing student retention (pp. 3–18). Carol Stream, IL: National Association for Devel­opmental Education.