Academic Support Programs at Elite Colleges Since the Beginning

One of my aggravations is the way the popular press and too often research publications claim that academic assistance programs, learning assistance, and developmental education were recently created.  The story goes they were created to serve the "new students" attending college.  That phrase is code language for first-generation, poor, and students of color.  The actual history of U.S. higher education actually records that academic support programs have always been with us.  Following is an excerpt from my book, Access at the Crossroads.  Enjoy.

Precollegiate academic assistance for most students at Harvard and Yale con­sisted of private tutors who prepared them for college entrance examinations in Greek and Latin and provided evidence of good moral character that was also required for admission. In the mid-1700s, Yale required proficiency in arithmetic in addition to the already stringent requirements. Other postsec­ondary institutions soon followed. Students who did not attend Latin gram­mar schools had few options for entering college. One option for gaining admittance to Yale was for a minister to place students in his home for private tutoring until they were ready for the college entrance exam (Cowie, 1936). This option was similar to the dame schools in England.

Once admitted to Harvard, most students continued to receive tutoring, as assigned readings and textbooks were written in Latin. Many college pro­fessors delivered lectures in the same language. Even in the most privileged families, verbal and written competency in Latin was unusual. Therefore, Harvard was the first postsecondary institution in the United States to require remedial studies for most of its first-year class of students (Boylan and White, 1987). After admission to prestigious colleges such as Harvard and Yale, stu­dents entered a cohort. Each week they met with the same tutor for group ses­sions. The tutors’ primary role was reading aloud the lesson material and then conducting a recitation session to detect whether students had correctly memorized the text. This practice failed to meet the needs for the most gifted and the struggling students, as it focused on the average student’s mastery level of the academic content material. The literature contains no evidence of the efficacy of this crude form of academic assistance.

Economics intervened in academic admission policies during the late 1700s. Because of the social norm of considering only white male students from highly prestigious families, most postsecondary institutions found it in their financial interest to admit students less prepared academically but possessing resources to pay college tuition and thus generate more revenue. By the time of the American Revolution, institutions began to differentiate themselves from one another by academic preparation levels of incoming college students and their official mission statements. Amherst and Williams admitted students unable to attend Harvard and Yale as a result of lower academic preparation or inadequate finances (Casazza and Silverman, 1996). Students experienced unofficial segregation policies and procedures. Stereotypes of perceived aca­demic inabilities and discrimination against females and students of color fueled this discrimination. Nathaniel Hawthorne described the students at Williams as “a rough, brown featured, schoolmaster-looking, half-bumpkin, half-scholar, in black, ill-cut broadcloth” (Rudolph, 1956, p. 47). These assumptions, based on ethnic and class prejudices, reflected social norms and prejudices shared by many in society, including key college policymakers. Admission criteria and procedures influenced by these stereotypes contributed to differentiation and stratification among postsecondary institutions.

MAEOPP Best Education Practices Center Posts Promising Practices

As I have shared previously through this blog, I lead a team of volunteers working to identify best education practices for TRiO and GEAR UP federal grant programs.  These programs focus on assisting first-generation college, poor, and historically-underrepresented students complete high school and college.  It is called the MAEOPP Best Education Practices Center.  It is cosponsored by the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning at the University of Minnesota and the Mid-American Association of Education Opportunity Program Personnel.  To help highlight the MAEOPP Center through this web page I have added a new tab to the top menu bar, "Best Practices."  The web page displays my thoughts about best education practices and then provides web links to the MAEOPP Center web site.

We are beginning to post best education practices to the MAEOPP Center web site that have been approved through an external expert panel.  The practices range in age from middle school through college.  As new ones are approved, they will be posted to the web site.  Each submission will be complete enough to provide basic information about it and how to implement.  Contact information is provided so you can follow up with the developers to talk more. 

New Research Confirms Old Findings for Improving Academic Success of Students of Color

From Inside HigherEd.  Click on this link for the entire article.  His research identifies practices that many TRiO programs use to support academic success of the students they serve.

Dr. Shawn previews research findings he'll be releasing formally today about the black and Latino male students who succeed in New York City high schools (and he said there was no reason to believe similar qualities don't help similar students in other urban high schools). The study wasn't of elite charter schools or wealthier parts of the city, but of students who had achieved academic success in regular high schools. Harper found not only that such students exist (no surprise to him, but perhaps to those who lament the dearth of such students) but that many of them have no idea that they would be attractive candidates for admission to some of the most elite colleges in the United States.

Harper -- director of the Study of Race and Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania -- attracted considerable attention last year for a study in which he identified successful black male college students and examined the factors that led to their success. This new study is in a way the flip side of that research -- as his focus was on students in New York City high schools who could succeed in college (although he also included a group of New York City high school graduates who were in college for comparison purposes).

But what were the common characteristics that seemed to propel these students to succeed?

• Parental value of education. Many spoke of parents who related their own lack of education to their lack of money, and told their children they wanted better options for them.
• High expectations. The report says that "almost all" of the students in the study "remember being thought of as smart and capable when they were young boys."
• Learning to avoid neighborhood danger. Those who lived in unsafe neighborhoods reported parents who kept them inside whenever possible. Likewise, many of the students reported spending after-school hours in school buildings, in settings where they could study and also socialize in safer environments than were available to them near their homes.
• Avoiding gang recruitment. Many said that by becoming known as smart, and by having parents who didn't let them spend time outdoors, they weren't recruited into gangs.
• Teachers who cared and inspired. Harper asked the students to name and describe favorite high school teachers, and he noted that none of them had difficulty doing so, describing challenging teachers who knew and cared about them. He said that the teachers of these students are working in ways counter to the image of out-of-control urban schools.
• Reinforcement of college-going culture. One student noted that, at his high school, every day that a student was accepted at a college, the entire school was told about this over the public address system. While college-going might not be the norm for his socioeconomic group, he came to think of college-going as the norm from hearing these messages over and over again.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/09/30/new-study-explores-qualities-help-black-and-latino-males-succeed-high-school#ixzz2gOH4XCrF 
Inside Higher Ed 

Dr. Mitchem and the Fight for the Forgotten

There is an excellent story of Dr. Arnold Mitchem who just stepped down as head of the Council on Opportunity in Education in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  It is quite a story of overcoming adversity and dedicating his life to helping the "forgotten" students, those who are first-generation and poor, with their educational success and future contributions to society.  The article concludes with an excellent timeline of both the history of TRiO and also the fight for equality in education.

Federal "Doing What Works" Website for Dissemination of Best Education Practices Suspended Abruptly Without Explanation

An important website for helping disseminate best education practices identified by the federal What Whats Clearinghouse has abrubtly suspended without explanation.  The "Doing What Works" website was a companion to the Institute for Educational Sciences' "What Works Clearinghouse" that evaluate educational practices regarding a stringent evaluation model.  While the WWC is very good at evaluating practices (some would argue the point their standards miss many worthy practices), they were not as user-friendly to understand "how" to implement the practices that they deemed worthy.  Doing What Works was a website sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and developed by the Innovation Studies Program at WestEd in partnership with American Institutes for Research and RMC Research Corporation.

The Department of Education sent the following email to those on the mailing list for the Doing What Works website:

From: “U.S. Department of Education”
Subject: Update on the Doing What Works Website
Date: September 20, 2013 8:29:36 PM EDT
Dear subscriber:  The U.S. Department of Education has suspended operation of the Doing What Works website. We sincerely regret this unfortunate event. You can still acquire many DWW media and materials through other channels. Please email dww@wested.org for specific instructions on how you can gain access to DWW media and materials.  Sincerely, The DWW Team

Key web links for this news:

1. Report of the website closing by the Washington Post Online  From the author:  "I won’t mention the irony in the fact that department spends millions on school reform that has no proven record of success but ran out of cash for its Doing What Works website."
2. Link to an archieved copy of the Doing What Works website.  The website has now been erased without even a single web page directing people to other sources.  This "Wayback Machine" archive records every web page ever posted.  They archived so far 240 billion web pages.
3. Link to official Facebook page for Doing What Works. 
4. Link to official Facebook page for Doing What Works. 
5. Cosponsor WestED's announcement about suspending Doing What Works. 

Why is it important to note the demise of the DWW website?

The federal government spends hundreds of millions each year on funding grant programs in the Department of Education and other agencies.  The Government is very effective in spending enormous amounts of money, but lacks a coherent, sophisticated system to disseminate the lessons learned from the money spent.  The What Works Clearinghouse is effective at evaluating educational practices in K-12 education, but ignores postsecondary education.  However, WWC is not focused on providing easily understood and user friendly reports, videos, sample curriculum, and the like to implement the education practices that meet their standards.  Just sending us to "Google" is not an answer for understanding how to implement best education practices.  Last time I used the search words  "best", "education", and "practices" Google identified 274 million web pages.

A simple solution

When the government awards grants to education institutions, they allow them to charge "indirect costs" to the government for the costs to spend the grant money.  The argument is that the institution has to pay for the basic services (utilitis, bookkeeping, laboratories for experiments, etc) to host the project.  The government limits these indirect costs to perhaps eight percent for a grant from the Dept of Education and as high as 40 percent from the scientific agencies.  The government agrees it is part of the cost of doing business and permits the charges.

Why doesn't the government add their own "indirect cost" to grants that go to education institutions?  Hold back one or two percent of the annual appropriation for a grant program and use that to fund a sophisticated best education practices center that provides a user-friendly means to help people implement best education practices.  Why not spends a penny or two on the dollar to help people implement what already has been learned?

An example of this approach is a small pilot project I am involved with.  I lead a team of volunteers who have created a pilot best education practice center focused on college readiness and college success approaches.  It is cosponsored by the University of Minnesota and the Mid-America Association of Educational Program Personnel (MAEOPP), a regional association representing professionals involved with TRiO and GEAR UP programs.  Click on this link for the MAEOPP Cener for Best Education Practices.  If a group of volunteers can create something like this with next to no budget, what could be created if something more sophisticated was funded with that one or two percent hold back  of grant funds from the govenment?

The Florida Solution to Developmenal Education: Punt!

I just read two stories in the online edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education from the same day that have oppositve conclusions.  On one hand SAT announced that about half of students are not ready for college according to their exams.  On the other hand, Florida legislators seem to know better and are allowing their students to opt out of developmental-level math courses, even though their own research says that 40% of them need to enroll in DE-level math courses.

September 26, 2013  Most Students Are Unprepared for College, SAT Results Show  By Justin Doubleday  "Less than half of the students who took the SAT in 2013 are ready to succeed in postsecondary education, according to a report released on Thursday by the College Board, which owns the SAT.  Only 43 percent of the test takers this year met or exceeded the benchmark score of 1550 out of a possible 2400, the same proportion as last year.  Those who reach that number, according to the College Board, have a greater chance of attaining a B-minus average or higher during their first year of college and persisting to graduation. The mean score for 2013 was 1498.  In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, College Board officials said the number of students reaching the benchmark score had remained virtually unchanged over the last five years. "We are just not moving the needle as aggressively as it needs to be moved," said Cyndie Schmeiser, chief of assessments."

September 23, 2013, Florida Colleges Make Plans for Students to Opt Out of Remedial Courses, By Katherine Mangan  "Jerry Shawver helps a student in Florida State College at Jacksonville's math lab. He wants to show lawmakers "our success rates and dare them to shut us down."  New students who show up here at Florida State College at Jacksonville have to take placement tests in mathematics, English, and reading. About 70 percent end up in one or more remedial courses. For now, at least.  State lawmakers voted in May to make such courses, which some see as obstacles to progress, optional for most students. Starting next year, recent high-school graduates and active-duty military members in Florida will have the choice of whether to take the courses or even the tests meant to gauge students' readiness for college-level work.  That prospect has sent a wave of anxiety across the state's 28 community and state colleges, which all have open admissions. Their fear: that an influx of unprepared students could destabilize introductory courses and set those who will struggle up for failure."

What am I missing here?  On one hand, experts at SAT tell us that half of students are not ready.  On the other hand, Florida state legislators tell me that all the students should do as they want.  After all, who wants to take a developmental-level course if it might be negative for them graduating?  I don't seem to remember the research study cited by the Florida legislators that support their gamble on the lives of the students.  Yes, change iw needed.  But dumping unprepared students into the college courses does not help.  Of course, if the Florida legislators never experienced community college life and instead attended private institutions, had plenty of social capital from previous family members that completed college, economic resources, better high schools, and the rest, their plan probably makes sense.  It is like watching a train wreck in process.  This time it is not a slow-moving one, but a fast-impending one. And we are all on the train since we all suffer the consequences. 

GAO Study on Developmental Education and Preview of New Research Center on Best Practices and Assessment

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported the following:  Remedial education is being fast-tracked, served up in bite-sized pieces, and made more relevant to students' career goals as states and community colleges experiment with ways to keep them from getting discouraged and dropping out, according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.  The report stops short of recommending any specific strategies, leaving that up to a national remediation-research center that will open next year with up to $10-million in funds over five years from the U.S. Department of Education. Proposals for the center, which was announced in May, were due last week.  Click here to download a copy of the report.

It highlights a number of new strategies, meanwhile, that seem to hold promise.  In Texas, Virginia, and Washington, three states that have been revamping remedial, or developmental, education, some colleges are compressing two semesters of instruction into one, an approach that can help some students progress faster. But at the same time, the authors say, it can leave the least-prepared students floundering.  Other strategies cited in the report include providing remediation in small modules, so that students study only what they need to get up to the college level. And offering students a tutorial before their placement test could help some avoid being placed in the noncredit classes altogether, the report notes.  The report is based on a yearlong study that included input from 10 community colleges in Texas, Virginia, and Washington, as well as one in California. The authors also consulted with national education experts and nonprofit and research groups.

Patti Levine-Brown, president of the National Association for Developmental Education, said she hoped the new center would end up at an institution with researchers who have spent time in the trenches. "There are a lot of people doing work in the field who don't understand what practitioners go through every day in the classroom," said Ms. Levine-Brown, who is also a professor of communications at Florida State College at Jacksonville. "One size does not fit all, and the more strategies we can come up with to help students succeed, the better."