Committee Name: Student Equity & Success
Date: Friday, December 11, 2015
Time: 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Facilitators/Location/Chair: Dennis Bailey-Fougnier & Joseph Carter/SAC 225
Attendees:
(in bold)
Guests:
Dennis Bailey-Fougnier, Kori Calubaquib, Jennifer Cass, Joseph Carter, Lori Chavez, Olga Diaz, Michelle
Donohue, Ricardo Espinoza, Terri Daniels, Wanda Garner, Liber McKee, Alta Northcutt, Nancy Phillips,
Margery Regalado Rodriguez, Erik Rose, Barbara Schultz-Perez, Martin Vargas Vega, Jim Weckler,
Joseph Colon, Terrence Willett, Katie Woolsey
Michael Mangin
Agenda Items:
Topic
Topic Lead
Plan Progress
Dennis/Joseph
Budget
Dennis/Joseph
Student Equity Director
Dennis/Joseph
Acceleration Subcommittee Terrence
Report
Equity Data Review
Timeline
Terrence
Veronica Neal Presentation
Barbara
Outcomes
2014-15 and 2015-16 plans will need assessments; what’s working
and what’s not. Terrence will make assignments to activity directors if
not already done. A matrix for completion rates will be compiled.
Target year of 2020 to close equity gaps.
End of year balance: journal entries will be processed in January to
close out the carryover balance from 2014-15. There was discussion
on using tutoring expenses but it needs to be very clear (for auditors)
which expenses will be used.
The following position requests have been sent to HR for recruitment:
Student Equity Director, Student Equity Program Coordinator,
Veterans Program Coordinator, Foster Youth Program Coordinator.
Supplemental funding will be given to HR to publish in targeted
venues.
The report’s five strategies were reviewed and discussed:
1. Increased Support
2. Shortened Sequence
3. Placement Preparation
4. High School Alignment/Articulation
5. Adult Education
Terrence will provide another acceleration report in spring.
(Report is attached.)
Data will be available in March and will be presented in April for
feedback and Board review. In May the data will be used for the
Scorecard.
Veronica Neal will be the keynote speaker at spring Flex Week on why
equity really matters. The presentation will be from 9:00 to noon,
with another session following from 1:00-2:30.
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Acceleration Subcommittee Strategies Final Report
December 11, 2015
Introduction
The Student Success Initiative Task Force that is now the Student Equity and Success Committee created an
Acceleration Subcommittee to review strategies related to helping students successfully complete transfer
level English and math at a greater rate in a shorter time. During the spring semester of 2014, the
subcommittee met several times to define “acceleration” and outline a variety of strategies to explore. The
subcommittee identified five strategies:
1. Increased Support
2. Shortened Sequence
3. Placement Preparation
4. High School Alignment/Articulation
5. Adult Education
The remainder of this report discusses each of these strategies along with benefits, concerns, resources
required, references for further study, and reactions and input from the English and math departments.
Questions or comments on this report can be directed to the subcommittee chair:
Terrence Willett
Director of the Planning and Research Office
terrence@cabrillo.edu
(831) 477-5656
Acceleration Subcommittee Members
Joseph Carter, English Department Chair
Jennifer Cass, Math Department Chair
Mark DeSmet, Math Instructor
Wanda Garner, Dean of Natural and Applied Sciences (NAS)
Eric Grabiel, STARS First Year Experience Coordinator
Rachel Mayo, Dean of Education Centers, Watsonville & Scotts Valley; Title V
Diego Navarro, Founder & Instructor, Academy for College Excellence
Barbara Schultz-Perez, Counselor
Conrad Scott-Curtis, English Instructor
James Weckler, Dean of Business, English, and Language Arts (BELA)
Terrence Willett, Subcommittee Chair, Director of the Planning and Research Office (PRO) 2
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Glossary
Locus of Control = Denotes whether a strategy can be implemented entirely by Cabrillo personnel (internal
locus of control) or if it requires collaboration with external parties or must be implemented entirely by
external parties.
Timing of intervention relative to enrolling at Cabrillo = Indicates whether the intervention occurs prior
to a student enrolling at Cabrillo, during the enrollment process, or after enrolling at Cabrillo.
Benefits = Describes possible positive impacts of an intervention. These could include increases in student
completion, reductions in time to completion, reductions in resources needed to achieve completion goals,
affective enhancements for students, and other desirable monetary and non-monetary effects.
Concerns = Describes possible negative impacts of an intervention.
Start Up Resources = These primarily focus on the type and amount of resources to design, implement, and
evaluate an intervention. Costs may include but are not limited to course scheduling, recruitment, managing
linked enrollments as in the case of many learning communities, and personnel costs for coordination.
Ongoing Resources = After an intervention is institutionalized, there may be ongoing resources required
especially if a pilot was grant funded and other resources must be identified to continue the effort. Note that
some costs would be in both start up and ongoing costs such as managing linked enrollments if a learning
community was institutionalized.
References = Links and articles related to a particular strategy. 3
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Acceleration Strategies
Strategy 1 Increased Support
One strategy would be to provide additional supports to students in English and math sequences such as
supplemental instruction, tutoring, advising, and counseling. Support services may include self-efficacy
assessment. This can occur prior to or after students enter Cabrillo. Math 104, Math Success Strategies for
Precalculus And Beyond, is an example applied to Math 4, Precalculus, students at risk of failing. Another
example is the Academy for College Excellence (ACE) that provides deep support through two courses and a
behavior system for highly at risk students. A third example is the Students Transitioning in Academics:
Reaching Success (STARS) program with linked courses that support English, math, and general learning
skills. Other examples for specific populations include the Summer Migrant Program (SMP), the Puente
Project, and Math, Engineering, and Science Achievement (MESA). See also READ-158 Read Math that
provides a cross disciplinary approach to supporting remedial instruction.
Locus of Control: Internal and/or collaborative
Timing of intervention relative to enrolling at Cabrillo: Prior and/or after
Benefits: Can increase course completion and retention. Can help create more focused and efficient
education plans. In math, can be applied to both STEM and non-STEM pathways.
Concerns: Some of these approaches can require significant additional resources for personnel, technology
support, coordination, self-efficacy instruments, and changes to registration practices or other office
procedures (e.g. learning communities with linked courses or restricted sections). Support services focused on
a specific population may be difficult to scale.
Start Up Resources: Professional Development. Working with operation related offices such as Admissions
and Records, Counseling, Information Technology, Planning and Research, and the Instruction Office to
develop advising and enrollment protocols especially if linked courses or restricted sections are involved.
Ongoing Resources: Personnel time for coordination and evaluation. Additional teaching units to offer
specially designed classes (for example 3.5 teaching units (TU) for each section of Math 104). Some models
can be self-sustaining through the reallocation of teaching units from reductions in remedial sections to
higher efficiency sections.
References
http://www.rpgroup.org/projects/basic-skills-research-project
http://www.rpgroup.org/projects/student-support
http://www.rpgroup.org/sites/default/files/Student_Support_Redefined-ACE_Case_Study-Fall2013.pdf
http://www.cccbsi.org/
http://www.cccbsi.org/basic-skills-handbook 4
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Strategy 2 Shortened Sequence
A common means of shortening sequences is by combining pre-transfer level courses into fewer levels.
Examples include a single pre-statistics course or pre-college composition as seen in the California
Acceleration Project (CAP) and Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Statway and
Quantway cirrucula. The recent evaluation of CAP found that accelerated pathways had an overall effect of
increasing the odds of completing transfer-level gatekeeper courses for students at all levels of the
developmental sequence after controlling for an array of potentially confounding demographic and academic
variables (Hayward and Willett, 2014). Another example is the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) in
Baltimore County with English 100 students in an English 1A course where English 100 students take a
supplemental support class. Academy for College Excellence (ACE) program at Los Medanos has a model to
accelerate both in English and math in the same semester simultaneously. The outcomes for both transferlevel math and English completion 1 semester and 2 semesters after the ACE semester shows significant
improvement over the comparison group (RTI, 2014).
Another approach is to focus on the calendar time to completion. For example, intensive half semester
versions of courses that allow completion of two sequential courses in one term, summer term courses, and
quarter systems all can result in the completion of more units in the same calendar time as compared to
semesters with full term courses or courses spread over two semesters. In the case of two sequential courses
offered in the same semester, attrition can still occur between levels unless they are offered as a blended
course. Related are modularized courses that divide a course into several independent sections that can be
completed typically via a self-paced technology based platform. Modules may allow the completion of course
material in a shorter time period but conversely increase the number of attrition points.
Note there is another definition of acceleration used in the ACE model, which is to help more students
complete the developmental ed sequence and successfully complete their first gatekeeper transfer-level
course. This definition focuses on increasing the throughput of students to college-readiness through
strategies such as contextualizing the basic skills courses and increasing support (see Strategy 1) rather than
primarily relying upon shortened sequences. However, these approaches can be complementary.
Locus of Control: Internal
Timing of intervention relative to enrolling at Cabrillo: After
Benefits: Can greatly increase transfer level English and math throughput and reduce calendar time to
completion.
Concerns: Developing new curricula takes much time and effort. What content may be missed? How do you
decide which content to eliminate? How do we ensure students choosing a non-STEM math pathway fully
understand the implication of that decision? How do we avoid disproportionately directing underrepresented
groups to a non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) pathway? How can faculty be supported to
be successful?
Start Up Resources: Professional development.
Ongoing Resources: Some models can be self-sustaining through the reallocation of teaching units from
reductions in remedial sections to higher efficiency sections.
References
http://cap.3csn.org/
http://www.rpgroup.org/projects/cap
http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/media/k2/attachments/accelerating-integrated-developmental-reading-andwriting-at-chabot.pdf
http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/quantway
http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/statway
http://www.academyforcollegeexcellence.org/student-outcome-studies/
http://alp-deved.org/
http://the-initiative.accelerationincontext.net/2013/04/26/aic-to-be-included-in-poppy-copy-2/ 5
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Strategy 3: Placement Preparation
Provide a short term (two week) course for placement test preparation. Last year (2013) Cabrillo offered a
Summer Math Intensive where 23 students participated and 63% reassessed one level above their original
placement. Another example is Math Jam that is a pre-placement test intensive study and review short course.
These interventions can be thought of as helping bridge the high school to college transition and typically
include a study skills component.
There could also be a reconsideration of current math assessment retest policies:
1. Should students be allowed to retake the assessment after enrolling in a math class?
2. What if the student receives a W?
Note this strategy will be informed and impacted by the development of the Common Assessment Initiative
and the Multiple Measures Assessment Project.
Locus of Control: Internal and/or collaborative
Timing of intervention relative to enrolling at Cabrillo: Prior mostly but could be after
Benefits: Could increase the proportion of students placing into higher levels.
Concerns: Requires resources to develop and implement. How do you incentivize students to participate
(opt in v. opt out)?
Start Up Resources: $50,000 allocated in 2014-2015 Student Equity Plan.
Ongoing Resources: $50,000 allocated in 2015-2016 Student Equity Plan.
References
http://www.canadacollege.edu/STEMcenter/mathjam.php
http://www.pasadena.edu/studentservices/lac/paws.cfm
http://cccassess.org/
http://www.rpgroup.org/projects/multiple-measures-assessment-project 6
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Strategy 4: High School Alignment/Articulation
Align high school and college curricula followed by a policy accepting high school coursework for placement.
Examples include Grossmont and Long Beach City Colleges that permit students who earned an A or B in a
high school course to enroll in the next level related course in college (note Grossmont only articulates
English). Related is the Early Assessment Program (EAP), a CSU sponsored program that provides a college
readiness test in 11th grade accepted by Cabrillo and also provides support services to students deemed less
than college ready to remediate in 12th grade. Another factor is the adoption of the Common Core standards
for K-12 by California. Finally, the Common Assessment Initiative (CAI) is piloting enhanced multiple
measures based upon high school transcript data that should inform alignment efforts.
Locus of Control: Collaborative
Timing of intervention relative to enrolling at Cabrillo: Prior
Benefits: Makes high school coursework more relevant and reduces need for remediation at college thereby
shortening calendar time to completion.
Concerns: Resources to allocate release time to initially align content and maintain articulated pathways.
Inconsistent grading practices can threaten validity of articulation.
Start Up Resources: Professional development. Release time to develop articulation/alignment.
Ongoing Resources: Release time to maintain articulation/alignment.
References
http://rpgroup.org/projects/multiple-measures-assessment-project
http://www.rpgroup.org/projects/student-transcript-enhanced-placement-project
http://www.calstate.edu/eap/
http://www.corestandards.org/
http://www.cde.ca.gov/re/cc/ccssresourceslistserv.asp 7
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Strategy 5: Adult Education
Programs for adults that address basic literacy skills more fundamental than those typically addressed in
"remedial" college courses. These courses can be designed to lead into college coursework. A current effort
underway is the AB86 Adult Education Consortium now renamed the Adult Education Block Grant
(AEBG).
Locus of Control: Collaborative
Timing of intervention relative to enrolling at Cabrillo: Prior
Benefits: Provides a pathway for basic literacy students. Can help lower level remedial courses at Cabrillo
have a more focused range of student skill levels to address.
Concerns: Resources for adult education programs. Time for coordination with adult education programs.
Start Up Resources: In process of being identified.
Ongoing Resources: In process of being identified.
References
Contact Holly Chase for more details 8
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English and Math Department Perspectives
To further develop these strategies as they related specifically to English and math, the subcommittee
requested to visit the English and math departments, provide an overview of the subcommittee report,
and receive feedback from the departments.
English Department
On April 17, 2015, representatives of the subcommittee presented an acceleration subcommittee report
summary to the English department followed by group discussion of strategies, concerns, and ideas. Key
points are highlighted below:
 Recent Developments
o English now accepting Early Assessment Project (EAP) scores
o Discussion ensuing of Chabot acceleration model with open entry 100 level English
 Core parameters
o Maintain standards
 Key Strategies
o Learning communities
o Focused and individualized remediation
o More access to tutors
 Promote awareness of tutoring
 Increased signage (such as the sandwich boards for mental wellness)
 Marketing
 Reduce possible stigma associated with tutoring
o Include student skills in support and instructional activities
 Questions
o How do weighted GPA from high school advanced placement courses impact their use in placement?
o Is it better to have more or less time in lower level English courses?
o How do students deal with failure?
 Ideas to explore
o Bring back 4 week intersession English 100
o Retool English 100L to include study skills
Key quotes
“I need help and support” as a faculty member to better help my students. 9
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Math Department
On October 17, 2014, representatives of the subcommittee presented the acceleration subcommittee
framework to the math department and engaged in a discussion on the strategies, concerns, and ideas. In
discussing utilizing high school data for placement and the preparation of recent high school graduates,
there were concerns about:
 The validity of high school grading policies for placement purposes
 The effect of recency on a student’
s ability to successfully complete a college math course one level
higher than the last one they had completed in high school
 The solidity of student goals in 11th grade in relationship to their motivation to engage with math
 Students not preparing for the placement test
 Maturity level
 Lack of willingness to put out sufficient effort to succeed
 Lack of effective study techniques
 Not bringing required materials to class such asgraphing calculators either due to lack of commitment
or lack of funds
Ideas to help address these issues included:
 Engagingwith high school counterparts through the Santa Cruz County College Commitment (S4C)
to review curricula and assignments especially final exams
 Provide preparation for placement test
 Create opportunity for students to go through placement process ashigh school juniors similar to the
Early Assessment Program to encourage senior year remediation
 Provide classes or workshops on study techniques in general and specifically for math
 Provide a linked support that combines placement test preparation with note taking, time
management, and other study skills
 Directing students to financial supports to help obtain required course materials
Recent Updates
 New non-STEM Intermediate Algebra, MATH-142 has been implemented that is a prerequisite for
statistics and other non-STEM general education math classes.
 A math placement preparation workshop called Math Plus has been implemented under the auspices of the
Student Equity Plan.
 Planning for a pilot to use high school grades in placement is underway for the Pajaro area.
 The math department plans on participating in the California Acceleration Project.
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