Annual Progress Report
High School Linkages – Student Readiness
2005
A.
Describe the past year’s accomplishments and the current status
of this Action Project.
Plans were finalized for Sinclair’s partnership with the Dayton Public Schools for
the new tech high school. Substantial new financial support was received to
scale up the Academic Resource Center (ARC) initiative across 13 new high
schools over the next five years. Significant improvements were made in ARC
processes for selection of students, staff training and communication, curriculum,
and testing and measurement of student learning. On average, participating high
school junior and senior students advanced 3.95 grade levels through this
program. Sinclair’s Tech Prep initiative was expanded to add two new pathways,
and processes for recruiting and recognizing Tech Prep students were revised.
Among this year’s graduating cohort, 71% of the students who began the
pathway completed it, and 64% of the cohort qualified by virtue of GPAs for a
scholarship to Sinclair. The college’s framework for Tech Prep served as an
exemplar for the League for Innovation’s College and Career Transitions
initiative, and an electronic toolkit was developed for replicating the pathway
model. Career exploration software for ninth grade students was developed,
piloted, and finalized for web distribution. Sinclair launched its leadership role for
Ohio of the national initiative Project Lead the Way, training over 90 high school
faculty on teaching strategies in math, science and engineering. Processes were
established for recruiting high schools, training high school and college faculty
and evaluating the annual progress of this new initiative. Planning was initiated
for a pilot course at Sinclair to address academic, career and behavioral factors
that promote student success. A process was developed for documenting the
many Sinclair-high school connections across the college.
B.
Describe how the institution involved people in work on this
Action Project.
The initiatives that are part of the college’s overall high school linkages – student
readiness commitment were highly visible on campus during this year. Members
of the college community identify with these individual initiatives rather than with
the AQIP High School Linkages-Student Readiness Project, and there is a strong
level of support for each of the individual initiatives. The Tech Prep, Academic
Resource Center and Project Lead the Way initiatives involved approximately 45
college faculty and staff, 105 high school faculty, 20 counselors and 1,120 high
school students in activities related to curriculum development and delivery,
facilities and equipment planning, assessment of student learning and student
transition to college. The college’s top leadership, Board of Trustees and
community leaders were closely involved in decisions regarding Dayton Public
Schools collaborations and the expansion of the Academic Resource Centers.
The college’s commitment to close collaboration with high schools and promoting
student readiness for college was a continuing theme in the president’s outreach
to the community, the college’s fiscal priorities and the college’s recent revision
to its strategic plan.
C.
Describe your planned next steps for this Action Project.
Each of the initiatives that are part of this overall project has defined next steps,
including specific plans for ensuring continuous improvement and specific
assessment and measurement of outcomes. There are clear institutional
“sponsors” of these initiatives, and regular assessment of progress is embedded
in existing college processes. The High School Linkages – Student Success
AQIP Project as originally scoped was quite broad and is essentially a collection
of related initiatives with some common goals. Because each initiative is now
well established, the college will move to sunset the High School Linkages –
Student Readiness AQIP project and replace it with a new project.
D.
Describe any “effective practices” that resulted from your work
on this Action Project.
There are three practices that have matured to a point where sharing them with
broader audiences would be worthwhile. Early data suggest that the Academic
Resource Center model is helping high school students make significant gains in
their preparedness for college as measured by advancement in grade level
proficiency in reading, language arts and mathematics, thus reducing or
eliminating students’ need for developmental instruction when they enroll in
college. The college’s Tech Prep model has been refined and shared with a
national audience through the League for Innovation’s College and Career
Transitions initiative; this model helps build a close articulation of content and
credit between high schools and colleges, and student success is quite high.
The on-line career exploration software developed for ninth graders shows
promise for helping students develop educational and career goals early, a
clearly demonstrated factor in student persistence and success.
E.
What challenges, if any, are you still facing in regards to this
Action Project?
The breadth of the scope of this project makes measurement of the cumulative
impacts of the initiatives unrealistic. Measurement of the progress of students
within each initiative is feasible and underway, but cumulative measurement
would not be reliable.