Elisabeth A. Barnett

Bridging the Gap: An Impact Study of Eight Developmental Summer Bridge Programs in Texas

The National Center for Postsecondary Research is a partnership of the Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University; MDRC; the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia; and faculty at Harvard University. Across the country, a growing number of recent high school graduates are participating in summer bridge programs. These programs provide accelerated and focused learning opportunities in order to help students acquire the knowledge and skills needed for college success. The state of Texas has given particular attention to summer programs as a way to increase students’ college readiness. During the past several years, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) has provided support to colleges establishing developmental summer bridge programs offering intensive remedial instruction in math, reading, and/or writing, along with an introduction to college. In contrast with traditional developmental education course sequences, which may span several semesters, the summer bridge programs were designed to help underprepared students build competencies over the course of several weeks before entering college.

Dual Enrollment: A Strategy for Educational Advancement of All Students

Dual enrollment is widely seen as a strategy to help advanced high school students begin college early. More recently, interest is growing in using dual enrollment as a way to smooth the transition to college for students traditionally underrepresented in higher education.1 Many scholars and practitioners are coming to believe that high school students who have the opportunity to participate in college courses are more likely to enroll in college and succeed once there. But a number of questions surround this proposition:

Faculty Validation and Persistence Among Nontraditional Community College Students

Community colleges enroll large numbers of nontraditional students who are at greater risk for nonpersistence in college. This research examines the influence of validation by faculty on students’ sense of integration in college and intent to persist. Validation is defined as “an enabling, confirming and supportive process initiated by inand out-of-class agents” (Rendon, 1994, p. 44), in this case faculty. Three student characteristics were taken into account: gender, race/ethnicity, and age. For each subgroup, an assessment was made of the extent to which higher rates of faculty validation predicted a greater sense of integration in college or intent to persist. Higher rates of faculty validation moderately to strongly predicted students’ sense of integration across all subgroups. With regard to the extent to which faculty validation predicted students’ intent to persist at the college, significant, positive results were found for females, Hispanic students, and both younger and older students.

Preparing High School Students for College: An Exploratory Study of College Readiness Partnership Programs in Texas

The National Center for Postsecondary Research is a partnership of the Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University; MDRC; the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia; and faculty at Harvard University. Nationwide, about 40 percent of college students take at least one remedial course to prepare for college-level coursework (Attewell, Lavin, Domina, & Levey, 2006). One cause of this high rate of remedial enrollment is the misalignment of high school graduation standards and college academic expectations (Callan, Finney, Kirst, Usdan, & Venezia, 2006; Venezia, Kirst, & Antonio, 2003). College readiness partnership programs attempt to address this problem by facilitating students’ transition to college.

Reshaping the College Transition: States That Offer Early College Readiness Assessments and Transition Curricula

Despite the fact that many states have increased their high school graduation requirements over the last several years, too many graduates are still underprepared for college (Bailey, 2009) and the workforce (Symonds, Schwartz, & Ferguson, 2011). Reasons for this underpreparedness include, among other factors: (1) a lack of clear information on students’ progress toward college and career readiness during the high school years that could allow students to address gaps in knowledge and skills, and (2) a mismatch between what high schools teach and the expectations of colleges and employers (Venezia, Kirst, & Antonio, 2003).

Community College and High School Partnerships

Community colleges and high schools are historically very closely linked; in fact, the original community colleges were formed as extensions of secondary schools in the early decades of the 20 century. Over time, the two have evolved into wholly separate educational systems with distinct missions, funding streams, and curricula. However, there are numerous arenas in which they currently work together that contribute to the national effort to increase college completion rates—an emerging priority given President Obama’s goal of returning the United States to its position of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.

A Good Start?: The Impact of Texas' Developmental Summer Bridge Program on Student Success

Summer bridge programs have long been utilized by postsecondary institutions to improve the college readiness of students; however, the research on their effectiveness is limited. This study presents evidence from an experimental study of one summer bridge program model specifically designed for recent high school graduates who placed into developmental education. The program took place at eight open access colleges in Texas during the summer of 2009, and participants were followed for two academic years. To provide needed context, we first describe site selection, random assignment, and program implementation. Quantitative results indicate that the program had no effect on the average number of credits attempted and earned or student persistence in postsecondary education. The program did have an impact on first college-level course completion in math (p < 0.05) and to a lesser extent writing (p < 0.10); there was no impact on first college-level course completion in reading. Our findings are consistent with those of other rigorously evaluated programs for developmental education students and suggest that persistence in postsecondary education is a complex issue that cannot be solved with any one program.

The Common Core State Standards: Implications for Community Colleges and Student Preparedness for College

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Structure in Community College Career-Technical Programs: A Qualitative Analysis

Using data obtained from interviews and program websites at Washington community and technical colleges, the authors of this study examine the structure of community college career-technical programs in allied health, business and marketing, computer and information studies, and mechanics and repair. A framework for structure with four dimensions—program alignment, program prescription, information quality, and active program advising and support—is used to evaluate the practices of relatively highand low-performing colleges within each field of study. The authors reviewed the websites of all programs at highand low-performing colleges in each of these fields of study and conducted case studies on individual programs from these fields, interviewing faculty, administrators, and counselors to learn more about the dimensions of structure in the programs. The allied health, computer and information science, and mechanics and repair programs were all found to be highly structured; the business and marketing programs were found to have a moderate level of structure. Overall, given that all of the programs were at least moderately structured, there was limited evidence of a connection between program structure and program performance. Table of

Guided Pathways to Careers Four Dimensions of Structure in Community College Career-Technical Programs

Objective: Some have hypothesized that community college programs are not sufficiently structured to support student success and that students would benefit from more highly structured programs. This study examines the specific ways that structure is expressed in policy and practice at representative community colleges. Method: Using data obtained from interviews and program websites at Washington State community and technical colleges, we examine the structure of community college career-technical programs along four dimensions: program prescription, program alignment, access to information, and active advising and support. Results: We find high levels of structure on all dimensions in the allied health, computer and information science, and mechanics and repair programs. There are moderate levels of structure in the business and marketing programs. Contributions: This study documents the specific ways that community college career-technical programs are structured to support student success, and it provides a framework for examining structure to inform practice and guide future research efforts.