The Student Success Symposium Road Show

Findings and Strategies from the 2006 National Symposium

on Postsecondary Student Success

James Hearn, University of GeorgiaHans L’Orange, State Higher Education Executive Officers

May 10, 2007

National Postsecondary Education Cooperative (NPEC)

• Mission: promote the quality, comparability and utility of postsecondary data and information that support policy development at the federal, state, and institution levels

• Voluntary partnership of postsecondary institutions, associations, government agencies, and organizations

• Funding from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), U.S. Department of Education

Outline of Presentation

• Part I- Commissioned Papers on Student Success

• Part II- Policymaker and Practitioner Perspectives

• Part III- Responses from the Research Community

• Part IV- What Does it All Mean?

Part I- Commissioned Papers on Student Success

Faculty Professional Choices in Teaching That Foster

Student Success

John BraxtonVanderbilt University

8 Dimensions of Student Success

• Academic Attainment

• Acquisition of General Knowledge

• Development of Academic Competence

• Development of Cognitive Skills and Intellectual Dispositions

• Occupational Attainment

• Preparation for Adulthood and Citizenship

• Personal Accomplishments

• Personal Development

Teaching Practices that foster student success

• Use of active learning vs. passive learning

• Frequent contact between faculty and students

• Cooperative learning

• Prompt and frequent feedback

• Communication of high expectations

• Respect for diverse talents and ways of knowing

• Multiple forms of assessment that require higher order thinking

State Policies that foster student success

• Tie state funding for institutions to teaching practices

• Give above average increases in faculty salaries to faculty who engage in good teaching practices

• Set aside funds for faculty development workshops and seminars

• Require reviews of academic programs to include measures of teaching practices that contribute to student learning

Institutional Policies that foster student success

• Institutional leaders should communicate their desire for teaching practices that will foster student learning in all communication

• Require teaching candidates to present a teaching demonstration as part of their interview

• Tie tenure, promotion, and salary increases to teaching performance

What Matters to Student Success: A Review of the

Literature

George Kuh, Jillian Kinzie, Jennifer Buckley Indiana University Bloomington

Brian Bridges American Council on Education

John HayekKentucky Council on Postsecondary Education

Proposition 1 - Trajectory for student success is established long before students matriculate

Recommendations:• Ensure that all students have rigorous, intensive pre-

college preparation• Align high school curricula with college performance

standards

Proposition 2 - Family & community support are indispensable to students’ educational aspirations, preparation and persistence in college

Recommendations:• Expand the scale and scope of effective college encouragement

and transition programs• Ensure that students and families have accurate information about

college, including real costs and aid availability

Proposition 3 - The right amount and kind of money matters to student success

Recommendations:• Align financial aid and tuition policies so that financial

assistance packages meet students’ need• Create small pockets of emergency funds to meet student

financial needs in real time

Proposition 4 - Most students benefit from early interventions and sustained attention at various transition points in their educational journey

Recommendations:• Clarify institutional values and expectations early and often• Concentrate early intervention on those with two or more risk factors (e.g., first

generation and/or low income• Provide multiple learning support networks, early warning systems and safety

nets

Proposition 5 - Students who find something or someone to connect with are more likely to be engaged, persist, and achieve their objectives

Recommendations:• Make the classroom the locus of the community• Structure ways for commuter students to spend time with classmates• Involve every student in a meaningful way in some activity or with a

positive role model in the college environment

Proposition 6 - Institutions that create a student centered culture are better positioned to help their students attain their educational objectives

Recommendations:• Instill assets based talent development philosophy about teaching, learning

and student success• Use effective educational practices and technology • Provide incentives for institutions to identify and ameliorate debilitating

cultural properties

Proposition 7 - Because we value what we measure, focus assessment and accountability efforts on what matters to student success

Recommendations:• Conduct periodic examinations of the student experience• Provide incentives for institutions to report and use

information about the student experience to improve teaching, learning and personal development

• Provide incentives for postsecondary institutions to adopt a common reporting template for indicators of student success to make their performance transparent

• Enhance state and institutional capacity for collecting, analyzing and using data for accountability and improvement

A Framework for Reducing the College Success Gap and

Promoting Success for All

Laura Perna

University of Pennsylvania

Scott Thomas

University of Georgia

Success is reflected in multiple indicators:

• Transition 1- College Readiness Indicator 1: Educational Aspirations Indicator 2: Academic Preparation

• Transition 2- College Enrollment Indicator 3: College Access Indicator 4: College Choice

• Transition 3- College Achievement Indicator 5: Academic Performance Indicator 6: Transfer Indicator 7: Persistence

• Transition 4- Post-college Attainment Indicator 8: Post-BA Enrollment Indicator 9: Income Indicator 10: Educational Attainment

Implications for policy and practice

• Policies and practices are enacted through multiple layers of content, therefore we must acknowledge the limitations that may be imposed by a student’s context

• Policies and programs interact with other policies, programs, and characteristics of schools, families and students

• No single approach to policy or practice will improve students success for all students

• Policymakers and practitioners should support research that test aspects of the conceptual model using multiple methods and theoretical perspectives

Moving From Theory to Action: Building a Model of Institutional

Action for Student Success

Vincent TintoSyracuse University

Brian PusserUniversity of Virginia

State and National policies should focus on:

• Creating linked P-16 systems to align primary and secondary schools with postsecondary requirements

• Creating databases that can follow students throughout all educational levels

• Supporting teacher development in K-12

• Creating outreach programs directed at traditionally underrepresented students

• Improving course articulation between 2 and 4 year institutions

• Conducting early and continuous evaluation and assessment

• Establishing innovative financial policies to increase overall financial support and direct aid to students with greatest need

Holland's Theory and Patterns of College Student

Success

John SmartUniversity of Memphis

Kenneth FeldmanSUNY at Stonybrook

Corrina EthingtonUniversity of Memphis

Congruence Assumption

• The growth of a student’s dominant personality type is dependent on the student’s personality type and fit with their academic environments (e.g., major).

• An academic environment that matches the student’s personality type will enhance the student’s dominant personality type and the skills and abilities associated with that personality type.

Socialization Assumption

• Patterns of change and stability in students’ abilities and interests are singularly dependent on the academic environment that they enter and not by their dominant personality type.

• A student’s abilities and interests will be reinforced and rewarded by their chosen academic environment (major).

Therefore…..

• Academic environments are an absolutely essential component for understanding student success in postsecondary education.

• Academic environments are successful in promoting the learning of students whether their dominant personality type is congruent or incongruent with their academic environment.

Policy and Programmatic Implications

• Students do not need to be constrained in their choice of academic major by whether or not their major matches their dominant personality type.

• Academic environments should be a key element in efforts to assess student learning outcomes.

Part II- Policymaker and Practitioner Perspectives

• Need to build partnerships between institutions and policymakers so policymakers will be informed about best practices and concentrate funds in these areas

• Need early intervention programs for students at risk– Summer bridge programs– Dual enrollment programs

• Need to recognize the role that student services play in ensuring student success

• Policymakers need to adequately fund student support services

Piedad Robertson Past President, Education Commission of the

States

Earl S. Richardson President, Morgan State University

• Student Financial Aid– Focus resources on need based aid instead of merit aid; grants, not loans– Need flexible student aid programs that are timely and fill in relatively small gaps between

expenses and unanticipated costs– Need early awareness on availability of financial aid

• Pre-college Academic Preparation– Align college requirements and coursework in high school– Provide early, continuing, and voluntary assessment of academic abilities prior to college– Motivate students to prepare for college– Bring college level coursework into high schools

• Campus Programs that Promote Student Success– Value Good Teaching– Support Teaching-Oriented Campuses– Provide guidance to postsecondary institutions on how to develop strong leadership and a

management culture to enable student success

Donna AlvaradoPresident and Founder of Aguila International

Chair of the Ohio Board of Regents• Key challenge of educational policymakers is to learn how to

increase the graduation rates of current college students while vastly increasing the number and diversity of students

• To facilitate increasing graduation rates and the number of graduates, disseminate best practices discussed in papers

• In addition to best practices, need to have the will to:– Get policymakers to devote funding to postsecondary education

– Make cultural shifts in the expectations of faculty

– Support articulation agreements between 2 yr and 4 yr institutions

– Insist on shared accountability and mutual rewards throughout K-16

– Provide career counseling and aptitude testing throughout K-16

William Demmert Jr. Western Washington University

• Critical success elements for Native American students– A record of family support and a significant mentor – Basic academic skills for college level work and financial resources

• Challenges facing Native students– Early learning environments of children are not stimulating– Substandard levels of language development

• No Child Left Behind Act consequences– Students are so concerned about making annual progress in math and English that

students are not learning their native languages– Teachers who teach native languages are not certified and are being replaced by certified

teachers who do not know native languages

• Other Challenges– Lack of fit between home environment and institutional environment– Incongruity between Native American students’ values & institutional values

Part III- Responses from the Research Community

Thomas BaileyColumbia University

• Difficult to determine causality between programs, policies and success

• Many studies do not have control groups or comparison groups

• When comparing students who participate in a program to those who do not participate, need measure of baseline academic ability

• Few studies use institutions as the unit of analysis, making it difficult to determine whether institutional practices and programs have an impact on student success

• Longitudinal measures of student success are rare

Bridget Terry LongHarvard University

• Translating Research into Results– Examples of successful K-16 systems and actions needed to create them– Translate academic research language into language that is easily understood– Reduce lengthy academic papers, into shorter papers for policymakers

• Get to the Root Cause– Distinguish correlation from causation – Research needs to use statistical techniques that control for selection effects– Once the root cause is identified, then policies can be effective

• Context Matters– Need to consider the individual circumstances of a student when forming policies

or programs– A program that is effective for one student may not be effective for another– Develop research models that apply to a particular circumstance or type of

student

• Use interdisciplinary approaches– Move beyond disciplinary silos– Expand our definition of educational research

to include areas that have not been included and to studies that do not have the word education in their title

• Areas of Additional Research for Undeserved Students– Role of information for underserved students– Research needs to be done specifically on

undeserved students to find programs and policies that work for them

Bridget Terry Long (cont.)

Laura Rendon Iowa State University

• Who are underserved students?– First Generation, Low income, Generation 1.5 – Students Learning Through Electronic Media– Students Enrolled in For-Profit Institutions

• Re-conceptualizing Student Success for Underserved Students– Scholars need to engage in efforts to theorize race, class

and gender and how these constructions might affect policymaking and student success

– Scholars need to push for transformation of societal structures and interrogate institutional structures including how they privilege some and exclude others

– Institutions need to first value the culture and learning of these students and shape the institutional environment to be inviting and inclusive of thee students

• Recognize that success is the result of multiple student interactions with different systems at different times

• Include institutional factors when examining student success and not just individual student factors

• Expand definitions of student success to include measures beyond intellectual/ academic indicators– Social-leadership skills– Emotional maturity– Spiritual and Sense of purpose

Laura Rendon (cont.)

Part IV- What Does it All Mean?

James HearnUniversity of Georgia

Peter EwellNCHEMS

Jane WellmanThe Delta Project

Challenges to Achieving Student Success

• Difficult to maintain high graduation rates and retention when have high numbers of students with varying skills and abilities

• There is no one solution for student success

• Integrative P-16 efforts can be hindered by structural, procedural, cultural and political differences

• Cannot implement all student success programs, often a trade off between cost and effectiveness

Jim HearnUniversity of Georgia

Areas of Additional Research• Alternative Measures of Student Success

– Move Beyond Graduation Rates– Consider value added measures

• Measure what student gains from attending an institution and • Controls for student’s initial skills and abilities

– Measures need to be cost effective• Based on available data• Data that can be obtained without great expense

• How student motivations, aspirations and values shape success• Influence of societal structures on student success• Guidelines for policy implementation• Institutional financial aid policies• Commuting and part time students• Student success for different socioeconomic, ethnic, racial,

cultural and age populations• Role of Information and Emerging Information Technologies

Peter EwellJane Wellman

Themes from Symposium Discussions

• Act on What We Know– Use teaching, learning, and institutional practices which

have been shown to work

– Use active and engaging pedagogies, such as learning communities and collaborative approaches

– Set high and clear expectations for students

– Use proactive early warning and intervention strategies

– Have mandatory assessment of basic skills and directed placement of students in need of developmental work

Intentionality and Alignment• Align high school exit standards with college readiness

standards

• Align federal, state and institutional policies and practices

• Alignment within institution

• Coordination between academic affairs and student affairs– Coordinate faculty development and student success efforts across

academic departments

• Establish a public agenda on higher education

• Alignment in research– Research should be interdisciplinary and work from a problem

based standpoint, instead of a theoretical perspective– Include stakeholders in defining a research agenda

More Precise Research Methods and Policy Approaches

• Different definitions of student success

• Contextualized models

• Recognition of the growing complexity of student progression

• More detail about educational treatments and experiences

• Research from within particular cultural perspectives

Action Research

• Make a clear distinction between variables that policy can affect and conditions that affect student success, but about which policy can do little

• Focus on implementation questions– Research on how to best to implement policy– Research on how institutions make use of data they collect– Understand what conditions and incentives will induce faculty

to adopt effective teaching and learning practices

• Establish a translation function– Convert findings of best practice studies into actionable

propositions that practitioners and policymakers can understand

– Publish results not just in academic journals

For More Information…..

• http://nces.ed.gov/npec/index.asp

• http://nces.ed.gov/npec/symposium.asp

nancy.borkow@ed.gov

jhearn@uga.edu

hlorange@sheeo.org