Implement a student success scorecard.

Description

In order to increase both public and institutional attention to student success, the California Community Colleges will implement a new accountably tool that will present key student success metrics in a clear and concise manner. These scorecards will be posted at the state and local levels to help focus the attention of educational leaders and the public on student performance. In order to concentrate state and local efforts on closing equity gaps, the scorecards will be disaggregated by racial/ethnic group. The scorecards are intended to promote meaningful policy discussions not only within the community colleges, but also with our colleagues in K-12 schools, business, local government, and other key groups.

The success metrics included on the scorecard would include both intermediate “momentum” points and completion outcomes. Examples of intermediate outcomes include: rate of earning 15 units, 30 units, and 60 units; completion of a degree-applicable or higher-level course in math and English; basic skills improvement rate; rate of term-to-term persistence; and ESL improvement rate. Completion outcomes would include earning a certificate, an associate degree, and transferring to a four-year institution. In assessing progress, each college would be compared against its own past performance rather than statewide averages or artificially created peer groups. The Chancellor’s Office will develop scorecard metrics and format, in consultation with internal and external stakeholders.

This proposed scorecard would be built on the existing Accountability Reporting for Community Colleges (ARCC), our statewide data collection and reporting system. It is the intent of the Task Force that by implementing the collective recommendations in this report, especially those related to using technology to create student education plans, ARCC will be able to capture more robust data identifying students’ educational goals and intent. It should be noted that while ARCC has proven itself to be an extremely effective system for gathering and reporting a broad range of institutional and student-level data from the colleges, there are limitations, including the ability to closely follow the outcomes for students taking less than 12 units.

The key difference between ARCC and the new scorecard is that, under this recommendation, local scorecards would present a distilled subset of data, including outcomes for students taking less than 12 units, in a brief format that will help to focus attention on the system’s current student success efforts.