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Improving Student Success: A Serious Discussion or Passing Fad (December 2010) |
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By Jonathan Lightman
Executive Director of FACCC
Anyone engaged in public service knows the obvious. The public demands our services, but doesn’t want to fund them.
Each election cycle, we hear the predatory politicians promising to excise the “waste, fraud and abuse” from government, allowing our institutions and programs to run like a business. This, of course, never happens, so the cycles repeat like clockwork every two years.
Roughly 15 years ago, The New Republic posted contrasting headlines from different newspapers published within days of each other. While the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ran a story called, “Affluent top list of political donors,” Newsday’s piece was called, “Low wages said key to poverty.” Ironies abound.
Recently, two stories appeared on the same day. The first, prominently appearing in the LA Times, carried the banner, “Community colleges not preparing California’s future workforce study says. ” The second received almost no public attention. Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed $60 million from the Education Trailer Bill, $35 million of which would have been used to partially restore such essential programs as EOPS, CARE, Matriculation and DSP&S. In other words, we’re told we’re doing a terrible job, and by the way, there’s no money to fix it.
This year’s budget lobbying was supposed to be about creating space in the community colleges for all those desiring an education. The demand for our services is unprecedented. We’ve got UC and CSU eligible students who can no longer afford those segments.
We’ve got an intractable unemployment rate exceeding 12 percent, meaning workers need to be retrained. And, we’ve got returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan desiring a civilian education. In the last fiscal year, our system educated over 200,000 without any state funding, with another 138,000 unable to even get in the door.
Enter SB 1143 (Liu), the bill which changed the conversation. As initially intended, this measure would have implemented a dual census in the community colleges, one at three weeks and the other at the end of the academic term. Unless our system achieved 100 percent completion – something not done at Stanford, Harvard or UCLA – we would have lost up to $480 million in funding. The measure was later amended, and ultimately approved, to direct the Community College Board of Governors to establish a task force and develop a plan on improving student success.
The early versions of SB 1143 were falsely premised on the notion that our adherence to open access somehow competes with the ability of our students to succeed. Taking it to its logical conclusion, SB 1143 would have negated the open access character of the community colleges. Students deemed at risk for non-completion would no longer be welcome.
When SB 1143 was being considered on the Senate floor, I had one very revealing encounter with a supporter. After hearing a long explanation of why this bill was critical, I asked him whether he knew the existing counselor to student ratio in the community colleges. As expected, he was clueless. I then asked him why we don’t do something bold, like open up EOPS to all students. He gently answered there was no money for such radical thinking. In this economic downturn, he stressed it made more sense to withhold dollars from institutions which didn’t show progress in student completion. Needless to say, I didn’t expect to change his opinion, but to confirm the mindset we were confronting.
Here’s the bottom line. In this era of perennial budget reductions, lawmakers are looking for a silver bullet. They want to demonstrate that they’re causing public services to improve (immediately), and it won’t cost taxpayers a dime. SB 1143 is simply another example of this phenomenon. On this bill, community colleges were the target.
There’s no way to predict whether any of the nouveau discussions on student success will dramatically change retention, completion or graduation rates. Our system’s recent attention on Basic Skills education, combined with funding from Sacramento, has resulted in defined change. This was achieved through careful study, not from a quixotic search for the silver bullet. If this can serve as a model for the soon-to-be established task force on student success, there’s a chance for positive improvement. Let’s hope the work of the task force will be driven by data, not politics, resulting in increased resources down the line.
In the meantime, we have a choice to fully fund such proven services as EOPS or learn to live with the results of our badly underfunded system. This is not simply a study in contrasting headlines; it’s a statement of reality. Those wanting it both ways lack any real understanding of community colleges – or of our students, who they purport to care so much about.
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