Community colleges score above average on accountability report

Informative article from San Gabriel Valley Tribune:

Information is power.

By Amanda Baumfeld, Staff Writer
Posted: 05/04/2009 04:02:49 PM PDT

State figures show more than half of first-time Citrus and Mount San Antonio community college students meet their goals of earning a degree or preparing to transfer to a four-year university.
That's according to the 2009 Accountability Reporting for Community Colleges (ARCC), which was recently released and gives an overview every year on student performance in the community college system and at each of its 109 colleges.
"The existence of this report shows the trend of increased accountability that community colleges are facing," said Lan Hao, Citrus College's director of institutional research. "This is a good thing. This makes the public aware and adds to the discussion of the complexity of the job of community colleges."


The idea behind ARCC, state officials say, is to give a "quick snapshot" of how colleges perform over time on several basic indicators, including graduation/transfer rates, course completions and and course improvements.
It also includes enrollment demographics and a "self-assessment" written by each college to explain unique factors not covered by the statistics.
"A focus upon only one of these pieces of information will probably provide an incomplete evaluation of college performance," the ARCC report said. "And this may lead one to make unfair judgments about an institution."
Statewide, the student progress and achievement rate - or the percentage of first-time students who earned a degree/certificate, transferred, or were prepared to transfer to a four-year college - between 2002 and 2008 was 51.8 percent, according to ARCC.
At Citrus's 10,000-student campus the rate was 53.1 percent while Mt. SAC's 40,000-student campus weighed in at 52.3 percent.
East Los Angeles College was slightly below those numbers with 42.9 percent of its first-time students meeting their goals of earning a degree or preparing to transfer to a four-year university.
"We do look at all the measures and make improvements," said Ryan Cornner, ELAC's Associate Dean of Research . "We do attempt to improve on the AA degrees...as part of our educational planning process."
Among a "peer group" of colleges with similar characteristics, the ARCC report showed ELAC's rate was above average in vocational course completion and course improvement in English as a Second Language (ESL).
Among Mt. SAC's "peer group" the report showed the college scored above average in four of the seven categories including student progress and achievement, students who earned at least 30 units, persistence rate and improvement rate for credit ESL courses.
"It allows us to benchmark against the group in this particular area," said Barbara McNeice-Stallard, Mt. Sac's director of research and institutional effectiveness. "Above the average is a significant number for us. It's great that we achieved that; now how can we keep going ahead and excel even more?"



Meanwhile Hao was particularly proud of Citrus's course improvement rate in ESL. The college scored a 75 percent compared to 50.1 percent through all community colleges.
College officials attributes that to grants which have helped provide additional resources and training for English learners, officials said.
In general, the report said, more than 105,000 California community college students were able to successfully transfer to four-year institutions in 2007-08. That's up from about 91,000 students in 2002-03.
The most degrees and certificates awarded by community colleges were in nursing (8,262), child development/early care and education (7,090) and administration of justice (6,414).
Despite high scores, "We want to improve everywhere across the board," said Citrus Spokeswoman Paula Green. "Student success and learning outcomes are key strategic planning goals that we have; we want to do well across the board."


- Staff writer Tracy Garcia contributed to this report.
amanda.baumfeld@sgvn.com
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