The California Community College system’s Board of Governors voted over the winter break to approve recommendations that will change the way students get through community college.
The vote to implement the recommendations was unanimous, with two board members abstaining. The recommendations will now go to the California Legislature and be voted on to
make the recommended policies a reality. Even more changes can be expected here at Skyline, probably within the next few years.
The 76-page report, written by the Student Success Task Force (made up of people from the California Community College Chancellor’s Office), presents ideas that intend to solve the
system’s budget issues while helping students be more successful at the same time. The plan is to push students quickly through the system in order to help them reach their goals and help the state save money by subsidizing as few units as possible. The task force and Board of Governors argue that students spend too much time at community colleges, accumulating too many units with no goal in mind.
Essentially, these new policies will require students to have a solid educational plan or else lose registration priority. This would involve requiring students to meet with a counselor to get a plan down on paper, to declare a program of study by the end of their first year, and to not take too many classes unrelated to their set goal. If a student violates any of these conditions (or any of many others), they will no longer have priority registration. Another policy replaces the current placement test system with a statewide diagnostic test every incoming student must take.
Katelyn Smathers, a senator with the Associated Students of Skyline College, takes an official stance against the recommendations by the Student Success Task Force.
“Our position as the ASSC and my personal position is we are completely, adamantly against the whole thing,” Smathers said.
However, Smathers says the ASSC is reformulating their strategy now that the recommendations have passed through the Board of Governors and are going to the Legislature. Rather than opposing the policies as a whole, the ASSC will attempt to fight against each piece of legislation individually.
President of Skyline College Regina Stanback-Stroud said, along with many school officials, that the recommendations outlined in the task force’s report will not be beneficial to student success. No one on the task force is considered an expert in student learning or instruction, and Stanback-Stroud said the task force was created based on politics rather than education.
“Understand that this committee is formed on a political basis,” Stanback-Stroud said. “In other words, it’s a political response. . . . The participants are there because of their professional and political positions.”
Stanback-Stroud also worried about the kinds of students who will be excluded from the community college system if and when these recommendations are implemented. She said the students who will likely be excluded from the system are economically disadvantaged or first-generation college students who need the most help mapping out their education.
San Mateo County Community College District Chancellor Ron Galatolo shares Stanback-Stroud’s concern that these recommendations may hurt the students who would benefit the most from community college. For decades, the community college system has acted as a safe haven for those who need more time before going to a four-year college or entering the workforce.
“That’s probably my greatest concern,” Galatolo said. “It just feels to me like it would lock out our most needy students and the students that really see community colleges as . . . the last safety net for allowing them to pursue their dreams of higher learning. To take that away from them, you essentially cut out a large portion of who I think are potentially talented students that could provide much more for the community with collegiate-level education.”
Galatolo and Stanback-Stroud both think there are better steps that could be taken to help the problem of student success. Stanback-Stroud believes that acceleration and contextualized learning would be more efficient than a standard placement test, which can put students below their level of understanding and causes them to become unmotivated in a tedious sequence of basic skills classes.
Contextualized learning, according to Stroud, would be more effective. Students who learn basic skills like math within the context of their planned major are more likely to succeed because they stay interested.
Galatolo thinks that what students want to learn should be taken into account when designing curricula. He also believes that there should be more focus on non-academic issues like financial aid and guidance in matriculating to the community college system.
Although the Board of Governors has voted to implement the Student Success Task Force’s recommendations, there is still a lot of work to be done before these changes become final.
Legislation must be passed and logistics have to be worked on. There are very few positives about the situation in the eyes of district officials, but the raised awareness after these recommendations were made was a good thing in the eyes of Skyline’s president.
“This brings to the surface for the public that they’re literally talking about rationing education,” Stanback-Stroud said. “The good thing that occurred is that there was such blow back on these recommendations, I think it caught them by surprise, and they did make some changes.”
