Celebrating data use that is real, relevant, timely, student-based, understood, applied and truly impacts student success! 


Being Culturally Competent
 
Community college colleagues gathered for two days of cultural competence workshops in San Diego, California recently that were focused on improving student learning outcomes and their assessment that reflect an increasingly diversified student body.
 
The workshops, a joint effort of IEBC and Educational Testing Service (ETS), emphasized the imperative for community colleges to take bold steps  in addressing student equity and success, and how integrating cultural competencies into student learning outcome work improves student learning and assessment. We were pleased to receive very positive feedback - including "Intense" " "Awesome" "Outstanding"  in describing the workshops.-  and thank all of the participants..

Prior to the workshops, IEBCand ETS presented an introductory webinar , which also focused on integrating cultural competence into student learning outcomes, assignments, and assessments that build on what we know about today's students.

In closing the gaps across all student populations, small scale programs that only serve a fraction of the student population are not good enough. This Hechinger Report opinion piece details how Odessa College in Odessa, Texas, has gone "all in" to transform their approach to serving students and is achieving remarkable results and closing achievement gaps..
 
It Takes a Village ...

Anything's possible when you work together. That's the message from the League for Innovation in the Community College as it recognized a successful partnership between a community college district and a high school system with a national Innovation of the Year Award.
 
The Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District and the Grossmont Union High School District, based in El Cajon, Calif., formed the East County Education Alliance in 2014 to boost concurrent enrollment opportunities, increase collaboration, and better align curriculum. What's more, qualifying high school graduates will be eligible for a free year of classes at either Grossmont or Cuyamaca College beginning with high school students graduating in the Class of 2019.  In-depth outreach is well underway to reach and inform students and families. IEBC is supporting implementation of the Alliance work.

Data is Not Enough 

States have done a great job building critical data systems on student performance, but that's only half the battle, says the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) in its annual report.
 
As explained by a recent blog post in Education Week, data by itself changes nothing. Data simply provides the groundwork for action. In the past decade, says the nonprofit Data Quality Campaign, states have done a commendable job in collecting a massive amount of information on students K-12 progress. But too many states are faring poorly in helping teachers, students, and parents access the data that's pertinent to them. And as of 2014, 15 states didn't even provide basic progress reports to the groups most affected by the data.
 
If you want to really use data, you need to understand what is important for your needs, how to access the right data and how to put it to meaningful use. IEBC's data use workshops across the country are focused on student success and answer questions about data that get at the heart of improvement efforts.

 
The Data Whisperers

Data is more than numbers. It's students, w hich is why IEBC has  expanded its data products and services.  Having a few key indicators focused on what you care about can make a huge difference in improving students' lives. With its numerous products and tools, IEBC can merge your data sets within and across pre-K, K-12, community colleges, universities, and the labor market into single data warehouses where student cohorts can be tracked and reported throughout their journey from the start of their education through full-time employment.
 
Want to learn more? Interested in requesting a demonstration? Contact us at info@iebcnow.org or (530) 204-7129..

Getting the Story Right

Sometimes it's possible to omit the very students you care about. A recent webinar,  Getting the Story Right: Reporting Student Equity Completion Outcomes, explored an array of potential problems in measuring student success, including how cohort definitions may exclude the very students you want to include and how cohort definitions can be developed and applied to avoid this.
 
In short, when using various methods for creating cohorts, are the differences and results skewing the results?  

Coming soon...
 
Retreat in Arizona - The Learning Summit
 
Dr. Brad Phillips, IEBC President/CEO and Dr. Donald Wood, Vice President for Institutional Effectiveness at Odessa College in Odessa, Texas, will be making two forum presentations at the League for Innovation in the Community College's upcoming Learning Summit in Arizona, June 12-15: "Go Big or go Home: Bringing Interventions to Scale," June 14 and "Creating a Culture of Effective Data Use," June 15.
 
From Harvard Education Press early next year, a new book about data use and community colleges authored by Dr. Brad Phillips and Jordan Horowitz, president and vice president of IEBC. The book, based on IEBC's unique data use model, capitalizes on recent research about human judgment and decision-making, organizational habits, and behavioral economics to improve data use among America's colleges and increase student success.  
Institute for Evidence-Based Change | ( 760 ) 436-1477 | www.iebcnow.org