Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

A scathing new report is questioning the effectiveness of California’s 112 community colleges, stating that remedial education in California’s community colleges must drastically improve if the nation is to meet President Barack Obama’s goal of substantially boosting college completion rates by 2020.

But locally, Foothill College students are faring better than average, Foothill President Judy Miner said.

“Large portions” of community college students enter the system unprepared, according to the statewide report, “Something’s Got to Give,” by the education research organization EdSource.

“Continuing to tackle the problems of readiness and remediation with the same strategies will simply not work,” the report said, and the state lacks data systems even to measure the extent of the problem.

“Precise measures of the extent of the challenge — and of who needs (remedial) courses and why — are not currently available,” it said.

But at Foothill, students in remedial courses had an 81.5 percent rate of successful completion — the highest among peer colleges, according to an accountability report issued by the state Chancellor’s Office.

In addition, the community college has been recognized by the Gates Foundation for innovative remedial education, Miner said.

Although the EdSource report focused on remedial education, it provided figures suggesting that few community college students ever transfer to a four-year institution or earn an associate’s degree or vocational certificate.

Of the 2.9 million individuals served by the California system in 2008-09, only about one in 13 transferred to a four-year institution or earned an associate’s degree or vocational certificate that year, according to the report.

“Accepting that not all enrollees hope to complete a degree or certificate, 2008-09 completions for the system as a whole still provide perspective,” said the report, commissioned by state Community College Chancellor’s Office.

Of 18,060 students enrolled at Foothill last fall, 606 transferred to the California State University or University of California systems, 503 transferred to private institutions, 459 earned associate’s degrees and 162 earned certificates in one of the college’s programs this past June, according to numbers provided by the college.

In regards to assessing the remedial needs of students at Foothill, a 2008 “inventory of basic skills needs” will be updated and available at a college-wide conference in late January, Miner said.

At Foothill, the term “basic skills” denotes remedial coursework. Other colleges sometimes use the term “developmental,” she said.

Foothill will get some help when it comes to improving remedial education. It is one of 13 nationally that have been funded by the Gates Foundation for its “ Global Skills for College Completion” project — an initiative to test fresh ways of teaching remedial math and writing with an eye to boosting pass rates.

The Gates Foundation hopes the effort will “create a database of effective practices” to double the national average pass rate in remedial classes, from 40 percent to 80 percent.

“If we all are successful in doing so, we will have created a powerhouse force of workers and thinkers, and estimates are that this higher pass rate will pump billions of dollars into the economy,” Gates Foundation Director of Education, Postsecondary Success and Special Initiatives Hilary Pennington said.

Bill Gates himself tiptoed into a Foothill math class this past April to observe the college’s intensive “ Math My Way” program, designed to give previously math-phobic students the skills and confidence to succeed at college-level math.

“Math My Way continues to be held up as a model program,” Miner said.

The program “was recently cited by the Gates Foundation as an example of the type of innovation that they aim to support with the Next Generation Learning Challenges grants that will be awarded next year.

“We are partnering with Rio Salado College … to propose a hybrid version of Math My Way, i.e., a portion of the course requirements that could be completed online.”

Miner said the EdSource report offers “a comprehensive description of the breadth and depth of challenges statewide in offering effective (remedial) instruction.”

Noting state budget challenges cited in the EdSource report, Miner said, “I am hopeful that Measure E (on the Nov. 2 ballot) will bring additional resources to Foothill so that we can hire more full-time faculty and staff who will develop, deliver, assess and improve programs and services in support of underprepared students.

“Their educational success is key not only to their future, but to all of ours.”

According to college data, Foothill has taken in roughly 14 percent to 16 percent of the Gunn and Palo Alto high school graduating classes in recent years.

Join the Conversation

16 Comments

  1. And these are the guys asking for $49 Million at the ballot box tomorrow!
    Vote no on Measure E parcel tax!

    A photography teacher earns $208,169 a year. A computer instructor takes home $222,791 and a maintenance worker’s annual paycheck is $93,706.

    These are a sampling of wages at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills and De Anza College in Cupertino, which make up the Foothill-De Anza Community College District.

  2. vote against measure E. THese adminstrators want to squander more and splurge even more. The adminstrators are shameless crooks with no conscience.

  8. “But at Foothill, students in remedial courses had an 81.5 percent rate of successful completion — the highest among peer colleges, according to an accountability report issued by the state Chancellor’s Office.

    In addition, the community college has been recognized by the Gates Foundation for innovative remedial education, Miner said.”

    Yes, these ARE the guys asking for Measure E to support the OUTSTANDING job they are doing.

    VOTE YES ON E!

    @”No Links,” “Fred,” and “Cindy”: Thanks for the reality check and a good chuckle 🙂

  9. We’ve been short changing high school education for years, and now we’re worried about the “remedial needs” of our community college entrants. Maybe we should be putting our money back where the education was supposed to happen. And maybe we should let teachers build curriculum rather than politicians.

    And remember that for all the community college students with remedial needs, there are 10x more HS graduates who didn’t go to community college; how are we going to be competitive internationally if our workforce is dominated by remedial needs?!

  14. The SFGate article isn’t a slamdunk against Measure E by any means, nor does it portend excessive salary to employees. It does highlight what is wrong with our education system.

    As mentioned in the article, those individuals that earned double their annual salary did so by putting in more than double the amount of time at work. That’s just compensating someone for their time, which would have to be paid by another worker if this individual didn’t put the time in.

    Note too that the rate for overtime work is at a reduced rate, so no extra dollars there, other than fair compensation for time spent.

    Under this scenario, any of us who are non-exempt and make more than 80k a year could also pull in double that if we spent twice as much time at work, less that if we got paid time and a half, as required by state law.

    More disturbing to me is the amount of remedial education required by CC’s to provide to incoming students, and the low percentage of students who continue on to 4 year universities.

    This suggests poor preparation in high school and highlights the actual problem in our education system: Our education system as a whole. Poor, inconsistent funding controlled by the state, a large population of under-educated immigrants, and intransigence of unions and education administrations all play into the low numbers we see by the time these students reach a CC.

    Justifying a “No” vote on Measure E because of this article is like cutting off your nose to spite your face…its short sighted and does not address the root cause of the problem.

  15. I am very disappointed that E did not pass. I am a part-time instructor at Foothill College, and I make only about 60% of what a full-time, tenure-track faculty member would make, for the SAME amount of work. What many people do not realize is that the majority of faculty members at ALL colleges and universities these days are only offered part-time positions and must piece together a living by working at more than one college, often having to teach a more-than-full-time load in order to make ends meet. These part-time instructors need to be paid more; they need to be paid a fair and liveable salary! The instructors making over 100,000 a year are the tiny minority; most of us need something like Measure E to provide funds for the college so we can simply make a basic living (by basic I mean a measly $30,000 a year). I am disappointed in Palo Alto-Mountain View-Los Altos for failing to support education.

  16. You know, if we reformulated high school in a way so that current middle class earning jobs would take High School Grads more it would do more in saving the middle class than making everyone go to college would ever.

  18. “@Kristine: Have you heard of grammar and punctuation?”
    What kind of useless posting is that!
    Does this forward the topic at hand in any way?

  19. Like Alison, I am very disappointed E did not pass. However, it did not appear that the E supporters undertook a methodical, thorough approach to getting E passed. All of the local high school and elementary bond and parcel tax measures that I am aware of that have passed in our area in the last 8 years or so have had campaigns managed by a grassroots team of supporters that undertakes a consistent calling effort–calling likely voters night after night, week after week, finding out first whether they support the measure, and then calling the supporters to put out lawn signs, join the campaign, getting them to vote early by absentee ballot, and then finally a huge get out the vote and vote yes push. For example, the local elementary and middle schools organized calling teams on specific nights to support the high school bond that passed last spring. I don’t think that happened here.

    The anti-incumbent furor that was so prevalent in this election did not help, either since a huge number of “no” voters were voting. Perhaps if the community college goes out again for a new parcel tax during a quieter election cycle (when not as many people vote–so your supporters have a better chance to be “heard”) and enlists the support of teams from the local “feeder” high schools–and in turn from their feeder middle and elementary schools, this can pass. MVWSD’s tax did not pass the first time, but since has had two successful tax measures. The money is sorely needed–and so is the access to higher education that our wonderful community colleges offer.

  20. “What kind of useless posting is that!

    Does this forward the topic at hand in any way?”

    —————-

    Nope, it doesn’t. Unfortunately, in an open forum, this is bound to happen. I remind myself of the sign I read when I entered the door: “Don’t feed the trolls”. They seem to be prevalent when relevant discussion develops.

Leave a comment