From High School Graduation to Postsecondary Success: The Completion Innovation Challenge

Last week, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), the 25-state common assessment consortium managed by Achieve, hosted its first alignment meeting with K-12 and higher education. Secondary and postsecondary content experts from each of the 25 PARCC states participated in cross-state, cross-sector, cross-content conversations centering on what it will take to align the expectations of postsecondary faculty with the goals of high school faculty in creating next generation common assessments. Although the group probed complicated and challenging questions, the overall consensus of the participants was that the meeting signaled the beginning of an important collaboration between the K-12 and postsecondary communities to raise student achievement in high school and reduce the number of students needing to take remedial, non-credit bearing, classes at the postsecondary level. 

It seemed fortuitous, therefore, that during this PARCC meeting, Complete College America (CCA) announced its new $10 million competitive grant program, Completion Innovation Challenge. This grant competition is designed to inspire states to do more to help with college completion, reducing the time-to-degree, restructuring delivery for students, employing transformative technology, and transforming remedial education. The issue of postsecondary remediation was something the PARCC meeting participants explored specifically, given approximately 30% of first-year college students must take remedial courses in English and/or math in order to learn, or relearn, high school level content and skills before they can even begin taking credit-bearing college courses, a percentage the PARCC assessment system is aiming to lower over time. The longer first-year college students spend in remedial classes, paying tuition and not receiving credit, the less likely they are to succeed. CCA is encouraging states to transform remediation by "offering students with academic short-comings additional tutoring and support as a co-requisite to first-year, full-credit classes" instead of being relegated to remedial courses where they do not earn credit.

In order to compete for the funds provided through the CCA competition, states must submit plans focusing significant state efforts in one or two of the five identified areas of transformation. Interested states must express their intent to apply for funding by March 18, 2011 and submit proposals by May 17, 2011. With the recent focus on innovation in public K-12 education, the CCA competition provides a unique opportunity for the postsecondary community to implement its own ideas to improve education across the board.

You may find additional information on CCA's Completion Innovation Challenge at www.completecollege.org/innovcationchallenge.