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Capacity Building

Supporting High School Teachers’ College and Career Readiness Efforts: Bridging California’s Vision with Local Implementation Needs

This brief shares the perspectives and concerns of high school teachers in two districts regarding implementing the Common Core State Standards, specifically as the Common Core pertains to preparing more students for college and well-paying careers. The brief also makes state policy recommendations for ways to support teachers in their efforts to increase students’ college and career readiness, including through fostering alignment between K-12 and postsecondary and workforce partners.

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Leveraging the Common Core to Support College and Career Readiness in California

The report compares state policy leaders’ expectations for and high school educators’ early experiences with the Common Core. As the state passes the five-year milestone in implementation, the report recommends ways to better leverage California’s “college and career readiness standards” to help improve outcomes for graduating students.

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Organizing for Success: California’s Regional Education Partnerships

This report examines 19 regional education partnerships in California that include representatives from among K-12 and postsecondary education and business and community organizations. The study reveals what 37 participants identified as critical components of their work, challenges they have encountered, and promising strategies they share to help inform the work of new and existing partnerships. This information is helpful as the state and philanthropic foundations continue to invest millions of dollars in regional efforts.

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State Policy Leadership in Higher Education – Six Case Studies

This report provide six mini-case studies of higher education policy reforms enacted in other states, exploring the important role that state policy leadership played in developing, promoting, and implementing these policies aimed at improving higher education outcomes, and discussing the relevance of each reform effort for California. This report follows two reports: an update of California higher education performance, Average Won’t Do, and A New Vision for California Higher Education, an effort to engage stakeholders around a vision more suited to today’s students and economic conditions than the 1960 Master Plan. Together, the reports underscore the urgency of efforts to improve leadership and policy for higher education in California, and offer ideas for how this might be accomplished.

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A New Vision for California Higher Education: A Model Public Agenda

This report draws on various reports and other sources of information to construct a model public agenda to address the mounting challenges facing California higher education, intended to inspire broad discussion potentially leading to an official public agenda for California higher education. The model envisions region-based planning and heightened collaboration at the regional level, guided by effective state-level policy leadership and high-level staff support to fulfill critical fiscal, advisory, and accountability roles.

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On Balance: Lessons in Effective Coordination from the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges – An Organizational Perspective

This report examines the importance of effective coordination of postsecondary education in boosting educational attainment and economic competitiveness. It describes a case study of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC), and analyzes the key strategies and conditions that have led to the effectiveness of the Board as a coordinating agency over locally governed colleges. The report includes a self-assessment instrument intended for use by other states that seek to improve the effectiveness of their own postsecondary education coordination to better serve students and meet state needs.

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Measuring Institutional Conditions that Support Student Success in the California Community Colleges

This report, prepared by IHELP for the University of California All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity (UC/ACCORD), looks at the opportunities and challenges in measuring institutional conditions that support student success. The report draws from the literature and ongoing research to describe the significant challenges in identifying, defining and measuring indicators of supportive institutional conditions in the community colleges. It offers a list of possible indicators and existing sources of data that could be used as a “starting point” in defining a set that could fairly and accurately capture the conditions at a particular institution.

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Taking the Next Step: The Promise of Intermediate Measures for Meeting Postsecondary Completion Goals

This report, sponsored by Jobs for the Future, examines system, state and multi-state efforts and multi-institution initiatives to develop and use intermediate measures of student success as a tool to improve accountability and guide institutional efforts to improve student success. The report distinguishes between milestones that must be attained in order to get to completion and success indicators that increase a student’s chances of completion. The report analyzes the differences in approach, definitions and uses of the data on intermediate measures and offers recommendations on the collection, reporting and effective use of the data and the need for common practices and definitions.

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Beyond the Rhetoric: Improving College Readiness Through Coherent State Policy

his policy brief, jointly produced by the Southern Regional Education Board and the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, examines the college readiness problem and offers recommendations to help government and educational leaders strengthen their efforts to lessen the college readiness gap. IHELP Director Nancy Shulock participated in the workgroup that produced the report, which analyzes the causes of the college readiness gap and discusses how states could better address the problem.

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Advancing by Degrees – A Framework for Increasing College Completion

This report, produced by IHELP for The Education Trust, offers higher education leaders guidance on using data to monitor student progress and applying the results to inform changes in policy and practice to help more students earn degrees. The report describes a framework of milestones, or intermediate educational achievements that students reach along the path to degree completion, and on-track indicators, or academic and enrollment patterns that are related to a greater likelihood of graduation. The report uses data from the State University System of Florida and the California Community Colleges to demonstrate how the framework can be used in two-year and four-year institutions to diagnose where and why students fall off the path to success and to make changes in policy and practice to increase degree completion.

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Strategies for Improving Higher Education in California: Some Lessons from Florida for California’s Higher Education Policy

This policy brief, sponsored by the Campaign for College Opportunity, examines the public higher education policies and practices of the state of Florida in order to determine possible lessons for California in its efforts to increase student success and degree completion. While Florida still faces significant challenges, some of the state’s policy approaches for public higher education warrant consideration in California’s quest for improvement, specifically the comprehensive student data system, policies related to student transfer from community colleges, statewide Career Technical Education program standards, and standardized policies for assessment, placement and remediation.

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