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Developmental Education Redesign in Colorado

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Title: Developmental Education Redesign in Colorado
Language: English
Authors: McKay, Heather, Michael, Suzanne
Source: New Directions for Community Colleges. Spr 2021 (193):57-69.
Availability: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 13
Publication Date: 2021
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education
Postsecondary Education
Two Year Colleges
Descriptors: Community Colleges, Remedial Instruction, Career Development, Educational Change, Educational Policy, Barriers, Educational Practices, Organizational Change, Grants
Geographic Terms: Colorado
DOI: 10.1002/cc.20439
ISSN: 0194-3081
Abstract: Colorado's Community College System's Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training (TAACCCT) grant facilitated and supported the state's redesign of developmental education (DE) to increase rates of student retention and completion across fifteen community colleges. This chapter presents observations about the process of transforming Colorado's DE policy and practice, challenges faced, insights about institutional change, and the role the TAACCCT grant played.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2020
Accession Number: EJ1278677
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0147809160;0yg01mar.21;2020Dec30.02:22;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0147809160-1">Developmental Education Redesign in Colorado </title> <p>Colorado's Community College System's Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training (TAACCCT) grant facilitated and supported the state's redesign of developmental education (DE) to increase rates of student retention and completion across fifteen community colleges. This chapter presents observations about the process of transforming Colorado's DE policy and practice, challenges faced, insights about institutional change, and the role the TAACCCT grant played.</p> <p>Each of the four U.S. Department of Labor's Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training (TAACCCT) grant solicitations required grantees to implement innovative strategies to enhance the training and increase the retention and credential completion rates of community college students. In Round 1, attention specifically focused on improving the outcomes of students who lacked college‐level proficiency in reading, writing, and math—students in developmental education (DE). In this chapter, we look at the DE redesign work done under a TAACCCT Round 1 grant by the Colorado Community College System (CCCS) and the state's community colleges. The chapter begins with a brief overview of DE and the challenges to DE students' retention and completion. We then discuss Colorado's process of redesigning DE policies and practices, including challenges for adoption and institutionalization. Finally, we examine the impact of TAACCCT in Colorado and identify some of the lessons learned. The chapter is based on data collected by the grant's third‐party evaluator, Rutgers' Education and Employment Research Center (EERC), including interviews with faculty, students, administrators, student‐services staff; meetings with CCCS senior staff; classroom observations; document review (McKay, Michael, & Khudododov, 2016; Michael & McKay, 2015); and review of student records (Khudododov, McKay, & Michael, 2016).</p> <hd id="AN0147809160-2">The Developmental Education Challenge</hd> <p>In Fall 2011, at the start of TAACCCT funding, approximately one in four U.S. high school graduates entering college was placed into DE coursework. Of these first‐year DE students, 57% were enrolled in a public community college (Barry & Dannenberg, 2016). Studies indicate that over half of the students who take DE courses fail to complete them, let alone progress to college‐level coursework or finish a postsecondary credential. A DE course for many students is therefore often their first and last experience in higher education (Bell‐Ellwagner, King Jr., & McIntosh, 2017; Valentine, Konstantopolous, & Goldrick‐Rab, 2017). When so few students referred to DE complete course work or obtain a degree, the costs snowball with significant financial and social implications for individuals, families, and society (Edgecombe, Cormier, Bickerstaff, & Barragan, 2013).</p> <p>To tackle this problem, colleges, systems, and states around the country have worked to identify and experiment with new strategies to shorten the time students spend in DE, including corequisites and acceleration (Edgecomb, Jaggars, Baker, & Bailey, 2013; Kilgore & Wilson, 2017), to improve students' progress into degree granting programs and to increase degree completion. Below we discuss some of Colorado's efforts.</p> <hd id="AN0147809160-3">Addressing the Challenge of Developmental Education</hd> <p>Prior to the 2011 receipt of a Round 1 TAACCCT grant, several Colorado community colleges were making reforms to their DE programs using grants from foundations and participating in initiatives like Complete College America. In 2011, concurrent to the receipt of a three‐year $17.2 million TAACCCT grant, the Colorado Community College System (CCCS) embarked on a statewide redesign of DE. One of its first steps was the creation of a Developmental Education Task Force (DETF) to recommend DE policy changes and practice models for all of Colorado's community colleges. The DETF included math, reading, and English faculty; academic advisors; registrars; and college administrators from thirteen CCCS colleges and from two of Colorado's independent community colleges, as well as senior CCCS staff. Over a period of two years, the DETF emerged as a critical forum for research, review, discussion, and dissemination through in‐person and remote meetings. Participants at DETF meetings examined DE assessment and placement, the structure and content of DE courses, pedagogies, and educational pathways. To inform these discussions, national leaders in the fields of DE and adult education presented their research and practice. Members of DETF also heard from Colorado colleagues who had piloted diverse practice innovations including acceleration, compression (e.g., Edgecomb et al., 2013), contextualization (e.g., Perrin, 2011), learning communities (e.g., Visher et al., 2010), and modules (e.g., Biswas, 2007), and expanded DE student advising at their colleges (e.g., Rutschow et al., 2011).</p> <p>Informed by insights gained from its explorations, the DETF made a series of interrelated policy and practice recommendations to the CCCS board to achieve three primary goals: (a) to reduce DE students' time to enrollment into college‐level courses; (b) to increase the rate of DE students' enrollment in college‐level courses; and (c) to increase DE students' successful completion of college‐level courses. To achieve these changes, the DETF recommended:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> Eliminating the DE requirement from a sequence of courses to a single semester‐long course,</item> <p></p> <item> Integrating English and reading into a single discipline, College Composition and Reading (CCR),</item> <p></p> <item> Creating two separate math pathways based on academic and career pathways: MATH 050—quantitative literacy for general technical careers; and Math 055—pre‐algebra for students interested in transferring to a four‐year college and/or preparing for a STEM career,</item> <p></p> <item> Using corequisite courses in Math and CCR whenever possible,</item> <p></p> <item> Creating "soft‐landing options"—pre‐college Adult Education courses either on campus or in the community for students falling below the new state Accuplacer cut scores,</item> <p></p> <item> Changing assessment and placement policies and practices including the use of multiple measures.</item> </ulist> <p>In the spring of 2013, the CCCS Board of Directors accepted the DETF recommendations and mandated that all of Colorado's community colleges implement the DE redesign policies and practice models by Fall 2014. In doing so, the Board gave the colleges flexibility with respect to the process of implementation, providing choices as they implemented the new policy pathway models. Additionally, in May 2014, the state legislature passed the Adult Education and Literacy Act. This Act established a partnership between the state's education office and workforce system to foster the provision of community‐based pre‐college admission assistance with basic literacy and numeracy skills and provided funding to help individuals who fell below the new Accuplacer cut scores (Colorado Department of Higher Education, 2014).</p> <hd id="AN0147809160-4">Transforming Policy Into Practice</hd> <p>Making change in higher education using strategies like collective decision‐making and shared governance can promote the acceptance, institutionalization, and sustainability of new policies and practices (Kezar, 2018). In many ways, the methods that Colorado used to reform DE aligned with these ideas. The DETF provided a collaborative structure for a critical process of exploration, discussion, and communication that resulted in shared decision‐making.</p> <p>Discussions about the state's DE policy limiting DE to a one‐semester‐long course, and curriculum redesigns, took place at multiple levels and in diverse venues—DETF meetings and subcommittees, on‐campus discussion sessions led by DEFT members, working sessions at the CCCS annual state community college conference, and college visits by CCCS representatives. Collectively these activities created a variety of feedback loops that facilitated increased awareness of the DE problem and the redesign. This communication structure encouraged extensive sharing and exploration of the benefits or limitations of different strategies with respect to implementation and individual colleges' experiences serving their DE students, further stimulating innovation and creativity across community colleges.</p> <p>During the DETF process, faculty across the state were encouraged to give feedback on DE practices and innovation being used around the nation and to exchange ideas about the DE pathways models Colorado should consider adopting. As colleges began to experiment and pilot potential DE redesigns, faculty also used DETF and campus discussions to share their own work on curriculum and pedagogy. For example, many campus' work groups used backward design to redesign course curriculum, identifying desired learning outcomes and then building content and assignments to achieve them (University of Colorado Boulder, n.d.). In retrospect, backward design essentially helped to revise and restructure DE math curriculum, integrate reading and composition courses into a single course—College Composition and Reading (CCR)—and create new corequisite courses in both math and CCR.</p> <p>As they developed new curriculum, faculty work groups also began to rethink their work in the classroom. Faculty set out to change their pedagogy by increasing their use of contextualization and critical thinking and also by reducing their use of lectures. In some cases, the shift to corequisite courses helped this process, although the delivery and array of strategies used with corequisites varied across the colleges. As departments made these changes, faculty observed that their classes had become more student‐centered, with students more actively involved in their own learning. Faculty also reported piloting strategies to expand students' understanding of the learning process and skill development, creating rungs or steps along a ladder of proficiency and knowledge rather than a series of discreet bits of information and skills.</p> <p>In addition to shifts on curriculum and pedagogy, advisors and other campus staff began to re‐conceptualize student services. As a result, some campuses expanded the availability of DE student advising and increased their use of career pathway advising, an approach that links academic and career counseling.</p> <p>Participation in the DETF or within campus work groups led to the emergence of campus‐based change agents who engaged other faculty, disseminated information to those less involved, and worked to deepen the level of change that is necessary for large‐scale change to take hold on college campuses (Kezar, 2018). EERC interviews with several faculty members revealed that participation in one or more redesign activities gave faculty members a sense of inclusiveness and ownership of the new DE policy and DETF's final practice recommendations. Participation also fostered an eagerness to implement the redesign models on their respective campus.</p> <hd id="AN0147809160-5">The Roll Out of Colorado's DE Redesigns</hd> <p>Each of the fifteen Colorado community colleges presented a distinct context for the new DE policy rollout and potential institutionalization of DE practice redesigns, creating different opportunities, and perhaps limitations, along a continuum of transformation. The colleges varied in their location (e.g., urban, suburban, rural), student demographics (e.g., age, gender, race‐ethnicity), residential/nonresidential status, DE offerings, and histories experimenting with DE redesigns. The stability of each college's senior administrators and the level of engagement in DE redesign and the DETF also varied over time. Each of these differences affected the ways the colleges' chose to roll out and adopt the DE redesigns approved by the CCCS board.</p> <p>Beginning in Fall 2013, several colleges were ready to act, quickly plunging in to offer the redesigned developmental courses. These colleges believed jumping in would reduce confusion, foster more rapid changes in campus culture, and facilitate the transformation of their DE programs into business as usual. Most colleges rolled out the new courses concurrent with existing DE offerings, reasoning it would be less burdensome for students already in the DE course sequences to finish what they had begun. Straddling program delivery was also thought to be an effective strategy to introduce the redesigns and foster greater faculty buy‐in. A few colleges, however, waited until the Fall 2014 deadline to rollout the redesigns. These colleges hoped delayed implementation would allow them to learn from the experiences of other colleges prior to changing their DE program.</p> <hd id="AN0147809160-6">Variation in Implementation</hd> <p>Research shows that to facilitate change in higher education, and to have it endure, change must align with the realities of institutions (Kezar, 2018). The new state DE policy primarily focused on quickly getting all students into college‐level courses, which was reaffirmed by CCCS's strong suggestion to adopt and implement corequisite models. CCCS and the members of the DETF, however, recognized that one redesigned practice model would not fit the colleges' diversity of needs, capacities, and histories. Thus, to make sure that the fifteen different colleges' redesign implementation would align with the realities of each college, they allowed institutions and their faculty to choose which practice models to adopt and implement. These choices led to variances the execution of the redesigned DE practice models at each campus. Most institutions took advantage of the inherent elasticity of the approved DE models. A number, however, made choices about the practice models that significantly diverged from the intended DE policy, evoking specters of Lipsky's (1980) notion of the street‐level bureaucracy in which local actors use discretion in policy implementation. Those on the ground made real‐time decisions based on campus history and context. Examples of practice model variations as well as divergence from the intentions of the new DE policy are discussed below. First, we discuss flexibility in adoption.</p> <hd id="AN0147809160-7">Making Use of Practice Model—Flexibility</hd> <p>College Composition and Reading (CCR) models showcase the flexibility of the new DE redesign models. The CCR redesign provided colleges with four different implementation options: a stand‐alone CCR course; a CCR course with a lab supplement; a CCR course paired with college‐level subject matter courses; and a corequisite option with a college‐level English course paired with a lab. The course offerings were designed to serve different students based on placement score, but they all had the same goal of getting students into college‐level coursework within one semester or less. Colleges thus chose the option or options that best aligned with the vision of the college and its leadership as well as their resources and students' characteristics. All colleges, however, chose to offer the stand‐alone CCR course and the corequisite option. Some of the larger colleges with more faculty, DE students, and financial resources also tried out the CCR course paired with college‐level subject matter courses. Faculty at these colleges liked the collaborative work that resulted from teacher pairing, the student learning experiences that emerged, and the ability to continue activities that had successfully responded to student interests prior to the redesigns. Despite these benefits, by the end of TAACCCT, most colleges chose not to implement the CCR paired with a college‐level subject matter redesign model as it was too resource intense and presented some new policy and staffing challenges.</p> <p>For example, CCR curriculum required familiarity with reading instruction, and the ability to integrate it with composition. Familiarity meant the ability to use "<emph>processes and strategies in reading to inform their [student] writing, and vice versa</emph>" (Cox, 2015, pp. 8–9, italics in original). This presented some significant staffing challenges in terms of faculty skill sets and state policy restrictions. Many community college English instructors felt they lacked the requisite knowledge and skills to do such integration. In addition, the regional accreditor, Colorado's Higher Learning Committee, requires faculty who teach college‐level or transfer English courses to have either a master's in English or at least eighteen graduate credits in English. Many reading faculty members, even those with a master's in reading, were therefore not "qualified" to teach the new paired CCR courses. They were only qualified to teach stand‐alone CCR and soft‐landing courses—pre‐college Adult Education‐level courses for those who fell beneath the state cut scores. Consequently, traditional college reading faculty worried about their job security. Further, with the reduction in DE course sequences, both reading and English faculty at some colleges worried about their jobs. At the same time, some rural colleges worried about launching the new CCR courses, given their limited ability to recruit qualified faculty to teach the redesigned CCR courses.</p> <p>Whereas the redesigned DE courses had common learning outcomes, colleges and their faculty were given choices about the methods or pedagogies to be employed in their respective classrooms. For example, math faculty at several colleges actively debated the best way to teach quantitative literacy (MAT 050) and pre‐algebra (MAT 055) (Bickerstaff, 2014). Some faculty advocated for a conceptual approach to MAT 050 (quantitative literacy) and MAT 055 (pre‐algebra for students preparing for a STEM career), including using contextualization. Others asserted that MAT 055 should be taught using a procedural approach to prepare students for the procedural work required in STEM courses and careers. Still other faculty asserted that the same teaching methods should be used in MAT 050 and MAT 055. As result, within a single college and across the state, instruction for the same math course differed depending on which faculty member taught it.</p> <p>A third area that offered a chance for colleges to make choices was the pre‐college DE course—the soft‐landing option for students who did not meet the new state‐mandated cut scores. Colleges could choose if and how to serve students who did not place into the new DE pathways. Many different variations emerged; some colleges chose to offer bootcamps or other preparation options, others sent students to or partnered with Adult Basic Education (ABE) programs in the community, and some offered ABE services on campus. Subsequent to the implementation of the state's new cut scores, the spectrum of college offerings and community resources resulted in students around the state having access to very different options. This change led to significant controversy among college staff and faculty.</p> <p>Some argued that community colleges were abandoning their historic responsibilities to be a "gateway" into higher education, and to make up for what students did not get in their K–12 education. Others thought that shifting "preparatory" coursework away from the community colleges to ABE programs was a good thing. As one faculty member stated, "Why take their tuition money, why give them hope that this is going to work for them?" (Michael & McKay, 2015, p. 54).</p> <p>Some faculty and staff worried that the Colorado's Adult Education and Literacy Act of 2014 provided insufficient finances to meet the needs and demand of individuals who fell below the cut scores. They wondered how potential students would access ABE programs. They also raised concern about the alignment of community‐based programs with college standards and the transition of students from ABE to college. In addition, they worried if students with special needs could be effectively served by ABE and supported in transitioning from ABE to community college. Finally, of significant concern was the recognition of the wide variations in implementation strategies that resulted in substantial differences in the educational and supportive service structures among the state's fifteen community colleges. Such variations often make it extremely difficult to track students' educational pathways and academic outcomes in the short and long term. For example, it is hard to track students who swirl between colleges or those who enter and ultimately leave college after completing the needed prerequisites.</p> <hd id="AN0147809160-8">Divergence From the Intended Policy</hd> <p>Despite the state's intent to provide elasticity in the DE redesigns model, deviations from the actual DE policy to restrict DE courses to a single semester emerged. The most pronounced example involved the course sequence and course taking under the new math pathways. The DE math redesign model created two parallel and mutually exclusive pathways: Math 050: quantitative literacy for general technical careers, and MAT 055: pre‐algebra for students interested in transferring to a four‐year college and/or preparing for a STEM career. The reform's intent was to move students from one developmental math course directly into the required college‐level math course. While most colleges implemented these pathways as intended, student records from some colleges indicate that there were students who took MAT 050 and MAT 055 as a sequence. In the EERC team's conversations with faculty, staff, and administrators it became clear that these course‐taking patterns were a result of local choices made by the colleges as they implemented the redesign. As such, despite the state policy, college staff were essentially functioning as policy decision‐makers (Lipsky, 1980). As a result of student advising or its absence, and/or college enrollment policies, students were permitted to continue taking multiple DE courses rather than a single college‐level pathway as stipulated in the redesign. Consequently, these college faculty and staff were implementing DE math pathways that countered the intent of the state's policy redesign.</p> <hd id="AN0147809160-9">Change—Top Down, Bottom Up, and Through the Middle</hd> <p>The trajectory of Colorado's DE transformation reflects a dynamic process of policy and practice decision‐making based on perceptions of the nature of the problem (Asera, McDonnell, & Soricone, 2013). As discussed below, the infusion of significant new resources under TAACCCT facilitated a system‐level push for change, a push supported by the governor and the legislature. However, while actions of the state legislature provided the context for aspects of the redesign, the final policy changes and the implementation models grew out of the work of many actors. DETF, the college‐based work groups DETF members established at their respective colleges, and the formal and informal discussions at regional and statewide meetings over the course of the TAACCCT grant, all contributed to implementation of the legislation. As such, the final recommendations both reflected multiple voices and signaled the choices of a majority of participants from multiple levels.</p> <p>As discussed, once the policy was established and redesign models were created, they were implemented in slightly different ways by faculty and staff at each college. This reflected both the built‐in flexibilities of the practice models and the reality of local actors making choices, or using their own discretion (Lipsky, 1980). As indicated above, local variations appear to have been both good and bad. That is, alterations in some practice models and related pedagogies suggest ongoing innovation, and the adoption of best practices in developmental education emerging in the literature. At the same time, the colleges which failed to observe the one‐semester‐of‐DE policy decision moved beyond the elasticity of the DE redesign and strayed from the intended policy goal.</p> <p>Lipsky (1980) argued that policy can be best understood in action—in the locale where policy is transformed from ideas or words into reality—such as the daily encounters between students, faculty, and staff at a community college. His view therefore recognizes that policy implementation involves some discretion; and inevitably there will be some stretch in how policy operates in practice—both good and bad. That has been the case in Colorado, where the new statewide DE policy provided front‐line actors with elbow room but also set a mandate with some limits. As indicated above, over time, the one‐semester‐of‐DE mandate was breached by several colleges.</p> <p>Going forward, those implementing DE reform should consider how realities on the ground affect implementation and impact the intention of the policy change, both positively and negatively. It would also behoove those undertaking such reforms to think about how to deal with local decision‐making that may move beyond mandates or intended policy. Should it be encouraged, mollified, or simply studied and understood? The realities of the implementation of DE policy need to be further studied for us to understand changes over time and the positive and negative consequences for students of on‐the‐ground discretion in the implementation of the policy.</p> <hd id="AN0147809160-10">Change and Institutionalization</hd> <p>In a relatively short amount of time (2011–2014), Colorado established new cut scores for entrance into the fifteen Colorado Community College System colleges, and fundamentally shortened the sequence of courses offered in its DE programs. In the process, over the first 18 months of DE redesign implementation (Fall 2013 through Fall 2014), the state increased the number of students who progressed out of DE courses and improved retention and completion rates in gateway courses. For example, in terms of acceleration into college‐level courses, the EERC team compared the time it took for pre‐redesign DE students (<emph>historic cohort</emph>) with those only enrolled in a redesigned DE course (<emph>redesign cohort</emph>) with respect to their enrollment in a college‐level (gateway) course. Despite some differences by college, overall 82% of redesign cohort students who enrolled in one of the College Composition and Reading redesign options, including the option to co‐enroll in DE and ENG 121, took zero to one terms to enroll in the first level of college English (ENG 121). This is substantially more than the 4.7% of students in the historic cohort who reached that milestone within the same timeframe (Khudododov et al., 2016, p. 14). In math, the outcomes were less dramatic, but still promising. Close to 60% of state‐redesign students enrolled in a 100‐level math course either while completing or immediately after completing their DE math course as compared to only 29% of the historic cohort who did so (Khudododov et al., 2016, p. 22). These early outcomes show that even with variations in implementation, DE redesign had a positive impact across several student outcomes.</p> <hd id="AN0147809160-11">TAACCCT and the Value of Resources</hd> <p>External funding can play an important role in resourcing, while creating both an impetus and a timeframe for change in higher education (Kezar, 2018). However, in general, such funding does not dictate solutions or strategies to bring about the intended change. For Colorado, the receipt of the Round 1 TAACCCT grant fueled facilitation and expansion of the state's DE reform agenda across fifteen diverse institutions. Thus, while Colorado may have established the DETF without TAACCCT, the grant provided funds for faculty release time, travel expenses for multiple in‐person DETF and committee meetings, access to subject matter experts, informational and professional development workshops for faculty and student advisers, extensive participation of several senior members of CCCS, as well as a third‐party evaluation. Each of these factors contributed to making the DE redesign process a statewide participatory process. Further, the grant's three‐year time limit added urgency and speed to the change process (Kotter, 2007/1995). For some, grant‐related urgency helped to accelerate the changes they wanted to make. At the same time, the grant time limits pushed others in directions for which they were not yet ready or comfortable, lessening their embrace of different aspects of the redesign. The prestige of a federal TAACCCT grant also added status to the state's DE redesign, elevating its priority among state officials.</p> <p>Post‐TAACCCT, there has been ongoing innovation and local decision‐making about DE policy and practice models. However, to date, most post‐grant changes have not been closely followed or analyzed. This lack of analysis speaks to the importance of a post‐grant statewide sustainability plan (Baker, 2012) and continued system‐level support and leadership. In conversations with state leaders, EERC was recently informed that Colorado is making plans to embark on further study of DE and its implementation in the coming years.</p> <hd id="AN0147809160-12">Final Observations—Lessons</hd> <p>This chapter has provided a case study of systematic changes in Colorado's statewide redesign of its DE policy and practice. This case study provides several lessons for others to learn from regarding the policy and practice redesigns and the implementation process in Colorado.</p> <p>First, it is important to separate policy directives about structure from curriculum practice models, and to separate a mandate from flexibility. As discussed above, the new DE policy mandated that students should be required to take no more than a single semester of DE prior to progression into college‐level courses. The colleges, however, received latitude in implementing the form and pedagogy of the redesign practice models. In states where there is great diversity across its community colleges and multiple local actors, the boundary between mandate and opportunity can get weakened. It is thus important for continuous monitoring so that policy reforms are maintained or formally revisited.</p> <p>Second, institutional changes take place within multi‐layered landscapes. As such, new policies need to be carefully reviewed so that as one problem is addressed there are a minimum of new ones created. This is not to say systems and institutions should not engage in major shifts in policy and/or practice. But when they do, their effect on implementation of other policies and the downstream consequences should be anticipated.</p> <p>Third, external funding can make a significant difference in helping higher education respond to a rapidly changing economic and technological landscape. At the same time, as institutions build new programs and thus their capacities through external funding, it is important that they concurrently develop sustainability plans. In addition, to the more common focus on post‐grant staffing, these sustainability plans need to build mechanisms for feedback and evaluation. Without such continuous assessment, reform may become simply the "<emph>change du jour</emph>" (Achieving the Dream, 2011, p. 6), limiting the opportunity to build or expand practices that are shown to be effective in achieving positive student outcomes.</p> <ref id="AN0147809160-13"> <title> References </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> Achieving the Dream. (2011). Cutting edge series #2: Scaling community college interventions. Retrieved from https://<ulink href="http://www.achievingthedream.org/resource/227/cutting-edge-series-2-scaling-community-college-interventions">www.achievingthedream.org/resource/227/cutting-edge-series-2-scaling-community-college-interventions</ulink></bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> Asera, R., McDonnell, R., & Soricone, L. (2013). Thinking big: A framework for states on scaling up community college innovation. Boston, MA : Jobs for the Future. 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New York : National Center for Postsecondary Education.</bibtext> </blist> </ref> <aug> <p>By Heather McKay and Suzanne Michael</p> <p>Reported by Author; Author</p> <p></p> <p>H eather M cKay is the director of the Education and Employment Research Center at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.</p> <p>S uzanne M ichael is a senior researcher at the Education and Employment Research Center at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.</p> </aug>
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  Data: Developmental Education Redesign in Colorado
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22McKay%2C+Heather%22">McKay, Heather</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Michael%2C+Suzanne%22">Michael, Suzanne</searchLink>
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22New+Directions+for+Community+Colleges%22"><i>New Directions for Community Colleges</i></searchLink>. Spr 2021 (193):57-69.
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  Data: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
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  Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Evaluative
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Community+Colleges%22">Community Colleges</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Remedial+Instruction%22">Remedial Instruction</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Career+Development%22">Career Development</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Educational+Change%22">Educational Change</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Educational+Policy%22">Educational Policy</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Barriers%22">Barriers</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Educational+Practices%22">Educational Practices</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Organizational+Change%22">Organizational Change</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Grants%22">Grants</searchLink>
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  Data: 10.1002/cc.20439
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  Data: 0194-3081
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  Label: Abstract
  Group: Ab
  Data: Colorado's Community College System's Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training (TAACCCT) grant facilitated and supported the state's redesign of developmental education (DE) to increase rates of student retention and completion across fifteen community colleges. This chapter presents observations about the process of transforming Colorado's DE policy and practice, challenges faced, insights about institutional change, and the role the TAACCCT grant played.
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      – SubjectFull: Career Development
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      – SubjectFull: Colorado
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      – TitleFull: Developmental Education Redesign in Colorado
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