The Perfect Storm: Forces Changing our Nation's Future

This was an impressive general session at the March League for Innovations conference in Denver (March 2-5, 2008). Irwin Kirsch, Director of the Center for Global Assessment at the Educational Testing Service was the very engaging presenter.
There are three main forces that are changing our nation's future according to data gathered and analyzed by Dr. Kirsch:

• Divergent skill distributions
• the Changing Economy
• Demographic Trends

The first force will certainly have a major impact on community colleges: the wide disparity in literacy and numeracy skills among our school-age and adult populations. We are losing ground. High school graduation rates were at 77% in 1969 and fell back to 70% in 1995 and stayed their in this decade. Among disadvantaged minorities the rate is thought to be closer to 50%. What an extraordinary impact this will have on the future workforce!

The second force is the changing economy which Kirsch describes as "seismic." There has been a radical shift in the balance between capital and labor driven by both technological innovation and globalization. It is clear from Kirsch's analysis that there is a far larger number of jobs that require a college education. It is predicted that college labor market clusters will generate about 46% of all job growth between 2004 and 2014. He notes that higher earnings will go to those who have the degrees and the "higher cognitive skills." These are not only the folks who will have good paying jobs they will also be the folks given the most opportunities for further learning.

The third force involves "sweeping demographic changes." The U.S. population is projected to reach 360 million in 2030 (up from 300 million in 2005). The population will become increasingly older and more diverse. The labor force is projected to grow more slowly in the next 20 years. The U.S. Census Bureau believes that between 2000-2015 net international migration will account for more than half of the nation's population growth. A large percent of that internation population will be Hispanic (around 20% by 2030). The challenge historically with this ethnic group is the low percentage who have a high school diploma.

Kirsch makes clear that separately these forces are powerful, together they are indeed the "perfect storm." He concludes: "While new policies focusing only on education and skills will not solve all the challenges associated with existing inequalities, if our society's overall levels of learning and skills are not increased and the existing gaps are not narrowed, there is little chance that economic opportunities will improve among key segments of our population." We have our work cut out for us at the community colleges across the nation.

Building "Bridges" to Student Success

This League for Innovation in Community Colleges session wowed me with the results from a special program called "Bridges." The Ford Foundation and Lumina Foundation set aside money for approximately 5 states to do research and support at risk students' success in the community college. Washington State, Colorado and Ohio representatives spoke about the program in their states.
Kristin Corash, VP of Stategic Planning at the Colorado Community College System utilized the funds for a systemwide strategic plan. Kristin described the remedial challenge in our state: among adults 67% fall into remedial education; across the nation 80% place into developmental education. The funding supported work on Career Pathways as a framework for progress. Kristin reported the development of 67 plans of study that follow career pathways. These are careers that have been shown to be of importance for the economy of the state. See www.communitycollegecentral.org.
I asked Kristin about the poor funding that Colorado provides to adults in need of basic education. She indicated that the state funded $200,000 to that end this year. The audience was stunned by such a low number. She felt it was at least a token sign that the State needs to do something along these lines. We at CMC recognize how little support is given to higher education and remain continually grateful for our "independent community college" status.
But let me cut to the chase here for it is in Washington State where the results are to be had. The State of Washington has agreed to provide 1.75 FTE per student in ABE or IBES with .25 of that fte going toward support services. The students' developmental work is tied to improving their wages. They follow David Prince's theory of the tipping point (Washington State U): one year of college plus a certificate results in $7,500 to $8,500 more in salary for ESL and ABE students respectively. Washington State has close to an 80% completion rate for students who enter developmental education or ABE. They are seeing student go farther faster. They have cracked that nut which we so often bemoan of the dev-ed student who never goes past the first couple of developmental education classes. They have focused the resources on that front door and emphasized the urgency of this work for the future of our workforce. It was down right encouraging!

"Urgent: 21st Century Skills for Educators (And Others) First"

Will Richardson, a well-known educational blogger, recently attended a conference and observed that many sessions were operating with "pre-internet" tools. His post
invited an explosion of comments about the state of use of 21st century tools by our institutions (which includes all levels of the organization). The large challenge is the use 21st century tools for own learning as well as the facilitation of 21st century learning.

Will's Post

One of the posts used an IBM data tool to analyze the concerns by terms that appeared in the posts as well:

http://bwatwood.edublogs.org/2008/03/12/wills-hot-button/

Your thoughts, questions, practices to share?

Student Runs Study Group on Facebook and Faces Expulsion

This article is about a Canadian student who ran a study group on Facebook and faces expulsion for it. The many responses to the case provide good food for thought and practice. It acknowledges these two issues: Students were to do online problems individually but historically did homework in f2f groups.

The article describes the Facebook group as "swapping tips." Though there seems to be a gap in the information provided, look at the perspectives represented by various perspectives.

Article and Responses

Slideshare.com and Our League Presentation

Colleague LisaMarie Johnson and I presented at the League for Innovations. We decided to put our PPT up in a free service called Slideshare.com. Anyone can get an account or create one for a class so students could upload to the account. The actual Slideshare site also provides a transcript about each slide, which is good accessibility (ADA) practice. I was able to copy code from the site to embed the viewer that you are able to use below.

About the presentation: This presentation presents Web 2.0 tools that students can use to demonstrate their learning. It includes accounts for you to try (The URL and passwords and directions you might need.)

| View | Upload your own

Naturalist John James Audubon Images Digitized

The University of Pittsburgh Library System, which owns one of only 120 sets of the large hand-colored works of John James Audubon's North American birds, has digitized the 435 images he created and mounted them online. It is a magnificent website - http://digital.library.pitt.edu/a/audubon/. Whether you are teaching onithology or just wanting to view this incredible collection, great thanks should be extended to the University of Pittsburgh for sharing these with us.

Resources for CMC from The League for Innovations

Greetings from the League for Innovations Conference where there are between 1500 and (?) community college educators.(The registration desk was waiting for final numbers at last report.)

Today's keynote was a very well laid out presentation by Irwin Kirsch from ETS on three trends that are affecting community colleges: the inadequacy of numeracy and textual literacies in the overall American population, our changing demographics, and the demands that knowledgework and global competition demand.

When this conference is over, all major presentations (at the least) will be available online at League IStream.

CMC is a League member college, so CMC can get free personal accounts to
view both video and publications in digital formats.

To get your account, go to the link in this post, click on Colorado Mountain College as your home institution, then enter you email and password and submit to gain access to these terrific resources.

Best,

Alice