Getting to Graduation: The Completion Agenda in Higher Education

9. The Challenge of Scaling Successful Policy Innovations: A Case Study of Three Colorado Community College System Grants

chapter nine The Challenge of Scaling Successful Policy Innovations A Case Study of Three Colorado Community College System Grants elaine delott baker The relationship between educational attainment and economic competitiveness is a familiar topic in the national discourse, one that has taken on a new sense of urgency within the context of the growth in global competition, the widening gap between the educational level of the U.S. population and that of populations in other industrialized nations, and recent disappointing data on college completion. Only 37 percent of U.S. adults aged 25–64 have an associate’s degree or higher, as compared with 55 percent of adults in the highest performing countries.1 In the United States, fewer than 20 percent of community college students will graduate within three years, and fewer than half of students enrolling in a four-year institution will graduate within six years.2 The response to the challenge of low educational attainment—from the research community to private foundations to the president—has been dramatic and has led to an array of ambitious college completion goals, such as doubling the numbers of certificates and degrees by 2025 or increasing the level of high-quality college degrees and credentials to 60 percent by 2025.3 The cumulative effect of this focus can be felt in policy discussions and in allocation of new resources, in a renewed focus on effective practice, and in fundamental questions about the structure and delivery of postsecondary education. Within this context, the phrase “initiative fatigue” has surfaced, a re- flection of the frustration felt by many whose efforts to improve the access and success rate of at-risk postsecondary students have failed to yield systemic change.4 Initiative fatigue is a worrisome term for the leadership and innovators of community colleges, coming as it does amid the 225 226 the lessons from three states intense focus on the low completion rates of community colleges students , the limited resources to support change, and the heavy pressures being brought to bear by state and national policymakers to double the numbers of certificates and degrees by 2025.5 The case study in this chapter addresses the question of why efforts to scale successful, grant-funded innovations for high-risk community college populations across institutions and states have met with limited success. To answer this question, I examine the trajectory of three grants awarded to the Colorado Community College System (CCCS) from 2004 to 2010: the Colorado Lumina Initiative for Performance, the Ford Foundation’s Community College Bridges to Opportunity Project, and a U.S. Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) “Ready for College” grant. The chapter identifies a series of challenges that community colleges face in their efforts to bring successful innovations to scale, including state funding formulas, the logistical and cultural barriers of scaling within an institution, the lack of effective mechanisms to bring innovations to scale across institutions, the dysfunction of grant timelines, the challenge of maintaining the fidelity of program models in the cycle of replication, and the absence of long-term evaluations of grant-funded innovations. The Context Profile of the Colorado Community College System The Colorado Community College System (CCCS) is a highly centralized system of 13 community colleges, serving 38 percent of all Colorado resident undergraduates and 45 percent of the state’s minority undergraduates . In 2008–9, CCCS served over 117,000 students, 26 percent of whom were classified as minorities and 41 percent of whom were certified as Pell-eligible. Of the certificates and degrees awarded in 2008–9, oneyear certificates accounted for 40 percent, two-year certificates for 13 percent, and associate degrees in applied science (AAS) for 22 percent. Associate of general studies (AGS), associate of arts (AA), and associate of science (AS) degrees, which are transfer-oriented, accounted for the remaining 25 percent. The three-year transfer rate for first-time students in the fall 2005 cohort (2005–8) was 15.6 percent, with 89 percent of transfer students entering four-year institutions. Of CCCS transfers, 82 percent were part-time students and 18 percent were full-time stu- Challenge of Scaling Successful Policy Innovations 227 dents.6 The overall three-year graduation rate in 2009 was 22.5 percent; the minority graduate rate was 17.4 percent.7 The Remedial Challenge Academically underprepared students present a...