Community Colleges in 29 States to Pilot New Accountability System

New measures to help define success of two-year institutions

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The nation's community colleges are taking a major step forward in redefining what "success" means for their institutions with the naming this week of 40 pilot colleges to test drive a new Voluntary Framework of Accountability (VFA), a national system designed to provide accurate data, operational transparency, and the ability for colleges to benchmark student progress and completion data against peer institutions.

The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), in collaboration with the Association of Community College Trustees and the College Board, is developing the VFA, with funding from Lumina Foundation for Education and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The pilot colleges include 37 institutions, two state-wide systems and one multi-college district in 29 states. (Complete list follows.) Starting in mid-January 2011, the VFA pilot colleges will test a series of custom metrics that community college professionals developed over the last several months. The project fills what community college advocates have seen as a void in measures appropriate to the unique two-year college mission.  

"Many traditional measures of institutional effectiveness don't work well for community colleges," said Walter G. Bumphus, president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC). "For example, most are pegged to full-time students, and the majority of community college students attend part-time. Our overarching goal is to develop measures appropriate to our mission that clearly tell students and policy makers how we're doing."

VFA pilot colleges will work from a draft technical manual developed by four VFA working groups, a technical committee, and a national steering committee made up of veteran research experts and educators from within the college community. (See link to VFA website for a list of participants.) Project leaders are developing the VFA in stages so that they can release and test core measures for which there is broad consensus on technical definitions and available data. Additional measures will be proposed as the participants report outcomes and assess how well they gauge institutional effectiveness.

"Pilot testing is a critical part of developing the VFA," said Kent Phillippe, AACC's associate vice president of research and student success and director of the VFA initiative. "We want to learn from the pilots the utility of the measures and feasibility of reporting this data for all types of community colleges."

Late in January, AACC will make available all the resources provided to the pilots so that any institution will be able to calculate the proposed VFA measures, understand the pilot testing process and learn more about the VFA.  Added to the pilot testing, AACC will develop mock-ups for what could be built as the VFA data collection and display tool, and share the preliminary designs during the AACC annual meeting and via virtual meetings in the second half of 2011.

Pending outcomes of the pilot testing, reaction to the VFA among AACC member institutions and future funding, a full-scale roll-out to the nation's close to 1,200 community, junior and technical colleges could take place starting in 2012.

"The Obama administration and others are focused on greater numbers of student completions and demonstrable measures for how we gauge student success.  VFA is the community college response that says, 'We accept that challenge,'" Bumphus added.

Pilot colleges are: Baltimore City Community College (Baltimore, MD), Bevill State Community College (Jasper, AL), Bunker Hill Community College (Boston, MA), Burlington County College (Pemberton, NJ), Central Community College (Grand Island, NE), College of Lake County (Grayslake, IL),  College of Western Idaho (Nampa, ID), Community College of Allegheny County (Pittsburgh, PA), Dallas County Community College District (Dallas, TX), DeKalb Technical College (Clarkston, GA), Flathead Valley Community College (Kalispell, MT), Fox Valley Technical College (Appleton, WI), Genesee Community College (Batavia, NY), Greenville Technical College (Greenville, SC),  Hudson County Community College (Jersey City, NJ), Independence Community College (Independence, KS), Jackson Community College (Jackson, MI), Kentucky Community and Technical College System (Versailles, KY),  Lane Community College (Eugene, OR),  Louisiana Community and Technical College System (Baton Rouge, LA),  Mid-Plains Community College (North Platte, NE), Milwaukee Area Technical College (Milwaukee, WI),  Montgomery College (Rockville, MD),  Montgomery County Community College (Blue Bell, PA),Norwalk Community College (Norwalk, CT),  Oklahoma City Community College (Oklahoma City, OK), Parkland College (Champaign, IL),  Passaic County Community College (Paterson, NJ), Pima County Community College District (Tucson, AZ),  Pitt Community College (Winterville, NC),  Raritan Valley Community College (Somerville, NJ),  Renton Technical College (Renton, WA),  Rochester Community and Technical College (Rochester, MN),  Salt Lake Community College (Salt Lake City, UT),  Tidewater Community College (Norfolk, VA),  Waubonsee Community College (Sugar Grove, IL),  Wenatchee Valley College (Wenatchee, WA), Western Iowa Tech Community College (Sioux City, IA),  Western Nebraska Community College (Scottsbluff, NE), and Western Wyoming Community College (Rock Springs, WY).

The American Association of Community Colleges is a non-profit organization representing the nation's close to 1,200 community, junior and technical colleges and their more than 12 million students. Community colleges are the largest and fastest growing sector of higher education.

The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), in partnership with the Association of Community College Trustees and the College Board, is collaborating with community college leaders to develop the Voluntary Framework of Accountability (VFA). The VFA will define metrics that can be used to provide accountability and gauge the effectiveness of community colleges in meeting their stated missions. Ultimately, the VFA will identify sector-appropriate data definitions and include the ability for colleges to benchmark their student progress and completion data against like institutions.

SOURCE American Association of Community Colleges