CAP’s ‘Honey Badger Award 2020’ honors CVHEC for pre-AB 705 success
CAP’s ‘Honey Badger Award 2020’ honors CVHEC for pre-AB 705 success
The Central Valley Higher Education Consortium was honored in February 2020 with the California Acceleration Project’s Honey Badger Award for its early role in implementing Assembly Bill 705 that helped remove barriers to college completion by transforming placement and remediation practices at 14 of its member community colleges.
Presented at the California Acceleration Project (CAP) regional conference February 28 in Sacramento, the award acknowledged CVHEC’s early implementation efforts even prior to enactment of the bill.
Enacted in 2018, the state legislation restricts colleges from requiring students to enroll in non-transferable English and math courses that lengthens their time to attain a degree. AB 705 guides colleges toward corequisite models in which students receive additional concurrent support during the same semester that they take a transfer-level English or mathematics course.
At its annual summit in October 2016, the CVHEC Board of Directors, which is made up of the region’s 27 college and university presidents and chancellors, launched its move to implement corequisite measures at member valley community college campuses as documented in a report by CAP commissioned by the Campaign for College Opportunity, “GETTING THERE: Are California Community Colleges Maximizing Student Completion of Transfer-Level Math and English?” This regional progress report examined AB 705 implementation at 47 community colleges in the Central Valley, the Inland Empire and greater Los Angeles.
“The CVHEC board came to understand that transforming placement and remediation was critical to their larger effort,” the report said. “They set goals for implementing corequisite models and enlisted partners like Complete College America, the Charles A. Dana Center, and the California Acceleration Project to lead summits and workshops for Central Valley faculty and administrators.
“By the time AB 705 came along, the region was primed for action,” the Campaign report declared.
Dr. Benjamin Duran, CVHEC executive director and Merced College President Emeritus, said in the Getting There report, “More and more colleges in the Central Valley are realizing the importance of AB 705. They’re recognizing that, because of these changes, children of doctors and children of farmworkers could all have the same shot at succeeding at a community college or CSU.”
Duran credited Central Valley faculty and administrators for their work in implementing corequisite measures before and after AB 705 with the support of CVHEC, which was founded in 2002 to improve the college-going culture in the consortium’s nine-county region from San Joaquin to Kern counties.
The consortium’s corequisite movement also took center stage at its 2018 CVHEC Education Policy and Legislative Summit featuring discussions about AB 705 and the California State University Executive Order (EO) 1110. Issued in 2017, CSU Chancellor Timothy White’s order eliminated non-credit-bearing developmental courses in written communication and math/quantitative reasoning and required campuses to provide new types of course models to help students succeed in entry-level college courses. EO 1110 also eliminated the use of the English Placement Test (EPT) and Entry-Level Mathematics (ELM) exam.
CVHEC media contact: Tom Uribes • tom@uribes.com • 559.348.3278
BACKGROUND
The Central Valley Higher Education Consortium (CVHEC) is a 501(c)3 incorporated non-profit organization comprised of 27 accredited public and private colleges, universities, and community college district members in California’s nine-county region (San Joaquin to Kern counties). CVHEC serves as the convener and facilitator of technical support experts as needed by its members and executes the policy objectives of the CVHEC Board that is made up of the presidents and chancellors of the member institutions. A key CVHEC objective is to increase the Central Valley’s certificate and degree attainment rates.
The Campaign for College Opportunity is a California nonprofit organization devoted to ensuring that the next generation of college-age students in California has the chance to go to college and succeed. The goals of The Campaign are to substantially increase the number of students attending two- and four-year colleges in the state and to significantly impact the rate that students succeed and achieve their postsecondary education objectives. The Campaign was founded by the California Business Roundtable, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the Community College League of California in 2003.
The California Acceleration Project was founded in 2010 by two community college teachers who wanted to do something about the poor outcomes of students placed into remediation. The faculty-led professional development network supports the state’s 114 community colleges in the campaign to implement reforms that substantially increase student completion of transferable, college-level English and math requirements, a critical milestone on the path to degrees and transfer. These include using high school grades in placement, replacing traditional remedial courses with corequisite models, tailoring math remediation to students’ program of study and teaching with high-challenge, high-support pedagogy in English, math and ESL. CAP is funded through grants from the James Irvine Foundation, the College Futures Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Foundation for California Community Colleges is CAP’s fiscal sponsor.
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