Before Dr. Matt Gianneschi accepted his position in March as chief operating officer and chief of staff at Colorado Mountain College, he needed to finish writing several groundbreaking reports for the Education Commission of the States.
At the time Gianneschi, then vice president of policy and programs for the Denver-based ECS, a national nonprofit that tracks state policy trends and provides research and assistance to state policy leaders throughout the U.S., was in the midst of researching and writing two reports about remedial education policies. The reports address policies needed to inform the public about the number of students who arrive at colleges and universities not ready to enter college-level courses and monitoring their success once enrolled.
According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, in 2010 nearly 60 percent of graduating high school seniors entering community colleges were not academically ready for postsecondary coursework. In other words, accurately measuring students’ abilities and success in college is a very significant public policy concern.
Gianneschi’s reports indicate a key finding: Individual states and the country as a whole are inconsistently monitoring and reporting college readiness and the degree to which colleges are successful in supporting underprepared students. Without consistent data collection and reporting, states are ill-equipped to resolve these shortfalls.
In the first report Gianneschi and ECS policy analyst and co-author Mary Fulton researched how states collect and report data on the number of students requiring remediation. The authors found that wide variation in the ways states collect and report data on remedial trends, including that some states report no data whatsoever. The result is an uneven patchwork of reporting standards from state to state.
Gianneschi’s second report proposes a new national standard for state-level reporting. The method would allow states to consistently track and report data on participation in and progress through remediation. Like the common method for high school graduation rates that states voluntarily adopted in over the past decade, the proposal Gianneschi worked on would allow states to adopt a uniform method for reporting the incidence of remediation and students’ success in college.
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For CMC President Dr. Carrie Besnette Hauser, Gianneschi’s work exemplifies the level of expertise the college’s new chief operating officer has as a champion of education reform.
“Matt’s final work with ECS is truly groundbreaking,” Hauser said. “According to the Colorado Department of Higher Education, in our state 37 percent of high school graduates will need remediation to succeed in college. And Colorado is not alone. Finding consistent ways to measure college readiness is critical if we are to make meaningful improvements and achieve success with future generations of students.”
The debate is national. In an article in the April 8 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the influential Washington, D.C.-based national newspaper quoted Gianneschi describing the remedial issue between high school and college as a critical problem. U.S. News and World Report also covered the issue.
Several factors have created a sense of urgency, Gianneschi told the Chronicle. He explained that changes in high school standards and assessments, specifically the adoption of “college ready” expectations for all students, are creating a “common exit point and common entry point that has never existed before.”
“The benchmarks will sharply delineate who is and isn’t ready for college, [Gianneschi] said, and are likely to show that even fewer students are prepared,” reported the Chronicle.
These changes are beginning to affect legislatures and create a new sense of urgency regarding college readiness, Gianneschi pointed out.
“I hope these reports create greater clarity about what we know — and don’t know — about students’ readiness for college, and provide educators and policymakers with the tools to improve academic outcomes for all students,” he said. “And I hope they prove helpful to our work at Colorado Mountain College in partnership with our local school districts.”