Seventy-two community colleges are pilot-testing the Voluntary Framework of Accountability, hoping for a more sophisticated way to measure students’ progress and outcomes. Collecting data — including college readiness, completion of classes attempted, student outcomes in non-credit courses and transfers to four-year institutions — remains a challenge, said presenters at the American Association of Community Colleges meeting in New Orleans, Inside Higher Ed reports.
The VFA, developed by AACC and College Board, and funded by the Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation, hopes to replace the three-year graduation rate as a measure of community colleges’ effectiveness. If all goes well, AACC will issue a report on the pilot testing this summer and will make measurement tools available to all colleges in 2012.
Joe May, president of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System and member of the VFA steering committee, said the VFA lets community colleges “tell our story in a meaningful way.”
“We know we’re great at what we do . . . but we’ve never had the data to tell that story, and we’ve been unable to come to an agreement as to what that looks like. Are we really making transformations to people’s lives that add value and make a difference?”
The VFA measures enrollment in non-credit job training classes, state- and industry-recognized credentials earned and transfers from non-credit to for-credit classes. That’s an important part of the mission for Eastern Gateway Community College, in Ohio, said Laura Meeks, the college president and a member of the VFA’s student learning outcomes working group.
May concurred with Meeks, noting that VFA measures of non-credit coursework will be helpful in lobbying legislators.
“In a lot of policy makers’ minds, non-credit means non-value,” May said. “We need to attach value to it…. We know people get salary increases, they get promotions, they gets jobs [from taking non-credit courses] … but accountability measures just don’t exist. This is a move that takes front and center a very important part of our mission and about the value we add through workforce development and non-credit courses.”
However, some colleges are struggling to collect the data needed for the VFA, especially if they’re also collecting data for Achieving the Dream. It’s “stressful” for colleges with limited research staff, said Teri Walker, director of institutional research and planning for the Dallas County Community College District.
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