The Blog is Back in Town
5/16/2012
Accelerating Achievement has been a bit quiet for a couple of weeks. The elves have been called to other areas of the workshop, but they’re back in business now. Good thing our colleagues across the dev ed field have still been cranking out all sort...
Crowdsourcing the Placement Test Dilemma
4/25/2012
On Monday, the Inside Higher Ed blog Confessions of a Community College Dean, was all about how you know a student needs remediation. Blogger Dean Dad gives a succinct overview of the often frustrating process: cutoff scores, preparing (or not prepa...
Closing Doors
4/24/2012
The title of a Kevin Carey article in The New Republic is a question we’ve all been pondering for the past few years: “Why Are Community Colleges Being Treated Worst When They’re Needed Most?” Since the recession began, community colleges have been i...
Burning Bridges
4/20/2012
A new report released this week by Complete College America (CCA) drawing on recent Community College Research Center studies and data from CCA states, is recommending major changes to developmental education programs at two- and four-year colleges ...
Replicating Impact
4/18/2012
Today, we’re returning to our “SCALERS: Round 2” series. Originally created by Paul Bloom, the SCALERS model identifies seven organizational capacities that support the successful scaling of a social enterprise: Staffing, Communicating, Alliance-buil...
Come and Get It!
4/11/2012
Hey blog readers! There's some new material in the Resources section of the Developmental Education Initiative website. The DEI team at Cuyahoga Community College has agreed to share three pieces that they've developed as part of their DEI work. In t...
This Week in Links: Equity, Policy, Analytics, and Peeps!
4/5/2012
Sara Goldrick-Rab posted this week about the assault on community colleges (and, by extension, on equity): “That's right—students are showing up at ‘open door’ colleges and being effectively turned away. Welcome to the ‘new normal.’”
Getting Past ...
For the Reading List
3/29/2012
It’s a newsy week on Accelerating Achievement. Today, we’re highlighting recent releases from the Community College Research Center. And while we’ve not figured out how to provide a link that downloads directly to your brain, we hope that you’ll be a...
State Policy Update
3/28/2012
Our colleagues at Jobs for the Future have been compiling newsletters, writing reports, and posting blogs, all about developmental education, state policy, and every good thing. We wanted to be sure that you had the latest links to all this great mat...
OH - IO!
3/27/2012
Not only is the state representing in the Final Four, they're representing in developmental education reform. Last week in Community College Times, Madeline Patton featured three Ohio DEI colleges and three unique approaches to dev ed innovation. Pat...
Redesigning & Restructuring Math Emporium Facilities: Challenging, But Not Impossible
3/21/2012
Today, we’re returning to our “SCALERS: Round 2” series. Originally created by Paul Bloom, the SCALERS model identifies seven organizational capacities that support the successful scaling of a social enterprise: Staffing, Communicating, Alliance-bui...
Scaling Up at Grad Nation
3/20/2012
We’re at the 2012 Building a Grad Nation Summit, hosted by America’s Promise Alliance. According to board chair Alma Powell, building a grad nation is all about “bringing people together from all sectors of our communities to work in new, more coordi...
Announcing More to Most!
3/15/2012
We are delighted to announce the release of MDC’s latest publication, More to Most: Scaling Effective Community College Practices. More to Most is a guide for community colleges that are expanding small or pilot programs into larger, sustainable e...
One More D.R.E.A.M.: On the Road Again
3/9/2012
Today, one final dispatch from last week's trip to Dallas. Richard Hart, MDC communications director, wrote this after attending one of the fantastic concurrent sessions at D.R.E.A.M.
The most exciting thing I learned during a presentation last w...
I Had the Best DREAM!
3/2/2012
We’re back at MDC’s offices in Durham, NC after a great week in Dallas, TX for DREAM 2012. Our brains and notebooks are overflowing with ideas and observations, but here are some quick highlights:
Thursday’s lunch featured a great student panel—so ...
Cowboys and Mavericks and Educators! Oh My!
2/29/2012
This week, we’re in Dallas attending D.R.E.A.M., Achieving the Dream’s Annual Meeting on Student Success. We spent Tuesday with the 15 DEI colleges talking about the ideal pathway to completion for students that are underprepared for college-level wo...
I D.R.E.A.M. of Dallas
2/24/2012
We’ll be headed to Dallas next week for D.R.E.A.M., Achieving the Dream’s Annual Meeting on Student Success. Check out the agenda here; you’ll find many of our DEI colleges presenting on a variety of topics: scaling up math boot camps and accelerated...
Are We Riding the Wave of the Future?
2/22/2012
There are a lot of different ways that technology can influence classrooms, faculty, students, and campuses. In a Fast Company article last week, Michale Karnjanaprakorn presented a useful breakdown of the five buckets of technology innovation in edu...
This can save you money.
2/15/2012
Today’s post is our fourth installment of “SCALERS: Round 2.” Originally created by Paul Bloom at the Duke University Fuqua School of Business’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship,
the SCALERS model identifies seven organizational...
Links we like!
2/3/2012
A new study from CCCSE makes the case for mandatory requirements. Inside Higher Ed has the details: “Community colleges have a growing arsenal of tools that research shows will help students earn credentials—like academic goal-setting, student succe...
From the Shadow of the Everlasting Cascades
2/1/2012
It's time for another ATD/DEI State Policy Team meeting. ATD and DEI state policy teams have come to Seattle, WA, for two days of working, learning, and recommitting. Even the introductions were impressive as state team leads described their most sig...
Sir Linksalot
1/27/2012
Have you heard of flipped classrooms? Last week on CNN’s Schools of Thought blog, high school Principal Greg Green explained how his entire school has implemented the flipped class structure:
Teachers record their lectures using screen-capture softw...
SuccessNC
1/26/2012
Last week, the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) was featured in the Atlantic Cities series “The Next Metro Economy.” Bruce Katz of Brookings Institution and Judith Rodin, of the Rockefeller Foundation, lifted up ten innovative efforts ...
Many Happy Returns
1/20/2012
Today’s blog birthday post is brought to you by the letter S. We look back at Accelerating Achievement posts on two of our favorite topics: scaling and state policy.
In Scaling Up, we’ve been harvesting the latest thinking on scaling from the socia...
Birthday Wish: Equal Opportunity
1/19/2012
Today, Accelerating Achievement turns one. This week, we’re looking back at some of the year’s highlights and thinking about where the next year will take us.
There’s a lot going on in the DEI network of colleges, states, and partners. All year, we...