21st Century Learning Outcomes Project
FOOTHILL COLLEGE is working in partnership with the League for Innovation on the 21st Century Learning Outcomes Project, a three-year project funded by The Pew Charitable Trust. The League of Innovation selected 16 community colleges to participate in a network of highly committed two-year colleges that are designing and testing innovative performance-based methods for defining, delivering, assessing student learning, and documenting and certifying learning in ways other than grades and course credit. The long-range vision of this project is to foster the establishment of new standards and documentation for student learning in the first two years of undergraduate education.

Currently in year two of the project, Foothill is engaged in activities related to redefine what knowledge, skills, and abilities graduates should have to succeed in the 21st Century. The goal of these activities is to bring about curriculum transformation to ensure that all students are prepared for societal, technical, and workforce changes that are underway. Specifically, Foothill is helping to design a set of core competencies in communication skills, critical and analytical thinking, computation skills, and community responsibility. Working within existing governance structures and other appropriate committees, Foothill seeks to ensure that an appropriate mix of these competencies are taught in approved degree, certificate, and transfer programs.

Project on Good Works
DE ANZA COLLEGE has been invited to participate in the Project on Good Works, a national study on excellence in higher education jointly conducted by Stanford, Claremont Graduate University and Harvard. De Anza was identified by a panel of experts as an excellent provider of undergraduate education. Funded by the Hewlett and Ford Foundations, the project will interview individuals at De Anza who have contributed to the college's exemplary standing among institutions of higher learning. Interviews will be directed toward understanding the goals and commitments of those responsible for exemplary work in higher education; the key issues, pressures, and opportunities that they face today; and the ways that they are responding to those forces. The project is coordinated by Susan Verducci, a research associate at the Center on Adolescence at Stanford. The Project seeks to understand the issues, pressures, and opportunities faced by leaders and innovators in higher education, to identify the practices that allow them to pursue work that is excellent in quality and responsible to the needs of the broader society, and to establish procedures to encourage more good work in the future.

A New Look at the 'New Majority' in California Community Colleges:
Keeping the Promise Alive for Students of Color and Immigrants
DE ANZA COLLEGE is one of nine colleges participating in a statewide research project conducted by the nonprofit organization, California Tomorrow. The goals of this two-year research project are to:

1. Provide comprehensive, in-depth information, currently not widely available, on the experiences of students of color and immigrants in the California Community College system, their perspectives on the barriers and supports they encounter in this system, and the system's responses to diversity.

2. Stimulate dialogue, attention and action to the issues raised by the research at the policy level and to inform specific policy initiatives such as the new K-16 Master Plan for Education and the Partnership for Excellence.

3. Foster dialogue, attention and action to the issues raised by the research among community college faculty, staff and administrators in order to help improve services "on the ground" for students of color and immigrants.

A literature review and scan of the policy context will be conducted along with an analysis of available system-wide data on student participation, completion and transfer rates; documentation of the use and perceived effectiveness of student support, outreach and retention programs; and an analysis of the diversity-focused professional development available and efforts to diversify the faculty. Information on the project is available at http://www.californiatomorrow.org.

Information Systems and Decision-Making Research Project
FOOTHILL DE ANZA COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT has partnered with Teachers College, Columbia University to conduct a research study that looks at the combined effect of the increased demand for student accountability measures (such as Partnership for Excellence) and the desire for internal research that informs decision-making at the community college. The project is supported by an outside grant through Teachers College. The research has several components, including a 10-year retrospective longitudinal study of educational outcomes at both Foothill and De Anza. The longitudinal study is driven by the desire to have a better understanding of how to reduce the performance gaps that exist between students underrepresented in higher education and the rest of the student population we serve; how to accommodate students in terms of learning styles, goals,and needs; and how to develop ways to evaluate successful strategies for people who do not meet the traditional college student characteristics.

Team members from the project have also been working with the district and each campus to develop campus and district-wide outcome measurements for Partnership for Excellence funded projects. At a meta level, this project intends to design a national model for the use of educational research and information systems in decision making and policy setting to enhance student success. There is a growing need for research that will allow community colleges to assess the effectiveness of their programs and to understand and document their value-added in terms of their impact on students. This is particularly important as systems of higher education across the country find themselves in tremendous flux, both in terms of their mission and purpose, as well as in changing demographics.

For more information about the research project, please contact Lisa Petrides, the principal investigator for the grant, at lap52@columbia.edu.

Transitions and Tarpits: Access to Higher Education and the Silicon Valley 2010 Vision
PRESIDENT MARTHA KANTER and Dr. Linda Murray, Superintendent of the San Jose Unified School District undertook a critical analysis of the education pipeline in the Silicon Valley and found that many students of color were falling off the college track. Dr.Kanter was afforded the opportunity as a visiting research associate at the University of Santa Cruz's new Center for Justice, Tolerance and Community, to pursue an exploratory study of the specific barriers and opportunities that affect the transition of high school students to college. Specifically, she studied how the higher education community can better lead and connect youth to educational opportunity and, therefore, to resources, networks, and future economic advancement.
Kanter's work examined the wide disparity across ethnic groups for students in the Silicon Valley in meeting college entrance requirements. For example, 66% of Asians and 49% of Whites completed the course requirements for UC/CSU entrance in 1999, compared to 20% for Latinos, 22% for African Americans, and 21% for Pacific Islanders. According to the California Department of Education, 18,400 juniors were in the pipeline during 1999-00, but less than half took the SAT1 in the fall. Most noticeably, less than one-third of Latino 11th graders took the SAT1, compared to two-thirds of Asian and White students. She also found that transfer requirements and articulation agreements are often unclear to students and parents; students and their parents are not provided with easy-to-understand information about the road to college; students and parents are often unaware of the availability of financial aid and supportive services opportunities for students in Santa Clara County high schools. One of the goals of De Anza's Master Plan is to "improve the student success rates of all ethnic, gender, and disability groups for all major indicators of student outcomes so that they will be comparably high with no more than a 5% variance between each group. Said Kanter, "Without dramatic improvements, we cannot attain our Master Plan goals."

Among the solutions proposed by Dr.Kanter are:

1. A redesign of the high school report card to include details of the student's completion of A-F requirements,

2. The development of a universal college application that is given to all ninth graders with detailed multilingual information about eligibility requirements,

3. A universal English and mathematics placement test designed by UC, CSU and the community colleges,

4. Individualized education portfolios for each student (K-16),

5. Easy co-enrollments, joint degrees, and accelerated programs, and

6. Increased parent education about college in neighborhoods.