San Joaquin Delta College officials and representatives from 112 other community colleges released the first Student Success Scorecard on Tuesday, April 9, with college officials applauding the state law that established the groundbreaking new student accountability performance tool.
“The scorecard represents one of the crowning pieces of reform outlined in the 2012 Student Success Act,” said Superintendent/President Kathy Hart. “We are proud of the transparency the scorecard provides to our students and the greater public, and we intend to use the data to help us identify areas where we can improve programs and services for our students.”
Major findings in the first annual scorecard for Delta College indicate that:
- The college’s persistence rate, measured by students enrolling in three consecutive terms, is slightly higher for under-prepared students (73%) than those who enter college prepared (71%), suggesting the college is doing a good job providing support services and classes for students needing basic skills improvements. Persistence rates of the entire state system were at 65%.
- Degree completion and transfer rates are 23% higher for students who enter Delta College ready to take college-level classes than those who do not. The completion gap runs from 65% for those who enter college-prepared to 42% for other students. Completion is tracked over a six-year time frame, in large part because many community college students attend part-time.
- While there are wide disparities between ethnic groups on the scorecard’s major completion benchmark, Delta College’s gaps are lower than the statewide gaps in the community college system. For example, across all students, Asians have the highest completion rate at Delta (57%), while Pacific Islander students and African Americans completed at a rate of only 36 and 38% respectively. This 21 point “achievement gap” was smaller than the statewide gap of 28 points between Asians and African Americans (67 and 39%).
The scorecard website allows anyone to download five years’ worth of data, tracking cohorts of entering students who started at the college as early as the 2002-03 school year, up to the 2006-07 school year. Some of the college’s data trend downward slightly. For instance, overall completion rates fell almost three percentage points during that time. However, the percentage of students completing 30 units jumped 6 percentage points across that time frame. This suggests that future iterations of the scorecard will show higher completion rates.
Delta’s Board President Lisa Turner praised the faculty and staff at the college for their efforts in fostering student success. “We know we have some progress to make in closing the equity gap at the college, but the scorecard shows how strong our college is, and how committed the staff and faculty are to student success.
Delta officials were intimately involved in the development of the scorecard metrics. Interim Vice President of Instruction Matt Wetstein served on a statewide task force that developed the draft proposals that resulted in the final metrics included in the scorecard.
“The scorecard measures represent some widely used indicators of student milestones of achievement,” Wetstein said. “When the task force was working through these issues, there was a constant emphasis on ensuring we were looking at the right indicators, and we were determined to track the data across different age, ethnic and gender categories.”
Delta’s Acting Assistant Superintendent/Vice President of Student Success Michael Kerns highlighted the college’s strong student support programs as contributing to the college’s high rates of completion and persistence. “We provide a suite of support services to students, and that, coupled with a strong instructional program and caring faculty really tells a wonderful story about the impact of the college on students in the region.” Kerns has been serving on a statewide task force that is helping to implement initiatives in the Student Success Act of 2012.
Delta officials recognize that there are some disappointing elements in the scorecard. “We know we always have to improve our rates for students across all groups,” Wetstein said. “Many factors contribute to student success, not the least of which are socio-economic status and prior K-12 student success. Having said this, we have a mind-set at the college that responds well to this kind of data, and it is heartening to see the college address its challenges head on.”
Wetstein pointed out that recent data on patterns of student success showed that course completion rates jumped 5 percentage points in the Fall 2012 term, and that the rates improved across all ethnic groups and across most academic disciplines. While those data are not part of the scorecard released Tuesday, Wetstein suggested that the college’s greater emphasis on transfer and career technical course offerings during the tail end of the recession might help explain why rates improved so much. The college also revamped its registration priority policies, and new math placement levels were instituted at the college that term.
“We have a great college, and our recent data reflect an improvement that is something to celebrate,” Hart said. “The scorecard can help us celebrate our strengths, but it also helps us identify the areas of the educational river where we can shore up the banks.”
To view San Joaquin Delta College’s Student Success Scorecard, click here.
For more information, contact: Dr. Matt Wetstein, Interim Vice President of Instruction, 209-954-5047, [email protected].