It's Time to Provide Your Feedback

Some Background Info

You may or may not know that in California's community college system, every course is coded somewhat substantially for data reporting and collection purposes. Currently, CB21 requires colleges to code their basic skills courses using the following criteria:

• CB21-A for a course one level below the transferable level of a corresponding English course, for example.
• CB21-B for a course 2 levels below the transferable level of a corresponding English course.
• CB21-C for a course 3 levels below the transferable level of a corresponding English course.
• CB21-Y means not applicable; that is, the level of course is not one of the levels listed above, may be above level A (transferable) or below level C (more than 3 levels below transfer English).

Normally, few people care about this coding stuff. But that has changed ever since AB 1417, which requires that the community colleges annually report accountability data to the California Legislature; this is called the ARCC report. Subsequent to the first allocation of $33 million for the Basic Skills Initiative, AB 194 was passed requiring an annual supplemental report for basic skills accountability. Simply put, we now have to show how (and how soon) our students improve and progress from level to level, compared to other colleges in our peer group.

One of the greatest issues with the basic skills course levels coding is that there is little uniformity between campus’ levels due to a lack of a well-defined rubric for coding. A course coded at College A as 2 levels below can be vastly different than the same 2-levels-below-coded course at College B. This makes equivalency and comparability between campuses and their eventual ARCC metrics unreliable.

Another large issue is the difference between how campuses deliver basic skills curriculum with a more finely segmented level gradation. Some colleges may have 7 levels of ESL, for example, whereas another has 4 in ESL. Regardless of how the levels are locally defined, well-established and mutually-identifiable levels that locals can “map” to that create a systemwide set of comparable levels must occur in order for the accountability of basic skills students and expenditures to be accurate.

The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges has led the way in successfully designing and adopting a set of faculty-driven CB21 rubrics for credit courses.

The ASCCC is focusing its attention on noncredit. In May, a noncredit CB21 meeting was convened in Sacramento, where noncredit faculty came together in the first stage to create noncredit rubrics describing the levels and progression through basic skills courses including Adult Basic Ed and ESL. The faculty used the credit rubrics as a reference and created rubrics appropriate to those levels of noncredit leading to transfer-level courses.

Noncredit Feedback Needed

Now the ASCCC needs your help to finalize the statewide CB21 rubrics to be used to code noncredit courses and track noncredit student progress in ESL, Adult Basic Ed, and other disciplines. These codes are used for noncredit accountability reports to the state and legislature, so it is critical that we are able to more accurately demonstrate student success in noncredit!

Below is a reproduction of a message from Janet Fulks, the Academic Senate Noncredit Committee Chair:

" This very valuable work will require some of your time, but we really need the input from you, the faculty discipline experts.

Here is what we need you to do:

1. Review the background on the CB 21 project, goals and guidelines – at this website http://www.cccbsi.org/bsi-rubric-information
   
2. Get copies of the course outlines you teach. (You can find your Palomar ESL COR--course outline of record--by clicking here.)
   
3. Review the DRAFT noncredit rubrics, found on the same website http://www.cccbsi.org/bsi-rubric-information and determine whether the current rubrics adequately describe outcomes or exit skills common to your courses at the appropriate levels. Remember:
   
1. The rubrics are not comprehensive of everything taught in the courses.
2. The rubrics describe exit skills or outcomes that would be universally common among community colleges.
3. Rubrics were better if the descriptions are similar at each level and increase in expertise, rather than just being unrelated expectations.
   
4. Use the survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=CUIVYVHYZi8ZixsYgLIOVg_3d_3d to give us feedback to improve the rubrics before September 15.

There will not be time for further revision or vetting of these rubrics in the noncredit field, so it is very important for each noncredit campus to give feedback online."

Why Should We Do This and Why Now?

• If faculty do not define these curricular issues, it will be done by non-faculty outsiders.
  
• This will provide useful data to all schools.
  
• The process will help to make the basic skills pathway clearer to our institutions, students, and outside entities.
  
• The process of discussing basic skills courses, how they align, and what we expect as faculty, will benefit our students and our professional work.