Access in Community College Policy: An Examination of the Social and Political Space Afforded Disabled Students in California Community College Policies

Bibliography

The Role of the Community College in Teacher Education (New Directions/or Community Colleges Series No. 121) by Barbara K. Townsend and Jan M. Ignash. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, 2003, 113 pages, $28, softcover, ISBN 0194-3081. Reviewed by Audrey J. Jaeger.Teacher shortages across the nation have renewed interest in involving community college systems in the efforts to expand the teacher pipeline. Many states are recognizing that community colleges, with their tradition of responding quickly and flexibly to community needs, are a logical solution to unprecedented teacher shortages. In The Role of the Community College in Teacher Education, editors Barbara Townsend and Jan Ignash have compiled case studies from six states, reviewed national standards for teacher programs, and provided additional resources to guide community college leaders, state higher agencies, legislators, and others interested in improving and expanding the community college role in teacher education (p. 3).This volume offers practical information on program structures, factors, and stakeholders that can affect community college decisions to participate in teacher preparation programs. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the traditional and non-traditional ways that community colleges are involved in teacher education. This chapter concisely addresses the multitude of issues surrounding teacher and offers illustrative examples from the case studies (Missouri, California, Maryland, Arizona, Florida, and Texas) presented later in the volume. The case studies show both the unique and similar ways states have approached the community college role in teacher education.Throughout the text, the pros and cons of community college involvement in teacher are discussed. From the viewpoint of proponents, community colleges serve a high number of minority students, and for that reason they have the potential to increase the diversity of classroom teachers. The community college can serve as an important resource for increasing and maintaining the teacher pool. Community colleges often develop strong partnerships with local entities. Students in teacher programs can benefit from these partnerships through job placements in local school systems. Finally, community colleges offer a more affordable option for many students. From the viewpoint of opponents to community college involvement in expanding the teacher pipeline, the addition of teacher programs, especially those leading to a baccalaureate degree, may serve further to muddy the waters of the community college mission. These efforts could increase feelings of competition or distrust between community colleges and four-year institutions, causing other articulation and transfer programs to suffer. Another possible repercussion of adding baccalaureate programs is the creation of a two-tier faculty system within the community college. Unlike the majority of their colleagues, most faculty in a teacher preparation program would need to hold doctorates for program accreditation purposes.The case studies within the volume offer details on a variety of program structures for teacher preparation across the United States. One issue at the center of teacher discussions is articulation. These agreements bring their own set of challenges, as seen in Missouri's case in Chapter 2. Before the state began to respond to the national standards movement for approval of four-year teacher programs, community college students in Missouri were already experiencing problems transferring to four-year college teacher programs. The case reviews how community colleges were strategically brought into the conversation in a proactive attempt to ease some of the tensions of student transfer. A more seamless articulation agreement between a community college and a particular four-year college is described in Chapter 3. This program, Teacher Training Academy at Cerritos Community College in California, has been in existence for five years and is one of the oldest described in this volume. …

ABSTRACTAs Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Scholars, we understand that community colleges can be sites where harm and pain are reproduced for Students of Color. Racial microaggressions, a form of systemic everyday racism, adversely impact the academic experiences of community college Students of Color, producing high pushout and low completion rates. Knowing the detrimental academic consequences of racial microaggressions, we pay close attention to the largest system of higher education in the United States—the California Community College (CCC), which served close to 1.4 million Students of Color across 116 community colleges in the 2022–2023 academic year. We support the recently implemented CCC Ethnic Studies Area F requirement by advocating for Ethnic Studies courses, a form of inclusive and antiracist education. As part of our advocacy work, we ask a preliminary question: Can Ethnic Studies curricular, pedagogical, and relational practices in the community college classroom mitigate the dehumanization and consequent academic toll on Students of Color? In this manuscript, we theorize an Ethnic Studies Education (ESE) and argue that it can serve as a racial microaffirmative response to the dehumanization of everyday racism found in the community college classroom.

Recently Published Dissertations on Community and Junior Colleges

According to the U.S. Census (2000), 42 percent of adults in the United States between the ages of 25 and 64 have no more than a high school education (authors’ calculations). Unfortunately, however, most new jobs and the vast majority of jobs that pay wages sufficient to support a family require at least some education beyond high school (Carnevale & Derochers, 2003), and low educational attainment is associated with high rates of unemployment and poverty. Community colleges are an important entry point to postsecondary education for adults with no previous college education or even a high school diploma. In Fall 2002, for example, adults between the ages of 25 and 64 represented 35 percent of fulltime equivalent (FTE) enrollments at two-year public colleges, compared with only 15 percent of FTE undergraduate enrollments at four-year public institutions (authors’ calculations, based on U.S. Department of Education, 2001). Moreover, more than two-thirds of the community college students who entered postsecondary education at age 25 or older were low income (authors’ calculations based on “Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study” [BPS:96/01], 2003) The potential of community colleges to serve as a “pathway” for lowskill adults to college and career-path employment, therefore, is evident. Across the nation, several major projects are underway whose goal is to develop policies and practices supportive of this role. Funded by national foundations, these initiatives include the Ford Foundation’s Bridges to Opportunity initiative and the National Governor’s Association’s Pathways to Advancement project, funded by Lumina Foundation for Education. Despite this interest, relatively little is known about the unique experiences and the educational and employment outcomes of adults who enter community college with limited education. We do know that their experiences and outcomes differ from those of traditional college-aged students. Compared with community college students who enrolled soon after high school (at ages 18-24), those who start later (at ages 25-64) are more likely to earn a certificate and less likely to earn an associate degree. The late starters are also far less likely to transfer to a four-year institution and earn a bachelor’s degree. Indeed, among students who entered a community college for the first time in 1995-96, 60% of older first-time students did not earn any credential or transfer to a baccalaureate program after six years, compared with 40 percent of younger, first-time students (authors’ calculations, based on BPS:96/01, 2003). This Brief summarizes findings from a new study that seeks to fill information gaps about older community college students. Researchers used student record information from the Washington State Community and Technical College System to examine the educational experience and attainment as well as the employment and earnings of a sample of adult students, five years after first enrolling. The students in the sample were age 25 or older with, at most, a high school education. The study was conducted by staff at the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC), with assistance from the Community College Research Center, as part of Ford’s Bridges to Opportunity initiative. Its goal was to provide educators throughout Washington’s community and technical college system with a detailed profile of their low-skill adult students, who make up about one-third of the approximately 300,000 students served by the system annually. The study also sought to identify the critical points where adult students drop out or fail to advance to the next level in order to help SBCTC staff stimulate thinking among educators throughout the system about how to bridge those gaps and thereby facilitate student advancement.

Objective/Research Question: The purpose of this grounded theory study is to explore how community college CTE faculty members aim to support disabled students in their career pursuits. Methods: This constructivist grounded theory study entailed interviewing 20 faculty members across two southeastern United States community colleges. Results: Findings unveil the prominence of community college faculty holding mixed perceptions and limited understandings of disabled individuals’ experiences in CTE fields, tending to weed disabled students out of these professions, and possessing various ideas for how to better enable disabled students’ success, including bolstering disability awareness and acceptance. Conclusions/Contributions. These insights contribute to the formation of the 3Ps Model of Faculty Professional Engagement with Minoritized Students that will guide researchers in how to understand the processes that shape faculty engagement with minoritized students. The study also reveals opportunities for growth in how community college faculty and practitioners address issues surrounding building up disabled community college students’ employment pathways.

Most of the research on Black students in higher education today reflects their educational trajectories at predominantly White public and private four-year nonprofit institutions and historically Black colleges and universities. While this scholarship has contributed to our understanding of educational experiences and inequalities, it does not adequately capture the reality and scope of Black students in the 21st century higher education landscape.More Black students are enrolling in and at record rates in the for-profit and community sector. In 1982 enrollment after high school was 40 percent for Blacks compared with 53 percent for White students (Baum, 2013). In 2011 these rates were nearly the same, as 65 percent of Blacks enrolled compared with 69 percent of Whites (Baum, 2013). Since 1995, 82 percent of new White enrollments have gone to the 468 most selective colleges, while 68 percent of new African American enrollments have gone to the two-year open-access schools (forprofit and community colleges; Camevale & Strohl, 2013). Some states boast exceedingly high numbers. California community colleges and for-profit colleges account for close to 70 percent of Black student enrollment in postsecondary education (Rooks, 2013). This commentary serves as a close examination of the community and for-profit sector that continue to play an instrumental role in shaping access, equity, and educational outcomes for Black students in contemporary American higher education.Community Colleges: An OverviewCommunity colleges in the United States have been described many ways over the years, as democracy's college, the door college, and the people's college (Pusser & Levin, 2009). Community colleges offer a variety of services, including academic and career counseling, tutoring, and developmental education, as part of their effort to respond to a wide range of student readiness (Iloh, in press). Today community colleges serve a wide variety of functions in the educational marketplace and their importance in the economic development of this country is well-documented (Morrice, 2011). Recently, as a part of his effort to build a stronger foundation that will allow Americans to lead in the global economy, President Barack Obama announced an initiative to strengthen our nation's community colleges, and called for five million additional graduates by 2020 (Brandon, 2009).Community students are usually accepted on a first-come-first-serve basis, up to the capacity of the institution (Bailey, Badway & Gumport, 2001). In addition to their commitment to meeting their local communities' educational needs, community colleges seek to serve all who have the need and desire to participate in postsecondary education (Gleazer, 1980; Mullin, 2010). These open admissions policies have contributed to their high demand as well as concern over their funding and capacity constraints. The institutions are of particular importance as they are the primary source of postsecondary education opportunity for students of color, low-income students, and students who attended poorly funded high schools (Rosenbaum, Deil-Amen & Person, 2009). Unfortunately, many community colleges today face a funding crisis, enrollment growth that strains capacity, unsustainable rates of developmental education, unpredictable shifts in labor market demand, growing competition for enrollments and revenue from for-profit providers, and a loss of leadership of daunting proportions through retirements (Pusser & Levin, 2009).Education researchers and policymakers often debate about the role and utility of community colleges. Advocates of community colleges assert that these institutions are usually more affordable, provide the option of transfer, and students can earn short-term certificates or associate degrees that prepare them for specific occupations. Proponents have also argued that community colleges serve a vital role for some student populations (Dougherty, 1994; Morrice, 2011). …

This article argues for the importance of integrating a focus on language, literacy, and academic development for United States-educated language minority (US-LM) students, sometimes called Generation 1.5. It describes four initiatives at community colleges in California that aim to do so. US-LM students have completed some K–12 schooling in the United States, but their English is considered by community college faculty, staff, or assessment measures to be inadequate for college-level instruction. Although enacting effective language and literacy support for Generation 1.5 has centered on debates about whether these students belong in English as a Second Language (ESL) or remedial English courses, how they can best be identified and tested, or whether they should be taught in separate classes, we argue that more fundamental shifts are needed. Instead of conceiving of students’ language and literacy development solely in terms of progress through ESL or remedial English sequences, educators designing support for US-LM students must also consider larger contexts of students’ academic progress, promoting students’ development of language and literacy for success in academic and professional settings as well as progress toward completing credits required for associate degrees, certificates, and transfer to four-year institutions.

The California Community College system is the largest system of higher education in the nation, with 2.6 million students attending 112 colleges. Community colleges are integral to workforce development, economic recovery, and an accessible and affordable gateway for transfer to four-year universities. While community college student population is very diverse, executive leadership is not necessarily representative of these shifting demographics. Organizations and aspiring leaders may not be prepared for the mass vacancies created by impending retirements of executive leadership positions (ELP) at community colleges. This study sought, through the counterstories of female community college presidents of color, to identify challenges and opportunities for California community colleges to develop representative and sustainable executive leadership and organizational cultures inclusive and supportive of aspiring female community college presidents of color. Specifically, this study sought to illuminate various career paths of female leaders of color in higher education, as well as unique personal, professional, and organizational challenges that may hinder their ascension. Setting the context for this study are the shifting demographics of community college campuses, impending mass retirements of community college presidents in the next five years, and organizational culture and practices that may impede the ascension of female administrators of color that could present a challenge for organizations to foster sustainable and representative leadership. Within a conceptual context of Critical Race Theory, narrative counterstories illustrate the career paths and experiences of female community college presidents of color and allow the analysis of organizational culture factors to understand if and how organizational and cultural systems at California community colleges may exist that hinder the recruitment, support, and professional ascension of female community college presidents of color.

This paper describes a summit on Community Colleges in the Evolving STEM Education Landscape organized by a committee of the National Research Council (NRC) and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and held at the Carnegie Institution for Science on December 15, 2011. This summit followed a similar event organized by Dr. Jill Biden, spouse of the Vice President, and held at the White House in October 2010, which sought to bring national attention to the changing missions and purposes of community colleges in contemporary American society.1 The NRC/NAE event built on the White House summit, while focusing on the changing roles of community colleges in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. An in-depth summary of the summit was prepared by the NRC and NAE for publication in late Spring 2012 by the National Academies Press (NRC and National Academy of Engineering, 2012 ). This paper provides a synopsis of that report, which is available at www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13399, and emphasizes how we can use the report to improve STEM education for our students, but also how much progress still needs to be made to realize this ideal.

The guided pathways reform movement promises to redesign community colleges to improve student achievement by restructuring students' journeys through an institution. As colleges implement these reforms, they must engage an overworked faculty fatigued by change initiatives that have been implemented with varying degrees of faculty participation and success. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the alignment between the strategies used to implement guided pathways-based organizational change and faculty engagement in guided pathways reform initiatives within the organizational culture of two California community colleges with the goal to understand the role of organizational culture in transformational change and identify best practices in faculty engagement. This study was guided by an overarching research question and two subquestions. The overarching research question was: How has the alignment of organizational change strategies and the organizational culture of two California community colleges selected to participate in the national implementation of guided pathways influenced faculty participation in the reforms and the success of the implementation? The subquestions were: 1. How have the community colleges involved their faculty members in the organizational change initiative? 2. How have the community colleges' organizational strategies to implement guided pathways-based change aligned with their organizational cultures? Data were collected using one-on-one, semi-structured interviews, artifact analysis, and observations. The findings derived from analysis of the two cases included: (a) the design of the implementation had a significant impact on the process, (b) cultural factors at each site strongly impacted the implementation, (c) resistance to change emerged at each campus, (d) centering of the student experience was crucial to advancing implementation, and (e) building and sustaining momentum was important for each college. The study found that both cases utilized implementation strategies for guided pathways that were congruent with their organizational cultures and encouraged faculty participation. The study confirmed that transformational change such as guided pathways that seeks to reform community colleges requires significant faculty participation and leadership to have any chance of success. Keywords: guided pathways, community college, organizational culture, organizational change, faculty

Latino students represent the fastest-growing population in the state of California, the United States, and the California Community College (CCC) system. Unfortunately, compared to other ethnic groups, Latino community college students continue to lag academically. Given the importance of counseling services and the scarce research related to community college students and community college counseling services, this study explored how 26 first-generation, low-income, Latino community college students perceived, negotiated, and developed a relationship with their community college counselor. Using a qualitative grounded theory research design, participants’ counseling experiences were captured through face-to-face semistructured in-depth interviews, and a theoretical model was developed. This study extended the literature on the importance of community college counseling services in assisting and motivating students to reach transfer and graduation and emphasized students’ positive and negative counseling experiences. The research findings suggest a need to improve community college counseling services. Thus, based on the research findings and other published research, this study proposes a set of the following: (a) guidelines for applying cultura (culture) to community college counseling that can assist relationship building between students and counselors; (b) questions that can be included in students’ evaluation of counselors; (c) counselor interview questions that may elicit behavioral response and assess cultural competence; and (d) community college students’ preferred counselor characteristics that may be used by hiring committees.

Dewey, Implementation, and Creating a Democratic Civic University

Perhaps the most vigorous movement in administration in recent years has been directed toward the development of a comprehensive theory capable of generating both hypotheses for guiding research and principles for guiding practice. Despite many specific advances in special areas, such as hospital administration, public administration, business administraton, and educational administration, there still is no general conceptual framework for systematizing and interrelating our knowledge within and among these areas. It is still impossible to speak of administration in terms that would be acceptable to, or for that matter even readily understandable by, students and practitioners in the several special fields. This failure to conceptualize administration on a general theoretical level has been a major obstacle to the development of administration as a rigorous discipline, and the elaboration of theory is accordingly receiving increased attention both in "research" and "applied" administrative settings. The purpose of the present paper is twofold: (a) to describe a socio-psychological theory of social behavior having broad application to the area of administration and (b) to illustrate the application of the theory to major issues in administration. The four major issues considered here are: the problem of institutional and individual conflict; the problem of staff effectiveness, efficiency, and satis-

Community college counselors play an important role in supporting students’ decision-making as they navigate toward varied academic goals. Most community college students intend to transfer and thus must navigate the regulations and policies of two institutions, and many follow nonlinear enrollment patterns. Knowledgeable, personalized advising is an important resource for students in community colleges. Yet, counselors often juggle multiple roles, manage large counselor-to-student caseloads with limited resources, and must understand and meet the needs of a growing diverse student body. This study examines the factors that affect community college counselors’ ability to assist community college students in navigating multiple institutions at once while taking classes at a four-year university through a policy called cross-enrollment. To do so, we employed focus group interviews with 29 community college counselors from three community colleges in California. We found that institutional resources and support, cross-campus collaborations, counselors’ perception of the benefits and challenges associated with cross-enrollment, and counselors’ perception of the ideal cross-enrollment student were factors that affected counselors’ ability and willingness to facilitate cross-enrollment efforts. The findings suggest that improving the uptake of cross-enrolling is contingent on institutions improving their cross-institutional collaborations and providing community college counselors with adequate professional development and resources on the policy.