General Concerns

Whereas, SB 1143 (Liu, 2010) mandates that the California Community College System “establish a task force to examine specified best practices and models for accomplishing student success,” and the work of this task force is already in progress;

Whereas, Myriad forces from both within and without the California Community College System have attempted to define and suggest measurements for student success, leading to varying understandings and definitions of the term;

Whereas a number of organizations and interest groups are presenting themselves as leaders of change in California higher education, and

Whereas the faculty of the California community colleges have the expertise to understand current problems and to develop approaches to the changes that will best respond to the educational needs of California, and

Whereas the faculty are most interested in creating changes that are focused on the broadest range of student, community, and economic needs, and

Whereas, Countless conversations have still not resulted in any simple definition of student success;

Whereas, The breadth and depth of participants’ experiences and educational efforts is neither simple nor reducible to any simple definition; and

Whereas, The Accountability Report for the Community Colleges (ARCC) scorecard proposes that the Student Progress and Achievement Rates (SPAR) exclude those students who complete less than 6 units in less than 3 years;

Whereas, The goal of the California Community Colleges Basic Skills Initiative (BSI) is to improve student access and success by providing supplemental funding to address basic skills needs and to address training needs for faculty and staff in basic skills and English as a Second Language (ESL);

Whereas, Class caps are maximum student enrollment limits specified for each class, and class cap determinations have sometimes been made inconsistently on the basis of classroom size and other arbitrary factors;

Whereas, The enrollment management plans on many campuses have been responding to FTES enrollment funding caps by arbitrarily increasing class caps in order to increase perceived efficiency;

Whereas, The draft recommendations (as of September 30, 2011) of the California Community Colleges Task Force on Student Success (established in response to Senate Bill 1143, Liu, 2010) propose a complex package of integrated changes to the way the California community colleges currently function;

Whereas, Student success, specifically, and academic and professional matters more generally are areas in which primary responsibility has been granted to the local academic senate; and

Whereas, Distance Learning is recognized as a valid instructional modality in Title 5 Regulations, and increasing numbers of courses are offered in this manner by community colleges statewide both to meet the needs of students and to respond to identified administrative concerns about facilities, budget, or scheduling; Whereas, The Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) recently released a paper (The Master Plan at 50: Using Distance Education to Increase College Access and Efficiency) proposing the widespread use of distance education to alleviate perceived problems with access to com

Whereas, In the Garcetti v. Caballos court decision of 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court majority ruled that when public employees such as faculty speak, “pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline”;

Whereas, Adult education and community college noncredit programs share a common origin, both having emerged from the K-12 system in response to the particular needs of adult learners for educational options that are not part of credit programs and the future of these two types of programs is also intertwined;

Whereas, Both adult education and community college noncredit programs face similar funding challenges, with all state adult education funds now open to “flexibility” usage by underfunded K-12 districts and noncredit courses and programs receiving lesser funding;

Whereas, Various parties statewide, including the California Legislative Analyst’s Office and the Chancellor for California Community Colleges, have voiced concern that students accrue “excess units” beyond those they truly need for degree or certificate completion or for transfer (e.g., CCCCO Press Release, January 29, 2010), thus placing a financial burden on California taxpayers that those concerned believe serves no purpose;