General Concerns

Whereas, Supplemental Instruction (copyrighted by the University of Missouri-Kansas City) is a defined approach to student success that is targeted toward courses that are traditionally difficult, uses specially trained peer (student) learning leaders, uses faculty-developed material, and is designed to address retention, transfer rates, degree or certificate completion, and the disconnect that can occur between disciplines, such as specific math skills needed to pass a chemistry course;

Whereas, The recommendations (as of September 30, 2011) of the California Community College Student Success Task Force (established in response to Senate Bill 1143, Liu, 2010) calls for a refocusing and reorienting of institutions towards student success;

Whereas, Faculty are deeply concerned and offended by the document’s suggestion that we need to refocus on student success; and

Whereas, Student success has always been a focus of faculty and our efforts;

Whereas, The California Community College’s CalWORKs program currently provides or is directly responsible for service coordination with local counties and college student services units, academic counseling and vocational planning, matriculation guidance, childcare services, job preparation and search, subsidized work placement both on and off campus, instruction, document completion, data management, post-employment, and other services, which are used by California counties to meet their federal required work participation rates;

Whereas, Many California community colleges have locally established, researched, vetted, and validated placement tests that place students into classes in which they are most likely to be successful;

Whereas, Assessment for placement is closely related to matters of prerequisites and curriculum and is therefore clearly an academic and professional matter; and

Whereas, Assessment instruments that do not align with established curricula are liable to increase misplacement of students into courses and therefore hinder student success;

Whereas, At its October 15, 2011, meeting the California Community College Independents (CCCI) passed a “Resolution in Response to the Draft Recommendations of the California Community College Task Force on Student Success”;

Whereas, The positions expressed in the CCCI resolution are fully consistent with those of the Academic Senate; and

Whereas, The CCCI resolution highlights in clear, articulate, and detailed terms both the positive aspects of the task force recommendations and the areas in which the recommendations are problematic;

Whereas, Due to severe fiscal constraints and perceived abuse by students, continuing-student registration priorities are being restricted locally to give low registration priority to students who have attained excessive units, and a regulatory priority limit of 100 units has been recommended (September 30, 2011, recommendation 3.1) by the California Community College Student Success Task Force (established in response to Senate Bill 1143, Liu, 2010);

Whereas, The recommendations (as of September 30, 2011) of the California Community College Student Success Task Force (established in response to Senate Bill 1143, Liu, 2010) are being vetted across the state through a variety of venues in which faculty can provide feedback on the recommendations; and

Whereas, Many of the recommendations of the California Community College Student Success Task Force fall within academic and professional matters;

Whereas, At least 57 of the California community colleges offer official honors transfer programs with identified entrance and completion policies;

Whereas, Currently California community college students have no way to indicate completion of an honors transfer program, including at least 15 semester units in honors level work, on their California State University (CSU) application; and

Whereas, Recommendation 3.1 (draft dated September 30, 2011) of the California Community Colleges Task Force on Student Success (established in response to Senate Bill 1143, Liu, 2010) states that “Continuing students should lose enrollment priority if they

Whereas, MyEdu is a commercial company that has recently expressed interest in collaborating with California community colleges in providing students with scheduling and educational planning tools;

Whereas, MyEdu aggregates publicly available scheduling data from college websites along with professors' grade distributions by course (data that districts are legally required to provide to the public) as well as student reviews of professors from third-party web sites;