Not only are community colleges making great progress toward improving student completion success, they are also making huge strides in urging education policymakers, nationally, to develop a more accurate and effective methodology for tracking graduation rates and other measures of completion success. Maryland’s community colleges welcomed the news this week that a federal committee’s just-released draft report recommends to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan a broad series of changes in measuring completion success, including that of fully counting students who transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions.
“That move would be a victory for community colleges,” notes an article in Inside Higher Education about the recommendations. Maryland’s community colleges have been in the forefront of this issue, as noted on this blog and reflected in a commentary piece authored by Dr. Craig Claggett of Carroll Community College, which ran earlier this fall in that same publication. A final report will be transmitted to Secretary Duncan within the next few weeks.
