Strategic Plan Report

Relationship With K-12 System

Establishing Clear Standards of College Readiness
Helping High School Students Aspire and Prepare for College
No Dropouts - Combined High School Completion/College Readiness Courses
Improving Teacher Education and Expanding the Role of Education Schools

States have long recognized that raising the educational attainment of the citizenry requires close collaboration between primary and secondary and higher education. Most states have some version of Ohio’s Partnership for Continued Learning, a statutory body chaired by the Governor that includes the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Chancellor, legislative, education and business leaders. The goal of the Partnership is to identify and support policies and practices that build an effective educational pipeline from pre-school through higher education.

Ohio’s higher education system must take greater initiative to advance this collaboration. As the state’s public system of higher education, the University System of Ohio will help students prepare for college and raise the educational aspirations of all Ohioans.

Establishing Clear Standards of College Readiness

KEY STRATEGY: Clear standards of college readiness will be established.

Clear Standards of College Readiness While it is common to speak about the extent to which high school graduates are college ready, higher education has in fact not clearly identified what “college ready” means. This plan adopts a clear definition so that higher education can immediately begin working with parents, students, teachers, and counselors to help students get ready for college.

Ideally, a standard for college readiness should be fully aligned with what high schools expect students to know when they graduate. This is the goal of the Ohio Department of Education and the Board of Regents.

However, it will still be some time before such a comprehensive alignment is possible. The urgency of this plan requires the state to have an interim strategy. Fortunately, the state’s Articulation and Transfer Council has, at the direction of the General Assembly, been considering this subject, and has made a recommendation regarding a statewide placement standard for entrance into the first college level courses. The Chancellor has accepted this recommendation, and the Board of Regents, in partnership with the Ohio Department of Education, will begin designing and implementing strategies that help students prepare for and meet this standard.

It is important to understand that this is not an admission standard for college. As noted above, all high school graduates will be admitted to the community college of their choice. Some universities will likely have admission standards below this level as well. However, those students who do not meet the standard should expect to be enrolled in remedial help in one or more areas of college work. The goal of identifying this standard is to give all students the knowledge of what is required to avoid the need for remedial education, thus saving money and time toward a college degree. The University System of Ohio will be a leader in helping students meet and exceed this standard before entering college.

Helping High School Students Aspire and Prepare for College

Another way to help students prepare and succeed in college is to encourage them to meet the standard of college readiness early and take college courses and advanced placement courses leading to college credit, while still in high school. These programs help encourage students to go to college, give them confidence that they can do college work, and help reduce the cost of a college education. They may also help some students remain engaged in education during their senior year of high school.

Early College Credit and Seniors to Sophomores Program

KEY STRATEGY: Seniors to Sophomores is an early college credit program, which will bring qualified high school seniors to college campuses, allowing them to earn a full year of academic credit for free. The program will also drive the strategy to increase participation and awareness of the state’s other early college credit options.

Ohio has lagged behind other states in implementing such programs. The Governor and General Assembly have each issued clear directives seeking to improve the state’s performance.

Improving the state’s performance on early college programs requires a focus on the existing Post-Secondary Enrollment Option (PSEO). PSEO allows high school students to enroll in college courses, and sets forth a formula for how much money should be deducted from the state’s public school foundation formula to compensate the college or university. This one-size-fits-all formula has been widely criticized by both public school districts and higher education officials, contributing to the poor performance of the state in this area.

Despite the inflexible statutory formula, many public school districts have partnered with colleges and universities across the state to develop strong dual enrollment programs. These schools have essentially worked around the state PSEO formula to find more equitable arrangements.

Learning from this experience, Governor Strickland announced the Seniors to Sophomores program in his 2008 State of the State address: “Building on the existing Post-Secondary Enrollment Options plan, today I am announcing that I have directed the Chancellor to give every twelfth grader who meets the academic requirements a choice of spending their senior year in their home high school, or spending it on a University System of Ohio campus.

Tuition for the year will be free.

We will begin enrolling students in this plan for the upcoming school year. Participating seniors will then graduate from high school ready to start their sophomore year in college. In fact, students will receive their high school diploma and one full year of college credits at the same time. The credits will transfer in full to public institutions, as well as many private colleges.

I call this initiative Seniors to Sophomores. Its goal is to raise the aspirations of all students, to challenge students who might feel disengaged from their high school studies, and to help students who want to accelerate their college education. And, just think about the effect on a family’s budget when they save the cost of an entire year of college tuition.” Using the Seniors to Sophomores program as the impetus, the Board of Regents and the Ohio Department of Education have moved quickly to enhance all available strategies for early college credit. For the 2008-09 school year, approximately 40 school districts, in partnership with University System of Ohio colleges and universities, will be awarded a maximum of $100,000 each to serve as “Early Adopters.”

Early adopters will work to not only implement the Seniors to Sophomores program, but also to expand PSEO, AP, early college and dual enrollment programs that offer college classes on the high school campus. The experiences of the early adopters will help the state identify, develop and implement the most effective strategies statewide.

Responding to the Governor’s call for a Seniors to Sophomores program also caused the Ohio Department of Education and the Board of Regents to agree on a standard of academic eligibility that students must meet by the end of the junior year. To participate in Seniors to Sophomores, students must:

Pass all parts of the Ohio Graduation Test.
Complete Algebra II or the equivalent with a grade of “C” or better.
Complete three years of high school English with a grade of “C” or better.
Score “college ready” on the college’s placement assessment.

The Ohio Department of Education and the Board of Regents have also established standards for courses that would qualify for college credit on a high school campus. For a course to receive college credit:

All faculty must meet Higher Learning Commission criteria.
All courses offered must be either Transfer Assurance Guide (TAG) or Transfer Module Courses (terms associated with the state’s Credit Transfer System) or courses that are the beginning of technical degree programs.
All courses must use the college text(s), assessments and syllabi.
The college has identified a college faculty member or academic administrator to monitor the quality of the course and visit the high school site at least once-per-term.

New Combined High School Completion/College Readiness Courses for Those Who Do Not Complete High School

KEY STRATEGY: The University System of Ohio will reach out to all students who do not complete their high school education and work to re-engage them through high school completion and college preparedness programs.

The University System of Ohio will support all efforts to keep high school students engaged and in school until graduation. But some young adults will always leave school without finishing their diploma. These students are typically lumped into the category of “dropout.” Ohio cannot afford to spend its time counting dropouts, and so, in partnership with the Ohio Department of Education, the University System of Ohio will work to eliminate that phrase from the state’s vocabulary.

Students who do not complete a high school diploma by the end of the school year following their 18th birthdays will be jointly identified by the Ohio Department of Education and the Board of Regents, and will be recruited to attend an academic program offered through the Board of Regents that combines high school completion with college readiness.

These programs will be developed and administered by the adult literacy network that has been transferred to the Board of Regents from the Ohio Department of Education. The Board of Regents will report publicly on its success in recruiting such students to continue their education. Since the state guarantees support for high school completion through the Ohio Department of Education for students up to age 21, funding will be shared by the Ohio Department of Education and the Board of Regents. Students who complete the high school diploma through this initiative may be counted on the graduation statistics gathered by the Ohio Department of Education, giving both colleges and high schools an incentive to participate.

Improving Teacher Education and Expanding the Role of Education Schools

KEY STRATEGY: The Board of Regents will collaborate with the Ohio Department of Education to improve teacher education and expand the role of education.

A critical way in which higher education impacts the success of the primary and secondary education pipeline is through teacher preparation. By tradition and statute, teacher preparation has been a shared responsibility between the institutions that train teachers, the Ohio Department of Education and the Board of Regents. Ohio prepares approximately 7,000 teachers annually through campuses that represent a range of missions, contexts and challenges.¹³

HEI, Ohio Board of Regents, FY2007

Teacher preparation programs must focus on adequately equipping new teachers to meet the changing structure of schools and student populations over the next decade. A deeper and more sustained relationship between campus-based teacher preparation and school-based clinical experiences will be required. In this new model, teacher education students will benefit from an extended period of apprenticeship in the school setting. Experienced “master” teachers will provide expertise as adjunct faculty and increase the capacity of university education programs. And schools will have an available pool of teachers with greater experience directly in the school setting. Through feeder-programs to universities and career-pathway programs such as teacher’s assistant certifications, community colleges also play an important role in teacher training, and should be a partner in these conversations. Universities will need to take a more proactive stance in setting the teaching agenda for the state. The knowledge base, research and expertise on campuses must be engaged to help the state and the universities address the complex issues surrounding teaching and learning.

Ohio’s teacher education programs have been examining all aspects of the teacher preparation process through voluntary participation in Ohio’s Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) (www.teacherqualitypartnership.org). TQP is a collaboration of researchers from public and private institutions engaged in longitudinal studies of teacher education graduates and their impact on student achievement. This research initiative will be tremendously helpful in ensuring greater understanding of the inter-relationships of teacher education programs.