California does not have to start from scratch
In this commentary in EdSource, IEBC President Brad Phillips writes that the system can build on what we’ve already learned and must be both useful and easy to use. Read the full article in EdSource.
Finding it hard to go ‘All In’?
Read "The Problems and Promise of Bringing Educational Interventions to Scale” by Brad Phillips in Medium. Going all-in sounds exciting in poker but not for most educational institutions. Few are willing to bet big on going to scale with interventions, even if these interventions are research-based and have shown promise in improving student outcomes. So why [...]
Automatic Admission: Setting Up Students to… Succeed
This time of year many high school students are weighing their options for college. For most people getting a college degree is the difference maker in getting a good job and opportunities for a satisfying life. Seeing themselves in the opportunity-making business, Idaho public colleges are now automatically admitting high school seniors with a 3.0 [...]
How one Texas community college helped lift prospects for all students
There is no question that racial, gender and income inequities in the United States hurt our nation economically, socially and morally. Higher education can be a great equalizer, lifting the prospects of the poor, near poor and working class – but only if we hold the entire higher education sector and its cadre of reform advocates [...]
Hiding In Plain Sight: Solutions to College Relevance
Ensuring college degrees are worth the time, money and effort is a challenge this nation must solve. Simply put: more degrees of value mean a more prosperous, equitable future. The college attainment enterprise is certainly working hard and using considerable resources to make college more affordable and beneficial, but it is missing an important solution [...]
Education’s “pea in the mattresses” A tale of layers and royal domains
Sometimes the most obvious education solutions are the hardest to get attention for, much less implement. That’s the way it is with advocating for K-12 and higher education working together to improve college completion. The simple act of K-12 and higher education faculty and administrators together reviewing student performance data and observations about student needs [...]
Improving response time in education
What if the solution to what ails education was a simple matter of timing? We know the fastest response times win the day in health care, retail, and other sectors, so why not education? The answer lies in when education’s data and accountability systems provide information – is it in time or too late? Too [...]
A College Completion Idea That’s So Simple. Why Aren’t We Doing It?
This week’s White House “College Opportunity” summit will focus on an overlooked area with enormous potential for student success: K-12 and higher education working together to improve college completion. It sounds so simple and obvious. In fact many assume it’s already happening. After all both groups of educators share the same students, just at different [...]
How We Got It Wrong About Data Use
Data has been promoted as the great game changer in education. Simply stated, once we have good data, we can figure out what the problems are and how to fix them to improve student success. The common wisdom states that to increase data use, you have to build better data displays, develop a data [...]