Washington Watch is written by AACC’s government relations office.
It is only fair that all students succeed. We want all fourth graders and eighth graders in the United States to read and do math at the fourth and eighth grade level, respectively. The extent to which certain groups of students, based on race, ethnicity, or income level, do better or worse than other groups of students in reading and doing math at grade level defines achievement gaps. Identifying gaps is the first step in closing them. It is also important to measure how large are the gaps, which groups are most affected, and if there are changes from year-to-year.
At the postsecondary level, achievement can be measured in several ways. Common measures are completion rate and highest level of attainment. Underlying gaps in K-12 success lead to the gap in postsecondary access. There are disparities in who attends college. Low-income and people of color, except Asians, enroll at lower rates than their more well-to-do and white counterparts. Rural residents are also less likely to go to college than urban or suburban residents. Many of the reasons for the disparity in college attendance are related to the circumstances of the prospective students, including the academic opportunities available in the high schools they attended, financial means, and awareness of career pathways.
Documenting racial and ethnic disparities
The gap in educational attainment in the U.S. across race and ethnicity is documented each year that a new set of data is released by the U.S. Census Bureau. According to the Census Bureau, African Americans have made enormous strides in the percent graduating from high school, which is comparable to the overall rate (88 vs. 90 percent) in 2019. However, the gap between African Americans and the U.S. population in bachelor’s degree attainment rate, which in 2019 was 10 percent (26 vs. 36 percent, respectively) has persisted for decades.
A new report of the Excelencia in Education found that in the past decade, while Latinos’ degree attainment increased from 19 to 24 percent, it still lags behind their white counterparts who had a 46 percent rate. Moreover, the graduation rates of Latino students at two-year institutions is two percent lower than that of their White, non-Hispanic peers. All five top institutions conferring associate degrees to Latinos are community colleges, two in Florida and three in Texas. To achieve this ranking, one of those institutions, South Texas College, practices “equity sensitivity.”
State level information paints a similar picture. In 2015, Minnesota passed legislation setting a goal that by 2025, 70 percent of its adult residents ages 25 to 44 would have earned a postsecondary certificate or degree. In 2019, the overall attainment rate stood at 62.2 percent, up from 57.5 percent in 2015. The attainment rate increased for all racial and ethnic groups from 2015 to 2019. However, the gaps among the groups persisted. Even more troubling is the disparate rate of progress made by different groups. Whereas the attainment rate for White Minnesotans increased from 61.4 to 67.8 percent between 2015 and 2019, African Americans experienced only a 1.6 percent increase in the same time frame (37.0 vs. 35.4 percent). The American Indian population made the most progress in attainment, but from the lowest base, rising 6.6 percent from 21.4 percent in 2015.
Efforts to close the achievement gap
There are efforts at the national, state, and local level to close the achievement gap. Closing the equity gap is at the heart of the completion and success agenda of the American Association of Community Colleges’ multi-year Unfinished Business initiative launched in December 2018. The initiative’s equity goal, called a new frontier and a moral imperative, “will not simply identify barriers, but will seek out stellar practices and create tools that will help transform how we think and create solutions for all of our students.”
Recognizing the ongoing disparities in postsecondary certificate and degree attainment, a Minnesota organization whose mission is to use an equity lens to ensure that “students of color and American Indian (POCI) students achieve full academic and leadership success” prepared a report focused on a more equitable financial aid system for POCI students. Among the recommendations are reducing the student match for the Minnesota State Grant; increasing the calculation for the cost of living allowance for financial aid; encouraging more POCI students to apply for financial aid; and, expanding Minnesota Work Study.
The Institute for Higher Education (IHEP) released a report this month highlighting regional collaboration as an example of an innovative strategy to close postsecondary attainment gaps. Briefly, it features a partnership dubbed the Talent Hub, implemented in Mobile, Alabama. The partnership involved a foundation, which leverages partnerships with civil leaders, employers, K-12 and postsecondary institutions, and two community colleges – Bishop State Community College, Coastal Alabama Community College – and the University of South Alabama. This partnership is focused on increasing postsecondary degrees by 75,000 by 2030.
Questionable impact of equity-focused policy
Participants at every AACC Unfinished Business initiative meeting agreed that the road to achieving equity in student success is hard work. States are trying different policies to reach this goal. One such policy is performance-based funding that ties state support for higher education institutions to student outcomes based on race. A recent working paper published by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University explored whether such a policy implemented in Tennessee and Ohio incentivized equity. The answer is a resounding no. According to the paper, “we find no evidence that performance-based funding narrowed race-based completion gaps. In fact, contrary to their intended purpose, we find that performance-based funding widened existing gaps in certificate completion in Tennessee.” Moreover, in both states, “performance-based funding exacerbat[ed] racial inequities in associate degree attainment.”
For more information, contact Jolanta (J.J.) Juszkiewicz at jjuszkiewicz@aacc.nche.edu.
