• IDRA Newsletter • May 2012 •
In Texas, developmental courses have become another hurdle that students must overcome. Upon entering, college students must prove that they are college-ready by taking an assessment chosen by the college. If students score below a certain threshold, they must enroll in developmental courses, for which no college credit is earned. The rates of success in developmental course for students in Texas are discouraging. In math over a two-year period, only 14.2 percent of students who took developmental classes are able to meet the criteria needed to begin earning college credit. This means that after two years of developmental courses, only one in 10 students began earning courses with college credit. These statistics alone bear out the need to inform parents early on of potential challenges to the college-going future they envision for their children.
In order to inform families and communities about these issues, IDRA and TG have embarked on a project that will expand IDRA’s OurSchool portal to include college information. The OurSchool portal is one way IDRA delivers meaningful data to all educational partners to spur action that create equal and excellent educational opportunities for all children.
IDRA has outlined the three following objectives associated with college success and data dissemination.
- Compel meaningful action by creating and providing convincing clear messages, data, models and stories that make the case for equal and excellent educational opportunity;
- Expand utilization of IDRA’s OurSchool portal by educators, policymakers, community leaders and families; and
- Promote partnerships among educators, parents and students (pre-K-20) that prepare and graduate minority and ELL students from high school and college (IDRA’s 2011-2012 Strategic Plan, 2010).
TG awarded IDRA this 0ne-year grant in the fall of 2011 to achieve these objectives. The soft launch of the expanded OurSchool portal is scheduled for this summer.
Comments and questions may be directed to IDRA via e-mail at comment@idra.org.
[©2012, IDRA. This article originally appeared in the May 2012 IDRA Newsletter by the Intercultural Development Research Association. Permission to reproduce this article is granted provided the article is reprinted in its entirety and proper credit is given to IDRA and the author.]