NLA Discussion: waiting lists/a program example

[Barbara Martinez]

Here at Santa Fe Community College we have ended open enrollment in ESL
classes and will do the same with GED/basic skills classes this summer.
Feedback has been positive from ESL students who feel that it is a more
serious program, and teachers can teach with a more planned, sequential
curriculum.

Many of our GED students come and go, come and go.  We always welcome them
back with open arms, but have low rates of completion and/or level changes.
This means we are not serving them in the best way and it also lowers the
value of our program as far as students are concerned.  The ones that do
come consistently get frustrated because they end up repeating areas they
have already studied in order to allow the returning student to catch up.
Therefore we are starting this summer to close classes after the first (of
8) week.  We will have an "independent study" section that students may
enroll in while they wait for the next class session, but even in this
section, attendance of at least 4 hours a week will be required.  If they
do not attend, they are dropped from the program until the next enrollment
period which is typically every 8 weeks.

Barbara Martinez 
<bmartinez at santa-fe.cc.nm.us>


-----Original Message-----
From: David Heath
Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2001 2:39 PM
To: nla at world.std.com
Subject: NLA Discussion: waiting lists/a program example



Hello all,

I would like to continue Jon Randall's echo of Bob Bickerton's
point "to enroll everyone who comes to our doors, not only can
erode the quality of services we provide, but takes the policy
and elected leaders off the hook."  I would like to do this with
a program example of how Odessa College Adult Education
has responded to the first part of this idea.

Waiting lists are a result of insufficient resources to serve the
number in need of services.  But waiting lists are also the outcome
of organizational forces that struggle to respond to situational and
dispositional barriers to participation and learning that prevent a
student from sticking to an original intention.  That is, they result from
a program's sincere desire to increase student persistence.

In Texas, some programs are struggling to operationalize the
notion of serving fewer better.  As a program manager, the
decision to move away from an accepted, traditional practice of
open-entry admissions, no semester structure, and no attendance
requirement has not been without steady reflection, nor has it come
about without organizational resistance and continuous efforts to
dislodge the status quo.  I will outline the programmatic changes in
our ESOL program in broad form, provide some general descriptors
of the environment and student population while saving comment on
the theoretical underpinnings to a second post for those who find
such philosophical foundations less relevant than the action that
came about due to those underpinnings.

The ESOL program is in a community of 100,000 people in Western
Texas where 50+ % of K-12 students are first language Spanish.
Locally, we serve around 350-400 ESOL students a year.  A student
can attend morning or evening classes for ten hours a week.  These
students are primarily immigrants from Mexico, more likely female than
male, 25-44, with an average grade completion in Mexico from 6-9.  A
common goal is to have better communication skills in order to negotiate
the demands of an English speaking environment, in the community and
at work.  Very few students speak any English at home.

For many complex reasons (accountability being only one), we decided
to take a different approach this year.  Rather than our traditional
open-entry policy, we went to a tri-semester program with a 75%
attendance policy and a 10-20 hour ESOL orientation at the opening of
each semester, created largely around dimensions outlined in the
NCSALL report, "Persistence Among Adult Education Students in
Pre-GED Classes".  The orientation is presented entirely in Spanish
except for advanced classes to permit critical thinking and self-reflection.
(All our population is Spanish speaking except for perhaps 1-2 students
a semester.)  It varies in length depending on the depth the teacher and
students desire to plumb in any given semester.  I will forgo details other
than to say it is a fairly in-depth, critical, participatory investigation
of the forces in students' lives that prohibit and encourage
persistence.  It also contains elements to build self-efficacy and set
realistic goals and follow-up on those intentions.

The attendance policy has some flexibility but is enforced in a fairly
strict manner.  Any student who fails to meet the attendance requirement
is given notice and conferenced with prior to dropping from class.
However, once dropped, s/he must wait until the next semester to enter
class.  For the first nine months of this program year, attendance is up
19% over last year, from 60% to 79%.  More student contact hours are
being generated with fewer students.

Teachers are unanimously pleased with the changes.  According to
them, planning, classroom management, student progress and
teacher-student relations are all improved. They believe students are
more serious, engaged and feel a stronger sense of community.  We
completed a student survey in late September to check student response.
Seventy percent felt the changes to be positive and productive.  Some of
these students had been in and out of the ESOL program for several years.
We will conduct a follow-up survey in May to determine if student opinion
has altered.

Locally, we will meet all state and federal outcomes, in fact we will
substantially exceed those.  I personally feel the program is in a better
position to meet the demands for a caring and disciplined environment
that promotes an intimate space for "opening up" to learning and others
while maintaining an organizational structure that will promote achievement.

If you desire more details surrounding the ESOL orientation or the
programmatic changes, please email me personally.

I would be very interested to hear if others have implemented anything like
this and how it may be progressing.

If you are interested in the thinking that drove these changes, see
my follow-up message.

David Heath
Odessa College
dheath at apex2000.net







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