How Do Teachers Perceive the Effectiveness of the Florida College and Career Readiness Initiative and the Barriers to Implementation?

• In Event: 31.053 - Florida College and Career Readiness Initiative: Feedback From the First Two Years of Implementation

Abstract

Objective:

This study aims to understand the Florida reform from the perspective of the main staff responsible for implementing the reform--teachers of the college readiness and success (CRS) courses created by the reform.

Perspective:

Community colleges often require many different remedial placement tests, so students often can't anticipate whether they are prepared for college credit classes. Florida is one of the few states to use a single test statewide, which greatly facilitates the possibility of alignment. The Florida reform (FCCRI) seeks to create alignment by requiring students to take the state college placement exam in 11th grade, and, if they don't pass, to take CRS courses in 12th grade. Our goal was to understand what difficulties arise in such a reform, and the factors that influence the reforms' effectiveness, as seen by the teachers who implement the reform.

Methods:

Although ultimately the reform must be assessed by student outcomes, such data will not be available until after the first year of the reform. Meanwhile, this study conducts a survey of teachers, to get their perceptions about implementation and early effectiveness.

Data:

We selected a stratified sample of CRS teachers, and surveyed 216 teachers about the reform's implementation and about their judgments of its effectiveness on five goals.

Results:

Teachers identified many deficiencies in the way the reform was implemented. They particularly focused on the legislation's failure to provide time or resources for curriculum development. They also noted the difficulty of teaching CRS courses when they had no textbooks or any information about test content. They also suggested that they could be more effective if they knew students' test scores, and particularly diagnostic information about specific skill needs.

Despite the difficulties they noted, teachers expressed support for the reform, and they reported extensive actions to support the reform. We also found that the teachers felt the reform was generally effective. We analyzed variations in teachers’ assessments in different kinds of districts, different subjects, and with different kinds of students. We found that the program was judged more effective by math teachers, by teachers who used many different types of resources to implement the reform, and by teachers in schools that already placed a high priority on college readiness. The program was no more effective in schools which placed a high priority on career readiness, and teachers reported difficulty in engaging non-college bound students.
 
Policy and scientific significance:

This study contributes to the research on implementation of college and career readiness reforms. The teachers provide valuable suggestions about implementation difficulties, and ways the reform could have assisted their efforts to implement it. In particular, we consider ways the program could better appeal to non-college bound students.

The study also contributes to our understanding of the difficulties of alignment between high school and college standards. We find that English teachers have greater difficulties than math teachers, replicating prior findings in a Chicago reform (e.g. Allensworth, Nomi, Montgomery, & Lee, 2009). We consider the potential for implementing such a reform more widely.

Authors

• James E. Rosenbaum, Northwestern University

• Jennifer Lansing, Northwestern University

• Caitlin Ahearn, Northwestern University